Slices (3 page)

I
see a newspaper box, and the front page is talking about the economy,
talking about terrorism, talking about the fucking weather. I
scramble through my pockets and all my change is gone, I spent the
last of it on the bus, and I see a crumbling low cinder-block wall at
the edge of a parking lot and there’s nobody around and I pull
one of the blocks out like a rotting tooth and swing around and toss
it into the glass front. I pull a paper out of the wreckage and try
not to cut myself and I keep moving in case someone heard the noise.

I’m
dropping a trail of discarded pages behind me as I tear through the
paper in disbelief. Nothing. Nothing about this. But this is the
local paper, the same paper I’ve been reading. Two different
editions? One for inside the city, one for everywhere else? That’s
crazy.

Then
I think of something even crazier.

Maybe
the city isn’t really sick. Maybe it only thinks it is.

I
have a hell of a time making myself go back into the hospital. I
spend at least an hour outside, pacing, wishing I still smoked so I’d
have at least an excuse to be out here. I don’t want to go in,
but I know, I just know it, that if there are any answers to all
this, this is where I’m going to find them.

Mom’s
asleep. I’m just about to leave when the nurse comes in, and I
try talking to her about what’s going on, but she just shakes
her head fiercely and says, “Not here.”

She
backs out into the hall, looks around, gestures to me to follow and
she’s gone. I hurry to catch up. She hasn’t turned to
look at me — she’s unlocking a door and it’s a
small supply room, not much bigger than a closet, and she looks
around again and pushes me inside.

I
stand there blinking as she steps in after me and shuts the door. The
air in the room is antiseptic and sharp, and she’s standing
uncomfortably close.

“Your
mother isn’t sick,” she says.

“I
know that — ”

“She
hasn’t been sick this entire time. Just the people around her.”
Her voice is flat and clipped, and there’s some accent there I
can’t place. The buzzing of the filament from the room’s
single light bulb makes her voice sound like a recording. “Your
mother came in here weeks ago, she says she’s very sick, she
lists off all the things wrong with her, and she’s not sick. It
doesn’t make sense, the things she’s saying. There is no
sickness with all the symptoms she talks about.”

“Yeah.
She’s a hypochondriac. I know that. But — ”

“She
is here two weeks when other people, they start getting sick. They
have what she claims to have. Nothing like it in the world until she
makes it up and now I have a hospital full of cases, streets full of
cases. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“No.
No, I don’t.” The sound of blood rushing in my ears was
like the ocean. I wanted to sit down. “Do you think —
she’s causing this to happen? Is that what you’re
saying?”

“What
do you think?”

I
didn’t say anything. When I finally spoke, it was like someone
else talking in another room. “I think you’re right,”
I said, the words sounding small and muffled in this tight space. “I
think — I already knew that.”

“Where
I come from, we know what she is. We would know what to do.”

“What
she is — ?”

She
nods. “Witch. We know.”

“What
— ” The word came out like a dull laugh, and then nothing
followed it. “What would you do?” I finally asked.

“
I
would do nothing,” she said, arms folded over her chest.
“You
are her son.”

“So
I have to stop her. Yeah. I — I think I knew that, too.”
The walls felt closer, now. “How do I stop her?”

“I
think you know.”

“What,
are you saying — I should just put a pillow over her face, is
that it?” I laughed the same non-laugh again.

She
didn’t say anything.

I
just stared at her helplessly. “She’s my
mother,”
was all I could say.

She
still didn’t say anything. She just kept looking at me for a
minute longer, and then turned and left the room. When I came out
into the hallway, she was gone.

It’s
been five days since that moment and I haven’t slept. Every
time I keep thinking it can’t get worse than this, it does.

There’s
a TV left on in one of the lounges. It stays tuned to the same
channel — there’s a picture of a news anchor desk with no
one sitting behind it. No one left at the station. No one in the
lounge gets up to change the channel, and there’s the smell of
rotting meat and the buzzing of flies.

