Nerve Damage

by Peter Abrahams

  That stopped the cough, but for only a second or two. Then came a deep, rending sound that tore through his throat, too powerful and urgent to be called a cough, and the water spewed back out. It thickened in the sink and turned red—pink at first, then crimson—running slowly down the drain.

  The next breath Roy drew was normal; and the next, and the one after that. He tried to remember the last time he’d stayed up all night and couldn’t. Never again, old-timer. A chain saw started up somewhere outside.

  Two

  “Wow,” said Krishna Madapan, Roy’s dealer, walking around Delia. Friday morning: the roads were clear again and Krishna had stopped in on his way from New York to Stowe for the weekend. He was dressed all in cosmopolitan black, as usual, although today he looked half country, half city, in ski pants and a mink coat. “May I venture an opinion, Roy?”

  “What if I said no?” Roy said.

  Krishna blinked—his only reaction whenever anything tried to knock him off the rails—and continued. “This is your best,” he said. “No disparagement or denigration of any of your other works, you understand, but—simply your best.”

  “I don’t know,” Roy said, looking up at the piece; he was seeing nothing but flaws today.

  “Of course you don’t,” said Krishna. “That is why you are what you are. And why I am what I am, I might add.”

  Roy didn’t quite get that, but before he could ask for clarification, Krishna had pulled out his cell phone. “Who are you calling?” Roy said.

  “My driver,” said Krishna.

  Roy glanced out the window, saw that Krishna was traveling by limo. The driver was just putting his newspaper aside and flipping open his own phone.

  “Be a good fellow,” Krishna told him, “and bring me my camera.”

  The driver made a face that only Roy saw. A few seconds later, he was coming up the path, camera in hand, slipping and sliding in his leather-soled city shoes. Krishna took pictures of Delia from many angles.

  “This objet trouvé at the top,” he said, “I cannot for the life of me identify.”

  Roy told him what it was.

  “Ah,” said Krishna, and gave Roy a quick sideways look. He’d known Delia; in fact, she’d brought the two of them together. “Your very best,” Krishna said again, quietly now, possibly to himself, perhaps even moved. He pulled up the collar of the mink, as though the temperature had fallen. Then he noticed that the driver was gazing up at the sculpture, too, his mouth a little open. “What is your name, please?” he said.

  “Luis,” said the driver, turning quickly, as though caught doing something bad.

  “And what do you think of this work of art, Luis?” Krishna said.

  “Me?” said Luis.

  “You.”

  Luis licked his lips. “Those are radiators, right?”

  Krishna nodded. “Common automotive radiators.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Luis. “But it’s art anyway, huh?” He studied it for a moment. “Weird,” he said.

  “Weird how?” said Krishna.

  “Weird how?” said Luis. He thought. “It kind of reminds me…” He lapsed into silence.

  “Of?” said Krishna.

  “This one rush hour on the L.I.E.”

  “The L.I.E.?” said Krishna.

  “You know how it gets,” said Luis. “But this was a few years ago, freezing rain. Everyone was going real slow, but it didn’t do no good ’cause there was a big crack-up anyway—happened right in front of me—like in slow motion.”

  “A slow-motion crackup?” said Krishna. He gave Roy a significant look, as though he’d proved something.

  A significant look misinterpreted by Luis. “I don’t mean nothin’ by it,” he said. “Nothin’ bad.” He glanced at Roy. “You the artist?”

  Roy nodded.

  “No offense,” Luis said.

  “None taken,” said Roy.

  A good review, in fact. And coming from the limo driver, instead of some New York critic with God-knew-what agenda, maybe one to be treasured. Roy suddenly felt great, even better at that moment than when, on his way out the door a few minutes later, Krishna shook his hand and said: “This one will be in the first paragraph of your obituary, my friend. More important, I have some buyers in mind already. The fattest kind of fat-cat buyers.” He laughed. Roy laughed, too: not from the prospect of a big sale—his needs were simple and he already had more than enough—but just because of how Krishna got so much fun out of life.

