By noon the doctor was happy to release him, and James was wheeled down to the entrance and discharged. Thank-yous and paperwork completed, he walked out onto Broad Street, where a cacophony of organic fumes greeted him. The strength was such that it rose above the traffic fumes, and he was almost instantly overcome by nausea. He’d half expected this, but nothing could have prepared him for the sheer volume and variety. Fear gripped him—mindless, pointless terror—and he froze in his tracks. Going back into the hospital wasn’t an option, but he hoped his freshly painted apartment would offer some sanctuary, so he flagged a cab. He tore open the taxi’s door, shouted, “229 Pine Street!” and moved to seat himself, but the inside of the cab glowed, and its denizens were of a particularly unsavory nature. The assault on his senses was worse than the street by several orders of magnitude.
“I’ll walk, thanks,” James managed to spit out as he staggered backwards, tripping over the curb and landing on his rear end. The gutter threw up debris, and a host of new and unwelcome sensations. He picked himself up quickly, cleaned his hands with an alcohol wipe he’d grabbed when he left the ward, and tossed it into the gutter.
Public transport was out of the question, so James set out to walk the two miles back to his apartment. He needed to get a handle on all of this. He’d done it before, and though the rules of the game seemed to have changed, he had to cope with this, whatever it was. As he jogged down Race Street, the racket roared through his head like a billion buzzing bees. Filtering, as he’d learned over the years, helped a little, but only a little.
Two blocks down Race Street, James realized he’d made a major error in his choice of route—Chinatown. The bacteria on the garbage behind the restaurants were overpowering. He turned off Race and headed south, where an even bigger obstacle presented itself: the bus station. The fit young figure running down Tenth made quite a contrast to the winos and bums, but nobody even so much as glanced at James. Each of these ripe individuals hosted more filthy inhabitants than the last, and there was nothing to do but hold his breath and run. A particularly dirty-looking drunk danced and tottered in a narrow part of the pavement. The man had his arms spread wide, his bagged bottle in one hand, and he blocked the way. Even with his tongue locked up against the back of his throat, James could still smell, and the man’s bouquet nearly knocked him over. He pushed past, and upped his pace until he was in the relative clear of Market Street. There he stopped, and hands on his knees, sucked in some air. The bio-pollution in this area was less intense, but it was still far from what could be called peaceful. He calmed himself and consolidated his sketchy knowledge of this part of town to select a route home with as little garbage, human or otherwise, as possible. It took him almost an hour, but he made it.
Inside was better, but not as quiet as James had hoped. Parts of the apartment were okay, but there were areas as bad as or worse than anything he’d encountered outside. The kitchen was unbearable—like hell, or might have seemed like hell had he not just left hell at Tenth and Arch. He found some plastic sheets left by the painters, and taped them over the kitchen’s entrance, which brought instant relief. Close to exhaustion, he flopped into the nearest chair. When he’d calmed down a little, he picked up his phone, called his cleaning lady, Maria, and asked if she could do a deep clean.
“Are you unhappy with the service, Mr. Weems?”
“No, not at all. I just need you to go over it again, please.”
“Okay, got messed up, huh? House-warming party?”
“No, just need it absolutely immaculate. Can you do it today?”
“Uh, no, tomorrow at the earliest, sir.”
“Okay, that will have to do, thank you.”
James was a prisoner in his own place and could not, for the life of him, understand why. All the control he had learned as a child seemed to have evaporated. At this rate, if he was ever going to cope with the wider world, he was going to need a giant hamster ball.
Then something occurred to him: the bum by the bus station had stunk like hell. James had been holding his breath, but even when he’d pinched his nose, he could still smell the man. How was that possible? He went to the kitchen door, took a deep breath, pinched his nose shut, and then peeled back a corner of the plastic covering. Immediately, he could smell the microbes in the kitchen doing their thing. He resealed the covering, and the ruckus ceased.
