Whiskey & Charlie

by Annabel Smith

  Charlie stroked the dog’s head. “What are you going to call him then?” he asked Juliet. “You can’t keep calling him your little bag of flour.”

  She laughed.

  “You’d be better off calling him Kilo,” Charlie suggested. “At least it rolls off the tongue a bit more smoothly.”

  Juliet poked him in the ribs. “Don’t be horrible, Charlie,” she said. “I don’t want him to be permanently reminded of his ordeal. I thought I might call him Chester.”

  “Why Chester?” Charlie asked.

  “He looks like a Chester to me.” She tried it out. “Chester!” she called, and the dog lifted up his head to look at her.

  “You see, he already knows his name.”

  “Chester it is then,” Charlie said, and he reached down to rub his little snout.

  * * *

  It is the morning of the eighth day when Charlie is awakened by the phone before it is even light outside.

  “What’s happened?” he asks. A call at that time of day can mean only one thing.

  “He’s got a fever. They can’t get his temperature down,” his Aunt Audrey says.

  “How bad is it?”

  Juliet sits up in bed and turns on the bedside light.

  “They’re treating him now, but there’s no change as yet. You should probably come.”

  “We’ll be there in twenty.”

  “You can’t die from a high temperature, can you?” Charlie asks when they are in the car. Juliet reaches over and squeezes his hand. Charlie takes this as a yes. He has to restrain himself from running a red light onto Dandenong Road.

  Already Whiskey’s coma has lasted longer than Charlie would have thought possible. He has never known a week to pass so slowly as the seven interminable days and nights they have lived through since Whiskey was hit by the car. But Charlie has kept himself going by reminding himself of what his mother has written in Whiskey’s journal, that it is extremely rare for a coma to last more than two weeks. With every day that has passed, Charlie has told himself they are one day closer to Whiskey waking up.

  He has comforted himself with the thought that if Whiskey was going to die, he would have already died by now, would surely have died right after the accident, when he was bleeding in so many places that they didn’t know where to begin stitching him up, when the oxygen that should have been traveling through his bloodstream was hissing in and out of his chest cavity through the hole in his lung, when his brain was swelling, swelling, pressing against the bones of his skull.

  Charlie has thought that now they have controlled the swelling, the bleeding, reset his bones, repaired his lung, the worst of the danger has passed. He has convinced himself that within weeks, Whiskey will be sitting up in his hospital bed, complaining about the food.

  x x x

  When Charlie and Juliet arrive at the hospital, Audrey is waiting for them in the foyer.

  “Are they getting his temperature down?” Charlie asks as she hugs him.

  “Not yet,” she says as they wait for the elevator, “but they’re doing everything they can.”

  “Why has it gone up so much?” Juliet asks. “Has he caught an infection?”

  “They think there’s been damage to the part of the brain called the hypothalamus. The doctor we spoke to said that usually, if you get too hot or too cold, the hypothalamus will get some other things happening in the body to bring the temperature back to normal, but when the hypothalamus is damaged, that cycle breaks down, and the body keeps getting hotter and hotter, or colder and colder, as the case may be.”

  “What can they do for him?”

  “They’ve got him on a cooling blanket,” Audrey says. “They pump iced water through it. That’s the only way they can treat it, from the outside. It seems to need a bit of time to take effect.”

  “Is it”—Charlie struggles to find the words—“life-threatening?”

  Audrey puts her arm around Charlie. “They won’t say as much. But the way they’ve responded, it feels like it.”

  “How’s Mum?”

  “And Rosa?” Juliet adds.

  “It’s been quite the shock,” Audrey admits. “I think they thought—we all thought—that things were under control. We didn’t realize there were other things that could go wrong. This came out of nowhere.”

  They are at the intensive care ward by then, and she pauses, looks at Charlie seriously. “Try to be strong for them,” she says. “I know it’s just as hard for you. But we’ve got to try to keep ourselves together.”

  Walking up the ward, Charlie can see his mother and Rosa sitting on the chairs outside Whiskey’s room.

