Terminal House

by Sean Costello

  He grabbed the remote and switched the thing off, thinking, They should write a new book and call it Overt Seduction or Buy This Vacuum And I’ll Bang You.

  He leaned forward to bring the footrest down, the movement raising protests from his hip joints. His head spun for a moment once he was upright, and he braced himself against the armrest until the feeling passed. The next message his body sent came from his bladder, this one urgent, and he shuffled across the squeaky laminate flooring to the bathroom. He got his pants down as quickly as he could and lowered himself onto the cold plastic seat. Along with the numerous other indignities of aging, sitting down to pee seemed among the most humiliating, the loss of that great privilege of manhood—standing up to pee—diminishing him at some primal level. Maybe Ray was right. Maybe he would’ve made a nice little girl.

  And it was there, sitting on the can with hot urine dribbling into the bowl, that he remembered the hash-addled promise he’d made to his dearest friend the night before.

  “Okay, my brother. Okay. I’m not sure how yet, but I’ll make it happen. Count on it.”

  Now he said, “Goddamn,” and wadded a length of toilet paper into his fist, using it to dab himself dry, a singsong verse from childhood joining the rising cacophony in his head: No matter how much you wiggle and jiggle and dance, the last three drops always land in your pants.

  He stood now, pulling up his drawers as he rose, quietly cursing the tiny squirt of urine spreading warm against his thigh.

  What in the name of God had he let himself in for? There was no way he could legally euthanize his friend. He’d let his medical license expire a decade ago, and he knew without asking that Hicks would laugh him out of his office if he approached the man with the idea.

  Ben made his way into the kitchen now and sat at the table, resting his head in his hands, replaying the details of the night before in his foggy mind. He’d explained the many drawbacks to Ray, telling him it was impossible, the best he could do was sit with him in the euthanasia theater. The whole thing was automated anyway, the technician sequestered in a booth remote from the theater itself, the drugs delivered via computerized pump. All he could do was ask the tech to leave the booth once he’d initiated the sequence. That way, at the end, they’d be totally alone.

  But Ray had been adamant. “I want you to do it, Ben. Please. I don’t want anyone else involved. Can you understand that? Just you and me, like old times. Just you and me.”

  Jesus Christ.

  And he’d agreed?

  Goddammit, yes, he’d agreed.

  * * *

  Ben scrambled off the La-Z-Boy to answer the phone, muting a blaring Pawn Stars episode with the remote.

  It was Roxanne.

  She said, “Still up for that lunch date?”

  “Uh, yeah, you bet.”

  “Okay, good. I’m in the lobby. How long do you need?”

  Ben glanced in the entryway mirror. He looked like hell, still in yesterday’s clothes, thin hair a rat’s nest, two days of stubble on his face.

  He said, “Can you give me half an hour?”

  “Take all the time you need, I’ve got my reader.”

  He said, “Okay,” and almost signed off. Then: “Want to wait up here? It’s quieter and I won’t feel so rushed.”

  “Sure. Apartment ninety-twelve, right?”

  “That’s right. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Just come ahead in.”

  She said, “I’ll be right up,” and Ben clutched his forehead, saying, “Oh my God, Roxanne, I can’t believe I forgot. It was this morning, right? Your grandfather?” He heard her say, “Yes,” in a small voice and said, “How did it go?”

  Sounding steadier now, she said, “It went well, actually. In a strange way, it was almost like a formality. But now that it’s over, Ben—if it’s okay with you—I’d rather not talk about it anymore. At least not for now.”

  Ben said, “I can respect that. I just wanted to say…I’m very proud of you, Roxanne. And if you’d rather get together some other time…”

  With a cheerfulness Ben could tell was at least partially manufactured, she said, “You’re not squirming out of our date that easily, Doctor Hunter. Get yourself together and let’s go see what’s on the menu in the caf.”

  Ben said, “Ten-four, Roxie. Come ahead up.”

  Excited in spite of the circumstances, which fled his mind almost instantly, Ben cradled the receiver and unlocked the apartment door. Then he hustled into the bathroom for a shower.

