by L. T. Vargus
She couldn’t help but admire his attitude. Darger tried to imagine living that close to death on a day-to-day basis and didn’t think she’d manage to be very stoic about it at all. For some people, that kind of knowledge would send them spiraling into the darkness.
She held her drink in the air and toasted his courage.
“I don’t know if I’d call it courage, exactly,” he said.
“Pugnacity?” she offered.
Fowles clinked his bottle against her cup.
“That’ll do.”
Darger was feeling a little drunk by the time the barmaid returned with a second round.
Something had occurred to her over the course of the day, and she’d been working up the nerve to bring it up. The second dose of vodka was helping.
“So is the cancer why…?”
“Why what?”
“Why you left last night.”
“Yes,” he said, sighing with what seemed like relief. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you then. The last thing I wanted was for you to spend the night worrying that you’d done something wrong.”
Darger thought she’d feel relieved herself, but found herself confused instead.
“But I still don’t understand why.”
“Why I don’t want to—” He stopped himself, shook his head. “No. Why I can’t be involved with someone? I’m dying, Violet. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“Fuck fairness,” she said.
He laughed at her abruptness before continuing with his explanation.
“I can’t burden you with that. Or anyone else, for that matter.”
“No,” Darger said. She couldn’t accept that as an answer. “That doesn’t make sense. You just explained to me that you refuse to stop living before your time is up. But only when it comes to work? That’s stupid.”
“But my work won’t get hurt when I die.”
“You think it won’t hurt me when you die, as long as you don’t sleep with me?” Darger said, the words sounding more bitter than she’d intended.
They were quiet for a moment, and the noise from the crowded bar seemed to swell to fill in the empty space. Fowles reached across the table and placed a hand on her arm.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said, and his hand slid from her wrist to her fingers.
Her eyes slid up to meet his.
“Maybe it’s stupid to think I can protect other people from it. It’s just a different way of trying to control things that are beyond my control.”
* * *
After that, it came as no surprise that he invited her back to his place.
Fowles lived in the first-floor apartment of an old Victorian-era house. It was painted blue and had a row of rosebushes planted out front.
He unlocked the door and pulled Darger across the threshold, bending to kiss her once they were inside.
She heard the door fall shut behind her but barely noticed.
Still kissing her, Fowles reached for the light switch. Illumination. And then Darger gasped, stepping back as she caught sight of the bookcase near the door.
“Is that a stuffed squirrel riding on the back of a tortoise?”
Fowles followed her gaze and then nodded absently.
“Oh. Yes. I guess so.”
For some reason, probably the vodka, this made Darger giggle uncontrollably.
“It’s not mine!” Fowles explained. “This place, I mean. I’m subletting from a friend-of-a-friend.”
Standing on her tiptoes, she pressed her lips to his, but this time it was Fowles that pulled away.
“I should reiterate that I still don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Shush.”
She kissed him again and reached for the top button of his shirt.
* * *
Later, Darger watched his chest rise and fall with breath. He looked so healthy. So vital and alive. It didn’t fit that he could be dying.
Was dying.
“You’re really not afraid?” she asked.
“Of dying?”
She nodded.
He sighed. “Not really. Maybe it’s my work. Seeing the life cycle of the insects. The never-ending spiral of reproduction, birth, and death. We’re no different. It just happens slower for us.”
They were silent for a time, with only the sound of crickets chirping outside the window.
“The fact that I have some control over when and where and how helps, too.”
Darger didn’t understand. It seemed to her that the one thing he didn’t have was control.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oregon is a Death with Dignity state. When the illness becomes too painful or debilitating, I can choose to end my life.”
The thought gave Darger a chill, but as Fowles continued to talk, she thought she understood why he felt that way.
“When I first got my diagnosis, one of the things I worried about most was wasting away. Mentally and physically. And putting my family through that slow downhill decline. Knowing I can prevent that gives me power, if only a little.”
A car with a broken muffler rumbled down the street.
“I have regrets, of course,” Fowles said. “Not many, but a few.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, nothing dramatic. Just a few things I figured I’d experience in my lifetime, and now I don’t suppose I’ll have that chance.”
“Skydiving? Climbing Mt. Everest?”
He laughed.
“I’ve been skydiving. Twice, actually. And mountain climbing has never appealed much to me. It’s more the things in life you just sort of expect will happen for you… falling in love, getting married, having children.”
Darger didn’t know what to say to that, so she kissed his naked shoulder and then laid her head on his chest.
“What about you?” Fowles asked. “What things do you want out of life?”
Darger considered the question for a second before she answered.
“The same, I guess. A family. Kids. Though I sometimes have a hard time envisioning balancing that with my work. But when I imagine my future, I always picture kids."
