The Postmortal (7 page)

I had to get out of Manhattan. Katy merrily haunts me in this place, which I more than deserve. I see visions of her all around: in the kitchen, by the television, lunging out the window. Soon there are so many ghosts of her crowding me that I feel engulfed. Sound reason told me that to stay around much longer was to risk insanity. I had to go see my sister.

I have the good fortune of not having to deal with Penn Station on a daily basis. I’m amazed that current events have managed to create an environment in which dealing with Penn Station is somehow even worse than before. I didn’t know it could get worse. It already seemed to operate at maximum awfulness. Oh, but I was wrong.

This was an exodus. There was a line just to get in the station. I’d never seen that before. A fire marshal was stationed outside every entrance, holding back travelers until a certain number had exited. They let a handful of people in, then held the line again. It was like trying to get into a nightclub—which is perfect in its symmetry. My goal was the six-thirty train. They ran every half hour, so I figured if I missed the six thirty, I could just hop on the seven with a tall boy of Budweiser, and off I’d go. I just barely made the ten-thirty train.

It was around midnight when I pulled in. My sister was waiting for me. She looked tired, but she has two kids, so I think she looks the same way at midnight as she does at all other hours of the day. Polly exists in a perpetual daze, run down by the burdens of motherhood and falling further and further behind in rest, never again to reach complete wakefulness. I had specifically asked my dad not to tell her what I had done, because I knew she’d make me feel bad about it. I had already suffered through four hours at Penn Station and a train ride so tightly packed you couldn’t have slipped a dime between the bodies. But then, seeing her, I figured that I may as well get all the pain out of the way immediately. She drove me back to her house and poured me a drink.

I confessed almost immediately. “I got the cure.”

She snapped awake (she can only be alert in short bursts). “What? When?”

“Three weeks ago. That’s not all of it. My roommate and the doctor who gave it to me were killed in the July 3 attacks.”

“Oh my Jesus. Katy? Was that her name? Are you joking?”

“No. I referred her to my cure doctor, and when she went to get her blood drawn, the office was bombed.”

“Oh my God. Are you okay?”

“Not particularly. I . . . I was so excited for her to get it. I didn’t think this could happen, and I still don’t know how it did. And now she’s dead, and I feel like I deserve the same fate.”

“Why did you get the cure? How could you be so dumb? You have to swear right now that you won’t tell Mark that you did it. He’s been talking about it and talking about it. The last thing I want is for you to egg him on.”

“Please don’t castigate me for this.”

“But didn’t you realize the danger you put your roommate in? The danger you put yourself in? These crazy people didn’t just start killing doctors a couple of days ago, John. And you don’t even know if the thing works. I just can’t believe you’d go to some back-alley Guatemalan Dr. Nick to get your life fixed.”

“He wasn’t some quack,” I said defensively. “He was a legitimate doctor with a well-known practice.”

“Yet he chose to engage in some shady side business. Why is that?”

“It was just some ego thing.”

“And that doesn’t bother you, even now? I saw the doctor Mark wanted to visit to get it done. His name was Frankie, and he looked like he stole furniture out of trucks. I’ve heard that some of the people offering to do it aren’t even real doctors. They’re like chiropractors times ten. I’m not judging you for getting it. I’m just worried about you. That’s all.”

“I’m grateful for that, P. I really am. But I’m fine. Mentally, I’m a disaster. But physically I feel fine. Great, as odd as that sounds.”

She grew a touch curious. “So you think it really works, then.”

“We won’t know for a while. I’ve been taking a photo of my face every day just to see if there are any changes over time I don’t readily notice.”

“And you’re not worried about, you know, hogging all the food and stuff ?”

“I promise I won’t eat all the Nilla Wafers in the house, like last time.”

“You know that’s not what I mean. There’s a reason people are fighting so fiercely to keep this cure out of people’s hands. You don’t have kids. I do. I think about this stuff. I think about what’ll be left for them.”

“So you’re never going to get it? And you’ll never let Mark get it?”