Five
The cleaning ladies arrived the following morning. One lady was streaming with a cold, and it blared at James like a foghorn. He gestured them in and stepped well back in the entrance hall, stiff and wide-eyed. They regarded him warily, then looked at each other and edged in, their backs to the wall.
“If you could give the place a real good deep clean, please.”
“Um, okay, Mister Weems.” Maria, the healthy woman, looked around, wondering what it was she was supposed to clean. James, sensing her bewilderment, pointed towards the kitchen and proffered a fifty-dollar bill—one with its own sanitary issues. “For a good job.” He dropped it on the hall table.
Maria shrugged and nodded to the cold victim, and the pair went to work.
James called the local market and ordered canned goods, as well as some dried and frozen meals. Not fine dining, but it would get him through this. Hot-delivered food was out of the question, as was anything “fresh”. Antiseptic body soap, a couple of gallons of bleach, a toilet bowl disinfectant, and a big box of plastic garbage bags all seemed like good ideas as well. When he’d finished, he supervised the cleaners as they scrubbed the bathroom with bewildered fervor, pointing out the spots they missed as delicately as he could. The women dutifully sprayed the areas again, and rubbed and rubbed.
James went and hid in his studio, where the clean, refreshing scent of turpentine and linseed oil masked the smell of any unwanted visitors. He’d always loved that smell. He squeezed some chrome yellow onto a palette, mixed in a little thinner, and fudged the paint around on a practice pad, not so much working as attempting to quiet his mind. The brush drew the paint out thinly, leaving some canvas exposed. Another pass, ninety degrees to the first, made a sort of tartan effect. He regarded the result for a few moments, then took a large round brush, picked up some red on its end, and touched it to the canvas. Twisting it as he dabbed, he made little smudged sponge-like spots across the tartan field.
Maria rapped timidly at the door. “All done, Mr. Weems.” Her helper stood by, head lowered.
“Thank you so much,” James said, and pointed at the cash on the hall table. “Any chance we can increase the number of days to three per week?”
Maria raised an eyebrow.
“Just for a little while, maybe a few weeks,” he said.
The look Maria shot her partner clearly said that, screwball or not, she couldn’t afford to turn her nose up at business like this. “Yes, certainly, Mr. Weems.”
“And of course, always a bonus for an especially good job, okay?” James smiled reassuringly.
“We always do our best, but I will always do a special good job for you, Mr. Weems,” she said with the suggestion of a curtsy.
As the ladies left, the doorbell rang again—the delivery guy from the market. Again, James left the door ajar and stood back.
“Hey, Mancuso’s!” a voice rattled ahead of the tramping on the stairs.
A large man in a striped, short-sleeved shirt waddled to the door, two large boxes of groceries in his arms. His shirt was drenched in sweat, like a second skin. His personal bouquet preceded him. Though not nearly as unkempt, he was even more overpowering than the down-and-outs James had passed at the bus station.
“Just leave it by the door,” said James, holding out the payment plus a ten-dollar tip, hoping the man would just take it and leave.
“Sure, sure, I just wanna tell you about our specials.”
“I’m really busy. Tell me later, okay?”
“Ah, won’t take a minute, Mr. Weems. We got fresh gourmet tricolore pasta on special offer, and there is a free sauce w
ith every order over a hunnerd dollars. Not a hunnerd dollars of pasta, just a hunnerd dollar order, ya understand. Ha-hah.”
James shifted nervously. The man was overweight—obese—and had thick-as-a-coke-bottle black-rimmed glasses. His voice was whiny but deep, and broke often, which made him sound like one of those sheriffs in old Westerns.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.” James’ hand itched on the door handle. He eased the door back impatiently as the man prattled on.
“And we got Colombian coffee at two for one, and some nice biscotti if you like, also.”
James had an overpowering urge to slam the door, but he just couldn’t. The guy was too nice to be that rude to, and not a little pathetic. James stood there, half-listening, fidgeting, and nodding at the appropriate points, like someone who needed to urinate.
