Дуглас Кеннеди - Five Days

‘Have you always worn glasses?’ I asked.

‘They’re pretty damn awful, aren’t they?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘I’m saying that. I let Muriel choose them for me around eight years ago. I knew from the outset they were a mistake. She told me they looked businesslike, serious. Which are synonyms for dull.’

‘Why did you buy them then?’

‘Good question.’

‘Maybe a little too direct,’ I said, noting his discomfort. ‘Didn’t mean to be so blunt. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be. I’ve often asked myself the same thing. I suppose I was raised in a family where the women always chose the clothes for the men, and where I wasn’t interested in style or things like that.’

‘But the truth is, you do have a sense of style. ’

He tugged at his zip-up jacket.

‘This is hardly “style”. I don’t even play golf.’

‘But you certainly understand visual style, citing Cy Twombly and John Singer Sargent. And when it comes to the world of books, of language. ’

‘I often tell myself I dress like an insurance man.’

‘Then stop. Change.’

‘Change. One of the most loaded words in the language.’

‘And one of the easiest, if one can only accept the tenets of change. “I don’t like the eyeglasses I’m wearing, so I’ll change them.”’

‘But that might cause some eyebrows to be raised.’

‘And are those disapproving eyebrows that important to you?’

‘They have been. Change. A tricky business.’

‘Especially when it comes to eyeglasses.’

‘I promised myself a leather jacket last year.’

‘What happened?’

‘Tried one on in one of those outlets down in Freeport. Muriel said I looked like a middle-aged man having an identity crisis.’

‘Is she often so warm and praising?’

‘You really are direct.’

‘Not normally.’

‘Then why now?’

‘I just feel like being direct.’

‘Do you buy your husband his clothes?’

‘Do I dress him? The answer is, no. I’ve tried to encourage him to think about clothes, but he’s just not interested.’

‘So he dresses like. ’

‘A man who doesn’t care how he dresses. You will be amused to hear, however, that I did buy him a leather jacket last year for his birthday. One of those reproduction aviator jackets. He approved.’

‘Well, you clearly have taste. And you clearly know how to dress. As soon as you walked in, I thought, you really belong in Paris. Not that I know much about Paris, except for what I’ve read and seen.’

‘Maybe you should find a way to get there.’

‘Have you ever been?’

‘Quebec City is the closest I’ve ever come to France.’

‘Yeah, I did one trip to New Brunswick to see a client who had some business in Maine. That was thirteen years ago, before you had to have a passport to travel to Canada. Strange, isn’t it, not having a passport?’

‘Get one then.’

‘Do you have one?’

‘Oh, yes. And it sits in a desk drawer at home, ignored, unused, unloved.’

‘Use it then.’

‘I’d like to. But. ’

‘I know — life.’

The waiter showed up, asking us if we’d like coffee. I glanced at my watch. It was a bit after two-thirty.

‘Am I keeping you?’ I asked.

‘Not at all. And you?’

‘No plans whatsoever.’

‘Coffee then?’

‘Fine.’

The waiter disappeared.

‘I wish ninety minutes would always evaporate so quickly,’ I said.

‘So do I. But in your work, boredom can’t be a big problem. Every day a new set of patients. A new set of potential personal dramas, hopes, fears, all that big stuff.’

‘You make the radiography unit of a small Maine hospital sound like a Russian novel.’

‘Isn’t it? Like you said about my “small” story, the universal problems are always universal, no matter how minor the setting. And you must run into distressing stories all the time.’

‘What I see are dark masses and irregular-shaped growths and ominous shadows. It’s the radiographer who decides what they all mean.’

‘But you must know immediately if. ’

‘If it’s the beginning of the end? Yes, I’m afraid that’s one of the clinical fringe benefits of my trade — the ability, after almost two decades of looking at the bad stuff, to visually ascertain far too quickly whether it’s Stage One, Two, Three or Four. As such I’m usually privy to this news before the radiologist. Thankfully there are very strict rules about technologists never informing a patient whether the prognosis is bad or not — though, if pressed and the news is good, I’ve developed a code which most patients understand and which gives them a sense that there is no cause for concern. And our radiologist, Dr Harrild, will only talk to a patient if he has discerned that the all-clear can be sounded.’

‘So if a radiologist doesn’t come to talk with you after a scan or an X-ray. ’

‘It all depends on the hospital. In a big hospital, like the place down the street, Mass General, I’m certain that there’s an enforced protocol about never speaking to the patient. But we’re not a world-renowned hospital. As you know we’re completely local. So we bend the rules a bit when it comes to Dr Harrild meeting with the patient if the news isn’t sinister.’

‘Which means if he doesn’t meet with you. ’

‘That’s right. It’s probably pretty damn dire.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘Hopefully you’ll never get a diagnosis like that,’ I said.

‘The truth is, we’re all going to eventually get a diagnosis like that. Because my work is, in part, all about risk assessment. So I too am looking — in a wholly different way — at the frailty of others. Trying to ascertain whether they are the type whose heart will explode before they’re fifty-five due to lifestyle and the usual self-destructive habits. Or perhaps a family predisposition to cancer. Or the fact that, to my trained eye, they just look so beaten down and defeated by life that they are simply not a good bet.’

‘So you too have a trained eye.’

‘Well, if someone walks into my office carrying three hundred pounds in weight and looking like they have had trouble getting up the stairs to meet me. no, I am not going to agree to a one-million-dollar life policy.’

‘Then again, they might live well into their eighties, despite all that weight. Generic roulette, right? And there’s one empirical fact that none of us can dodge — the price of admission for being given life is having it eventually taken away from you. Anyone who says they don’t think about it all the time—’

‘I think about it all the time.’

‘So do I. That, for me, is an ongoing preoccupation since stumbling into middle age — the realization that time is such an increasingly precious commodity. And if we don’t use it properly. ’

‘Does anyone really use it properly?’ he asked.

‘Surely there are people out there who think themselves fortunate and fulfilled in their lives.’

‘But the truth is, no matter how successful or happy you may consider yourself to be there is always a part of your life that is problematic, or deficient, or a let-down in some way.’

‘That’s all a bit actuarial, don’t you think?’

‘Or just completely realistic. Unless you think otherwise?’

Before I could pause and appear to think this through I heard myself say:

‘No, I’m afraid you’re absolutely right. There is always something not working in your life. Then again, the great hope is. ’

I stopped myself from finishing that sentence, and was relieved when the waiter arrived with our coffees. I added milk to mine and stirred it many times, hoping Richard would not ask me to complete the thought. But, of course, he said: