Somebody Up There Hates You (7 page)

I want to close my eyes so I don't have to see her, but I can't. Got to meet people's eyes, Mom always says. Look 'em in the eye. So I look right at her, round face, pink hair falling down now, spikes all slumpy. “Not AIDS. Cancer. Not catching. No worries.”

Doesn't matter, catching or not, she backs away. “Oh, man,” she says. “I just . . .” She wipes her hand on her skirt. And then she's gone. Running down the street, weaving between costumed people, her skirts pulled up and her strong legs churning.

***

Things blur. Sirens coming. Phil running, pushing my chair uphill, panting and grunting. Flashing lights. Phil turning, and we're in an alley and we're still moving fast, and then we're two blocks from Warren Street, on a quiet side street, and Phil parks me behind some bushes in somebody's front yard, and he leans over, holding his sides and groaning. “Shit,” he breathes. “I am too old for this.” He falls on his back onto the grass and lies there, his breath honking in his chest.

I feel strangely peaceful. I start to look around. This is a nice street; houses have pumpkins in their windows or on their porches. There's no trick-or-treaters left; it's late, I guess. Jeannette might be calling the police right now. Might have done it hours ago. I have no clue.

Phil's breathing calms down and he sits up. He's starting to laugh. “I hope you got some, Richard, me lad. Make it all worthwhile.” His face is smeared with blood, and his knuckles are cracked wide open. He opens and closes his hand a few times, testing it.

“I sure did, man,” I say. “Thanks.”

He nods. “Mission accomplished.” He sighs. “You want to go back there? That hospital? Or you want to go home? I can take you home, you know. We're, what? Five, six blocks away? From where you and Sisco live these days?”

I hear the real question in his voice and I get it: he doesn't know where we live. Mom doesn't want him to know. I close my eyes and I can picture it, the tiny little house Mom finally was able to buy us two years ago. He's right, it's only about five blocks away, to the north and west. Another quiet street, bitsy little ranch houses in bitsy little yards. But for Mom, it's a huge accomplishment, that house. It's huge. She
bought
it, fair and square, on her own. All by herself. My room is about eight feet by eight feet, hers not much more. But it's got a little lawn and a little porch, and she planted flowers, and there's a crab apple tree out back. It's our sanctuary, she said once. Our safe place. It's
ours
. Our house is something I think about a lot, sitting in my hospice room. Like how it's so close and how I could walk there anytime. Or take a cab. I could go home, lie around my room. But then Mom would have to take care of me, and I think that's way too hard, that this stuff should be left to the pros. Really.

And, anyway, Mom's sick. I bet she's in bed by now, wrapped in her old quilt and finally asleep after the trick-or-treaters. Last thing she needs? Phil and me, all messed up, knocking on her door.

“Hospital,” I say. “Don't want to get Jeannette in trouble.”

It is a long hard climb, uphill all the way. I'm too beat to help. It's all on Phil. And he manages, in short spurts with long rests. Give the man credit—he gets me back to Richie's World, almost safe and almost sound.

7

I
WON'T EVEN TRY
to describe the scene back at the hospital, it's so dark-edged and foggy in my head. I remember that the first thing I saw when Phil pushed my chair into the ER entrance and said good-bye, backing and bowing away, was the clock. It said 12:24. Not even Halloween anymore. Now it's All Souls' Day, I thought. I remember that. Or All Saints' Day. Whatever. I can't roll myself another inch. Can't get to an elevator, can't do one single thing. I just sit there. I might even be crying, I'm so tired. No, let's be honest: I
am
crying.

It all got kind of wild, I heard afterward, but at the time, I just drifted off to sleep. The ER staff, they read my bracelet and put me on a stretcher and got me back to the hospice unit. They understand the meaning of
No intervention.
Good people, those ER folks.

