'Billy?', Heidi called up the stairs.
Halleck looked to the left and saw his own white face staring back at him from the mirror. There were purple pouches under his eyes that had never been there before, and the ladder of lines in his forehead seemed deeper.
Cancer, he thought again, and mixing with the word, he heard the Gypsy whispering again.
'Billy? Are you upstairs?'
Cancer, sure, you bet, that's it. He cursed me somehow. The old woman was his wife ... or maybe his sister ... and he cursed me. Is that possible? Could such a thing be? Could cancer be eating into my guts right now, eating me inside, the way his nose ... ?
A small, terrified sound escaped his throat. The face of the man in the mirror was sickly horrified, the hag-face of a long-term invalid. In that moment Halleck almost believed it: that he had cancer, that he was riddled with it.
'Bil-lee!'
'Yeah, I'm here.' His voice was steady. Almost.
'God, I've been Yelling forever!'
'Sorry.' Just don't come up here, Heidi, don't see me looking like this or you'll have me in the f**king Mayo Clinic before the noon whistle blows. Just stay down there where you belong. Please.
'You won't forget to make an appointment with Michael Houston, will you?'
'No,' he said. 'I'll make one.'
'Thank you, dear,' Heidi called up softly, and mercifully retreated.
Halleck urinated, then washed his hands and face. When he thought he had begun to look like himself again - more or less - he went downstairs, trying to whistle.
He had never been so afraid in his life.
Chapter Six
'How much weight?' Dr Houston asked. Halleck, determined to be honest now that he was actually facing the man, told him he had lost about thirty pounds in three weeks. 'Wow!' Houston said.
'Heidi's a little worried. You know how wives can be.
'She's right to be worried,' Houston said.
Michael Houston was a Fairview archetype: the Handsome Doctor with White Hair and a Malibu Tan. When you glimpsed him sitting at one of the parasol-equipped tables which surrounded the country club's outdoor bar, he looked like a younger version of Marcus Welby, MD. The poolside bar, which was called the Watering Hole, was where he and Halleck were now. Houston was wearing red golfing pants held up with a shiny white belt. His feet were dressed in white golfing shoes. His shirt was Lacoste, his watch a Rolex. He was drinking a pina colada. One of his standard witticisms was referring to them as 'penis coladas.' He and his wife had two eerily beautiful children and lived in one of the larger houses on Lantern Drive they were in walking distance of the country club, a fact of which Jenny Houston boasted when she was drunk. It meant that their house had cost well over a hundred and fifty K. Houston drove a brown Mercedes four-door. She drove a Cadillac Cimarron that looked like a Rolls-Royce with hemorrhoids. Their kids went to a private school in Westport. Fairview gossip - which was true more often than not - suggested that Michael and Jenny Houston had reached a modus vivendi: he was an obsessive philanderer and she started in on the whiskey sours around three in the afternoon. Just a typical Fairview family, Halleck thought, and suddenly felt tired as well as scared. He either knew these people too well or thought he did, and either way it came to the same.
He looked down at his own shiny white shoes and thought: Who are you kidding? You wear the tribal feather.
'I want to see you in my office tomorrow,' Houston said.
'I've got a case'
'Never mind your case. This is more important. In the meantime, tell me this. Have you had any bleeding? Rectal? Mouth?'
'No.*
'Notice any bleeding from the scalp when you comb your hair?'
'No. '
'How about sores that don't want to heal? Or scabs that fall off and just reform?'
'No.'
'Great,' Houston said. 'By the way, I carded an eightyfour today. What do you think?'
'I think it'll still be a couple of years before you make the Masters,' Billy said.
Houston laughed. The waiter came. Houston ordered another penis colada. Halleck ordered a Miller. Miller Lite, he almost told the waiter - force of habit - and then held his tongue. He needed a light beer like he needed ... well, like he needed some rectal bleeding.
Michael Houston leaned forward. His eyes were grave and Halleck felt that fear again, like a smooth steel needle, very thin, probing at the lining of his stomach. He realized miserably that something had changed in his life, and not for the better. Not for the better at all. He was scared a lot now. Gypsy's revenge.
Houston's grave eyes were fixed on Billy's and Billy heard him say: The chances that you have cancer are five in six, Billy. I don't even need an X ray to tell you that. Is your will up-to-date? Are Heidi and Linda provided for adequately? When you're a relatively young man you don't think it can happen to you, but it can. It can.
In the quiet tone of a man imparting great information, Houston asked: 'How many pallbearers does it take to bury a nigger from Harlem?'