“Let’s just leave,” said Courteney, grabbing Bastiaan by the arm as he passed her. “But don’t think we’ll be paying the bill,” she added to the waiter. “You can stick that where the sun don’t shine.”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Bastiaan of the fat man, pushing him with both hands against the chest as he stood too, and his Dutch accent became more pronounced the more furious he got. This was something that happened whenever he grew really angry; I called it “the tone” and dreaded its rare appearance. “You think you know what you’re talking about? You don’t understand anything of what you’re saying. Develop a little humanity, why don’t you?”
“Get the fuck out of here before I call the police,” said the man, not even slightly intimidated despite the fact that Bastiaan was younger, fitter and taller than him. “Why don’t you and your friends go down to the West Village. They’ll be happy to serve all you perverts whatever you want down there.”
I could see Bastiaan trembling as he summoned all his self-control to stop himself from picking the man up and throwing him through the windows, but finally, controlling his temper, he turned around and walked away. We made our way to the doors and left, the eyes of everyone in the restaurant on us as we marched back out on to 23rd Street, where the lights from the corner offices of the Flatiron shone down on us.
“Fuckers,” said Bastiaan, leading us down the street toward a bar where we had every intention of getting riotously drunk. “Bunch of fucking fuckers. They’d have a bit more decency if one of them came down with it. I wish they would. I wish they all would.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him close to me.
“No,” he whispered with a sigh as his head rested on my shoulder. “No, I suppose I don’t.”
Patient 563
The curtains were drawn in Room 711 and in a husky voice that sounded as if it had not been used in sometime, the young man asked me not to open them. Enough light was seeping through, however, to allow me to make out the figure in the bed. He was around twenty years old but probably weighed no more than a hundred pounds. His arms, which were lying on top of the sheets, were stick-thin, his long fingers skeletal, the elbow joints inflamed beneath the hospital gown. His face was gaunt, the skin stretched taut against the skull beneath in an anatomical miscreation that summoned images of Mary Shelley’s monster to my mind. Lesions on his neck and above his right eye—dark black bruises that melted into the skin—appeared to pulsate as if they had a life of their own.
Shaniqua had told me that if I ever felt uncomfortable then I should leave, that it wasn’t fair for a patient to witness my discomfort, but I had never done such a thing yet. Today she had insisted that I wear a gown and mask, and I had followed her instructions even though the boy’s bed was covered in a white plastic tarpaulin that reminded me of the scene at the end of E.T. when Elliott’s house is quarantined by the government and the alien appears close to death. I told him my name and explained why I was there and he nodded, his eyes opening a little wider as if he was trying to physically draw some more life into his body, and when he tried to speak again the words came out as a sequel to a prolonged bout of coughing.
“It’s good of you to come,” he said. “I don’t get many visitors. I haven’t had one in weeks, other than the chaplain. He comes every day. I’ve told him I’m not religious, but he comes anyway.”
“Do you want him to stop?” I asked. “Because if you do—”
“No,” he said quickly. “No, I don’t want him to stop.”
“All right then,” I said. “How are you feeling today?”
“Like the end is nigh,” he said, laughing a little, which turned into another series of coughs that lasted for more than a minute and brought me out in a cold sweat. Relax, you can’t catch it, I told myself. You can’t catch it just by standing here.
“Do you want to tell me your name?” I asked. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. They just identified you as Patient 563 to me.”
“It’s Philip,” he said. “Philip Danley.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Philip,” I said. “Are they making you comfortable at least? I’m so sorry that this has happened to you.”
He closed his eyes and I thought for a moment that he was falling asleep but then he opened them again and turned to look at me, breathing in so deeply that I could see his chest rise and fall beneath the blanket. I imagined how pronounced his ribcage would look beneath his skin.
“Are you from New York?” I asked.
“Baltimore. Have you ever been there?”
“I haven’t been anywhere in the States outside of Manhattan,” I said.
“I used to think there was no point in going anywhere else. I only ever wanted to come here. From the time I was a kid.”
“And when did you first arrive?”
“Two years ago. I came to study Literature at CCNY.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “I know someone who’s studying Literature there.”
“Who?” he asked.
“His name’s Ignac Kri?. He’s probably a couple of years older than you, though, so you may not—”
“I know Ignac,” he said, smiling at me. “Czech guy, right?”
“Slovene.”
“Oh yeah. So how do you know him?”
“I’m one of his guardians,” I said. “Not in a strictly legal sense, but it’s how things have been for seven years. Not that he needs a guardian now, of course. He’s twenty-two years old. Anyway, he lives with my boyfriend and me.”
“I think he’s going to be a famous writer someday,” he said.
“Perhaps,” I said. “I’m not sure fame is what he’s after, though.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. Only that I think he’s going to be very successful. He’s a lovely guy. And I’ve read a few of his stories. Everyone thinks he’s very talented.”
“Did you enjoy studying there?” I asked, biting my lip when I realized that I’d used the past tense, as if that part of his life was entirely over. Which, of course, it was.
“I loved it,” he said. “It was my first time outside Maryland. I’m still enrolled there, I guess. Or maybe they struck me off their books, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter anymore, I suppose. My parents didn’t want me to come here at all. They said I’d get mugged my first time out in the city.”
“And were they right?”
“In a manner of speaking. What do you do anyway?” he asked. “Do you work at the hospital?”
“No,” I told him. “I just volunteer.”
“And what do you do when you’re not volunteering?”
“Not much. I think I’m turning into a 1950s housewife. I don’t have an employment visa, so I can’t legally do anything, although I work a few nights a week at a bar near where we live. My boyfriend earns enough to keep us both, so I guess I’m scrounging off him. Anyway, that’s why I volunteer. I wanted to do something positive with my days.”
“You’re gay then?” he asked me.
“Yes. And you?”
“Yes,” he said. “How do you think I got in this spot?”
“Well, not because you’re gay,” I said. “You can’t think that’s the reason.”
“But it is the reason,” he said.