  “We’re not allowed in there,” Audrey tells him as they approach.

  “Any change?” she asks, sitting down next to her sister.

  Elaine kisses Charlie hello, shakes her head. She looks terrible, Charlie thinks, worse even than after she saw Whiskey for the first time. Juliet sits down next to Rosa, takes her hand. Rosa doesn’t even turn her head.

  Charlie looks through the window to Whiskey’s room. There are three staff inside, holding ice packs on Whiskey’s legs and under his arms, adjusting the machine that pumps the water through the blanket on which Whiskey is lying. Whiskey’s body is shaking so violently it frightens Charlie to watch. He turns away from the window, toward his family, and then, remembering what Audrey asked him, he turns the other way so his mother and Rosa won’t see his face. When he trusts himself to speak, he turns back.

  “He’s shivering,” he says. “That must be a good sign.”

  His mother registers his comment but appears to be too exhausted to respond. It is Audrey who answers.

  “Apparently it’s an involuntary response to the ice. In a healthy person, it would be a good sign, but in Whiskey’s case, it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Charlie sighs, sits down next to Juliet. They wait in silence until at last the doctor emerges.

  “We’ve got it under control,” she says cautiously. “The nurses are finishing up, and then you can go in and see him.” She smiles wanly, as though the effort has drained her, and she walks away.

  It crosses Charlie’s mind that he should have thanked her, but he doesn’t have the energy to get up and go after her. He closes his eyes, waits his turn to see his brother, who is still, for now, alive.

  Lima

  As far as Charlie could remember, Whiskey had never shown any interest in marriage. While most people were content with the phrase tying the knot, Whiskey always referred to it as putting on the world’s smallest handcuffs. When their mother’s friends asked when Whiskey and Charlie might get married—a popular question, it seemed, for middle-aged parents to put to their friends—Charlie tried to avoid hearing what his mother said about himself, but he had heard her say that Whiskey was married to his work. It was true that since Whiskey had been working in advertising, he’d never had a girlfriend who lasted more than six months—and there had been quite a number who hadn’t lasted anywhere near that long. In fact, the girls had been replaced so frequently, and Charlie had seen Whiskey so infrequently, that Charlie had rarely met the same girl twice.

  Whiskey never went into the details of his relationships with Charlie, just as Charlie wouldn’t have discussed his own relationships with Whiskey—even before Juliet—but from what Charlie could tell, Whiskey didn’t really share his life with the girls he met. He didn’t bring them to family gatherings or take them away for romantic weekends or even stay at home watching videos with them. When he was in their company, Whiskey seemed largely indifferent to them, and he never spoke of them when they weren’t around. It seemed to Charlie that Whiskey thought of his girlfriends chiefly as accessories, decorative pieces to enhance his appearance at parties and industry events.

  So it came as a great surprise to Charlie to find out that Whiskey had come back from Peru a married man—an
d an even greater surprise when he met Whiskey’s wife.

  x x x

  He met Rosa for the first time at his mother’s place, the Sunday after Whiskey and Rosa got back from their honeymoon. The first thing Charlie noticed about Rosa was that she didn’t look like Whiskey’s other girlfriends. They had always been tall—although never taller than Whiskey, of course—dangerously thin, and perfectly groomed. Objectively, Charlie knew the girls were beautiful, but he had found their flawlessness contrived and banal. But Rosa looked real. She was what Charlie called short and Juliet called petite, with dark eyes and a mass of unruly black hair. She wore no makeup and was dressed rather conservatively in a black turtleneck and beige pants—not a side-split skirt or a plunging neckline in sight. She was neither glamorous nor beautiful, though later, when Charlie got to know her better, he saw that when she felt passionate about something, her face was full of expression, and there was something beautiful in her then.

  They had been invited to their mother’s place that day to celebrate the marriage. That’s what Charlie’s mother had told him on the phone, though Charlie knew his mother would not really be in any mood to celebrate the marriage. He knew exactly what she would be thinking: as if it wasn’t bad enough that one of her sons refused to get married, despite the fact that he had a perfectly lovely girlfriend, her other son had to go and get married to a complete stranger in a city she had never heard of.

