Alan Foster - Exceptions to Reality

“Don’t worry. I’ll see you in the morning. Nothing to concern yourself about. I’m only going to die.” And he did.

She was sure she would not be able to sleep. But he looked so peaceful lying there, not moving, not breathing. Astonishing herself, she drifted off around two thirty. The emotional tension must have exhausted her, she decided later. How else to explain enjoying a good if brief night’s sleep alongside a dead man?

When she awoke, startling herself awake with remembrance, he was making breakfast for her again. Not bacon and eggs this time. Unlike her own provincial cupboard, his larder gave birth to eggs Savoyard and chive hash browns with sour cream. She was sure she had gained at least five pounds since she had started going out with him, and that despite having to eat early every night. As for Joel, he never put on an ounce. Nothing like being dead, he had joked darkly, to keep off the extra weight.

“Sure it hurts.” He was checking on the poached eggs. “Whoever said dying doesn’t hurt never tried it themselves.” He shrugged, working beater and pan, concocting sauces. “Sometimes I feel like the guys who handle poisonous snakes for a living. After a couple dozen, or a hundred, bites you acquire some immunity to the toxins. The bite itself still hurts, but you don’t die. Lucky bastards.” The two sauces were almost ready.

She nodded, and decided to wait until after they had finished eating to tell him that she was in love with him. He did not take it well.

“You can’t be in love with me, Marjorie.”

It was Saturday and they lay out on his porch, soaking up both the sun and the spectacular view of the bay from his apartment. Across the water eclectic house-boats gleamed Tom Sawyer white in the treed crotch of Sausalito. Alcatraz was a rough gray diamond set in a diadem of gray-green, and cargo container ships piled high with the amputated abdomens of eighteen-wheelers plied the watery boulevard between Oakland and Manila, Richmond and Seoul, San Francisco and Hong Kong.

“Tell that to my heart.” Reaching over from her lounger, she put her hand on his bare arm.

“Your hormones, you mean.”

The hand twitched but stayed. “That was cruel, Joel.”

He turned over to face her, and the desperation in his eyes was underlined by the raw emotion in his voice. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Marjorie! I didn’t mean that. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.” His fingers stroked her cheek, her neck, the sweat-beaded hollow between her breasts. They were trembling. “I—I can’t love you back. You know that. I can’t fall in love with anybody. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair .”

She smiled hopefully at him, not sure how to proceed or what road to take or where to go: only knowing that go there she must. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? I love you, Joel.”

He rolled back onto the other lounger. “Don’t you think I’ve thought about having a woman say that to me? Much less someone as beautiful and sweet as you. I’m almost forty and I’ve done everything possible to avoid it.”

She kept her tone as gentle and reassuring as possible. “Then you shouldn’t have died on my couch.”

Lips pressed tightly together, he was shaking his head. “It just wouldn’t be fair. What kind of a life would we have, me dying every night, you not knowing if the next morning would be the one when I didn’t wake up? How would we explain it to our kids? What if my condition has something to do with some freak genetic mutation? What if it can be passed on?” A hand came down hard and angry on the white plastic of the lounge. “Whatever the damn thing is, when I die for the last time, when I don’t wake up, I want to be sure it dies with me.”

Unfolding herself from her lounge, she lay down next to him, hearing the metal and plastic complain, feeling the sun-sweat of their bodies mingle and flow together. Her arm fell lazily across his chest to lie there reassuringly. “Joel Farrell, you’re a better man dead than most of the men I know who are alive. If I’m willing to take a chance on a life together, why can’t you?”

She didn’t know if he sustained the kiss that followed out of pure passion or a need to give himself time to think of an appropriate response. Frankly she didn’t care.

“I’ll think about it, Marjorie. That’s all I can promise.”

“Then that’s enough—for now.” Turning in his strong, tanned arms, she gazed out and down at the glorious bay. Though she had lived in San Francisco all her life, it had always been just “the bay.” Now it was much more, so very much more, thanks to him. Just as everything was so much more. She sighed and closed her eyes, thinking and feeling and hearing as she never had before in her life.

When she found the note in her mailbox the next week, her screams brought Carol running from down the hall. When pounding on her friend’s door failed to elicit a response from within, the other woman swiftly used her copy of the key.

Bursting in, she saw Marjorie sitting on the old couch, clutching a crumpled piece of paper in one hand and holding the other over her mouth. It did not come close to stifling her uncontrollable sobs.

“Marjorie—Christ, what’s the matter?”

“He’s gone! Joel’s gone!”

Sitting down alongside her friend, Carol put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “The guy you’ve been telling me about for months? What do you mean, ‘he’s gone’? Did something happen? Was he called away on work? Did he—is he—dead?”

‘Marjorie’s sob froze in mid-rack as she gaped abruptly at her friend. When she began to laugh, that’s when Carol grew really worried.

“Right, that’s it,” she said in clipped tones. “Come on, I’m taking you to a doctor.”

“No, no!” Forcing herself to mute the wailing mixture of laughter and sobs, Marjorie used both hands to gently but firmly draw her friend back down onto the couch. “You don’t understand. What you said—” She broke off, choking slightly, afraid the laughter would become uncontrollable and might degenerate into hysteria. She held out the crumpled, handwritten note. Carol took it and glanced down.

“He has beautiful handwriting, this guy.”

“I know.” Marjorie did not try to wipe her face, preferring to let the tears dry on her cheeks, a thin crust of salt. “Everything about him is beautiful.”

Carol read. “He says he loves you more than any woman, more than any person he’s ever known. That you mean more to him than anything in this or any other world. That he wants nothing more than to hold you in his arms and whisper his love to you forever. And that’s why he’s leaving San Francisco, and you.” She put the note down. Carol was not hard, but she was a woman who brooked no nonsense. “This is a crock, Marj. A typical Dear Jenny letter if I ever heard one. I think you’re well rid of the guy.”

“No, you don’t understand!” Reaching out, Marjorie took the note in shaky fingers. “Nobody understands.”

“All right.” Sitting back on the couch, the other woman crossed her arms and waited patiently. “Explain it to me.”

Her friend looked down at her lap. “I—I can’t. You wouldn’t believe me. And Joel wouldn’t want me to.”

Carol was not shy of gestures. “The son-of-a-bitch walks out on you without so much as a good-bye kiss, and you’re worried about what he wants?” She shook her head, disgust plain on her face. “What’s with this guy? I thought you said he was perfect.”

“No.” Finding a tissue, Marjorie reluctantly began to dab at her eyes. “I never said he was perfect. He’d be the last person on Earth to think that about himself.”

“I would hope so. Ah, shit.” Reaching out with both arms, she pulled Marjorie to her and let her cry herself out. Later, much later, they were finally able to talk.