So I'm sent back to my floor where, Edward tells me the next day, Jeannette was a complete and utter basket case, she was so scared. She was shaking and crying and she called him in early to take over her shift since she couldn't see straight. But, lucky thing, she didn't call the cops or my mother or anyone else, she was so afraid she'd lose her job. She just paced around, cursing the name of Philip Casey up and down the corridor.

Here we are, All Souls' or Saints' morning, and Edward's got his hand on my pulse and he's mad, I can feel it. I'm lying flat on my back and keeping my eyes closed, but I can feel heat in his hand. “She curse my name?” I ask.

“Same name, Mr. Casey. Same name.” Edward drops my wrist and bends over, putting a hand on my chest. “You listen to me, Richie. You almost got a good nurse fired. You scared that poor woman to death. You can't do things like that. You . . .” Then he sighs. There's a long sort of pause, then he says, quiet, like he almost can't believe he's saying it, “You got to grow up, man.”

And, you know, couple days ago, way back on Cabbage Night, I'd have laughed at that. But today, it makes a sort of sad sense. Might be something to think about, if I get a minute. But I can't think. All I can do is sleep. All day. I sense people walking in and out of the room, I hear them talking. I hear my phone ring, a lot. Finally, a nurse answers it and talks, low and calm, to my mom. Couple of times, I go to pull up my blue star blanket, I'm so cold. But it's not there. Somebody brings in a white hospital blanket and puts it over me. People stand around the bed, whispering.

But it's all part of a dream. I know that, because Marie is there, too. She's part of a crowd. A whole bunch of people I don't know, some of them in weird clothes, costumes maybe. Everybody's drinking, smiling. It's some kind of big party. Mom's there. She looks young and happy, and there's some guy with her, a guy I don't know, laughing and putting his hand on her neck. I know, in the dream, that I'm not born yet, that Mom hasn't got a care in the world. I'm not exactly me, not yet. I'm just, like, about to be. Hard to explain. I'm, like, there, watching, but I don't exist. Like I say, it's hard to explain.

I don't wake up, really, until it's dark outside. And when I do, it's Sylvie who's sitting next to my bed, all curled up on the lounge chair. I sit up, try to pull myself together. She's grinning. “Oh, man,” she says. “You are so cool, Richie. You got out. You are, like, the hero of hospice. I even heard those two old men in 304 laughing about it. ‘Kid got out,' they kept saying. ‘Damned if he didn't.'”

I shake my head. I mean, here's a weird thing: I have never, ever been cool. Not even close. Never in my whole life. Ever.

Sylvie stands up, wobbly on her feet. I notice that she's dressed, wearing some kind of black top and jeans. They're about four sizes too big, but she's trying. She's got this funny little green striped hat on her head and she's wearing lipstick. She leans over my bed and puts her lips right next to my ear. “Richie,” she says, clear as can be, “Richie, I don't want to be a virgin anymore. Okay?” She backs up. “Okay?”

I just stare at her.

She smiles. “You think about that. Okay? But not for too long.” She walks out, holding on to the door frame with one hand, steadying herself, walking on her own. She's determined, anybody can see that.

Part II

NOVEMBER 1 - 3

8

S
O NOW IT'S NIGHT
and I can't sleep. It's real quiet; the harpy's closed up shop for the day. Everyone else on the floor, I'm guessing, they're deep in sleep. But me, I'm sitting up in bed, kind of quivering with extreme wakefulness, my brain leaping. The excitement and surprise are just too much. I mean, I got a prospect that I never, ever saw coming: a girl—cool girl, pretty girl, popular girl—who wants me to be her first. As in,
FIRST
. My studly services have actually been solicited. I am not going to have to beg to even touch the girl, my usual MO. No, no, this time I have been formally invited. As in, Your Presence as Official Deflowerer Is Requested. (Bring Your Own Tool.)

