Marcia Talley: In Death's Shadow

According to Valerie, they'd had 120 days-none of them the least bit shitty-in Paradise.

Connie and Dennis were gazing meaningfully at one another. Based on our recommendation, they had honeymooned in the BVI. From the signals that were passing, like electricity, between them, I was betting their memories were X-rated.

I blushed and turned away, noticing that Chloe was using her fingers to arrange individual grains of rice into a design on her plate, making sure the noodles didn't touch the rice.

"Damn!" Dennis patted his waistband, pulled out his beeper and checked the screen. "Sorry, all. Gotta make a call."

Connie pouted. "Perfect timing, as usual."

Dennis kissed the top of his wife's head as he eased between her chair and the wall. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I'll be back before dessert."

I spooned rice into Jake's mouth while he reached for the dish holding the spicy squid. Jake would eat anything. Emily tried to persuade Chloe to try a shrimp, but my granddaughter was having none of it.

I turned to Brian. "Valerie tells me you've won some sort of lawsuit."

Brian glanced up from his noodles. "Not exactly." He gave Valerie a narrow-eyed look that would have turned Leona Helmsley to stone.

Valerie ignored him. "We cashed in my insurance."

"Your life insurance?"

Valerie nodded.

"I didn't know you could do that," I said.

Brian reached out and covered Valerie's hand, where it rested on the table, with his own. I knew the type. Now that she'd let the proverbial cat out of the bag, he would go all masculine and take charge on her. "It's a plan that became popular during the AIDS epidemic," he explained. "Here's a theoretical for you. Let's say I'm gay, terminally ill, with no dependents. And I've got this monster life insurance policy. Who's going to get it when I die?"

Connie balanced her chopsticks on the rim of her bowl. "Your family?" she suggested.

"That's one scenario," Brian continued. "But suppose your nearest and dearest believe that homosexuality is an abomination before the Lord? Suppose they've disowned you? What if you don't want them to get one red cent?"

"Change your beneficiary," Paul said.

Brian pointed a finger. "Exactly! That's exactly it! Change your beneficiary."

When we looked puzzled, Brian pushed his plate aside and leaned forward. "So let's say you're gay, you're terminally ill, your family's a bunch of homophobic shits, and your medical bills are sky high. You've also got a $500,000 life insurance policy. Why shouldn't you get to use that money now, when you need it most?"

"It's called a viatical," Valerie interrupted.

"Viati-what?" said Emily. She unwrapped a straw and plunked it into Chloe's milk.

"Viatical. It comes from 'viaticum.' That's Latin. It means preparations for a journey," Valerie said.

Brian nodded. "So this is how it works. You get a doctor to certify that you're going to die, you take that information to a financial services company that specializes in viatical settlements, and they buy your policy from you. Cash on the counter."

"I get it," said Paul. "You sign your policy over to them, they pay you for it, and when you actually die, they get their money back."

"Right. And you get to spend the money any way you want," Brian added. "Medical bills. Clothes. Cars. Trips. Whatever."

"Wait a minute!" Paul held up a hand. "How does the company make any money on the deal?"

"Well, they don't pay you the full value of the policy, of course. It's on a sliding scale, based on their estimate of how long you have to live." He patted his wife's hand. "As you know, Valerie's prognosis was grim. The doctors gave her six months. A year, max. So the payout was about eighty percent."

Valerie shifted in her chair, as if uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. "Yes," she chirped with artificial cheerfulness. "But I didn't die, did I, darling?" She smiled. "So we paid off my medical bills, and with the money we had left over-” She paused, glancing at Brian as if seeking his permission to go on.

"We bought the house and splurged on the trip," Brian finished for her.

"It's ironic, really," Valerie added, grinning broadly. " 'Viatical' means preparation for a trip. Well, it was for a trip." She giggled. "It's just that I didn't end up at the morgue."

In the days immediately following my first marathon, I ran another marathon… of sorts. I vacuumed the house; paid the bills; tossed out my jogging shoes and bought a new pair, on-line, from LadyFootLocker.com; sanded and repainted the patio table in a color grandly named "manor green"; and helped Paul get ready for another famous race, this one from Annapolis, Maryland, to Newport, Rhode Island. On a sailboat. Following a gala reception on Friday evening, Paul would step aboard Northern Lights with the rest of her crew, making sure every sail, halyard, sheet, line, and cleat on the old Pearson 37 was shipshape and ready for a perfect getaway when the starter's pistol sounded in Annapolis Harbor on Saturday at noon.

Wednesday morning I was down in the basement up to my eyebrows in laundry, doing my part, when Paul materialized behind me. "Do I have any clean underwear?"

I'd been rooting for a stray sock in the dryer and bumped my head on the way out. "Ouch!"

"Sorry, love."

I stood up, rubbing my head. "That's okay. I'll live."

"I'm packing and couldn't find any underwear."

"That's because it's all down here." I handed him a laundry basket. "Sort away."

Paul's idea of sorting was to paw through the basket and select items he recognized, leaving the rest-my permanent press slacks and knit tops, for example-in a tangled heap. I watched him lay waste to three basketsful before asking, "Do you need a duffel bag?"

"No. Just a pillowcase."

I rummaged through a basket on the dryer and came up with three. "Which do you want? Laura Ashley, Ralph Lauren, or Bart Simpson?"

He added a neatly folded T-shirt to his pile, rested a paternal hand on top, looked down at me and smiled. "Ralph, I think."

"Ah-ha," I said, handing it to him. "Designer luggage."

I watched with amusement as Paul slid three piles of clothing into the pillowcase, gathered up the open end and swung the pillowcase over his shoulder like a buccaneer, making off with his plunder. Sailor's luggage. A matter of pride with my husband. Anything that wouldn't fit into a pillowcase stayed home.

To tell the truth, I was missing him already. The house seemed so vast and empty when Paul was away, so I'd made plans to keep busy. There was my project at St. John's, of course. And shopping for drapery fabric with Emily. I might even take in a movie or three.

I'd gotten in touch with Valerie, too, confirming my promise to join her on Thursday for a run through the park, followed by lunch at Domino's. It'd be missionary work for Valerie, of course. She'd have to gear down, for one thing, running with me, like driving 40 in a 65 mph zone. As soon as they were posted, I'd checked the race results online. Valerie's time had been truly amazing: 212th in the twenty to twenty-nine age group. I was an embarrassing 1,394th in mine.

After Paul and his pillowcase set out for the Academy, I headed over to the St. John's College library, where I was wrapping up a long-term project organizing and cataloging the extensive collection of the famous mystery writer, L.K. Bromley. The author, a sprightly eighty-something whose real name was Nadine Smith Gray, had retired several years ago to Ginger Cove, an upscale retirement community just outside Annapolis. Since I began working on her collection, we'd become friends.

Presently I was tasked with tracking down Mrs. Bromley's short stories-most of which had appeared in Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post during the fifties and sixties-with the aim of reissuing them in a single volume. Working through Mrs. Bromley's literary agent, a taciturn New Yorker with a smoker's cough whose clients had mostly predeceased him, we'd identified several publishers, and he was now pressuring me for a proposal.