A few of the women rolled their eyes at the idea of separate, but equal champagnes, but nobody protested. Cancer has its privileges. Besides, most of the women were hoping I’d remember the good times when I signed the final version of my will.
“I’m going to go around and pour for each and every one of you,” Rory continued. “And then I’ll ask you to take a bite of fine chocolate and a drink of champagne to toast Leo’s life.”
Rory got down from his podium and circulated among my guests, making sure that everybody took a small taste of champagne before the toast. Rory was my accomplice. There was a further sacrament hidden inside my ritual, or as Rory might put it, a jewel inside my lotus. The women’s pink champagne, I’d informed Rory, would be drugged with rohypnol— the date rape drug. The men’s libation would be spiked with LSD. The males would be sent home, where they’d experience the finest trip money could buy. Once they’d departed, I would take the women on a journey to that most transcendent of states, tantric union.
“Even Tiffany— your daughter?” Rory had asked. I could tell the thought of incest gave him a frisson.
“What kind of perve do you think I am?” I’d rejoined. “But no reason you shouldn’t be with her. Everyone in the Manhattan phone directory has.” You see, I’d secured Rory’s cooperation by a simple expedient, promising him a share of the spoils. Rory had proved invaluable, even convincing the museum to keep the guards on the first floor, far away from our party on Level Six. We’d planned to take our conquests to the fifth floor, where the museum had constructed two small chambers as shrines to the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities. Rory would bed down in the chapel of the Peaceful Deities, and I with the Wrathful ones.
“To Leo’s life,” Rory said. The assembled guests clicked glasses and drank up. Rory circulated again, making sure everyone drained their glass to the dregs. I’d worried that the perpetually-dieting women wouldn’t drink their fair share. Finishing the drink was crucial to the ritual, Rory told them. “And now Leo will speak to you.”
I went up to the podium.
“My dear wives and children, my friends, and my colleagues,” I began. “All of you have been with me on the long journey of my life. I want to thank you for coming on the voyage with me. I apologize if the trip hasn’t always been a pleasant one. I’m not an easy man. I have high standards and I grow disappointed when people don’t meet them. I know I can be difficult, exacting, and critical.”
The guests shook their heads, emitting a low hum of negation and reassurance. Rory came up to me and whispered in my ear. “They all drank. I made sure.”
“I poured drinks for us as well,” I whispered back, pointing to two champagne flutes. “Our very own Love Potion Number Nine. One hundred milligrams of Viagra a glass.”
“I don’t really need . . .” Rory demurred.
“Of course not,” I whispered. “It’s just to enhance your experience. And frankly, I do need it. I’m a sick man.” I could see Rory was mortified at offending me. He picked up his glass and gulped it down.
“This is the end of my life,” I told the crowd. “It’s time for me to be honest. I know that at times— too many times— I’ve been a hard boss, an unavailable friend, an absentee husband and father.” My guests were silent. They weren’t sure how to play this. I could tell Melissa was dying to agree with me, but was restraining herself for the sake of Norman’s inheritance. Melissa had actually liked me, once. We’d trembled as we’d undressed each other, grinned at our wedding album, rejoiced when she got pregnant with Norman, dreamed together of his bright future. We’d lived all the clichés in every corny flick I’d ever produced, and at the time, they’d seemed fresh and real. That was why she hated me so vehemently.
My second marriage had been strictly a commercial arrangement, so there were fewer hard feelings when it imploded. “Just bidness,” like Ted Hawks had said in his flowery Southern accent during his epic apology. I’d felt a small spurt of emotion at Tiffany’s birth, but by then I’d seen the movie before. I knew it wouldn’t have a happy ending.
“I ask your forgiveness,” I said. My guests nodded. Nothing to forgive, they murmured. My daughter Tiffany was looking a little pale. Rory had seen it, too. He was licking his chops imagining her incipient swoon.