Add this to the incontrovertible fact that just about twenty-four hours ago, I received my first—and please, please, please not last—blow job. Or something like it, anyway. Okay, so I'm inflating in my mind, big-time, I know that. Still, it happened, without one minute of pleading on my part. I mean, it was
offered,
man. Free and easy. Suddenly, I'm one hot dude. See, this is why it's cool to be alive, no matter what. It's all about surprises, the whole you-never-know thing, which really is turning out to be true. There is just no way in the whole wide world that I could have guessed, two days ago, that any of this was coming my way. What are the chances: seventeen-year-old virgin boy meets fifteen-year-old virgin girl in hospice, and they fall in love and/or lust, do the do—and meanwhile this ultrasexy boy gets his first bj, or whatever, on the side? Really, all of this in hospice where, believe me, this is not the norm. I mean, me and Sylvie, everybody, we're here because we got the Big Diagnosis: one month or less. You arrive and thirty days later, you either go home or Go Home. And yet. And yet, I am suddenly in full-swing, in-demand, hot-guy heaven. This does not compute, children. All I keep thinking, in my maturest mode, is Holy Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But just to make sure that all of this sudden uplift in my sex life doesn't make me forget that I do still have SUTHY Syndrome, I get to see Sylvie's father pacing the hall, making his umpteenth turn past my room. Never for a moment should I forget that Somebody Down Here hates me, too. Every time the man passes, he slows down and glares through the window in my door. His face is all dark and blotchy, bruised and cut, and it hangs there in the window like a bad moon rising, I swear. I close my eyes and feign sleep, but I can still feel his Evil Eye trained right on the center of my forehead. The beam of fury strikes like a bullet:
POW.
Finally, just before midnight, when the man has passed and repassed my room a million times, I can't take it anymore and I ring for a nurse.

It's poor old Edward, who's been pressed into doing, like, a triple shift. I mean, the dude looks so beat that I feel healthy in comparison. He's been bathing and lifting and medicating and who knows what all since seven
A.M.,
taking the seven
A.M.
to three
P.M.
shift, then the three to eleven, and for some reason, is still here. His shoulders are bowed, I'm telling you, and his uniform is all wrinkled and stained with about eight best-left-unnamed substances. I feel sorry for bothering him, especially since he's still trying to be cheerful and reasonably professional even when it's clear that's a huge stretch of human patience.“What's up, young Richard?” he asks.

“Nothing much,” I say. “I'm feeling better, actually. I just need help getting out of bed, okay? Can't sleep. Can I hang with you guys for a while?” They let me sit at the nurses' station some nights, when things are quiet. There's some laughing there, usually, and some fat-full, salt-heavy, sugar-laden, unhealthy snacks for those who choose to eat. Some company for the sleepless, at least. Nurses, they get the middle-of-the-night blues, too. How could they not?

“Oh, sure, like you deserve privileges.” His eyebrows pull together. Then he sighs. “Okay, fine. We could use some cheering up.” He grabs my chair and hoists me into it.

I shouldn't ask. Should never ask around here. But I can't help it. “Who?”

Edward steers the wheelchair so I can see into room 304, the room that the two ancient dudes share—well, shared. Past tense. The bed by the window is all neatly made up, empty. The curtains are pulled around the other one.

“Oh, no,” I say. “Did one of those guys actually
die
while the other one was right there in the room? I mean, isn't that against regulations?” I mean, really. Usually they hustle the actually—as in right-now, today, this minute—dying folks into private rooms for family privacy and to prevent roommate trauma. The least they can do, don't you think? Give everybody some breathing space for those last breaths.

He gives a snort. “Let's just say it's frowned upon. But sometimes, we don't know. Thought the man was taking a longish sort of nap, but got busy. Missed what was happening, like a total fool.”

At the nurses' station, I can see that everyone's down. They're all just subdued. There's a Br'er there and two aides, along with Edward and me and a nurse I don't know. She's the kind that wears a stiff white cap bobby-pinned to her hair, and the white cap has one of those black velvet ribbons running across it. That kind of cap always spells trouble, in my experience. The cap sits on top of a helmet of gray hair. She's got
supervisor
and
reports
written all over her. She looks at me hard, like I'm some strange beast and she's pissed off that I've escaped from my cage, but then she glances at Edward's tired face and doesn't say anything, just makes a
tsk
ing sound with her tongue. I can tell that this group is going to bring me down from my sex-happy high, big-time. “Going for a drive, daddio,” I say to Edward. “Don't wait up.” I wheel myself off down the hall.

