“Did she hike there often?” I ask. The question spills out before I can correct it. I’m already using the past tense for Olivia. That gut feeling.
“Yes… she loves to hike. You know that.”
“I haven’t seen her in two years, Eddie. I’m not sure what she likes anymore.”
Eddie just nods. I can tell he’s reminding himself what a shitty friend he has been. I wonder if Eddie knows that Olivia and I had been Facebook friends. I chide myself for thinking in the past tense again.
I nod to Numi. My friend picks up his notebook and pen. I ask Eddie a few brief questions. Numi begins writing. Eddie answers my questions as Numi takes notes for me. When I’ve gotten the most I can out of Eddie, I lapse into silence. I’m completely spent. More than spent. I’m nearly catatonic.
“Meeting’s over,” says Numi.
“What?” says Eddie, startled. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” says Numi. “The man needs to rest.”
Eddie looks at me and I nod, or try to nod. He gets it. As he stands he says, “Help me find her, Jimmy. I don’t know who else to turn to.”
“I will,” I say, and mean it.
Eddie considers shaking my hand, decides against it. He settles for a half nod and says, “I’m sorry this happened to you, Jimmy.”
“So am I.”
He’s about to say something else, scratches it, then turns and walks away.
Numi watches him go, then looks at me, then at my reddening arm. He makes a small, disapproving sound. He moves over and adjusts the umbrella above us so that the shade now falls across my forearm.
CHAPTER FOUR
I’m stretched out on my couch in my apartment in Los Feliz, which is a trendy, hilly district above Hollywood. I never pronounce Los Feliz correctly. Three years in this place and I still sometimes screw it up. There’s the gringo way and the Spanish way, except I can never remember which is which.
Then again, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Numi has come and gone, having already helped me over to my couch. Without his help, I might still be back at The Coffee Bean, slowly burning alive and hopped up on lattes.
Most of my life I’ve been uncomfortable touching other men. Hell, I’ve even been uncomfortable getting too close to women, too, which is the reason I’m alone to this day, but that’s a whole other issue.
Mostly, I am uncomfortable receiving help from anyone. My disease has changed all that, of course. Now I am forced to receive help. To rely on another person. To rely on a man. A gay man, no less.
But I’ve drawn the line at help in the bathroom. I tell Numi that if I fall over on the toilet then I guess I’m just meant to die on the toilet. Numi just shakes his head. That he would help me in the bathroom blows my mind. What friend would do that? Numi would. Still, it’s just too much for me to handle. I’m already uncomfortable enough as it is.
Twice, I have fallen in the bathroom. Once, I knocked myself out, hitting my head on the doorjamb. Hours later, I awakened in a pool of my own blood. I never told Numi about it, and luckily, my hair hid the goose egg.
I just might die in the bathroom after all.
Anyway, Numi places the remote control on the coffee table next to me, along with my cell phone, my Kindle, and a bottled water. He tells me he will check on me in a few hours, stands briefly at the door, watches me silently, and then leaves.
I have mixed emotions about Numi. He is a good friend—of that there is no doubt. That he overly fusses over me, there is no doubt of that, either. His homosexuality never bothers me, but it is in my thoughts. I sometimes wonder if there is more to why he helps me so much. I wonder if he likes me in a different way, perhaps more than just friends. Whether or not he does shouldn’t matter. But it does matter, and it makes me keep him at arm’s length. It is also, I suspect, the reason I snap at him sometimes.
Whether or not I hurt him with my snapping, I don’t know. But I suspect I do. I try to not do it. I try to be a better person, and then I remember I am dying and I don’t care if I am a better person. After all, what does it matter if I grow as a person if I’m going to die soon?
Still, I don’t want to hurt Numi, but I hate that I need his help.
I think these thoughts as I rest my eyes, suddenly aware that Numi has also tucked a blanket around me. I don’t remember him tucking a blanket around me. Sometimes my mind leaves me. I can’t explain it entirely. Sometimes I’m here, but then sometimes I’m not. My thoughts are often scattered and hard to nail down. I feel like death will occur when my thoughts are so scattered that my mind never returns. It is a scary thought, but a real one.
I try not to think about it too much.
A part of me wants to sit up and read, or turn on the TV, or do anything other than just lie here, but moving doesn’t even seem to be an option. If Numi were here, I would ask him to turn on the TV. He’s not here, though. I want him here, but I don’t want him here.
My sickness forces me to grow closer to Numi. I don’t want to grow closer to him. I like our comfortable distance. There is no comfortable distance anymore, not when he’s putting on my seat belt for me.
When my eyes close, the chaotic images come. The chaotic images worry me. Mostly they don’t make sense. Sometimes I will see snatches of something that does make sense, only to watch it quickly morph into something incomprehensible. I am certain I am losing my mind.
As I watch something that starts out as an octopus, only to morph into balls of light and then streaks of colors, I try to sleep. I try not to think that death might really just be losing one’s mind forever. So scattered that it never comes back.
I know I am close to death because whenever I lay back and close my eyes, I never, ever want to sit up again. Or open my eyes again. And as I lie there, I can feel the cancer in my lungs, eating away at me.
With thoughts of death, losing my mind, and disease, it’s no wonder I can’t sleep. And as I lie there and flit in and out of consciousness, waiting for death, waiting for Numi, wanting to be alone, but not wanting to die alone, my cell phone rings from somewhere. It sounds far away, and the ringing somehow merges with the chaotic images in my thoughts. I know that the ringing is coming from my cell phone, but I don’t care. I don’t even care that my mind seems broken and scattered and gone. I especially don’t care about my dying body. But I do care how good it feels to rest.
So nice, I think. So nice…
Sometimes the swirling images, the indescribable prisms of lights, morph into people. But often just one. Usually this person seems to be standing nearby, often in the corner of this very room, watching me. I’ve even gone as far as to open my eyes to catch whoever is in the room with me, but no one is there. I’ve made it all up. My dying mind has made it all up.