“Honesty compels me to admit that your conduct hasn’t been flawless either. My wives and children haven’t been as loving as I wished. My friends and colleagues haven’t been as loyal as I hoped. When I learned I had Stage Four cancer— a death sentence— I was consumed by rage and self-pity. All the injuries of a lifetime came back to me: your petty betrayals and frivolous slights, your deep shallowness and ingratitude. I was inspired to play a little game with you. I circulated a rumor that I was bankrupt as well as dying. Not one of you kept in touch. I lay wasting away in my hospital bed, my body choked with tumors, my veins pricked by a thousand needles and suffused with toxic chemicals. I heard nothing from any of you.” I stared at Tiffany, whose pallor had increased. “Not even a text.” I gave them a sardonic look. “Until I let it be known that the rumor was false. I was wealthier than ever before.”
I could see the anger and consternation in the eyes of my guests. The murmur of their voices grew harsh, but not all were able to express their pique. Several of the ladies’ complexions were beginning to resemble Tiffany’s.
“My experiment only increased my wrath. My heart was filled with black rage against all of you, but then I began to reconsider. Rory had been teaching me about Tibetan art, and from Tibetan art, we’d moved on to Tibetan Buddhism. The Buddha teaches that all sorrow comes from attachment. I realized that was the root of my problem. I was too attached. Attached to material things, to people, to power, to a vision of myself. And most of all, I was attached to my anger. In order to die in peace, I needed to let go.”
Ted Hawks and Steve Glass exchanged little smirks. “The old man’s lost his edge,” I could hear them agree.
“Cancer was a great opportunity for me to learn and grow,” I continued. “It was a chance to learn acceptance. To forgive you and to forgive myself. To release my attachment to anger, and try to achieve nirvana, right here on earth, in the few days remaining to me. I learned to meditate. I felt at one with the world, and with all of you, my family and friends. I followed the wonderful Buddhist practice of metta bhavana— loving-kindness meditation— which helped me to empathize with and understand you.”
I paused. Ted and Steve were still smirking. So was Norman, and even Melissa.
“Yet despite all that,” I continued, “I found my anger returning. It was so hard for me to let it go. I struggled with myself, and finally, I resolved my conflict. My anger was merited. Why should I let it go? I was damned if I would. It looked like, sadly, cancer would not be my ticket to enlightenment. But it could be something even better, I realized. A golden, Get Out of Jail Free card. I could do anything I wanted. At this stage, what did it matter?”
“Is he ever going to get to the fucking point?” I heard Tiffany murmur to her mother. I didn’t resent it. Tiff was obviously feeling rather ill.
“You’re quite right,” I said. “I need to get to the point. Here it is. I’ve put aconite in your champagne. Wolfsbane, if you prefer the more poetic name. A lovely, purple flower that grows, appropriately enough, in the Himalayas. It’s a fast-acting poison. The effects manifest themselves somewhere between two minutes and two hours after ingestion, depending on how much you ate for dinner.”
Rory looked at me. He and I had dined together before the party, and he’d eaten greedily. I didn’t know where he put it, in that thin frame of his. Unlike bulimic Tiffany, he wouldn’t yet be feeling the effects. But his eyes told me that he guessed. He, too, had been poisoned. Only Rory had drunk the “Viagra” I’d supposedly prepared for the two of us. I gave him a small smile, confirming his conjecture. He hadn’t really injured me, but his combination of sanctimonious mysticism and oily lechery grated on me.
“It’s not a pleasant death,” I cont
inued. “You’ll freeze and burn and sweat. You’ll experience vomiting, diarrhea, and stabbing abdominal pain. Your pulse will slow and you may start to feel numb. You’ll suffer convulsions, and if you’re lucky, you’ll go into a coma. Then you’ll die.”
I was being melodramatic, but what the hell; it was my big moment. Those guests who weren’t already struggling with symptoms started shouting and shrieking for help. Let them scream.
It didn’t matter to me. If my money and my cancer didn’t keep me out of jail, I was content to spend my last two months of life in prison, savoring happy memories of this party.
“Oh, and I’m afraid there isn’t any antidote.” This wasn’t strictly true, but the dosage had been generous, and my speech was timed to take them beyond the window in which the remedy was effective. Chances of recovery were nil.
