The Affliction

by C. Dale Young

  “Hey, you the guy from the beach. We talked. I’m Diego.”

  Leenck knew exactly who I was. In fact, I was the only person Leenck had seen who had dared to disturb him. “I don’t think you ever told me your name,” I said.

  “Leenck.”

  “Is that Scandinavian?”

  “You know, I am not really sure. My parents weren’t Scandinavian. But they aren’t around for me to ask them.”

  Leenck had both told the truth and lied in the same breath. As I discovered much later, his parents were in the old country, in Spain, the very same country that sent its people to infiltrate the far reaches of the globe from the Caribbean to the Americas to the Pacific itself, Balboa disassembling his ships on the shores of Panama in the Gulf of Mexico and then reassembling them on the opposite Pacific shore. Imagine that. Balboa used Panama to cross from the Gulf to the Pacific long before the Canal was even built there. But I am getting distracted. Suffice it to say that Leenck’s parents were very much alive despite the fact Leenck made it sound then as if they were dead.

  “Oh, sorry about that. My mother died when I was young,” I said, “and, well, my father and I aren’t really on speaking terms.”

  Leenck was trying to walk away now, but I followed. I continued telling him about my own family, how I had lived in the U.S. for a long time as well.

  “You are not American?” Leenck asked.

  “Oh no.” I laughed. “I grew up on a small island in the Caribbean. My father’s family is originally from Spain. My mother’s family was Spanish and Indian.”

  “But you don’t have much of an accent? I don’t hear an accent when you speak English.”

  “You don’t have an accent either ...”

  When Leenck reached the checkout and became aware that all he had was the sparkling wine and the orange juice, he grabbed a TV Guide and threw it on the belt along with the beverages. But Leenck had no television. I knew this. When he paid for his items, he nodded at me.

  “Good talking with you, man,” I said. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.” Leenck was already worried he would see me again. It is funny how one can tell these things. I have always been able to tell a lot from people’s expressions, usually much more than from what they actually say.

  At home, Leenck fixed himself a tumbler of mimosa. He drank it all in one sitting and fixed himself another to sip while sitting in the backyard. The grass was withering in various places, but lush and green in others. The yard looked like a patchwork of greens and decay. The fence was unpainted on the side he could see. From outside his yard, the fence was white, almost pristine. But inside the yard, it was an unstained and unpainted fence that looked like it was rotting. The water from the sprinklers had given the fence a reddish rusty complexion. Did Leenck think about his parents? Did he speak to himself? I can almost imagine him saying: “No, they are not Scandinavian. They are most certainly not Scandinavian.” I can imagine him saying a lot of things.

  *

  “You have a leukemia. This is a cancer of your white blood cells.”

  “How do we get rid of it?”

  “Well, we can try to control it with chemotherapy...”

  “What?”

  “Chemotherapy. Drugs that will kill off some of your cancer cells.”

  “But you said control it. You cannot get rid of it?”

  “No, this is a chronic leukemia. We cannot cure it.”

  “So, I’m going to die of this.”

  “Well some people live a very long time with this.”

  “What is a long time? What does this mean for me now?”

  “Right now, we just need to focus on the diagnosis and getting started with chemotherapy.”

  “But. .. But, this is ...”

  “But nothing. We need to get started because your spleen is filled with cancer cells.”

  “I just need some time to think about this.”

  “We need to get started. You don’t have a lot of time to think about this....”

  *

  On that fateful day I remember well, Leenck woke to find himself scratching the scar he had on his left thigh. It had been a long time since he thought about this scar or how he got it. And it seemed as if it were all a dream, the way he had tried to impress his father by tying a wire around his thigh to show how far up a tree limb one should tie it off before cutting it. But it wasn’t a dream, and the scar reminded him of that, reminded him of the old country and the simple way of life in which he had been raised. To Leenck, he had not been raised in a cult in Spain but just raised differently. And he wondered if his parents were still alive, though he knew they were because people in his family lived into their 90s if they were needed in the town. Yes, they were alive. They had to be. He could see them doing their everyday routines when he closed his eyes.

  Leenck got up and went into the kitchen and made some instant coffee. He drank it quickly and made himself a mimosa. He took the drink out on to his backyard patio and sat there in his boxer shorts. The fence was definitely rotting. He swore he could almost smell the wood rotting. He got up from his lone chair and started walking around the backyard barefoot, around and around in circles. And when he got tired, he stopped and took off his boxer shorts, threw them on the ground, and stood there naked sipping mimosa from his tumbler, the sunlight warming his entire body. He stretched his arms and back. He slowly inspected the rotting and hideous fence. He walked over to it and started walking alongside it, slowly circling the yard. Along the eastern edge of the yard, he noticed one of the boards in the fence was loose and hanging at a slight angle.