First stop, Sylvie's room. If I can see in, maybe I'll know that her father's given up prowling and has crashed on his little cot. Or gone off to drink in a local bar, like he always seems to do once Sylvie's asleep. I ease up to the doorway, hands on wheels, ready for a quick reverse should the man be in there, like some grizzly bear in his cave, protecting his young. The door's open, and I lean in. The cot is empty. There's a big half-moon hanging outside one of the windows. I roll farther in, quiet as a paraplegic mouse. I park myself just at the foot of Sylvie's bed.

The room smells girly-sweet. There's a big bunch of pink roses in a vase by the bed. The little night-light over her bed is on—it's never really dark around here. I can see the shape of Sylvie in the bed, curled on her side under a sheet. I focus on the curve of what I assume is her hip and get a big lump in my throat. I know, I know: a big lump in my crotch would be more promising. But that's not happening at the moment. I'm not sure it ever will with Sylvie. Partly because she's sick, partly because she's fierce. Partly because her old man would fry my ass. But mostly because I got this deep sense that she is so far out of my league that I'm dreaming if I think my lips might ever touch hers. Like they wouldn't even match, you know? Her private-school, smart-girl, good-family, college-prep lips are just not the same shape as mine. Like we're different species. I roll over to the bulletin board and check out, in the iffy moon/ hospital light, all the pictures her mother has put there, like I got to make sure, like maybe she wasn't so gorgeous and perfect back in her other life.

But she was. It's all there, the evidence. Pre-SUTHY, this girl was seventeen million notches above me on the social scale. At least. Hell, she was way ahead of me on the whole evolutionary scale. Like I'm some sort of slump-backed ape-creature and she's the tall straight human, already using her thumbs to make fire and wheels. I keep looking and looking, though, searching the eyes and the body and the hair and the skin in the pictures. Like maybe, even then, there was some sort of sign on her. Like a stain or something. Something to show that she was marked. Some warning that at fifteen, she'd end up here, with the likes of me. And if I could find it, then I'd be able to match my sorry self to hers. I don't know, something like that, that's what I'm searching for. I roll over to the bunch of roses, wanting a good long smell of their sweetness. There's a little white card tucked into the vase. I pluck it out and read,
Baby, I miss you. Get better, okay?
It's signed
Chad.
Wouldn't you just figure her boyfriend would be named Chad? I mean, come on. I haven't got a shot. I put the card back and decide to just roll myself out of there, quiet and simple. Have some dignity, man, I tell myself.

“Hey.” Her voice raises the hair on the back of my neck, it's so sweet and low.

I swing my chair around and look at her. She hasn't moved, still curled on her side. But her eyes are open and they shine in this little patch of moonlight that's broken into her room. It's amazing—how beautiful she looks, right then. There's this little haze of dark hair growing on her head, soft and fuzzy. Her eyes are dark as night and huge in her thin, white face. “Hey,” I say.

She crooks a finger through the bars of her bed, bringing me closer. “Dad's gone?” It's a question.

“Yeah. I think so.” I roll closer and put my hand around one of the steel bars. It's shining in the moonlight, all silver.

She smiles, a flash of white teeth. “Yeah, well. Don't count on it. He'll be back. He takes long walks, he says. Comes back reeking of bourbon. Whatever.” She reaches out and pulls my hand through the bars, curling her fingers around mine and then putting both of our hands under her sheet, against her belly. She's wearing some kind of long, loose tank top thing. And I'm pretty sure that's all she's wearing. “Well, then. Let's carpe diem, dude.”

