The Last Time I Died (7 page)

What a disappointing awakening our man has ahead of him. Oh yes, he’ll wake up.

Remember, he failed.

I’m not in Heaven because there’s a tube in my dick.

It’s not Hell because the tube would be much larger.

Fuck.

I’m alive.

My eyes creak open. The hospital room is clean and cool and I can’t move a muscle. Exhausted. Tubes in every orifice, not just my Johnson. Machines making beeps that mean something to someone. A pudgy nurse in the process of changing my IV bag. She smiles a beautiful smile that doesn’t belong in a hospital. She must be new. I can see where the wrinkles and bags will be in five years if she lasts that long.

—Well, hello. We thought we lost you.

Her words are sweet, but I can tell she’s speeding up the IV swap out so she can run and tell the doctor I’m not brain dead. I wonder who lost money on that one.

My eyes dart around the room. I’m assuming she’s taking this as a good sign.

—How are you feeling?

How am I feeling? My eyes slow to a stop and I drift off into a thousand yard stare. The last thing I need is self-awareness, but now that she’s asked the question I can’t help but assess my current state. I am feeling terrible.

I’m too tired even to groan. My throat too dry to make any noise if I wanted to. I breathe a little deeper and hope she can translate that to mean that I’m feeling alive, for better or worse.

They thought they lost me. I was dead. I killed myself. Fucking finally.

And look what I found. I can see the room around me and I can see this highly trained, doughy woman looking at me like she cares what happens and I can see machines keeping me alive and the mound that is my feet at the end of the bed and the door to my room that’s slightly ajar. But really, wherever I look all I see is the recollection of my lifeflash, the vast mental landscape of unexplored content that I am now aware of, its infinite potential soaking in to my consciousness. Tainting my perception of everything else.

My life.

I can see the real world around me, but I am now completely aware of the existence of the reality I thought I had destroyed. It’s in there. All of it.

One recovered memory plays over and over in a constant loop, as if searching for approval or context or company. I was eight. Staring at the stoop. The night my father killed my mother. My god.

This is officially my earliest memory. HackShag has lost the title to the brash, young newcomer. Eight-year-old Christian Franco now holds the belt.

Chubs finishes up with the IV.

—Okay, you rest now.

Like I was going to enter the Ironman.

She scurries out to let the doctors know the good news.

I’m so tired.

Black.

*It’s three years ago.

I’m standing in one of the ballrooms at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia.

I’m crying as two hundred Jews stare at me and think either
Oh, what a sweet young man
or
God, what a pussy
. Half of them are right.

I’m crying because I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

From what I can tell, men look at getting married as the end of a long, arduous process. Celebrating the end of the march of courtship. A culmination. Women look at it as a beginning. The launch party for your new life together. The starting line.

I’m crying because I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

I’m crying because I’m trying to remember how I got here and I can’t.

I’m crying because I drank too much scotch before the ceremony.

I have no family at the wedding aside from my sister. My choice.

We’re having a Jewish ceremony. I have no particular religious leanings beyond yelling the name of somebody’s lord and savior when I stub my toe. On the other hand, Lisa was raised in a Jewish household. Orthodox, no less. Observed every holiday. Fasted. No crazy black dresses and wigs, but she went to Hebrew school and was bat mitzvahed. She still observed well into our marriage. Made the full spread for Rosh Hashanah every year. Tried to atone every Yom Kippur. Everything. But ask her what happened when you died and she’d tell you there’s nothing. The lights go out. Black.

It made no difference to her that this one belief sort of negated the whole concept of practicing religion, Jewish or otherwise. If life only leads to black emptiness, how did practicing a religion help anything? It always struck me as pointless, but it was important to her so I said nothing. And now I have to stand here while this overblown donkey of a cantor murders a song I wouldn’t like even if he could sing. It’s endless.