  * * *

  When Ben emerged in his grey suit a half hour later, Roxanne was sitting lotus-style in the La-Z-Boy, scanning something on her reader.

  Feeling his face redden, Ben said, “You know, I had some fiction published in the eighties. Medical thrillers.”

  Roxanne beamed. “Really? Did you write under your own name?”

  “Of course. Why give someone else the credit?”

  Poking away at her reader now, Roxanne said, “The Surgeon, Critical Care and Code Blue. Any others?”

  “That’s the lot. But you don’t want to read any of that stuff. So many bad words.”

  “Too late,” Roxanne said, closing the reader and giving it a pat. “Got all three. And don’t worry, I can handle a little foul language.” She hopped off the chair, regarding him appraisingly now. “My, don’t you look dapper.”

  “That’s me,” Ben said. “Dapper Sugar Willy.”

  Roxanne laughed and took his arm. “Shall we?”

  Ben said, “We most certainly shall,” and led her out of the apartment.

  * * *

  Though he was long retired, Ben Hunter still possessed a physician’s mind—questing, analytical, viewing certain aspects of the human condition in terms of symptoms and diagnoses—and it occurred to him now, over a hot beef sandwich in the cafeteria, that he’d have to add Roxanne to his list of triggers, the time he’d spent with her so far almost consistently leading to one of those befuddling dislocations.

  He could feel himself slipping now—watching her work unselfconsciously on a cob of corn, melted butter glazing her chin—drifting back to another time and another girl, one so much like Roxanne it made his head hurt.

  Early in his geriatric practice, he’d come up with an analogy to help similarly afflicted patients better understand the mechanics of these ‘spells’. He’d tell them that in the blank, suspended instant before they lost touch with reality, they were like a computer in reboot mode, but a reboot gone terribly awry. And when the brain returned to function, it was in a scrambled operating system, the reverse holding true when they came back from whatever archive of memory or madness they’d been banished to—if they came back at all. And it occurred to him now, as the same process claimed him, that it was a more apt analogy than he’d imagined. The only good thing about this particular attack was that Roxanne appeared not to notice, at least not as far as he could tell.

  But then he was all the way gone and he said, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  * * *

  Startled by Ben’s abrupt lunge to his feet, Roxanne said, “Can we finish our lunch first?”

  “No time,” Ben said, draping a napkin over her half-eaten meal. “This’ll keep.” He grabbed her hand. “Come on.”

  Hustling toward the elevators now, his grip on her hand almost painful, Roxanne felt like she was with a different person. A slightly crazy person. She could see it in his eyes as they boarded the elevator, a manic light intensified by the stark fluorescents. It was as if something was winding him up from the inside, compelling him along some frantic path. Cindy Gore, her best friend growing up, had gotten into cocaine their senior year, and Ben’s behavior now reminded her of that. Between classes or at parties, Cindy would go into the bathroom her normal self and come out a few minutes later manic as hell. She was certain Ben wasn’t snorting cocaine…but whatever was going on with him now, it was strange and a little scary.

  A more likely explanation arose as he tugged her along the bus
y corridor, bumping shoulders with people without excusing himself. She’d noticed a bunch of pill bottles on the counter next to the kitchen sink while she was waiting for him to get ready. Maybe his behavior was being triggered by one of his meds or a combination of them, some bizarre interaction he wasn’t aware of. Or maybe he was having a mini-stroke. Although his speech wasn’t slurred, just really fast.

  Genuinely worried now, she said, “Ben, what’s going on?”

  But he ignored her, punching the button for the fiftieth floor, saying, “She’s in the penthouse. Says the light’s better up there. She had to fight admin tooth and nail to get the place, too. Oh, my. You don’t want to mess with Ely, she’ll kick your ass. That’s her name. Ely. She’s an amazing artist, you’re going to love her.” Beaming like an adolescent, he said, “And she’s going to love you—oh, I bet if I asked her, she’d do a portrait of you. In charcoal, maybe, or sepia. I love watching her work. It’s like magic. I might even be able to talk her into doing you in oil.”