The guards had finally come running up from the first floor. I started laughing. “After all,” I said. “What can you do to get back at me? Kill me?”
A COUNTDOWN TO DEATH
Deirdre Verne
IT all started with the package.
I pulled the yellow slip out of my mail slot and peered through the four-inch box assigned to apartment 4D, Windsor Tower, Tudor City, NYC.
“Hey Luis, you got my package back there or at the front desk?” Luis set a stack of mail aside, rolled his chair over, and peered back at me.
“I come around, Miss M. We talk.”
“Sure thing.” I wondered how much Luis suspected. Ordinarily a superb doorman, he’d been distracted of late. Luis’s girlfriend was four months pregnant, and they’d been fighting the same amount of time. He had already packed on fifteen pounds of sympathy weight, straining the seams of his neatly-pressed uniform. Unwittingly, I had become the in-house consultant for the doormen in my building. I’d never been able to help myself when it came to matters of a personal nature. I’m one of those individuals who feels perfectly at ease posing questions. This inevitably leads to conversation, and soon I’m asked. “So, what do you think?”
“Is it Teresa?” I asked, as we exchanged the package for the slip. “I’m surprised. The second trimester is usually the honeymoon phase.”
“No, no. My Teresa, she’s good.” Luis waived politely to an elevator full of tenants exiting the lobby for the mad morning rush through the streets of Manhattan. “It’s Mr. Rudkus. He’s dead.”
“Dead? That can’t be.” My disbelief bordered on being defensive. “I was just at Mount Sinai hospital for a visit, and he fully intended on coming home.”
In fact, Mr. Rudkus was so concerned with public opinion, he specifically asked me to spread the news of his recovery. With hospital machines pumping and beeping, he was surprisingly purposeful as he squeezed my hand. “It’s very important, dear. Make sure the neighbors, the building management, and the shopkeepers know that I’ll be home before New Year’s. And, mail these holiday cards. I must keep up appearances, and we agreed when it got to this point, you’d be my voice. It’s what you do best.”
We had formed a purely platonic, May-December relationship about a year prior, although our initial meeting was less than random. To this day, I’m certain Mr. Rudkus sought me out. A night owl by nature, I had been toiling away the wee hours as a fact-checker for WPIX in The Daily News building on Forty-second Street, returning to Tudor City by six in the morning. This, it turns out, was the exact time Mr. Rudkus completed his daily chore of depositing one single bag down the garbage chute. We connected over his empty box of Mallomars. There are, of course, two camps. Those who freeze, and those who don’t. We both froze, and this culinary commonality was the start of something wonderful, our regular breakfast routine. I absolutely adored our mornings together, as did he. If it wasn’t for my reverse sleep-pattern, I am sure we could have lingered well past lunch. How we veered from the virtues of cookies to death, I have no idea, but the progression was seamless. It happened while I was replenishing his daily pill dispenser.
“I don’t think I’ll renew the yellow pills.” He tossed the bottle in the garbage.
“I don’t think you have a choice.”
But I was wrong. He did have a choice, and after much discussion, Mr. Rudkus helped me understand his need to live each and every day with humility and grace. More than that, I wanted to help him maintain the quality of life he deserved.
“Well, he’s not actually dead.” Luis grabbed a ring off his belt and proceeded to sort through a hundred seemingly identical keys.
“He was sent to hospice. That’s like dead. My uncle went to hospice and never came home.” Like a magician shuffling a deck of cards, Luis plucked the winning key from the stack. “The building manager, he asked me to empty Mr. Rudkus’s fridge today.”
I clutched my package like a teddy bear and searched frantically around the lobby. A frigid winter breeze whooshed across the lobby as the front door swung shut. The brisk air stung my flushed face, revealing my discomfort. It’s not like I didn’t know Mr. Rudkus would end up in hospice care. Mentally, I had prepared for this day, but my emotions swelled like a two-year-old begging for attention.
“I have to sit, Luis. Can you join me?” Luis checked his watch, nodded, and we made our way over to the well-appointed seating area.
“Teresa, she loves this furniture. She comes in late at night and pretends like we’re rich.”
“She’s not alone.” I assured him. I felt the same way when I’d toured Tudor City, searching for a rental within a short walk of The Daily News Building. The nine lobbies in the buildings that make up Tudor City, smack dab in midtown Manhattan, are a gothic throwback designed for the diehard anglophile. Stained-glass windows inset with faux family crests, soaring arches lined in burled wood, and stone floors as thick as bedrock are sure to impress even the most jaded New Yorker. Unfortunately, at that moment, it felt downright crypt-like.
“Are you going to be okay, Miss M? You and Mr. Rudkus, you two are the nice ones. Not everyone is so nice in this building.”
“Like Mr. Johns in 5C? I can’t stand to be on the same elevator as that man.”
Luis chuckled softly. “The guys, we call him El Diablo.”
“That’s good. I may have to borrow that.” I leaned in to Luis and lowered my voice.
“Luis, I try to be one of the good ones, but I need to do something bad.”
“Lemme guess. You want a little peak in Mr. Rudkus’ apartment. Just to say goodbye.”
“How did you know?”
Luis tapped his temple. “It’s my job.”
Luis waived to Fernando at the front desk and rattled off something convincing in Spanish. “I have to clean the fridge anyway, so why not have some company?” He handed me some plastic garbage bags, as cover.
Entering Mr. Rudkus’s apartment was like stepping into my favorite restaurant at an off-hour. Familiar, but lonely. It was all I could do not to look at our pair of coffee mugs on the kitchen counter.
“So, where do we start?” I placed my package on the hall credenza.
“I got the fridge. You say goodbye to Mr. Rudkus.”
I wandered into the living room and ran my hand along the built-in bookshelves, lined densely with books on the history of New York City. If it happened south of Forty-second Street and north of Gramercy Park, post-World War I, Mr. Rudkus was the man with the details. I counted seven copies of The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, highlighting Mr. Rudkus’s obsession with Manhattan’s meat packing industry. “Tell me,” I could hear him say, “where do we go for fresh meat now? Fairway? You call that fresh?”
I hesitated before opening the cabinet on the lower half of the bookcase, although I knew full well what I’d find. Rows of ledger books. The type a bookkeeper used before computers wiped out a generation of mid-level management. Green- and white-marbled fronts with a thick, black band running down the side. The ledgers were neatly labeled and organized by year— two per year, one hundred books in total. I knelt down and pulled out the most recent.
“Wow, pretty c
ool,” I said out loud.
“What’s that, Miss M?” Luis called to me from the kitchen.
“Mr. Rudkus wrote down every penny he spent each week.” I flipped the pages back to the third week in October. “Here it is. We went for coffee that week, his treat— $5.50.” I scooted into the kitchen to show Luis. There was a certain satisfaction finding documentation of our friendship, as if the ledgers made it official.
“Look at the notation. ‘Time with a dear friend.’ That’s so sweet.” I felt a stab of loss.
“Go to May.” Luis said as he chucked some old mayo in the garbage. I licked my finger and tabbed backwards.
“There.” Luis leaned over my shoulder and pointed with his elbow to a line item. “He gave my nephew Martin a two-hundred fifty dollar check at his graduation from Baruch. Good man, no?”
“Very good man. The notation says ‘Worthy Investment.’” A prideful smile spread across Luis’ face.
I ran my hand down the column of numbers and did some quick calculations. “Not only was he good, but generous. A two-hundred fifty dollar gift is a considerable sum on a fixed income.”
“How much money has he got?”
“Now, that’s a nosy question, even for me, Luis.” I shut the ledger firmly to punctuate the end of our snooping. “I can’t tell anyway. The ledger just lists the expenses, and my guess is that he was on a tight budget. I don’t think he spent more than a thousand dollars in any one month. Interesting, huh?”
“I guess. If you like numbers.” Luis frowned his disinterest and heaved the garbage toward the hall.
I replaced the ledger and closed the cabinet. Less two bags of old food, Luis and I left Mr. Rudkus’s apartment the way we found it. Almost.
Fresh Slices Page 18