When I saw Ella before the ceremony, she put on a brave face and wished me the best even though I know she has her doubts. And by doubts, I mean she thinks Lisa would make a delightful ex-fiancée. Ella’s husband shook my hand and handed me another drink right before I walked to the chuppah. His little way of calling me a sucker. I was fine until I saw Ella waddle down the aisle with her maternity bridesmaid dress. How cruel of us, looking back. She didn’t want to be in the wedding in the first place, but Lisa insisted and I bullied. Ella walked down the aisle with as much dignity as she could muster and all I can see is her rotund belly and I’m thinking maybe that will be Lisa one day and won’t that make us whole? I could have held it in if I had kept my eyes closed the entire ceremony. Ella was my trigger.

I made it a point to have dinner with Ella and Tim as a foursome a few times before the wedding. We had never made the effort before then (also my choice), but I wanted to show off my new toy. This magnificent beast that I had tamed. This mountain I had climbed. Look what I did. I saw this beautiful creature and I snookered her into loving me almost as much as I love her. I broke her. Ella meet Lisa, my new life.

Ella forced a smile and talked girl talk with Lisa even though I know Ella well enough to understand that she was actually feeling Lisa out. Looking for the weak point. The cracks. Not that she would have ever acted on this intelligence. She knows better than to give me advice.

And here we are today.

I’m crying because I drank too much scotch before the ceremony and now it’s starting to hit me that the last five months of hell are over. The planning and arguing and screaming and worrying about the wedding are done and we can finally get on with the crying and arguing and screaming of being married. This is the point at which my perspective intersects with Lisa’s. This one day.

It’s not sadness I’m feeling. It’s relief.

I think I’m happy.

I wake again.

I’m still alive.

Still in the hospital.

Could have been an hour. Could have been two days.

There are fewer tubes and IVs. I’m able to sit up. The fat nurse with the great smile has been replaced by Harry who is not smiling. He’s waiting. I reacclimate myself to the idea of being alive for the foreseeable future. Hmm. This could be an awkward conversation.

I know Harry’s been picking up the slack for me at work. Covering for me with the other partners. Handling my bleating clients. Lying to them. Ordering underlings to do what I should have been doing and steaming about it the whole time. That’s what I would have done. I wonder how long it took him to figure out I wasn’t coming in. I doubt I was in any condition to ask the hospital to call him even if I could have remembered the number. Maybe they found my card in my wallet. Where’s my wallet?

Have I been in here an entire week? Maybe.

Filling in the blanks, I realize Harry must have been calling my apartment and my cell and finally, just in case, the same hospital I was brought to last time. At least, I think that’s where I am. Maybe he started with the hospital. He’s a smart guy.

Harry looks terrible. Was he here all night? Watching me? Waiting for me to wake up? Hoping he would get one more chance to tell me what an asshole I am? What a guy. Fucking love this guy.

I wonder if I can talk. There’s a feeding tube (a ‘nasogastric’ if I recall correctly the one malpractice suit I sat in on for kicks) running through my left nostril, down my throat, and into my stomach to feed me. My throat feels cramped and I want to rip the tube out but I know if I do that I’ll never talk again. It might be worth it. I have nothing left to say to anyone.

Must have been at least a week. Maybe more. If I could raise my arm I would feel the stubble on my face to get a better idea. I’m too tired. And I don’t really care. This must be costing someone a fortune.

Harry takes a deep breath and I know what’s coming. He isn’t here to shoot the shit or hold my hand or counsel me to put my faith in a higher power. He’s angry. But I have no one else. I’ll take angry.

Fuck it. I’ll start and see how he reacts.

—I saw my father. I saw his face and I remembered that night. I saw it.

My voice is a whisper from the grave.

Harry waits a moment to let my statement register before disregarding it as information that is not relevant to him, as I am no longer relevant to him.

—You’re fired. I thought I should tell you myself.

I’m not surprised nor do I feel a tinge of concern. I want him to know there are more important things to be dealt with. At the end of your life, you’re not going to look back and thank the lord that you crammed those extra cases into your workload, Harry. Probate. Estate taxes. Money. It’s all nothing. I saw my father last night. I was in the same room with him. Alive together. Listen to me for a second. Let’s talk as one human to another.