  She tried to reach him again on the elevator, saying, “Ben, can we slow down a minute and—”

  But now the arrival chime sounded and the high-speed car eased to a stop. Roxanne’s ears popped as the doors slid open and Ben’s pals Quinn and Wilder stepped aboard, Quinn saying, “I told you the damn thing was going up,” before noticing her and Ben. Grinning, Quinn said good morning, but Ben didn’t respond, didn’t even look at the guy.

  The two old men glanced at Roxanne with obvious sorrow in their eyes, and she thought, They know something.

  In a silence that was palpable now, Ben raised his eyes to the digital readout and the elevator resumed its ascent. The new arrivals stared at their shoes until the chime sounded again and Ben tugged Roxanne out on the fiftieth floor.

  As if nothing strange had happened, he said, “She’s right down here, fifty-oh-two,” and led her to the artist’s door. He raised his fist to knock, then glanced at Roxanne, that manic gleam still in his eyes. Whispering now, he said, “I should warn you, though. The woman curses like a dock worker.”

  * * *

  Quinn said, “Jesus,” as the elevator doors slid shut. “I’ve never seen him that bad.” He poked the lighted button for the cafeteria level.

  Wilder nodded. “Son of a bitch had no idea who we were.”

  “And the other day? On the way to the greenhouse? I had to shout in the man’s face to bring him back. There one minute, gone the next. I’m sure he thinks we don’t know. And I’m worried he’s going to hurt that sweet kid.”

  “How so?”

  Quinn shook his head. “You know, for such a smartass, you can be dumb as a stump sometimes.”

  “You think I won’t slap those dentures out of your pie hole?”

  “Relax, man. You don’t see what’s going on with those two?”

  “Clearly not.”

  “The girl doesn’t put you in mind of anyone?” Wilder gave him an exasperated look and Quinn said, “Think Hillcrest High and broken-hearted Ben. The Sadie Hawkins dance? Where it all started. November sixty-seven. Or maybe it was sixty-eight. Christ, I’m halfway demented myself.”

  “No argument there.”

  Quinn said, “Blow me,” and waited, letting it sink into the man’s thick skull. It wasn’t until the elevator came to a stop and the opening doors admitted the clatter of the cafeteria that Quinn saw enlightenment dawn in his friend’s dark eyes.

  “Oh, shit,” Wilder said. “You might be right.”

  “Of course I’m right. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

  Silent now, the men shuffled out and the doors ran shut behind them. Wilder made a beeline for the coffee machine and Quinn headed for the fresh-fruit display. They reconvened in the check-out lane, but didn’t speak again until they were seated at their usual table by the windows.

  Spooning out a scoop of melon, Quinn said, “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  Now Wilder said, “Why not get him to do it?” and thrust his chin toward the check-out lane. Quinn turned to see Ray Gale with a food tray in his hands, scanning the sunlit room for a familiar face.

  Quinn said, “What I said earlier? I take it back. You’re a goddamn genius.” He got to his feet and waved Ray over.

  * * *

  Ely was struggling to capture a speck of sunlight on the eagle’s yellow beak, her trembling hand refusing to cooperate on this fine detail. She blamed the slew of medications they had her on, those pushy pharmacy techs banging on her door three times a day, making her gobble handfuls of capsules and pills, some of them big enough to choke a horse. Typical of the staff here, they all thought she was feeble, just a crusty old bull-dyke lesbian playing paint-by-the-numbers all day.

  But Ely was no feeb. Not this old New Yorker. She’d learned to use a computer before most of these snot-noses were born, and she’d Googled some of the poisons they had her on. And she was convinced that one of them—a green-and-white capsule that tasted like ass—was responsible for her tremor. An anti-psychotic, of all things. For senility, the doctor told her. “After all, Ely, you are a hundred-and-two.” Condescending weasel. When she complained about the tremor a few weeks later, the man told her she’d just have to live with it.

  Live with this, Ely thought now, raising her middle finger, stretching it out as straight as it would go, which wasn’t very straight anymore.

  She rested her brush on the easel and sat back in her motorized chair, tilting her neck from side to side to work out a kink.