I can feel my heart thunking against my ribs. And I can feel her heart beating against her ribs. It's the coolest thing: they're in sync, those two hearts. And the skin on her belly is smooth as silk. I rub my rough knuckles against it, up and down. She guides our hands a little and makes them run over a bumpy line that cuts her in half, going north and south, sternum to, I assume, crotch.

“Scar,” she whispers. “Ugly as hell. Like some hideous railroad track.”

I shake my head, trying to think of something gallant and comforting to say. I can't. I let go of her hand and take one finger of my own, running it along the scar, up and down. Up, it starts between two tiny breasts. Down, it ends where hair might start, if she had hair. I stop there. Finally, my voice opens up. It sounds all cracked and funny, but at least I can form words. “Ugly, hell,” I say. “It's the stairway to heaven.” There it is, I realize—the thing that puts her on my level. Or me on hers. Or something. I move my finger one squinch lower.

She makes a little sound, just a soft intake of breath, and rolls onto her back. She catches my hand and holds it to her. Then she presses it even lower and lets go. She giggles. “No need for bikini wax,” she says. “All taken care of by Dr. Chemo.” She lifts her hips, just a smidge, and her eyes close. “Go for it, Rich-Man,” she says.

And, you know, I would, I really would, except I want so bad to kiss her first. Like I can't just grab the girl's privates, can I, without some kind of prelude? I just can't. My mama raised a gentleman. I roll as close as I can get to her bed and try to lean in over the bars. It's almost impossible, though, unless you're a giraffe. It's awkward as hell.

She notices that my hand isn't progressing, I guess, and she opens her eyes. She sees me looming over her, halfway out of my chair and halfway in. She snorts out a laugh. “Oh, Richard,” she says. “I'm such an ass. Sorry.” She pushes the button that lowers the side of the bed.

I stand up; I'm not really wheelchair-bound, after all. Just a little shaky in the legs. Well, a lot shaky, it turns out. I fall on top of her, and all of a sudden we're both giggling like maniacs, our legs all knees and ankles, knocking into each other, and our elbows in each other's faces.

She's better at this than I am, I have to say. Without doing much, she kind of slides under me and then we're lying chest to chest, crotch to crotch. I take a breath as she runs one hand along my chest. Then she gives a little shriek. “Oh my god. You've got one, too,” she says. Her small fingers play up and down what the docs call my midline incision. Been opened and zipped back up six, seven times. Her hand is cool, and I, like, just freeze as it creeps lower and lower to where hair should be and isn't. “Oh, man,” she says, “we match! Except for this.” And, no shrinking violet she, she just goes on ahead and grabs, while I lower my face and find her mouth with mine.

And that's exactly how we are when Edward bursts into the room and flicks on the overhead light. Then we're blinded.

I try to pull the sheet over us. “What?” I say. “What?”

Edward is whispering, loud. “Come on, you two. Move it. Her father's back.”

I will not dignify my exit from the room with a description. It's too embarrassing. Let's just say I was bundled like a baby into the wheelchair and pushed at amazing speed by Edward into the room next door. From which Edward and I peeped out like scared rabbits while Sylvie's dad wobbled down the hallway, muttering and growling to himself. He peeked into Sylvie's room, where I presume she had the smarts to look like a sleeping innocent, then he kept going, making one more lap around the hallway.

As we watch the man's back recede, it takes me a minute to realize that we're in 304, the room with the recently vacated bed. I can tell that Edward is about ready to punch my lights out, and he's opening his mouth to start some big-time lecture when I hear something: a weird kind of humming noise. “Hey,” I whisper to Edward. “Shut up. Listen.” Maybe the bed itself is moaning? Maybe it's haunted? I mean, I don't believe in ghosts, not much, but I do kind of think a guy might hang around, some way or another, for a couple hours after he stops breathing. Only makes sense, right? Not like some otherworldly presence or anything, just like the guy he was. So I try to remember the old man who lived in it, the guy who liked soccer, guy who laughed, I heard, at my Halloween escape. But then I can hear the sound more clearly and I can tell it's not coming from his bed after all.