“In three hundred feet, turn right,” says the GPS docent.
“Do we have to move?” Hadrian asks.
“Let’s not—get ahead of things,” she says. “It’s just an interview.”
“He said there was a list?” Remy asks. “There’s usually a list.”
“You know this how?”
“Books. Newspapers.”
“There is a list,” she confirms. “But not a long one and he said I’m on the top.”
It hits her. “Shit,” she says. “Flights.” She takes out her phone, brings up the browser.
“You book your own?” Remy asks. She searches for flights, Austin to DC, enters today’s date.
“I don’t know. He said the chief of staff would call me.”
“Chuck Malcolm is gonna call you?”
“You say that like I didn’t just talk to the president.”
“Right. That’s—I’m an idiot.”
She touches his hand, offers a smile. “You’re not an idiot. It’s just—we’re off the map now.”
“In two hundred feet, turn left. Your destination will be on the right.”
She thinks about telling her daughter—will she scream?—thinks about the moment she’ll meet the president, that first step into the Oval Office—what will she wear? The thought paralyzes her. She hasn’t brought a meet the president outfit. Would Story go shopping with her? Is there even a store in town that sells pantsuits?
As her mind races, her life separates itself from time, miles passing without impact. Nothing her body experiences physically—the temperature in the car, the landscape passing outside, the sound of the radio—imprints itself on her memory, and therefore it’s as if the journey itself never happens. For twenty minutes, Margot exists in a state of internal debate, lost in the blast zone of a dream come true.
What Margot’s mother, were she alive, would have warned her to consider is that the other shoe may have already dropped.
Beside her, Remy focuses on the road. Where Margot’s mind is sharp, his thoughts are scattered. It’s all for nothing, he thinks, if he drives up on the curb right now and kills someone. The roads in Texas have a central turn lane, and on direction from the GPS docent, he signals and slows, pulling over. His hands are tingling again. They have been, off and on, for a few weeks, and he’s been dropping things—silverware, pens. But absentmindedly, in moments when his brain was focused on something else—so he chalked it up to the collateral damage of living a life of the mind. But at his physical last month he mentioned it—numbness in his hands, being a bit of a butterfingers. The doctor checked his eyes and asked him to grip his hand and squeeze.
Remy did, or tried, because his hands didn’t seem to be as strong as they used to be.
“Is that all you got?” the doctor asked. His name was Mike Esby, and he and Remy had become friendly over the last few years, after their social circles merged when Hadrian started prep school with Mike’s son.
“Just a little off right now,” Remy told him. “I had the flu last month. Hard to get out of bed.”
“Yeah, Jeremy had that,” Mike tells him. “It was going around the school.”
The doctor sent Remy for an MRI, looking for a tumor or a spinal disk pressing on the nerve. When that came back negative, he ordered blood tests and an electromyogram, a test Remy had never heard of that involved a technician inserting an electric needle through the skin into various muscles. It was as enjoyable as it sounds and made him feel jumpy for hours afterward.
Then, yesterday, when he was on the treadmill, Mike’s office called and asked him to come in. Remy showered and took a cab into the city. He was a forty-six-year-old man with no history of health problems, and an optimist to boot, so he wasn’t worried. While he waited for the doctor, he read an article in a travel magazine about Vietnam that made him want to go, and he took a picture of it with his phone to help himself remember. Then the nurse called him in.
“ALS,” Mike said, when Remy was seated across from him, and for a moment Remy thought he was talking about baseball.
“Is it the playoffs already?”
“What?”
“No,” said Remy, a cold sweat breaking out suddenly on his back. “What are you talking about.”
“I’m saying the tests came back—and I ran a few of them just to be sure—and, well, there’s no easy way of saying it, but you’ve got ALS.”
“And I’m saying what is that?” Remy’s tone is more aggressive than he intended, but he’s worried that his inability to understand the acronym may be part of the condition, like he’s now medically unable to speak English.
“Sorry,” Mike says. “Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. You may know it as Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
The words hit his brain but didn’t penetrate.
“Didn’t he die of that?” Remy asks.
“Yes,” says Mike. “He did.”
Remy’s heart began to race. “But—”
“There are drugs,” Mike told him, “that can slow the progression. But there’s no meaningful treatment. I’m sorry, Remy. There’s no easy way to say this. You have an aggressive neurological disorder that is going to take over your life, and you need to prepare yourself for that. Does Margot know you’re here?”
But Remy wasn’t listening anymore.
*
You have arrived at your destination.
He pulls over on a quiet, tree-lined street. The internet has told him that the loss of muscle control in his hands will worsen and spread. The muscles in his body are literally wasting away, deprived of nourishment. One day in the not-too-distant future he will lose the ability to walk, then speak, then eat, then breathe. And then he will be dead.
He shuts off the car. Beside him, Margot is still buzzing.