  ‘Intention tremor’, they called it. She’d looked that up, too. Could recite its meaning by rote, which she did now at the top of her lungs. “The amplitude of an intention tremor increases as an extremity approaches the endpoint of a visually guided movement. You dipshits.” It meant your damn hand shook when you tried to do something delicate. She’d even figured out a way to assess the severity of the condition in herself.

  Ely reached for a speck of lint on the arm of the black hoodie she’d painted in for the past thirty years, a fine-motor skill she’d been practicing since she started tonguing the capsules into the corner of her mouth and spitting them into the toilet after the techs were gone. Two weeks now. The tremor began when her fingers were about an inch-and-a-half from the lint, the movement barely perceptible at first, then coarsening as she closed the distance.

  Taking her time, Ely touched the fabric, pinched—and got the little sucker this time, thinking, Thank God, it’s going away. She chortled. Should be good as new in a week.

  There was a knock at the door now and Ely glanced at the clock on the mantle: the drug pushers weren’t due for another hour. She thought, Must be Ben, and hollered, “It’s open,” in her big, bawdy voice.

  * * *

  Several things went through Ely’s mind as Ben came through the door, dressed to the nines with a young girl in tow, but principle among them was a sense that something was terribly wrong. She knew he’d been having increasingly troublesome skirmishes with Alzheimer’s—she’d been his trusted confidant since he was a teenager, and had witnessed a few episodes for herself—but the bout he was having now was clearly among the worst of them.

  Tugging the girl along by the hand, he tramped into the room, saying, “Ely, I’d like you to meet my new friend, uh…” He turned a quizzical eye on the girl and she said, “Hi, Ely, I’m Roxanne Austen. Ben and I met at the anniversary celebration the other day.”

  The girl offered her hand and Ely shook it, saying, “Nice to meet you, honey.” She glanced at Ben. “Now what lies has this old fart told you about me?”

  Ben laughed too loud and too long and Ely said, “Sit your ass in that chair, Hunter, you’re making me nervous. And let go of the girl’s hand, you’re cutting off the circulation.”

  Chastened, Ben released Roxanne’s hand and plunked onto the chair. Noticing the painting Ely was working on, he said, “Oh, wow, Ely, that’s fantastic. What is that, a flamingo?”

/>   Ely waited to see if he was trying to be funny, then said, “Flamingos are pink, and they don’t land in trees.” She said to Roxanne, “Sweetheart, there’s a pot of tea on the stove. Be a lamb and go heat it up for us, would you? Cups are on the shelf over the sink.”

  Roxanne said, “Sure,” and scooted around the room divider into the kitchen.

  Now Ely said, “Hunter, come here,” and Ben did, moving over to stand beside her. Ely caught him by the wrist. She said, “Closer, down here,” and when he stooped, she slapped him across the face.

  Ben said, “Uh,” and his eyes cleared. Rubbing his cheek, he regarded her with frank perplexity, as if seeing her for the first time. He said, “Was I…?”

  Ely nodded. “Bad this time.”

  Ben glanced toward the kitchen, a clink of cutlery out there now. Ely said, “You brought your new friend,” and he gave her that puzzled look again. She said, “Roxanne,” and he nodded, the last of the cobwebs falling away. “You need to do something about this, Ben.”

  “I know. But there’s nothing I can do.” He glanced at the painting. “My God, Ely, you haven’t lost your touch. That is so beautiful. Did you know bald eagles can live up to twenty years in the wild?”

  “Sit,” Ely said, Roxanne on her way back now, spoons chattering against china. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AS IT TURNED OUT, Ben didn’t discuss his condition with Ely again until weeks later, deep into the month of June. The spells continued to plague him, increasing in frequency and duration during that unseasonably hot stretch. But between hanging out with Ray, and spending whatever time he could with Roxanne, he barely had a moment alone with Ely. And truth be told, he had little interest in broaching the subject with her again. Ever. Because in spite of the fact that he could only remember fragments of the episodes once they’d passed, the bits he could recall were consistently more exhilarating than the time he spent in the ‘real’ world. When you got right down to it, what was so wrong with feeling young again? With reliving past triumphs and joys? Besides, Ely was like a dog with a bone. If he didn’t give her time to fixate on something else—her meds were always a safe bet—she’d hound him to the grave.