  He walked them outside. Luis opened the rear door for Krishna. Krishna got in, carefully hiking up his mink coat. The door closed on a corner of it anyway, no one noticing except Roy.

  He headed back up the path. Sections of Delia appeared in three windows, an effect that brought him to a stop. He was still standing there when a rusted-out sedan drove up, burning oil. Skippy got out.

  “Mr. Valois?” he said, a breath cloud rising over his head.

  “Yes?”

  “Um.” More breath clouds rose, like smoke signals.

  “What’s up, Skippy?”

  Skippy cleared his throat. “The thing is, more or less, I had a look at your, you know, sculpture thing, the one over at the green.” Pause. “’Course I’ve seen it like a million times, going by. But yesterday I went and had a look, if you know what I mean.”

  “And?”

  “And, um, Uncle Murph said you don’t bite.”

  “I don’t bite?”

  “‘So why’nt you just go over and ask him? The worst that can happen he says no.’”

  “Ask me what?”

  “Yeah,” said Skippy. “So which is why I’m here. Hope it’s not a bad, um…”

  This was getting a little unbearable, especially at three below. And Skippy—like most of the local boys and unlike all the skiers, antiques hunters and second-homers—didn’t dress for the cold. Today he had on jeans, a light jacket, unzipped, and sneakers; no gloves, no hat, a runny nose.

  “Come inside,” Roy said.

  “Yeah?” said Skippy. “Well, okay.”

  Skippy entered. He looked around. His gaze landed on Delia, and stayed there. “Hey,” he said. “That’s why you wanted all those rads.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the rotor thing—it’s way up there.” Skippy moved around the base, head tilted way back, one or two teeth rotting already. “How high, anyway?”

  “Twenty-four feet, two inches at the top of that bent blade,” Roy said.

  “Is this Number Twenty?” Skippy said. “In the Neanderthals?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t look like a Neanderthal,” Skippy said. “They were cavemen, right?”

  Roy nodded.

  “So what’s the story behind this one?”

  Roy smiled. “Hard to put in words.”

  “Sorry,” said Skippy. His eyes, even behind that droopy screen of greasy hair, had trouble meeting Roy’s.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Roy said. He touched the nearest column of the arch. “It’s called Delia.”

  Skippy took another look. “So it’s meant to be, you know, a real person?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “An imaginary one?”

  “No. It’s about a real person, I guess you’d say, but not a representation of her.”

  “So there’s a Delia?”

  “My first—my wife,” Roy said. “She died about fifteen years ago.” Fourteen years, eight months, two weeks, to be exact.

  “Oh.”

  A silence fell over them, not uncomfortable. Thirty seconds went by, maybe more. It felt to Roy like there were three people in the room, getting along fine. “A helicopter crash,” he said. “Off Venezuela.”

  Skippy’s eyes went quickly to those twisted blades up above.

  “Delia was trying to get them to grow pineapples,” Roy said. “She had it all worked out—acreage, marketing, irrigation, everything.”

  Skippy said, “Does Uncle Murph, um, know how she…”
r />   Roy shook his head. “Hadn’t met your uncle at that point.” And Roy didn’t talk much about Delia, in any case; if her death came up, he usually just said plane crash. Which was how Tom Parish, Delia’s boss, had referred to it in that first phone call. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news, Roy. The details—thunderstorm, mechanical failure, helicopter—had come later, along with the body.

  “Oh,” said Skippy.

  Two bodies, in a way, since Delia had been three months pregnant at the time.

  “How old are you, Skippy?”

  “Sixteen,” Skippy said. “But I’m reliable—ask Uncle Murph.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Roy. His gaze was drawn to three pimples on Skippy’s cheek, forming an inflamed little triangle.

  “So,” said Skippy. He cleared his throat, and then again. “Is that a yes?”

  “What’s the question?”

  Skippy’s face reddened, somehow turning all his pimples white. “Assistant,” he said. “A job. Part-time, lifting heavy stuff, cleaning up, that kind of thing.”

  “You want to be my assistant?” said Roy.

  Skippy nodded.

  “What about the job with your uncle?”