Fowles ran a hand through her hair as she talked.
“I feel like a dork admitting this, but the older I get, the more I find myself daydreaming about various parenting scenarios and how I’d handle them.”
“If that makes you a dork, then I’m King Dork,” Fowles said. “I've thought a lot about what my approach would be as a father. I mean, I know a little about the popular parenting techniques and what have you, but I guess I mean it in a more personal way. Like if I were tasked with distilling my fatherly message down to a couple paragraphs, what would they be?”
“Let's hear those ‘graphs,” Darger said.
“Well, I'm going off the cuff here, so bear with me. It's a two-parter.”
He swallowed before he launched into it, that oversized Adam's apple bobbing in his neck.
“In this world, you are largely defined by your dreams, by what you want. What you want sort of shapes everything about your time, your effort, your sense of yourself. It is arguably the most important choice you make.”
His hands moved in the dark, gesturing like a professor giving a lecture.
“And if you look at it that way, the truth is, no one can really stop you from pursuing your dreams except for you. Sometimes maybe it won't work out exactly the way you originally pictured it, but if you really try, you can probably find a way to be part of the realm you've chosen — if you're 5’2”, you're probably not going to play professional basketball, for example, but you could get into coaching or be a sportswriter. You could still be part of that world. See, so many people feel powerless and kind of accept that. They just give up on their dreams without a fight, simply flow into the path of least resistance. But you have just as much right as anyone else to the things you want. You are utterly free to embrace your passions, to chase your obsessions, to really go for it, and once you're armed with that knowledge, it
kind of empowers you to tilt all things in life toward you, to advocate for yourself, to not take no for an answer."
He paused there a moment, a little puff of laughter coming from his nostrils.
“I know what you're thinking. ‘Don't take no for an answer’ sounds almost sociopathic, right?” he said.
“I was going to say 'rapey,' but yeah. A little.”
“Well, I told you it was a two-parter. Because the second side of this fatherly message is that deep down, what really makes any of us happy is connecting to other people. The genuine connections we make are really the only thing that I think is sacred in this realm. And that means how you treat people is sort of sacrosanct by proxy. If you always remember that, the sort of spiritual weight of that, I think it kind of balances out the more hard-nosed aspects of fighting for what you want.”
They were quiet for a beat. Darger smiled.
“I like that,” she said. “So to sort of paraphrase it, I think what you're saying is that you've gotta fight for your right to party.”
Fowles laughed.
“Exactly.”
The chorus of crickets filled the next few seconds, and then Fowles spoke again.
“I usually try to avoid giving unsolicited advice, but this is a case where I can’t help myself.”
Darger adjusted her position so she could see his face. He was staring up at the ceiling, unblinking.
“What is it?”
“If you really want to start a family, take it from someone that won’t get the chance: Don’t wait too long.”
Chapter 40
You sprawl in your apartment. Awake in bed. Eyes open and piercing the dark hung up all around.
You can’t sleep. Can’t even keep still. Shoulder blades fidgeting, working themselves up and down against the mattress in violent little strokes, two knives chopping and dicing and mincing away.
It’s so weird that Callie is gone. So weird. So empty.
So impossible.
You thought it would hurt more than this. Sharp pain all over like your skin flayed from your body, all of your shell peeled off, all of you opened up, stringy red muscle tissue exposed, blood sluicing over the meat in sloppy pulses. You thought it would be torture, agony, torment. Unending and unendurable.
But no.
It’s the dull ache of emptiness instead. Desolation. Blankness.
And it’s everywhere. All around.
Vast expanses of nothingness trying to press themselves into your skull. A universe comprised of black seas, cold and vacant and meaningless. A kind of darkness that not even the stars can fight off all the way.
A black hole to stare into, to fall into forever.
It reminds you of walking at night, coming upon those shadowed places where it looks like the city has been ripped open, its innards laid bare before you. And you stare into those wounded spots as though they might offer you something, some explanation for any of this, some meaning.
Something. Anything.
You sit up, fumble a hand toward the nightstand, grab your glass of water and drink. The wet feels good on your tongue, in your throat. Makes you remember that you’re still here, still real.
No matter who else has come and gone, you’re still here.
Chapter 41
Darger’s phone alarm blared from somewhere near her feet. She flailed a leg at it, hoping that a well-aimed kick would shut it up, but it continued its mechanical squawk.
With a groan, she sat up. The side of the bed where Fowles had slept was empty. A thin sliver of light glowed from under the bathroom door, and she could hear the patter of running water.
Darger slipped out from under the covers, the cold of the room gripping her right away.
She knelt. Fumbled with a pair of wadded up slacks, the legs somehow tangled in a way that made them seem nonsensical in the dark. More like a pretzel of fabric than a wearable garment. She wrestled with them a while before the phone dropped into her lap. At last, she swiped the screen to shut the stupid alarm off.
And then she was back in bed, her head falling back against the pillow, the warm blankets surrounding her again.
She let her eyes wander around Fowles’ bedroom. Everything was monochromatic in the gray morning light. Self help books lined the shelves — a few by Dr. Phil, even. And posters for bad action movies adorned one of the walls. She wondered what the things in this room said about him, but then she remembered that he was subletting. Half of this stuff probably wasn’t even his, maybe more.
He didn’t belong to this place, and it didn’t belong to him.
His stay here was temporary.
And so was hers, she supposed. They were both in between. The bigger events in their lives, the destinations, existed elsewhere in space and time.
Every time she remembered that Fowles was dying, it occurred to her that it was a strange thing to forget. And of course she hadn’t really forgotten. But the brain had a way of pushing those painful, uncomfortable thoughts out of the way. It was a convenient defense mechanism.
A stubborn part of her brain — a superstitious part — wanted to believe that he wouldn’t die. Maybe a smaller subset of that part even believed that she could assist in that somehow, like embarking on a relationship might save him.
If life were a movie, it could work that way. The power of love and all that crap.
But not here. No, these kinds of thoughts were the bargaining stage of grief, Darger knew. Her brain wanted to cut a deal. Offer up something to offset the disease, to pay the price hanging over Fowles’ head. It had to work that way, didn’t it? Had to be possible. Part of her would believe it until the end. A reality where we are powerless over such things would always be too big to process.
Fowles came out of the bathroom in a pair of bright orange boxer briefs and a white t-shirt.
Darger laughed.
“Wow. Do you have a pair of those in leopard print?” she asked.
Glancing down, Fowles continued toweling off his wet hair.
“Are you making fun of my underwear?”
Darger rolled over onto her side and propped her fist underneath her chin.
“They’re kind of asking for it.”
“You don’t like orange?”
“It’s a very loud orange. I’m afraid your penis might start directing traffic.”
The half-crooked grin spread over his mouth, and he chuckled.
“You can shower here, if you want. But I figure you’ll want to stop at your hotel to change before we head to the station.”
“Right. Have to avoid that walk of shame,” she said, waggling her eyebrows.
“Oh, are you ashamed now?”
“No,” she said, leaning forward so she could smack him on the rump. “But you should be.”
Darger got dressed while Fowles slipped into the kitchen to make coffee. A few minutes later, they were chugging the steaming brew in between bites of toasted bagel.
“You didn’t tell me you could cook,” Darger said, licking a smear of cream cheese from her finger.
“If you’re that easily impressed, then I’ll blow your mind with my vegetable lasagna.”
It hit her again, his impending death, and she almost winced. He’d never have a wife to make lasagna for.
“What is it?”
She shook it off and smiled.
“Oh, I was just trying to decide if it’s too soon to propose.”
Fowles laughed. And she studied his wonky smile and his bony cheeks and his wiry hair, and he looked so happy, she thought, Why not?
“I’m serious. Marry me.”
He stopped laughing after a moment. His brow drew into a hard line.
“You’re joking.”
“I am not.”
“But we only met three days ago.”
“So? It’ll be something you can check off your bucket list.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’ll be fun.”
Instead of answering, he gl
anced at his watch.
“If you want to be able to shower and change, we need to leave.”
Darger helped carry their meager breakfast dishes to the sink, worried she’d offended him.
It had been a stupid thing to say, she decided. A half-joke she’d tried to turn into something serious.
They’d been on the road for almost ten minutes when Fowles broke the silence.
“You’d really do that? Marry a stranger?”
“No, I only have sex with strangers,” she teased. “But after that I consider them close friends, and then I’ll marry them.”
“I’m trying to be serious.”
“So am I,” Darger said.
She turned and regarded him with her head cocked to one side.
“You really consider me a stranger? Even after last night?”
“OK, not a stranger, per se. But we’ve known each other less than a week.”
They were stopped at a red light, and Fowles was staring at her, scrutinizing her the way one might study a box of eggs at the supermarket to make sure none of them were cracked.
Darger threw her hands in the air.
“No, then.”
“No?”
“The offer is withdrawn,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because of the way you keep looking at me.”
“I’m sorry,” Fowles said. “I don’t mean to. It’s just… what would your parents think?”
“Oh, my mother would kill me.”
He raised an eyebrow, as if she’d proved his point for him.
“Well, so what if she doesn’t like it? It’s my life.” Darger plucked at her sleeve. “It’s not like she asked my permission to marry her husband.”
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Where?”
“To the heart of your willingness to marry someone you met a week ago.”
