Josh Bazell - Beat the Reaper - A Novel

“I will. But we only have one phone.”

“Call me from anywhere. Whenever. Do you still have my number?”

She recited it from memory, which I knew would have to satisfy me.

But another entire week went by without her calling. Insanity. I forwarded my phone to work, then drove like a maniac to get there so I wouldn’t miss her. I took the cordless everywhere in the house. People who weren’t her I just hung up on.

She called on a Sunday night, late. I was doing handstand push-ups against the wall and screaming. Out the window it was raining. I rolled forward and came to my feet with the phone in my hand.

“Hello?”

“It’s Magdalena.”

I fell still. I was completely slick with sweat. My pulse felt ready to blow apart my fingertips, and I couldn’t remember whether it had been that way a minute ago or not.

“Thanks for calling,” I croaked.

“I can’t talk. I’m at a party. I’m in the bedroom. Everyone’s purse is here. They’ll think I’m stealing something.”

“I need to see you.”

“I know. I need to see you too. Can you come meet me?”

“Yes I can,” I said.

The party was at a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. She was waiting for me under the awning of the apartment building across the street, to stay out of the rain. She had her viola with her in a nylon case. As soon as I saw her I swerved the car into the fire-hydrant half-space in front of the building. She ran over and put her viola in the back seat and got in the front. I already had my seat belt off.

We kissed for a long time. It was difficult because I needed so badly to look at her, but I was also so hungry for her mouth.

Eventually she put her head on my chest. “I want you but I can’t have sex with you,” she said.

“That’s okay.”

“I’m a virgin. I’ve kissed a couple of boys, but that’s all.”

“I love you,” I said. “I don’t care.”

She grabbed my face and looked into it to see if I was serious, then started kissing me again, a thousand times harder. I heard a zipper, and she took my hand and put it on her crotch, then pulled the cotton of her underwear aside.

Her pussy was blazing, and sopping. When she squeezed her thighs together it forced my fingers up into it.

Skinflick approved, by the way. Magdalena was completely honest and never questioned herself, and while Skinflick was no longer exactly like that, he still respected it in other people, and recognized how rare it was. Once when he and I were alone together he said “She’s perfect for you. Like Denise was for me.”

The three of us smoked pot together sometimes. Magdalena would announce that she wasn’t feeling it at all, then go lazy-lidded, then start kissing my neck and whisper, “Take me to the bedroom.” Skinflick, on the other side of me, would say, “Make Pietro do it. I’m watching cable.”

But that was later, when Skinflick was living with me again.

What happened was this:

One night in October I came home to find him sitting in my living room with a gun in his hand. A chunky .38 revolver. I’d been out running, something I’d started to do with Magdalena, but right then she was either playing with the quartet or at night school, where she was studying accounting.

When I came through the door Skinflick didn’t point the gun at me. But he didn’t put it down, either.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Did you kill him?” he said.

He looked fucking awful. He was pale, and a weird mixture of skinny and flabby.

“Who?” I said. Thinking: Oh shit. David Locano is dead.

“Kurt.”

“Kurt Limme? ”

“You don’t know anyone else named Kurt.”

“How the fuck would you know? I haven’t talked to you in weeks.”

“Did you?”

“No. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even know he was dead. What happened?”

“Someone shot him in the face in the doorway of his apartment,” Skinflick said. Limme’s apartment was in Tribeca. “Like he buzzed the person in.”

“What do the police say?”

“They say it wasn’t a robbery.”

“Maybe it was your Uncle Roger,” I said. Shirl’s husband.

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Yeah, I guess. Sorry.” For a second I wondered if I had killed Kurt Limme, and somehow forgotten about it. “What does your dad say?”

“He says you didn’t talk to him about it, so if you did it you did it alone.”

“Nice,” I said. I pulled a chair over from the table. “I’m going to sit down now. Don’t shoot me.”

Skinflick tossed the revolver onto the coffee table heavily as I sat. “Fuck you. I wasn’t going to shoot you,” he said. “I’m just worried they’ll come after me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. That’s the point.”

“Huh,” I said. “I’m sorry about Kurt.”

“It’s not gonna stop me.”

“Not gonna stop you from what?”

He turned away. “From getting made,” he said.

“I didn’t realize that was on the agenda,” I said.

“Yes you did.”

“You’re right: maybe I did. But it’s a shitty idea, and maybe you shouldn’t think about it right now.”

“I don’t need to think about it. I’m doing it.”

“You’re gonna murder someone to impress a bunch of scumbags?”

“It’s what Kurt would have wanted.”

“Kurt’s dead.”

“Exactly. And I’m gonna say ‘fuck you’ to whoever killed him.”

I said, “You think whoever killed Limme cares whether you get made?”

“I have no fucking idea!” Skinflick said. “I don’t even know who did it!” He sulked for a moment. “Anyway, who are you to question me? You got revenge for your grandparents.”

“That doesn’t mean it was right.”

“But it was, wasn’t it?”

“Well, it sure as hell doesn’t mean it’s right for you.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Between me and you?”

“That’s right.”

“Jesus,” I said. I sincerely did not want to get into that. “For one thing, I had someone to kill. I wasn’t just killing to do it.”

Skinflick’s face flashed a hint of relief.

“Well, fuck, dude,” he said. “I’m not gonna kill somebody innocent. I’m not an asshole. I’m gonna find some scumbag. Like the ones my dad finds for you. Some sick fuck who’s begging for it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll run the whole thing by you first if you want.”

“Okay,” I finally said.

That’s all I said: Okay.

Now, you tell me.

Was that some kind of promise?

First I go up to Medicine to get my antibiotics and antivirals, which my med students have thoughtfully placed in a urine sample cup.

“Sir, you may want to check—”

“No time,” I say. I use a random patient ID number to open up a fluids cabinet and take out a bottle of water with 5 percent dextrose. [33] Most bottled water in hospitals has 5 percent dextrose. This is to prevent the phrase “Liter of plain fucking water: $35” from appearing on your bill. I bite the cap off and slug down the pills.

And if my students are wrong, and I overdose?

It probably won’t shorten my life by all that much anyway.

My watch keeps scaring the shit out of me on my way up to the visiting surgeons’ office.

Outside the office door, Dr. Friendly’s resident is leaning sullenly against the wall. He gives me a look, then stands and walks away.

The interval between my knocking on the door and Friendly finally saying “What?” makes me want to bang my forehead on the wood. I don’t answer, just go in.

The visiting surgeons’ office is meant to look like someone’s real office. There’s an oak desk you can sit behind to deliver bad news, and the wallpaper has a repeating pattern of diplomas on it that from a distance looks better than you would think.