  “There’s nothing for me to do at Uncle Murph’s. He’s just trying to, you know, take the pressure off of my mom.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Cleans condos on the mountain. Plus some waitressing.” There was a long pause. “I’m not bad on the computer,” Skippy said.

  Roy had never had an assistant, didn’t need one. He named a date. “Why don’t you come in for a couple hours? We’ll try to figure something out.”

  “Yeah?” said Skippy. “Hey. Thanks.” His right hand twitched like it knew handshaking might be appropriate. But no handshaking happened. Skippy backed toward the door. “Thanks a lot.” He opened the door, went out, closed it. Then came a knock.

  “Come in,” said Roy. He never locked the door. The knob turned but the door didn’t open. Somehow Skippy had locked it. Roy opened the door.

  “Like what time?” said Skippy.

  “How’s two?” Roy said.

  “Cool,” said Skippy.

  Jen walked into Pescatore, looking great. Roy got up, pulled out a chair for her, helped push her to the table. She shot him a quick glance over her shoulder. “What’s with you?”

  “Just my normal self,” said Roy.

  “Right.”

  The mountain rose outside the window, some of the lower runs lit for night skiing. The moguls on Wipe Out cast rounded shadows, like hundreds of little black holes. A skier in white landed a perfect daffy, veered right and vanished behind a grove of spruces.

  “How does champagne sound?” Roy said.

  Jen made a little bubbling noise.

  Roy laughed and ordered a bottle of Pommery. He didn’t know anything about champagne, but Pommery was what Krishna served at openings where he really believed in the artist.

  “This is nice,” Jen said, taking a sip. “Did your ship come in or something?”

  Roy tasted the champagne; really nice, but it went down the wrong way, tickling his throat just a little. This was the moment for saying, Maybe it’s just about to; and Jen would ask what he meant by that; and he’d pop the question. And it probably would have happened just like that, except for the tickle in Roy’s throat. He coughed, a delicate, quiet cough at first, setting down his champagne flute and covering his mouth with his napkin. But the cough was just getting started, like a powerful engine revving up. It dipped into a deep, ragged register and kept going, on and on.

  “Drink some water,” Jen said, passing him a glass, her eyes widening.

  But by that time, Roy had noticed the tiny red drops on the white linen. He made an excusing-himself-from-the-table gesture and went to the bathroom.

  No one there. He hurried into a stall, bent over the toilet, surrendered to the cough. The cough got to work, this time really showing him what it could do. Blood filled the toilet bowl, in splatters, strings, gobbets.

  “Hey, buddy,” said someone outside. “You all right in there?”

  The cough died at once, as though it preferred privacy. Roy gasped in some air. “No problem,” he said, but in a voice that sounded much older than his own.

  Silence. Then came slow footsteps on the tiles—footsteps he’d missed on their way in—followed by urinal sounds, sink sounds, door sounds. Roy left the stall, just a little wobbly. He had the bathroom to himself again, himself and his image in the mirror: a pale image with a dark glimmering dawning in its eyes. Roy splashed water on his face, drank from the tap—cool water soothing on his raw throat—and went back to the table.

  “You all right?” Jen said.

  “Fine,” said Roy.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Fine,” he said again, and picked up as though nothing had happened. Jen ate salmon, Roy lamb; they drank champagne; split a piece of a cake called chocolate sin; and had a good time. Roy told a pretty funny story about a collector he’d met, her pet cheetah and a pizza delivery boy. But he didn’t pop the question.

  Three

  It wasn’t that Roy was a particularly acute reader of facial expressions. But he knew that people liked delivering good news; their eyes lit up with it. Therefore a lack of lighting up was a bad sign. No light in Dr. Bronstein’s eyes: they were dark, thoughtful, maybe a bit puzzled.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Valois.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Dr. Bronstein opened a folder, peered down at a sheet of MRI film; then his gaze rose slowly back up to Roy. Roy stood a little straighter, just to show Dr. Bronstein how fit he was. I went to U Maine on a hockey scholarship, doc, full ride. Roy came close to saying it.