—Harry…

—Good luck, Christian.

Harry turns and walks out and I am alone as if no one had ever been there.

(What’s this?)

Our man has arrived back at his apartment upright and sober.

Having administered his own slightly premature dismissal from the hospital, he has bypassed countless liquor vendors along the way home, no doubt disappointing the local population of mixologists hoping for a despondent derelict to wile away an afternoon at the mercy of their skilled hands.

And to top that, our man initiated a grand total of zero unnecessary confrontations, arguments, or altercations in the six days he spent recovering in the private room his (now former) employer quietly paid for. None. Could he be saving up for something special? A prizefighter-esque banking of testosterone and rage for an upcoming title event?

What could be whirling about among the creaky gears of the old boy’s cognitive machinations? A plan grander than his previous suicide by disgrace scheme? A notion that he may be, as they say in the B movie business, ‘on to something’? Is that certain something in his eyes hope or defeat? Ambition or remorse? Acceptance or determination?

Let’s look a bit closer.

Our man enters holding a bag from an art supply store and heads for the table in the middle of what you would refer to as his dining area, although he might think of it as the place where he finally resigned himself to the idea that his marriage was over before signing his divorce papers.

The loft, when he and his (then) wife bought it three years ago, was regarded as the height of design consciousness and the ideal backdrop for the handsome cosmopolitan couple. Minimalist with an assertive exactitude. Wide open with rooms delineated by furniture arrangements that self-dictated their own imaginary boundaries.

The kitchen ended approximately four feet beyond the bar stools that lined the far side of the marble topped island which had separated our man and his wife when she informed him she ‘can’t fucking take it anymore.’

The living room had as its centerpiece the sofa on which they sat silently for an hour as Lisa cried into her husband’s loving embrace upon hearing the worst news of her life.

There was a magnificent view of SoHo at which our man gazed while contemplating the painful confrontation, bold honesty, and white-hot humiliation he would need to endure to repair the damage to his marriage (during the brief period when that option existed.)

The bedroom the once-happy couple shared was simply a king-sized bed at the west end of the loft surrounded by two night tables and artwork one would not be surprised to find in a master bedroom. Our man has slept on the couch since her departure.

But let us return to the business at hand, which appears to be illustration. Pads. Pencils. A hunch in the old boy’s back that connotes either enthusiasm or anger. Our man is rather busy sketching and erasing and crumpling and sighing. Relentless, even.

But, why?

Therapy? Too bold of a play for our self-absorbed friend. Fun? It’s hard to believe the old boy enjoys anything anymore. Artistic vision? Doubtful. Our man lacks the drive to tell stories to anyone other than the woman he is at any given moment attempting to bed and/or humiliate.

No, judging by the volume of discarded attempts he has already generated, this would seem to be an adventure in precision. A quest to generate a perfect vision known only to him for the purposes of preservation. A prophylactic endeavor to prevent his single newly recovered memory from dissolving into so many useless molecules.

What we are seeing is desperation.

I’m broke.

My credit cards are useless. My savings long ago carved up by New York’s finest divorce lawyers. My checking account should have recently accepted a direct deposit of the last paycheck I will ever receive. And that is all there is and all that will be.

From what I understand, it takes about six months to evict someone from a rented apartment. I am unclear on the timeline of bank foreclosures if you own.

I don’t even think about trying to find another job. I won’t. Bruised, bitter, drunk, unmotivated. It goes without saying that I am unhirable. I’m broken. But, my plans are not the type that need long-term funding. If I’m careful, this final paycheck will cover me for the rest of my life.

I start with the eyes. That’s the toughest part. You get that right and the rest is relatively easy. But you have to get the eyes right. The first sketches I draw are okay. But the eyes aren’t right. So I start over again and again. I sketch ten and then twenty and then maybe a hundred pairs of eyes. My extra-wide bamboo flooring is covered in failed attempts.