  Though this was their first meeting, Rosa also seemed to know what his mother was thinking. Charlie was surprised to see that she did not shy away from it but tackled it head on before they had even sat down to eat.

  “I’m sorry you were not at the wedding, Mrs. Ferns. Everything happen so quick. I know you must be disappointed, and I want to make it right. I told to Whiskey I want to have an Australian wedding, to share with his family also. As soon as we settle in, we start planning, and we like to hear your ideas. That is important for us.”

  Charlie’s mother nodded, all the wind gone from her sails, and then there was no more tension between her and Rosa, only the usual tension between Whiskey and Charlie, which was always present at these rare family gatherings, though never acknowledged.

  x x x

  In the space between finding out that Whiskey had gotten married and seeing him with his new wife, Charlie and Juliet had speculated endlessly on the reasons why he might have gotten married at such short notice to a Peruvian girl he hardly knew. It was not the kind of question Charlie could imagine ever asking Whiskey outright. At best, he thought, he might eventually hear a secondhand version from his mother, somewhat condensed and warped by her own impressions and opinions.

  Charlie would never have guessed that Whiskey would choose as a wife the kind of person who would tell you the whole story the first time she met you. But that was exactly what happened.

  Whiskey told the first part, the part that revealed nothing about himself. He had gone to Peru to shoot a soft-drink advertisement at Machu Picchu, he said, and when he arrived, he discovered the shoot had been pushed back because of delays in preproduction. Since he was stuck in Lima for three days, his agency arranged a driver and a tour guide for him. Rosa had shown him around, and everything else had unfolded from there.

  At that point, Rosa interrupted him. “Unfolded?” she said. “We are not telling the story of a picnic table, are we?”

  Charlie was startled to hear her mocking Whiskey so blatantly, but when he looked over, he saw that Whiskey was laughing.

  Rosa shook her head. “You really are a very bad storyteller, Whiskey,” she scolded. “Don’t you think your family would like to know what really happen?”

  “Perhaps Whiskey thinks it’s private,” Charlie’s mother suggested.

  “Private!” Rosa sounded shocked. “Of course not. You are Whiskey’s family.”

  Charlie saw his mother raise her eyebrows. He expected Whiskey to change the subject then, or explain that things might be different in his family than they were in Rosa’s, but Whiskey was looking at her indulgently, waiting for her to go on.

  “It is a good story,” Rosa said, “and I will tell you how it really happen. Me and my brother have been paid to show Whiskey around, that part is true. However, Whiskey forgot to tell you the part where he was acting like a big shot, calling Miguel driver like he was in a James Bond movie.” Rosa grinned at Whiskey as she said this and poked him in the ribs.

  “The first thing he want to do is get some cigarettes, so we stop at a kiosk. He ask if we had Peter Stuyvesant in Peru,” Rosa said, “and I told to him we did. Then he ask me to get him a packet. ‘Soft pack, if they have them,’ he said. Well, he had been in the car only a short time, but I already had enough of him. So I tell him, ‘I am your guide, not your slave. Get your own cigarettes.’”

  Charlie was astonished by Rosa’s story. He looked at Whiskey, waiting for him to deny what Rosa had said, but Whiskey shrugged and admitted Rosa’s story was true.

  “I didn’t quite understand the role of the guide,” he said cheerfully. “Poor Rosa was a bit insulted. She had to put me in my place.”

  Charlie could hardly believe what he was hearing. The way he saw things, it was always Whiskey who was putting people in their place, never the other way around.

  Rosa was nodding proudly. “I gave him the rules,” she said. “I told to him to say please and thank you, and to say about my city plenty of nice things. I told to him if he could not think of any nice thing to say, it is better to say no things at all. In return, I told to him I will translate for him, make sure he does not get ripped off, and if he want, show him the real Lima, not just the places tourists go.”

  “Well,” Charlie’s mother said. “William’s not usually that keen on following other people’s rules.”