  He probably had no idea why he wanted to look through the space opened in the fence. Call it a childish curiosity, the kind we all know far too well. Leenck lowered himself on one knee and looked through the crack into his next-door-neighbor’s yard. Lying on a towel on the grass in a pair of tight square swimming trunks was none other than me. Didn’t you see this coming? I lived next door. Leenck bolted upright, ran over to his boxers and picked them up before running into his house and closing the sliding glass door behind him. He leaned against the glass door and downed the rest of his mimosa. He put his boxer shorts back on. He made himself another mimosa. That man from the beach, from the grocery store, Diego: I lived next door. To Leenck, this was just not possible. To Leenck, this was a terrible joke. But these things are never jokes, are they?

  *

  “This is Sheila from the Cancer Care Center calling for Leenck Woods. Please call us when you get this message. The doctor feels it is very important for you to come in for your treatments. We have left several messages for you, and the doctor is concerned. Please, if you have any questions or concerns about your treatments, please call us so you can speak to one of our nurses.”

  This was the last message Leenck heard on his answering machine before he left Los Angeles. When he recounted it to me, he always did so laughing. He had screened his calls for several days after he attended his chemotherapy training session. Poison. He believed they wanted to poison him. Not in the nefarious way they do in a movie, all plotting and scheming and then the fatal scene with a woman, always a woman, standing over someone. No, not like that, but he knew that chemotherapy was merely poison. He wasn’t going to do it. He couldn’t get himself to do it. He had decided to die. He had already gotten the house to rent in Santa Monica. He had already sold off all of his stocks and bonds and withdrawn all of his money from his various accounts. As he walked out the front door that day in Los Angeles, Leenck said out loud: “This is Leenck from the Office of the Dying. I feel it is very important for me to die, and I am therefore refusing chemotherapy.” In other versions of this moment, he would add that he stopped and thought about what he said. “Hmmm. Maybe I should phrase it differently... This is Señor Bosque, Mr. Woods, Leenck. I have opted not to receive the treatment.” Regardless of which version he recounted, after speaking to himself out loud, he always closed the door behind him. T
he power would be turned off that afternoon. He had no intention of ever calling the Cancer Care Center with its quiet shades of paint in the various rooms, the large glass windows looking out on exquisitely manicured gardens, its soft music piped into almost every corner of the place. He never did.

  *

  “You live next door to me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that why you talked to me here that morning?”

  “No man, I talked to you because you looked down and you almost walked into a garbage can.”

  “But you knew I lived next door to you.”

  “Yeah, I saw when you moved in. You didn’t bring much with you.”

  Leenck looked down the beach beyond me and beyond the bench on which I was sitting. Some children were throwing a Frisbee and yelling “Fuck!” every time one of them didn’t catch it.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “About what? About living next door?”

  “Yes, why didn’t you …”

  “Look man, when I first met you, you didn’t seem to want to talk. You practically ran away.”

  Leenck turned and started walking away. In the distance, we heard, once again, “Fuck!”

  “What is up with you, man? Is it a bad thing that I live next door?” I yelled as Leenck was already a good ten feet away from me.

  Leenck didn’t answer, nor did he stop walking.

  “I know you are sick,” I said.

  Leenck stopped and turned around. “What?”

  “Dude, I know you a sick muthafucker. You drink all day long.”

  Leenck didn’t respond. He stared at me and then turned and began walking again.

  “I’m just kidding with you, man. Jesus. What’s up with you? I’m just joking with you.”

  “I’m sick. I’m really sick.”

  Another of the Frisbee kids yelled “Fuck!” followed by “This Frisbee is fucked up!” followed by “Who the fuck even makes this shit-ass Frisbee!”

  Leenck likely had no idea why he had admitted to me that he was sick. He just kept walking. Later I discovered he had not told anyone he was sick, and I was probably the last person on earth to whom he had imagined telling this particular fact. It took him about eight minutes to get to his house. He felt feverish. He felt warm, flushed almost. When he got to his kitchen, he fixed himself a mimosa. He felt sweaty, and the fever seemed to be consuming him then. He took off his shirt and realized it was wet with sweat. He had walked home slowly, so he hadn’t expected this. He stripped down in the kitchen to his underwear. Sweat ran down his temples. As he walked into the living room, the doorbell rang. Leenck probably wasn’t thinking. He opened the door to find me staring at him. Leenck stood in his own doorway half naked and covered in sweat. He swayed slightly while standing there. He must have known then that he was collapsing. It started in his knees. As I watched him pass out, it seemed to happen so slowly I began to wonder if something was, in fact, wrong with my own head. I barely caught him. I carried him to his couch.

  “You okay, man?”

  “What?”

  “You passed out cold, man. You just fell.”

  “Where? Where am ...”

  “You’re on your couch. I caught you before you hit the floor, man. I carried you over here.”

  “Get out.”

  “Wow, you’re a really thankful guy.”

  “Seriously, you have to get out.”