I
haven’t seen a single doctor or a nurse since then. I wander
the halls and wonder if I should be checking on the patients, if I
should be making my own rounds. I keep mental notes of what rooms are
filled with the sound of coughing and what rooms have fallen silent.

I
don’t leave the hospital now. I can see bodies in the street
from the windows. There are no more sirens. There’s a garbage
truck at the end of the street, turned over on its side and burning.

I
check on Mom. Again and again. She’s asleep most of the time.
I’ve wanted to call you, ask what you think I should do, ask
you what the news is like in your world. Is the TV there still
talking about the stock market? Are you still watching reality TV
shows and reading gossip magazines — can you tell me what
celebrities are getting divorced, who’s cheating and who’s
pregnant? Can you name them all for me, first name basis, like you
know them, like it matters?

But
I can’t call you. There isn’t even a dial tone when I
pick up any of the phones.

I’ve
been thinking about what the final nurse said. I’ve been
thinking about it long and hard. If I really wanted to kill her,
there’s more than enough here to do it with. I’ve looked
at pills and hypodermics and I don’t know how to use them and
that would probably make it easier and I just can’t see myself
doing it. There have been times when I’ve been scared of her
and times I was ashamed of her and times I hated her, but it’s
still Mom. I don’t know if I love her. I just know I can’t
lay a hand on her. All I can do is talk to her.

I
stop and think about it. That’s just it. I can talk to her. I
don’t have to do anything else.

“Mom
— Mom, don’t try to get up. Mom, I’m sorry, listen
— the doctor said you don’t have much time left.”

Her
eyes slowly opened, then grew wide. “He did? He said that?”

I
squeezed her hand tight. “You were right. You were right all
along, you are sick, you’re really sick, no one’s ever
been
this sick. I’m sorry I doubted you, Mom.”

She
nodded, coughing. “I knew it. I knew it. I told you. I told
you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,
Mom, you did. You told everyone, you told those stupid doctors and
they didn’t know anything and you were right. You’re
always right.”

She
kept nodding, and was coughing harder. It didn’t sound like she
was faking now. The sound was wet and deep.

“I’ve
seen your charts. It’s just like you said. It’s serious,
Mom, and you’re not going to make it. It’s everything you
said it is. You’re feverish, and you can’t breathe, and
your — ” I shut my eyes and tried not to think about
the bus. “Your tongue is swollen, and you’re pale and
your eyes are dark and it’s just like you said.”

“—
stupid — ” she
managed to say between deep racking coughs. She’d sat up now
and was doubled over.

“That’s
right. The doctors are stupid. Everyone’s stupid. Everyone
should listen to you.”

She
didn’t say anything after that. She couldn’t.

I
didn’t want to sit here. I didn’t want to watch this, to
be here for it. But she had my hand held tight and wouldn’t let
go and all I could do, the least I could do, was just sit here and
hold on as long as she needed me to.

I
wasn’t watching the clock. If I had to guess, I’d say it
took her an hour to die.

Even
when her breathing had stopped, I had trouble unlacing my fingers
from hers. Her eyes were still open and I knew I was supposed to
close them and I couldn’t make myself touch her again once I’d
managed to get free. She looked — not peaceful, not happy, but
— grimly satisfied, somehow. Like she’d proven something.

The
light that’s coming into the room around the edges of the
blinds is starting to fade. I can hear a sound in the distance that
might be helicopters. Further in the distance, a siren, I think. It
might be.

I
don’t want to open the blinds. Not yet. I don’t know what
world will be out there when I do. Your world, or Mom’s. I
don’t know if the nurse was right. I don’t know if I’ve
stopped her — if this was a fairytale spell, I don’t know
if I broke it, or if I just gave her vision of how the world works
permission to exist.

I’m
sitting in the chair by the bed, not looking outside, not looking at
her. I can hear footsteps out in the hall. They might be nurses,
doctors, going about their work, the world spinning back into place.
They might be soldiers, might be the police, I might step out and
find faces with blank glass eyes and gas-canister mouths ready to
stop the spread of infection, whatever the cost.