She let out a low groan. “I have no idea. I really don’t. I’m guessing there will be a point when it’s legal and everyone has it and I feel obligated to get it too. I was like that with cell phones. I was easily the last of my friends to get one. Everyone else had one. And there I was, outside school at some disgusting pay phone that didn’t even work. Now, of course, I have one and I’ll never go back. That’s how I am. I usually have to be dragged into things. I know it’s probably inevitable that I’ll get the cure and that we’ll all get it. It’s just gonna be something you do. But it opens up all sorts of odd questions that I don’t want to deal with right now. I mean, what happens to Mark and me?”

“Are you guys having problems?”

“No! Not at all. But it’s a whole weird thing, to think you’ll be with someone for that long. I love him, and I’m willing to do it. It’s just . . . daunting. And the kids . . . Jesus. You become a parent, and your whole life becomes about worrying. You just worry constantly whether they’ll be okay. And the idea that I’ll be worried forever about them and what they do . . . I almost have a panic attack when I think about it. I’m worried, and I’m worried about having to worry so goddamn much.”

I told her about all the bankers getting divorced.

“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Don’t tell me that.”

“Sorry.”

“See, that completely freaks me out. One day we’ll get it, and Mark’s friends will all say, ‘Hey, what are you still doing with that old bag?’ ”

“But you won’t be old.”

“But I’m old already. I have two kids. That makes you old. So then I have
that
to worry about. Do I have the ability to keep my husband happy for centuries upon centuries? Do I need to get lipo so that I can look like some perky goddamn cheerleader? I have no earthly idea, and I don’t like the idea of having to confront all those issues somewhere down the road. Right now my whole life is plagued with decisions that have to be made: what to get for dinner, which school the kids should go to, which kid’s birthday party we should go to this weekend. It’s just decision after decision after decision, from trivial crap to really important things. By the end of the day, I’m mush. I don’t even eat dinner because I don’t want to choose what to have. I have cereal and call it a day. And now there’s this. Big,
huge
decision alert. Every question I ask myself about it begets a dozen more. It’s giving me a migraine right now, and I haven’t even done anything.”

“It has to be better than the alternative, though.”

“Does it? I don’t know.”

“Well, you say you’re already old. How does growing old feel so far?”

She sighed. “It
sucks
.”

“Well, now I feel somewhat better about my decision.”

We changed the subject. Polly handed me a plate of cold roast beef and corn off the cob. We talked, and I ate, and for the first time, Katy’s death moved to the back of my consciousness, if only for a moment. This is bereavement: the slow, eventual reassertion of your own meaningless preoccupations. As I ate, the look in Polly’s eyes made it clear she was still thinking about the cure. She had tried for so long to stern the tide, to avoid being overwhelmed by it. But there I was: the tsunami at her doorstep.

I have a friend in DC who e-mailed me this in response to reports about the expanded security perimeters to accommodate protesters in Midtown:

DATE MODIFIED:
7/18/2019, 11:07 A.M.

I was walking down Third Avenue today when I spotted a woman across the street with a remarkable body and blonde hair that broke just past her shoulder blades. I turned electric. I saw a gap in traffic and sprinted across the avenue. A cab rounding from Forty-third blithely took the corner and nearly plowed into me. I kept my focus on the blonde as the driver honked three hundred times in the space of four seconds. She didn’t turn her head and kept bouncing down Third, with me trailing behind her and trying to figure out a plan before quickening my pace to identify her. I kept thirty yards behind, dodging dog walkers, tourists, and meandering hordes of the unemployed. I took out my phone and queued up the number for the police, without hitting Send, so I would have it at the ready. I took her picture so I could post it to my feed if need be. If this blonde was
the
blonde, I’d call the police and alert them to her presence, then follow her until they arrived to detain her.

I made the decision to pass. I sprint-walked closer and closer, until we were side by side, then I feigned interest in the window of a Hot & Crusty on the other side of her, and caught a quick glimpse of her face. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t even close.

This sort of wild-goose chase has now taken up firm residence in my daily routine. Spy blonde. Suspect blonde. Chase blonde. Realize I’ve misidentified blonde. Think of my friend bursting into flames sixteen days ago while I remained outside, like a dumb dog that no one bothered to train. Doomed to follow every pointless distraction that crosses my path.

 

From the
Washington Post
website: