Revisiting some old characters. A few narrative strands starting to come together. To catch up, check out the old post on David in Salida and of course, Beth’s first appearance from a few days ago.
I went on a date with a girl named Lilly who worked as a Japanese document reviewer for a law firm. Basically, no one at the law firm read Japanese, and she had been in a remote fishing village in Japan with the JET program. So she scanned thousands of emails and indexes, inter-office memos and faxes for references to Matsusaka Communications that might be potentially incriminating. Someone had told me how lucrative that kind of work could be, staring at the inane conversations of employees at large foreign corporations. I thought about my own emails: the banality of their forced attempts at formality. Their closings: “best” and “cheers” and “Until then.” Reading the catalogue of someone else’s e-chatter seemed like it had soul-ruining potential.
We talked a lot about Japan. She was really into Japan. And her cat, Henrietta.
“This is good,” I thought to myself. “This is what people do. Healthy people. They go to restaurants and talk about themselves and then they know each other better. And hey, I’d love to go to Japan. And, though cats induce a level of mucus production in my sinuses that should be studied by NIH, they are pretty damned cute. I am passing an enjoyable evening.”
I dropped her off at her place in Adams Morgan. I had a feeling this was where I invited myself up, but the artifice of doing so (and, really, the fear of Henrietta) kept me from pressing the issue. I drove home through Rock Creek Park, taking the turns slowly and made a mental note to bring a Claritan the next time we went out—just in case.
Rock Creek Parkway eventually dumps out along the Potomac, a nice drive past the lit monuments on summer evenings, and I felt clear-headed and full of purpose. I turned off of Rock Creek and got onto the Beltway, driving through the tunnel under the Mall. On the other side, I got off the H Street exit and was home five minutes later. I parked and jogged up the iron steps to our door.
I pushed into the cool blast of the air conditioner and saw Greg sitting on the couch, holding a beer, looking down at the floor.
“Hey,” I said. He didn’t say anything.
“You alright?” I asked. He didn’t seem to notice my presence yet. I felt nauseous.
“Is it David?” I asked. He looked up and nodded. He had been sick for a year. Things had been getting better. There was talk of remission, of successful treatment, of getting back to work. People said things like fresh start, that he was putting on weight, that he had started going to the gym once in awhile.
“He’s in a coma,” Ben said. “Laura called while you were out. David’s parents emailed her. She’s flying in from Colorado tomorrow.”
Establishing the chain of communication seemed somehow important in these situations. Who emailed whom? How was contact established between the parties that needed to know. When was it taking place? While I was forking salad into his mouth listening to Lilly talk about Matsusaka? This chain of communication that implied my eventual finding-out. A chain that continually split. Who would I have to call? Henry, of course. Although maybe Laura called Henry. Probably Seth would want to know. He might come down to visit if it were bad enough. Ben would call Pete if he hadn’t already.
“We saw this coming more clearly, this time,” I said. “We made the right preparations. It’s just the last few weeks, we thought there was a reverse.” The sounds that I was making already felt familiar. I was inhabiting a new vocabulary already. One of shock and disbelief. It’s strange how easily the impulse toward surprise came back. Like changing a shirt. Inhabiting a different vernacular.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to make a few calls.
**
Beth suggested that we go to a Thai restaurant for dinner. I had totally forgotten that we had made plans, but thought I should catch up with her. She drove after work. We rode with the windows up and the air conditioning on full. The sun had been murderous for the past few weeks and it held onto its remaining strength even now. It drained, as much as anything else.
“It doesn’t seem the right time of year to be dealing with this stuff,” I said. “Shouldn’t it be dark and cold?”
She didn’t say anything, and I was glad—felt ashamed at the sentiment that weather should somehow have something to do with it. It? Specificity was failing me. I was constantly dehydrated, sucking down water in the office. Distracted into surfing the web endlessly at my desk, looking up symptoms of various fatal illnesses on WebMD. Googling things like “Odds of coming out of a coma AND malignant lymphoma” and “if I smoke two cigarettes per week will I get cancer?”
David hadn’t improved in a week, and as predicted the group had descended on Washington. We visited the hospital and talked. We did the things that people in this situation were supposed to, as far as we knew, do.
Lilly called once. I thought of her reviewing documents and, vainly, thought of her thinking about me while she was reading something about Matsusakoshi. The name of the company that she was trying to investigate suddenly seemed more difficult to recall. I should have invited myself up. I should send a text and explain. I should call and try to talk to her about it.
Or something like that.
Beth and I ate. I had Pad Thai. She ate some other noodle dish.
I wanted so badly to tell her something interesting. I wanted to tell her something at all. It felt like we hadn’t talked in ages, that I couldn’t think of a single episode that had occurred between us in weeks. That, in the fog of losing David slowly, I lost her too.
But all of this seems trite when eating noodles in silence.