  “May I ask a question?” said Dr. Bronstein.

  “Shoot.”

  “Of course, we’ll need a biopsy,” said Dr. Bronstein. “And nothing’s definite at this point. Not definitively. But have you had much contact with asbestos—in your work, for example?”

  “Asbestos?” said Roy. “No.”

  “I understand you’re a sculptor,” said Dr. Bronstein.

  “Yes, but I work with metals.”

  “What kind of metals?”

  “Recently it’s been mostly junked car parts,” Roy said. “Before that I did some pieces with I-beams I bought from a demolition company in Worcester.”

  Dr. Bronstein’s eyebrows, white and overhanging like snowy cornices, rose. “Did you spend much time at the actual demolition sites?”

  “None,” Roy said. “They e-mailed me pictures and I chose from that.”

  Dr. Bronstein’s eyes slid back to the MRI film. “And before the I-beams?”

  “Spring steel rods,” said Roy. “And before spring steel rods, car parts again, which was where I started.”

  “Brake linings?” said Dr. Bronstein.

  “No,” said Roy. “Mostly radiators, sometimes engine blocks, a few axles.”

  “Were you ever in the military?”

  “No.”

  “Work in a mine?”

  “No.”

  “How about construction? Plastering? Pipe fitting?”

  “No,” Roy said. “What’s this all about?”

  “Those are all nexus points for asbestos exposure,” Dr. Bronstein said.

  Roy raised his hands, palms up.

  “This could be a long time ago,” said Dr. Bronstein, “a teenage summer job, for example.”

  “I worked in a machine shop,” Roy said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Metalwork,” Roy said. “Welding, mostly.”

  “Did that involve insulation? Fire retardant? Boiler construction?”

  “We built assembly-line parts for a chemical company,” Roy said. “Mostly outdoor work.”

  “That wouldn’t do it,” said Dr. Bronstein, ticking off boxes on a page in the folder.

  “Do what?”

  “Are you familiar with the term mesothelioma, Mr. Valois?”
>
  A very complicated word; Roy wasn’t sure he’d heard it right. “Say it again.”

  “Mesothelioma.” Dr. Bronstein enunciated every syllable. Roy didn’t miss it this time: the word brought to mind those cheesy Japanese monster flicks.

  He shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

  Dr. Bronstein’s gaze again rose from the film, fastening on Roy’s face, just below the eyes. “Mesothelioma—malignant mesothelioma—is a disease caused by asbestos exposure, invariably.”

  “What kind of disease?” said Roy.

  “A serious one.”

  “But what’s the name of it?”

  Dr. Bronstein looked confused. “I told you—mesothelioma.”

  Roy’s voice rose a little; that aroused the tickle in his throat. “What’s another name?”

  “Another name?” said Dr. Bronstein, backing up. Dr. Bronstein was a little guy; Roy could have ripped him apart. “Oh, I see,” he said. “Cancer. Mesothelioma is a form of cancer usually affecting the lungs but sometimes the peritoneum or heart as well.”

  “And I have it?”

  “Can’t say for sure without a biopsy. An open biopsy, that’s the gold standard. I’ll have to send you down to Dr. Honey in Boston for that. May be the world’s leading mesothelioma expert—I trained under him, as it happens, which is why—” Dr. Bronstein broke off, and it grew very still in the examining room, no sound but Dr. Bronstein’s pale finger tap-tapping at Roy’s MRI film.

  “You can only get this from asbestos?” Roy said.

  Dr. Bronstein nodded.

  “But I’ve never been exposed,” Roy said. “So I couldn’t have it.”

  Dr. Bronstein gazed at the lower half of Roy’s face.

  Roy’s voice rose again. “How could I? You said ‘invariably.’ That was your very word. So if I’ve never been exposed, then how could I have it?” The tickle grew stronger in his throat.

  Dr. Bronstein licked his lips. “You couldn’t.”

  “Exactly,” said Roy. “And I feel normal. Stronger than ever, in fact.” Roy thought of telling Dr. Bronstein about all those collegiate snowshoers he’d blown by on the lower loop.