  “What, you think I never seen a guy in his underwear?”

  “You need to ...”

  “Man, I was joking about you being sick and all. But you really are sick. You need to see a doctor.”

  “I have already been to doctors.”

  “But you are sick and should probably see a new doctor.”

  “I am sick. And I’m dying.”

  “That’s just the sickness talking smack, man.”

  “No, listen to me. Everything dies, and now I am dying.” It sounded almost as if he were in a movie reciting a script. The poison had set in and in the next scene he would be clutching his chest while he vomited up yellow-green foam. This was melodrama at its finest, but he could not stop himself. And some part of me enjoyed it then.

  I looked at Leenck and tried my best to select the right words: “I know of an old woman. You need to go see the old woman, Cassie. She can help you.”

  “No one can help me.” Again, Leenck continued the drama with his short outbursts, declaimed as if he were on a stage. Why does a man speak like this? I couldn’t stop myself then from thinking in that way.

  “Cassie can,” I said. “She cures all kinds of people. I can take you to her. She lives not far from where I grew up. All we have to do is fly to Antigua or St. Lucia and then charter a boat.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Days later, Leenck felt better. The sweats had passed. He got up, showered, and went outside. He pulled the plastic lounge chair from out of the shade and positioned it at the bottom of the few steps to the patio, positioned it in direct sunlight and then lay down on it. I watched him position that old tattered lounge chair. I could tell he was feeling better.

  “Why you all naked in your backyard, you perv?” I called out to him from my side of the fence.

  “Why are you looking through a crack in the fence into my backyard? So, really, who’s the pervert here?”

  I laughed when I heard this. He was good at making me laugh. Sometimes I forget that, that Leenck could make me laugh. “Man should be able to do what he wants in his own place,” I said. And before Leenck could answer, I had climbed over the fence into his backyard. “You okay, man?”

  “I’m fine. I didn’t collapse or anything. I walked out here, and I can walk back inside,” Leenck replied.

  I walked over and sat down on the steps to Leenck’s patio just behind him. “Good.”

  “Do you often sit down with your neighbor when he’s buck-ass naked in his backyard?”

  “You’re the one who’s naked!” I told him.

  “But it is my backyard, my own place. Remember? Man should be able to do what he wants in his own place.” When he said this, he mimicked my voice and the pattern of my speech but, for some reason I cannot explain even now, I did not seem to mind.

  “I don’t have a problem with you being naked. If you want I can turn away or get something to cover you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Nothing exciting here. Just an average guy.”

  “Yeah, you not a porn star or anything.” We both started laughing. “Have you thought about what I said?”

  “About what, my not being a porn star?”

  “Cassie, the old woman. Will you let me take you to see Old Cassie?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because she can cure you. She has been curing people of all kinds of disease for as long as I can remember. Scary old woman, but she is a gifted healer.”

  “She can’t help me with what I have.”

  “She has cured people of heart disease, diabetes, MS, even Alzheimer’s. She even cures people of cancer.” I watched to see if there would be a change on Leenck’s face. There was none.

  “She can’t help ...”

  “What is wrong with you, man? What do you have?”

  “It isn’t important. I just know she can’t help me.”

  Leenck got up and walked up the steps past me and into the house. As he stood in his kitchen mixing a mimosa, I, too, walked inside through the glass doors.

  “Ah, your vice,” I said.

  “Drinking naked?”

  “Nah, just the drinking.”

  “You’re gay, aren’t you, Diego?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Most guys wouldn’t casually talk to another guy who is naked and drinking in his kitchen.”

  “You gay?”

  “No, Diego. Not gay.”

  “Then how did you know I was gay?”

  “This is California, Diego ...”

  “Oh man, I’m not coming on to you or anything.�
�

  “I didn’t think you were. It is just that my being naked didn’t bother you. And you have helped me and worried about me. Most men don’t give a shit about other men.”

  For the first time since we met, I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed. I could tell the blood was rushing to my face and could feel the warmth of it in my cheeks. “I think I better go.”

  Leenck could see me blushing, and something inside him enjoyed the discomfort he was producing in me: “Why, because I am standing here with no clothes on? Because you keep checking out my dick? I might not be a porn star, but I can see you checking out my abs and my dick.”

  “Man, your skinny ass self isn’t all that... I gotta go, man.”

  “Why, you getting turned on? You want some of this? You hard, Diego?” As he said this, he turned around and said: “You want my ass?”

  “No, I gotta go because there is something wrong with you, man. You are not right.”

  You would think I would have stayed away from this man. But of course I didn’t. In this, I was as predictable as Leenck was. I went back. I kept going back. You could even argue that I am still going back.

  *

  “We need to get started with chemotherapy.” “Shouldn’t we run another test? I mean, are you 100% sure?” “Yes, we are sure. I have scheduled you for your chemo class tomorrow. We really need to get going on this.” “How long do I have?”