  “That is true, Mrs. Ferns,” Rosa said. “I thought your son would fire me straightaway. But he accept my rules and say sorry like a gentleman.”

  Whiskey looked embarrassed by this.

  “So that’s the real story, is it?” Charlie’s mother said. She looked amused.

  “Oh no,” Rosa said. “That is only the beginning. There is much more to tell. Once Whiskey had gotten over his bullshit, the three of us get along fine; we even start to like each other. But I was not planning to marry him, certainly not.”

  It didn’t take long for Charlie to work out that bullshit was one of Rosa’s favorite words, or that her lexicon of slang—picked up from years of working for American tourists—easily outdid his own. But at this first meeting, Charlie was surprised to hear a word like bullshit thrown in with her heavily accented English. He couldn’t help noticing that the word raised his mother’s eyebrows too, and he hoped she wouldn’t hold it against Rosa.

  Rosa went on with the story, saying that when the three days were up, Whiskey had gone to Machu Picchu, and she had thought no more of it until two weeks later, when someone from Whiskey’s agency had contacted her to tell her he was back in Lima and wanted her to act as a guide for him again. Rosa said she already had a job lined up for the next four days, so she had recommended some other guides she knew. But Whiskey had refused the other guides.

  “I was the only guide he want,” she said, looking at Whiskey fondly. “So that night, when I had finish working, I go to Whiskey’s hotel. When he came down to the lobby to meet me, I realize I was happy to see him, but of course, I do not let him know that.

  “I told to him, ‘If you want to see Lima, there are plenty of guides as good as me, better even. But if you want to see me, don’t ask me to be your guide; ask me to go to dinner.’”

  Juliet laughed. “You certainly know how to get straight to the point, Rosa,” she said.

  Rosa beamed at Juliet. “You are right,” she said. “I don’t like beating all around the bush.”

  “You can say that again,” Whiskey said. “I think the word forthright was invented for Rosa.” He was pretending t
o be gruff, but from the way he was looking at her, Charlie saw that that was exactly what Whiskey liked about Rosa, the way she stood up for herself, and stood up to him.

  “Go on then,” Whiskey said softly. “Tell them the rest.”

  Rosa told them that after that first dinner, they saw each other every night for a week, and when she wasn’t working, they spent the days together too. The night before he was due to leave, Whiskey asked her to come back to Australia with him.

  “He told to me he would buy me a return ticket, so if I do not like it, or if things do not work out with us, I can come back any time I want.

  “But I refuse,” Rosa said. “I told to him it is not fair for me to give up my job, my family, my home, to go to a place I have never seen with someone I know for less than two weeks. I told to him if I am going to risk everything, he has to risk some things too—he has to marry me.”

  That was on Thursday, Whiskey told them, becoming involved in the story again. On Friday, he met Rosa’s mother to ask for her hand—Rosa had insisted on that. On Saturday morning, they bribed a local official into accepting the paperwork, which should have been submitted a month and a day in advance, and that afternoon, they were married, in a church of all places, though Whiskey hadn’t set foot in a church in a good ten years. He did not understand a word of the service, but he ate the bread and drank the wine because Rosa said it was less complicated than admitting he was not a Catholic. On Sunday, he and Rosa flew to St. Barts for their hastily planned honeymoon, and two weeks later, they flew back to Australia.

  “And here we are,” Rosa said happily.

  “Here we are,” Whiskey echoed, putting his arm around her.

  Seeing the way Whiskey doted on Rosa, watching him behave as Charlie had never seen him behave before, it struck Charlie that Rosa was the first woman Whiskey had ever really been in love with. And he began to see that Whiskey’s decision was not so out of character as he had first thought, that Whiskey was, after all, a person who would throw a party at an hour’s notice, drop everything for an impromptu snowboarding weekend, fly up to Noosa on an impulse to surprise a friend for his thirtieth—that his marriage to Rosa was perhaps not very surprising at all. What was more puzzling to Charlie, once he had met Rosa, was exactly what she saw in Whiskey.