I’m
not paying attention to any of that. I’ve got the phone in my
hand, and if I pick up the receiver, if there’s a dial tone
this time, I know I’ll be able to hear your voice, that life
will be all right whether I make it out of here or not. That one of
us made it.

That’s
all I need to hear. Please, just a dial tone.

Someone’s
knocking at the door.

I’m
going to pick up the receiver now.

I
first saw the vampire across the room at a crowded party.

Someone
had just put in a Decadence X CD, and I was startled, always startled
each time I hear your voice, soft and desperate on some recording, my
guitar riffs straining behind you, reaching out to catch you as you
fell.

Eyes
turn toward me and people whisper, and I know what they’re
saying — they’re saying, that’s her, that’s
Nikki Velvet, she was the guitarist — and I want to run
screaming, but I don’t dare. It took months to get invited to
this party, and if I let anything freak me, I’m not going to
get invited back. Even if I freak over something as simple and stupid
as missing you.

So
I sit back and smile at the woman who’s staring the most
openly, and raise my glass to her, and smile to myself as she looks
away. I raise my glass to my lips and the champagne hits the back of
my throat as the chorus reaches my ears, your voice easing through
the air like razors through silk. I can feel the razors open me up.

I’m
bleeding inside as he catches my eye.

For
a moment I think he’s you. Back from the dead. My eyes take him
all the way in, and I see that it isn’t you, it isn’t you
at all — it’s what you wanted to be, maybe. All your
rough edges and fears smoothed away to a polished alabaster surface.

My
breath froze in my throat. I leaned closer to Eva, not taking my eyes
off him; managed to ask her, “Is — is that — ?”

“Shhh,”
she tells me, her voice low in her throat. “Don’t stare.
Where?”

“By
the stereo,” I tell her, and my words make me wonder, did he
put in the CD?

She
looked away from me, eyes idly taking in the whole room with a casual
turn of her head, looking at him without really looking at him.

I
couldn’t help staring. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew if I
gawked at anyone, if I stared like a tourist at the dominatrices
covered in vinyl and leather or at the senator from Kansas or at the
whispering nuns that I would be quietly asked to leave and just as
quietly forgotten while this world kept turning without me. But he’d
caught my glance and was holding it tight in those ice gray eyes.

He’d
just been handed a drink by another man, younger than he was,
disheveled and pathetic. The smaller man looked around the room
nervously, sniffling, edging closer and closer to his pale god for
comfort and protection. He jumped when he looked back and noticed
that the man was holding a cigarette out to him, and he fumbled for a
lighter to serve him with.

“That’s
him,” Eva said. There was a trace of amusement in her voice.

“He’s
beautiful,” I breathed. She didn’t say anything.

I
wasn’t surprised at her silence. I was more surprised that
she’d brought me here at all. I never thought she liked me, and
asking her had been nearly a last resort. But the net of people I’d
been asking had grown wider and wider, the question discreetly set
adrift from ear to ear among the stranger contacts we’d made,
you and I, out on the road:

I
want to meet a vampire, I’d told people. A real one.

I’d
grown tired of the wannabes, of the nervous skinny little boys with
their dental acrylic fangs and slicked-back hair, powdered pale faces
and kohl-black eyes. The kind I used to bring backstage after the
shows, let them work their lithe little bodies against me and leave
my neck ragged and bleeding, let them touch the scars at my wrists
with their tongues. The kind I’d hand over to you when I was
done with them, and stay up late all night listening to you have
sex with them, thumps and moans clear and loud through the wall.
Lying awake listening to you love them and wishing for the millionth
time that you liked girls, replaying over and over in my mind the
words the boys would whisper to me as I bled, awkward and
adolescent promises of forever, of immortality, little boys lying to
me in the dark.

You
remember. Or you would if you were still alive.

I
want to meet a real vampire.

And
those words had finally reached Eva’s ears, and she’d
taken me by the hand one night at a bar and drawn me aside and asked
if I was serious. She’d never spoken directly to me before and
I was too startled to say anything but yes.