I’m Losing You (53 page)

She was pushing Samson toward the Imaginarium when the two women collided. Ursula gasped, though wasn't sure why. “Do I know you?”

Rachel's eyes bugged, jaw trembling. “We—we met at—at the mortuary…”

Ursula fought for air. She sneezed three times, then burst into tears.

“Please, please don't!” groaned Rachel, weeping herself.

“My Tiffany! My baby!”—dumbly backing the carriage away.

“Please! I've been dreaming about her…”

“You!—” Then Ursula remembered this was the woman who had washed her girl; the last to see her translate from this earth. “Was she—was she beautiful?”

“Please!—”

“
Tell me!
Was she beautiful?”

“Oh yes!
So
beautiful! The most beautiful thing I have ever
seen
—”

“And you…took care of her?”

“Yes! We took
perfect
care of her.” Ursula slowly deflated. “Are you…are you well? Can I—”

“Thank you!” shouted Ursula, abruptly heading for the long ramp beside Gelson's.

The part-time washer of the dead gave chase and shoved something into her hand. “Take it! It's yours!” Now it was Rachel's turn to flee.

She stormed off, stymied and haunted—like a witch whose potions had all failed.

Perry Needham Howe

Jeremy Stein made good on his promise to take Perry to lunch at Ginza Sushiko. He brought with him the free-lance dealer he'd mentioned on the train. Berto was a sound editor at one of the big post-production houses in the Valley. His family had been in the watch trade and from early on, he was attracted to the aesthetics of the old pieces they repaired.

They were the only ones there. Apparently, the restaurant was so expensive it didn't bother opening unless someone made a reservation; a hundred-dollar penalty was charged in event of cancellation. Perry said he wanted to try the fugu (you only live once, he thought) and was disappointed to hear its season came in November. It seemed fugu wasn't poisonous in itself but enjoyed eating something that was. At any rate, the chef said he served it “young,” before too many toxins accumulated in the liver. The liver, of course, was the real delicacy—like most toxic things.

“You'd love it,” Jeremy said. “It's rather like foie gras.”

The chef scowled, his English not up to a riposte. “
Better
than foie gras.”

“There's usually a residual toxin in fugu: first time I had it, my tongue started tingling
from the inside
. I almost shat myself! Finally got it together to inform the chef and he put me right.”

Perry couldn't help but wonder if stage-four adenocarcinoma was a tasty treat out there in the star-speckled vomitus of the Big Bang. Somewhere, a galactic cook was serving it up “young” (before chemo).

The men were delivered soups that made the counter smell of forest. Then came bowls of hot water filled with leaves; they dipped shredded sashimi within and each grabful swelled like a white rose in time-lapse bloom. Perry felt as if he'd ingested a mild psychotropic.

Berto knew the creator of
Streets
was interested in a minute repeater. He admitted he'd never sold one but said they could be gotten, at a price. A Vacheron Constantin retailing around a hundred and sixty thousand might be had for about half.

“You know, there's a guy in Pennsylvania who will get the Swiss parts and make you a repeater, do anything you want. We're talking a
substantial
reduction. See, a lot of these super-complicated watches
aren't
manufactured
by the companies that sell them. Look.” He jimmied the back of his wristwatch, revealing the works. “(I know just where to press.) See: Patek bought the
ébauche
—the raw movement—from Le Coultre. The big names aren't necessarily the manufacturers. They
do
stuff to the watch, it's not like they do
nothing
. Take VCRs: there's ten thousand different kinds but only a handful of places that make the components. Okay?”

Jeremy picked his teeth with one of the hand-carved rare-wood toothpicks that sat in tiny reliquaries before each man. Perry popped an urchin in his mouth that elicited a primitive sense-memory of ocean. He'd suffered a lot of epicurean bores in his day, with their gustatory boasts and simpleminded metaphors; now he was one of them.

“There's a European auction house called Habsburg you should know about, if you
really
want to go crazy.”

“Oh, he's that already!” said Jeremy, eyes closed in ecstasy of octopus aftermath. “He's totally gone.”

Berto pulled a Sotheby's catalogue from his valise and flipped to a dog-eared page at the back. Lana Turner stood next to a thuggish-looking man on her wedding day, nineteen forty-eight. “That's this guy Topping. There were two brothers, right? They inherited about a hundred and forty million.” On the center of the next page was a plain-looking wristwatch with a black band. “One of the earliest perpetuals—Topping was the first real owner, bought it from Schulz—
and
it's a minute repeater
and
a one-button chronograph—that's in the crown—
and
it's got a moon phase. We're talking nineteen thirty!”

Perry took a closer look. “It says ‘tonneau'—”

“Shape of the case. Like a barrel, see? It was made by this guy Schulz, who worked for Cartier.”

“Schulz made the
ébauche
?” Perry asked.

Jeremy winked. “I told you he was gone.”

“You're
learning
! No,” he said, pointing to the text. “See? It says the movement wasn't signed. Probably Piguet; they did a lot of the early complicated Pateks. This one sold for five hundred fifty thousand—and remember, we're talking nineteen
eighty-nine
. But that's an unusual piece.”