And this guy is dying. James reeled as the thought popped into his head. The message was clear, but how could he know that? Where had that come from? As the guy went on about the luxury baked beans, James slit his eyes and stilled his mind. He only knew that the man was at an advanced stage of some disease—a fatal disease. It was unmistakable, partly written in the sickly-sweet odor that shrouded him and partly from somewhere else that he could not identify. A nonsensical image popped into James’ mind: that of a thief in the night—a cartoon thief with a striped shirt and black mask—drilling into a safe. It was silly, but at the same time somehow James knew that it wasn’t, that it meant something. He stammered, “Really, thanks a lot, but I got to go, really,” and closed the door, leaving the groceries in the hall. The Mancuso’s guy shrugged and waddled off down the stairs.
When James was sure that he was gone, he opened up again and picked up the parcels. The sickly-sweet smell was fading, along with the man’s footsteps.
It wasn’t the first time James had seen the mark of death. When he was young, he had occasionally seen diseased people and known they weren’t long for this world. One of his classmates, Francis Falcone, had died of a very rare form of leukemia when James was nine. When he told his mother he could see that the boy was deathly ill, she dismissed the idea and told James he shouldn’t say such terrible things. Karen never even considered the possibility that there could be something to these premonitions. When Francis died, again she dismissed it as coincidence. After all, Francis had looked unwell for some time, and her son had obviously picked up on that. He was sensitive to people who weren’t well, it was as simple as that. To consider any other explanation was to disregard everything she had ever learned. This was not to say that her mind was closed, but she had limits. It was after the Francis Falcone incident that she decided to tolerate no more of what she referred to as James’ “nonsense”, and the Wharton sessions had begun.
The people with the “mark” of death on them, well, there was nothing James could do for them, so eventually that part of his talent retreated into a quiet, partitioned portion of his mind. That was where it had remained, until now. It was not that he was selfish, or that he didn’t care—he’d simply sequestered that particular nightmare in order to preserve his sanity.
~* * *~
James slept well that night. The dreams in germ-land were done with, but the acute sensitivity while he was awake remained. While the apartment was clean enough, there were still spots where the signals from microbes were so loud he could barely think.
There was another problem—James’ mother was coming for lunch. He’d tried to fob her off, but she had insisted. Worse, she was bringing homemade chicken soup and he could do without that as well, but didn’t want to rouse suspicion. He had enough trouble already. Dealing with guys in white coats was something he planned to avoid.
With a full kettle boiled for tea, James disinfected the drains with the extra hot water and told himself, one day at a time. He’d gotten past all of this before. He could do it again.
There was this business of being able to smell things with his nose clamped. He went near the plastic bags and sniffed them. They’d been well sealed, but nothing being perfect, he could still sense their contents. He tried holding his nose again, and it made little difference. He could still smell, hear, sense them—whatever. It made no sense at all.
James scattered a few things around to give the place that essential disheveled look. He re-nuked some of the toast crust from his breakfast and rubbed just a little on the kitchen counter, then carefully smeared some fresh butter next to it. He could wipe it up as soon as Karen left or, even better, casually while she was still there.
Karen showed up nicely dressed, as always. The paper bag containing the soup smelled good on the one hand, but had some serious overtones of God-knew-what on the other. Mercifully, she must have had a hot bath not long before she arrived, and her clothes were nice and fresh.
James winced as she took the Tupperware tub out of its bag. “Why don’t you stick that in the microwave? Got to be a bit cold by now,” he suggested.
“If you want.” Karen grimaced at the artistically messed-up kitchen counter. “This place reeks of bleach.”
James pretended he hadn’t heard.
Karen rummaged through the cabinets, looking for bowls, and came across James’ arsenal of cleaning products. “Uh oh,” she muttered. She filled two bowls and placed them in the microwave, then shouted through the kitchen door, “What do you want to drink?”
