Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(42)

In all my recollecting, what I had not much considered was my mother’s actual request. Unflappable and übercapable, Paul had been the one to take care of everything and everyone, including me, so I had failed my mother in this regard. But it would not be a final failure, I assured myself as I curled up against Shiloh. I would spare Paul the sight of skin spread like rice paper over bones and blood, a body battered beyond recognition by the same chemicals intended to salvage what a lab test had already confirmed was unsalvageable.

By avoiding a grueling repeat of our mother’s death, I would take care of Paul in the most meaningful and lasting way I was able.

Or so I told myself as I drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.





TWENTY-TWO


“I need to go into the office this afternoon,” Shiloh said the next morning. We’d had coffee and croissants at his apartment, and had just returned from a quick walk on the beach, during which neither of us brought up our life-and-death chat. “You okay to take the ferry?”

“Of course,” I said, though in truth, I wished he’d mentioned it earlier. Still, if I could dine alone, certainly I could take the S.S. Regurgitator back to Vieques by myself. Besides, I was acutely anxious about becoming too attached to a man I would be leaving behind in a few weeks. Milagros could squawk about love until she was blue. The main thing was that I didn’t want to fall in love. Except I was getting confused, with thinking about the future and enjoying sex as more than a stand-alone act. It was the cancer; I was sure of it. Not only had it warped my brain, it had created an instabond between me and Shiloh that would not, and could not, last.

So when Shiloh dropped me off at the boat that would take me from Puerto Rico proper back to Vieques, I kissed him with abandon, then ran for the dock before I could ask when I would see him again. One day soon I would no longer be a part of his life, nor he mine. It was best if we both began adjusting immediately.



As the ferry approached the shore, I felt the sense of relief one feels when coming home. At the beach house I took a nap, and when I woke it was dark out. It was a waste of a day, but I was wiped out and a bit feverish, and needed to rest. I made myself a bowl of cereal, read for a while, and returned to bed.

Shiloh didn’t call the following morning, and in spite of my feelings about healthy separation, it was impossible not to wonder if this had something to do with my refusal to give into his attempts to save me from myself.

No matter—it was impossible to dwell on anything other than the rusty knife slowly sawing through my gut. I’d soaked through my shirt, and when I put my hand to my forehead, I realized I was burning up. I took three Advil and cursed myself for not having rum on hand to chase them down.

Until that point, I hadn’t really felt like I was dying, per se, but now death was all too real. As I bent at the waist and resisted the urge to dry heave, I imagined my life force seeping out of me, like heat from the windows of an old home. And to think that I was still months out from the worst of it! My mother had refused morphine until the month before her death. She kept smiling as tumors bombed their way through her ovaries, into her intestines and bladder. And how? How did she have the energy to parent two children and be a wife and see her friends, while I was struggling to get off the sofa?

If she could keep going, then I would have to as well. Gritting my teeth, I tugged on my bathing suit, slipped on a cover-up and a sun hat, and took off down the beach. I wasn’t really in the mood to sunbathe, but Milagros told me that half a mile from our stretch of sand, there was a new hotel that made killer cocktails, which sounded apropos, even at eleven in the morning.

The hotel was a mirage of sparkling limestone at the edge of the sand. “Will you be dining with us?” a waiter asked as I approached the bar.

“Just drinks,” I said. I pointed to the canvas lounge chairs lined up on the beach. “Can I sit in one of those and still be served?”

“Are you a guest of the hotel?”

“No, but I’m dying of cancer.”

The waiter regarded me as though he didn’t believe a word I was saying, but I was gripping my side in a manner that suggested I was in the middle of birthing a live cactus, and he decided it was better for me to be far from the dozen or so patrons brunching on the patio. “I’ll be right over with a menu,” he said, indicating that I was to choose a chair.

The pi?a colada I ordered seemed to dull the pain, so I ordered another before finishing the first. It was fast approaching noon, and some of the people around me had begun sipping fruity cocktails, so I didn’t feel too bad when the waiter asked if he could bring a bill and I said yes—as soon as he was done fetching me a third drink. “Medical marijuana doesn’t work for me,” I explained when he lifted an eyebrow at my request. “This is the next-best thing.”

In fact, I had not yet tried nor considered weed, and it struck me, through my hooch haze, that it might not be the worst idea. Perhaps Paul would be able to help on that front, too.

Seagulls were circling overhead, and it was hard to tell if they were after the cocktail peanuts the waiter had served, or my flesh tartare. The persistent boom of the surf mostly drowned out the gulls’ high-pitched clamoring, but between the two, I nearly missed my phone ringing.

It was Tom. I answered, which I will attribute to the pi?a coladas.

“Libby?” As per usual, he sounded upset. “Why are you in Puerto Rico?”