Dessert was a drift of shaved green ice adorned by a Fuji-esque
snowcap of crushed kiwi. The bill came to twelve hundred and thirty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents, without tip. The two men offered credit cards, but Jeremy refused.

“That's okay,” said the benefactor. “My treat. Next time, buy me a watch. Hey, Berto,” he joked. “Can you get a used Breguet for what we paid for lunch?”

“You could pay the
tax
on a Breguet—maybe.”

Perry got the elbow as Jeremy nodded toward the dealer. “Would you buy a used Breguet from this man? Oh!” His face lit up. “Know what I heard? I heard there was a
black
American Express card.”

“Yeah, Farrakhan has one,” said Berto.

“I'm
serious
. Perry, have you heard of that? It's supposed to be for people like Bronfman and Gates. You can, like, buy
buildings
with the damn thing.”

“Or minute repeaters,” said Perry.

When they left, Jeremy gave the chef his card and made him promise to call at first fugu.

That night at the Century Plaza, Perry clutched his side and collapsed during the silent auction at a Luminaires fund-raiser for the Doheny Eye Institute. Jersey wanted to call an ambulance, but he stubbornly said the limo would do. The doctors were concerned the bowel had been perforated; they needed to go in and take a look.

“They might have at least let you keep on your tux,” Jersey said as they wheeled her husband to surgery.

“Listen,” Perry said groggily from the gurney. “I want my liver donated to the right restaurant—five-star.”

“What?” She smiled, wiping tears away with the back of a hand. “What is it, darling?”

“I want—”

“Tell me what you want…”

“—none of this Mickey Mouse Mickey Mantle
rejection
shit. And make sure it's in
season
—says so on my driver's license. Promise?”

“You're a crazy man, but I promise. And I love you.”

She kissed him twice and he rolled away.

Severin Welch

Out of the ICU, thank God. Two days in that sonsabitchin place. They fished a catheter through his groin and cleared a blockage in a valve, that's how they did it now. Instead of a triple bypass they snaked in like plumbers through a pipe. Lavinia was there in all her weepy, slobby, hard-bitten splendor, like some kind of Kathy Bates. Frankenbates. She kept asking what was he doing in the middle of the street. Where was he going, what had
possessed
him? The old man thought it best not to answer. She'd have to move to Beachwood, she said—told anyone who'd listen—because her father couldn't be left alone. But she would need
help
, who could help? She'd call her ex, that fuck, he wouldn't lift a finger for anyone. Who, then? All his neighbors were so fucking old. Total care! Get
real
—that's what they were talking about—and who paid? Medicare? Medicaid? I'll tell you who: nobody! Nobody paid for total care, total care was for the rich! For English and Canadians, and the Swiss! But maybe the Motion Picture Hospital—Daddy, what were you
doing
, you could have been hit by a hundred cars! She railed against her rotten ex and Jabba the whore and the whole fucked up shitty planet.

“I'd like to have my radio, Lavinia.” She knew what he meant. “I'd like you to get it from the house.”

“They won't let you have that here,” she said.

“Everyone has a radio.”

“Not that kind. You'll be home soon anyway.”

“I see. You're preparing my schedule? You're a doctor now?”

“That's right—so you better listen.” She reached into a gold Godiva tin for a
marron glacé
. “This is
such
a beautiful hospital. The paintings! On every
floor
. It's like a museum.”

“Why don't you move in, if you love it so much? You could give tours.”

Three in the morning. The nurse gave him Dalmane, but he couldn't sleep. Lavinia refused to bring the scanner but he made her retrieve the script—its dirty pages gathered by paramedics from oil-stained macadam and, along with bruised Uniden, sealed in a Hefty bag—the very original draft of
Dead Souls
, put through anemic paces
by Dee Bruchner so long ago. Pressed like a linty yellow flower within was the clipping from
The New York Times
:

Severin sat by the window, touching the cool security glass with a bunged-up finger. The nail still had a fissure, all the way from Brooklyn, ‘thirty-one—looked like a miniature ice floe—when his best friend, Joey Dobrowicz, smashed it with a rock (by mistake, Joey said). Did he holler. He stared out the thick pane, trying to conjure faces, but the slate was gray, the drizzle dull. It was raining the night his Diantha died, in this very wing.

He went to the chair and sat down, winded by memory. There was something terrifying about chairs in hospital rooms, especially at night. An immense longing came upon him, and Severin revisited the time they first met…the Automat—
For Me and My Gal
—nineteen forty-two, the year Mr. Bluhdorn immigrated to America from Vienna. Severin was a Western Union messenger by day (extreme myopia would exempt him from the service), tyro novelist by night. Sometimes they threw him a few dollars to create a radio ad, but what he really wanted was to be an Author—do an
All Quiet on the Western Front
, or something in the Steinbeck vein—then hire out for the movies. When Diantha got pregnant, they took a bus to Hollywood.