“What’s your favorite hymn?” Dan asked. “ ‘What a Fucking Friend We Have in Jesus’?”
She showed the Rebecca Clausen version of a smile. “Oh, very well. Clean out the room. Move in. Have it wired for cable, put in quadraphonic sound, set up a wetbar. What the hell do I care, I’m only the boss.”
“Thanks, Mrs. C.”
“Oh, and don’t forget the space heater, okay? See if you can’t find something from a yard sale with a nice frayed cord. Burn the f**king place down some cold February night. Then they can put up a brick monstrosity to match the abortions on either side of us.”
Dan stood up and raised the back of his hand to his forehead in a half-assed British salute. “Whatever you say, boss.”
She waved a hand at him. “Get outta here before I change my mind, doc.”
8
He did put in a space heater, but the cord wasn’t frayed and it was the kind that shut off immediately if it tipped over. There was never going to be any air-conditioning in the third-floor turret room, but a couple of fans from Walmart placed in the open windows provided a nice cross-draft. It got plenty hot just the same on summer days, but Dan was almost never there in the daytime. And summer nights in New Hampshire were usually cool.
Most of the stuff that had been stashed up there was disposable junk, but he kept a big grammar school–style blackboard he found leaning against one wall. It had been hidden for fifty years or more behind an ironmongery of ancient and grievously wounded wheelchairs. The blackboard was useful. On it he listed the hospice’s patients and their room numbers, erasing the names of the folks who passed away and adding names as new folks checked in. In the spring of 2004, there were thirty-two names on the board. Ten were in Rivington One and twelve in Rivington Two—these were the ugly brick buildings flanking the Victorian home where the famous Helen Rivington had once lived and written thrilling romance novels under the pulsating name of Jeannette Montparsse. The rest of the patients were housed on the two floors below Dan’s cramped but serviceable turret apartment.
Was Mrs. Rivington famous for anything besides writing bad novels? Dan had asked Claudette Albertson not long after starting work at the hospice. They were in the smoking area at the time, practicing their nasty habit. Claudette, a cheerful African American RN with the shoulders of an NFL left tackle, threw back her head and laughed.
“You bet! For leaving this town a shitload of money, honey! And giving away this house, of course. She thought old folks should have a place where they could die with dignity.”
And in Rivington House, most of them did. Dan—with Azzie to assist—was now a part of that. He thought he had found his calling. The hospice now felt like home.
9
On the morning of Abra’s birthday party, Dan got out of bed and saw that all the names on his blackboard had been erased. Written where they had been, in large and straggling letters, was a single word:
hEll
Dan sat on the edge of the bed in his underwear for a long time, just looking. Then he got up and put one hand on the letters, smudging them a little, hoping for a shine. Even a little twinkle. At last he took his hand away, rubbing chalkdust on his bare thigh.
“Hello yourself,” he said . . . and then: “Would your name be Abra, by any chance?”
Nothing. He put on his robe, got his soap and towel, and went down to the staff shower on two. When he came back, he picked up the eraser he’d found to go with the board and began erasing the word. Halfway through, a thought
(daddy says we’ll have balloons)
came to him, and he stopped, waiting for more. But no more came, so he finished erasing the board and then began replacing the names and room numbers, working from that Monday’s attendance memo. When he came back upstairs at noon, he half expected the board to be erased again, the names and numbers replaced by hEll, but all was as he had left it.
10