The Ghostwriter(27)
I finish off the glass and blink, my eyes wet.
Our first time. His sheets smelled like hamburgers and sweat. We turned on the fan and the hum almost drowned out his roommate’s tv. I was nervous and we were both drunk, our night spent at a bar, celebrating my print deal, my head spinning from too many appletinis. He didn’t have a condom and we discussed it, our slurred conversation filled with immature logic and groping, the act begun and finished before any conclusion was reached. He pulled me onto his chest and told me he loved me. I closed my eyes and calculated my ovulation window, given the date of my last period.
Mark pushes a napkin across the table at me, and I pick it up, looking down at the pattern, pink apples stamped into the thin paper, their cheery repetitions occasionally interrupted by a green leaf. Kate must have bought these.
“Let me get you to bed.”
He’s standing now, his hands helping me up, the kitchen dim, the afternoon light gone. What time is it? I look at the oven but the numbers on it blur, either from tears or intoxication.
“I can make it.” I step away from him, then think better of it. “Never mind.” I reach out and he takes my arm. He’s thicker where Simon was thin, his arm hair coarse where Simon’s was fine, and he’s taller, by at least four inches. “My room’s at the top of the stairs.” I’ll have to lay down in our old bedroom, that stiff four-poster bed where Bethany was created, the one I haven’t slept in since That Day. I’ll move, once he leaves. I’ll only have to lay there for a few minutes, for the sake of appearances.
I say goodbye to him at the entrance to my room, and walk into the space I rarely enter. I drag back the covers, and half-crawl, half-fall, into bed. The sheets still smell like Simon’s cologne. I can still feel his lips on my collarbone when I pull them up to my chin. It isn’t just this bed. The memories of him, as much as I fight them, exist. In the shower, I sometimes think of his kiss. In the car, I remember how he would reach over, his hand cupping mine, his thumb caressing the back of my hand, and tighten imperceptibly at quiet moments—a hug of sorts. I remember how much we laughed. Our inside jokes. How he would beam at me when I said something witty. When I hit my first bestseller list, we opened cheap wine and sat on the floor of that apartment and made a ramen noodle bonfire. That night, in bed, a laptop open, his arm around me, we’d looked at houses. “The sky is the limit,” he’d said, and we’d gone crazy, flipping through homes we never thought we’d be able to afford, envisioning lives beyond belief. We’d known. We’d known that this was our new life, and that there would be more bestsellers. We’d thought that everything, from that point forward, would be perfect.
I close my eyes and, despite every intention not to—feel the pull toward sleep. I hate Simon with my entire soul, and I love him with every other inch of my body, and neither really matters because he is dead, and I killed him.
My new worst friend somehow tags along to my doctor’s appointment.
“Helena Ross? Are you the Helena Ross?” The nurse looks up from my bracelet, her pierced brow pinching upward as if concerned by the concept. She can’t possibly read my books. She has a rainbow magnet stuck over a photo of her and a “friend”, one with more body hair than me, and we all know that’s saying something. If this girl reads my straight-laced romances, complete with the obligatory male/female pairing, then she needs to expand her library immediately.
“No, I’m not. But I get asked that a lot.” I try to pull back my hand, but she holds it firmly, two fingers pressed against the underside of my wrist.
“Wait, sweetheart. I need to get your pulse.”
My pulse is probably perfect, calmed by the lie. I’ve always been a liar. Maybe that’s why writing came so naturally. A thousand lies, disguised in a character’s voice, bits of my life sprinkled through the pages, the perfect camouflage for whatever it is I feel the urge to say.
“I got a great parking spot.” Mark comes from somewhere, a grin on his face like he has accomplished something other than irritating me. I’m still not sure why he’s here. We wrote all of Saturday and most of Sunday, finishing off the weekend with some well-needed alone time. Then, this morning, he was there—on my porch—all but insisting that he bring me to this appointment, even though a taxi was on call and available.
“Yippee.” I watch as the woman drops my wrist and reaches for the blood pressure cuff.
“This place is nice. The chemo area has little cubbies. Much nicer than where Ellen was.”
Ellen. His voice softens when he says it. I feel a pang of jealousy and poke out. “Please don’t make this entire thing a tribute.”
His nostrils flare a bit and I watch with interest. He has more minute reactions than Simon ever did. Like flared nostrils. I always thought that was a book thing, one of those literary reactions that never actually happens in real life, like swooning heroines or angrily shook fists. I expect an apology but he says nothing and I like him a little more for it.
“Looking good!” The woman says brightly, and I don’t know how that could be possible, but I can’t bitch at a woman wearing purple kitten scrubs. “Let’s get you in to see the doc.”
The doc is different than the one who handed over my death sentence. He’s an oncologist, and will handle my crumbling body for the remainder of my life. I stare at the Harvard diploma on his wall as he explains, without introduction or cushioning, the next few months, and how my body may react to it. He is an enthusiastic prescription writer, and fills out five different scripts, passing me the stack that will allow me enough drugs to weather a gunshot wound. I tell him that I’ve done just fine on my current meds, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s pure doom, wrapped in pale skin and too much ear hair, his voice clinical and dull, the kind that has me ready to nod off within minutes. He doesn’t meet my eyes, he doesn’t smile, and if there was an empathy class at Harvard, he flunked it.