“Just some bottled water, thanks.”
The fridge was nearly empty except for a number of water bottles, which James had filled from the kettle.
“Want me to do some shopping for you?”
“No thanks, Mom, I have plenty.”
“James, there is nothing in your fridge worth eating!”
“All in the freezer and the cabinets, Mom.”
“There’s no butter or eggs or bread or anything.”
“Relax, Mom, I’ll do some more shopping later in the week. There are some bagels in the freezer. Just nuke ’em and stick ’em in the toaster. We can dunk them in the soup.”
Karen rolled her eyes. James fidgeted.
“Can I get them to put my bike at your house?” he asked. “I’d have to roll it up a ramp to get it into my lockup down here, and I don’t think it’s in rolling condition at the moment.”
“Oh, that damned bike!” Karen walked up to him and stood square, arms wrapped tight. She shook her head hard, enough that her dyed-red hair fluttered madly. James pushed himself back in the chair, cornered, but all she said was, “All right, but you need to get rid of that death trap, Jimmy.”
“Yeah, yeah. Maybe. I need to put it back together first, Mom. She needs me!”
Karen threw her arms in the air and marched back to the kitchen.
“I can think of better things to be needed by. Or people,” she said as she banged utensils and slammed drawers.
“Ah, Mom.”
She poked her head out of the door. “Don’t be alone, James. It doesn’t suit you.”
“You’ve been alone and you’re fine! I’m a chip off the old block. I’ll do okay.”
“I often wish I wasn’t. And it gets harder as you get older. Sure, I have my work, but that’s no substitute. It doesn’t keep you warm at night.”
“Well, why don’t you find someone, then?”
“Hah! Easier said than done. You oughta see what’s out there. Anyhow, I’m too settled in my ways now. If I was going to do it, I would have done it years ago.”
“What, with Rich?”
“No, not Rich. I hardly knew him. And tying him down would have been like caging a butterfly.”
James knew all about Rich—his father. Not the gory details, but enough. He harbored no grudge, and had no real feelings towards the man one way or another. He’d never met Rich, had never had an offer to meet him, and had never asked to.
“You should call Peggy sometime, have her down here.”
“Mom...”
It hadn’t worked with Peggy. Not because of any great differences. Perhaps it had ended because there wer
e no great differences. They had gotten on well enough; they liked each other, and shared many interests. Certainly she was one of the few women James had met who could put up with his peculiarities. But he knew, on those occasions when he was honest with himself, that there was something about Peggy that frightened him. And in those moments when honesty took center stage, he knew it had something to do with those things he had hidden.
“And do you think you will be able to work here,” Karen asked, “away from the stimulation of your crazy, artsy friends in Nu Yaaaawk?”
“Heh, yeah. I think so. Made a couple of studies yesterday, in fact. The bang on the head didn’t knock that out of me.”
“That’s great, Jimmy. That’ll keep you out of trouble.”
When it was time to go, James saw Karen to the door. She said, “Please be careful, Jimmy, and remember, there are a lot of people there for you if you need anyone.” She looked him in the eyes, and he felt a little embarrassed.
“Okay, Mom. I know. Thanks.”
When she’d gone, James went back to his garbage bags. He took a deep breath, held one, and pinched his nose in a repeat of the experiment he had made two days before. When he undid the knot, the volume went up to max instantly. When he closed it again, it subsided. He looked at himself and what he was doing in the hall mirror, and said to the reflection, “Maybe I am nuts.”
Six
Karen had never kept information on James’ father from him. On the other hand, she hadn’t offered a great deal, either. She and Rich had interned together in the St. Francis Hospital in Indianapolis and had been, for the most part, no more than co-workers.
Karen had come late in her life to medicine. The Sixties had captivated, then derailed her. After an all but wasted youth, she’d enrolled in pre-med and was a first-year intern by the age of thirty. Simply put, the profession was the making of her, and she relished its challenges.
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