He thanked God for giving him a cock that still worked. He smiled. He still loved Maria after all this time, and hoped he would see her again. And again. Whatever time I have left. He flipped to the back of the Post, and riffled the pages till he found the American League standings. What? He flipped back to check the date again. No, it was September 10, 1978. The Yankees and the Sox were tied? Tied? The Sox had choked away that huge lead? What about the winning streak they’ve been on? Ted had assured him it was in the bag. He showed him the papers. He watched on TV. Was this a joke paper? Were all those other papers the jokes?
He tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. He had lost hold of reality, of truth. He did not know what was real and what was bullshit. Was Ted a malicious prick of a vengeful son? A Goneril? A Regan? Had Marty been with Maria last night? Please, God, don’t take that away from me. Was he alive? He fell to the cement. Was this it? Was he alive and dying or was he dead already? His heart felt full to bursting, but with love or death? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t figure anything out; he was just a man, and suddenly, he was so tired, so so tired. He would sleep. Sleep here on the sidewalk? Like a bum? That’s okay. That’s okay. People will understand. I needed to rest. He needed to rest, they’ll say. I’ll figure it all out when I wake up.
About twenty minutes later, Benny arrived at his kiosk to find Marty on the ground, unconscious and unresponsive.
56.
A banging on the front door woke Ted up. He looked to the side and saw Mariana. Mariana Blades. Motherfucker, that happened. Who the hell is making that racket? And now the phone is ringing, too? Armageddon. Like to wake the dead. They’re gonna wake Dad up. Ted got up gingerly, threw on a robe, and went to the door. It was the gray panthers. They told him that Marty had been found at the kiosk. Benny found him collapsed there when he got to work, and they had called 911, and the ambulance took him back to Beth Israel in Manhattan.
57.
By the time Ted made it to the hospital, Marty was tucked into a bed in critical. He wasn’t dead, but he was damn close. The doctors said he was in a coma and might not come out of it, and that Ted should begin to take care of “end matters.” End matters? Thanks, doc, you really should’ve been a poet. Mariana showed up a bit later. She’d had to go back home for her work clothes. She was on today. She checked with the doctors. Ted was glad they gave her more than they would give him. She came back from the consultation. They headed down to the cafeteria to talk.
They got coffee and Jell-O, but they didn’t touch either. “It’s my fault, I think,” Ted said.
“How do you figure that?”
“Benny found him lying on the ground with a newspaper in his hand.”
“Yes?”
“Well, you know what I’ve been doing. I’ve been covering up the fact that the Sox have been losing. You know. Maybe the shock of seeing it all at once was too much. You know, maybe if I’d just let him, I don’t know, acclimate to the situation, naturally and slowly, it wouldn’t have hit him so hard.”
“That’s impossible to know, Ted.”
“I killed him.”
“This isn’t about you, Ted.”
“What?”
“This isn’t about you. It’s about your father.”
“I know that. Fuck, Mariana, I know that.”
“Okay.”
They sat like that for a few minutes. Mariana stood up. “I gotta go,” she said.
“You gotta work? Now?”
“Yeah, I have other patients.”
“You seem to have no patience with me. What’s wrong?”
Mariana took a deep breath and sighed. Ted was confused at the changing of her mood, a bank of dark clouds rolling in from nowhere.
“Goodbye, Ted.”
“What do you mean ‘goodbye’?”
“Don’t raise your voice. Don’t make a scene here. I work here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your dad is nearly beyond us now, he’s beyond me now. I can’t do anything for him. I have to move on to where I’m needed.”
“You’re leaving?”
“It’s not personal.”
“Are you kidding me? Last night felt somewhat personal to me.”
“It was. And it was nice. It was beautiful. But it was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“It was unprofessional.”
“Who cares?”
“I do.”
“I don’t.”
Mariana became aware that some people were beginning to stare. She moved out into the hallway. Ted followed.
“Why are you running away from me?”
“I’m not running away from you.”
“Talk to me.”
“Ted, there’s nothing to say. This happens. Now, I go. You can report me if you like.”
“I’m not going to report you.”
“Thank you.”
Mariana turned to leave. After a few steps, Ted stopped her.
“Wait. Mariana. This is what you do?”
Mariana just stared at him.
“You help people die and, oh yeah, sometimes you fuck their relatives?”
Mariana said nothing.
“That time when I saw you in the cafeteria with that young, handsome guy, when I bought you Jell-O. I got a feeling-you were fucking him, too?”
“Does it matter, Ted?”
“Yeah, it fucking matters.”
“Would that make it easier for you to move on?”
“Fuck if I know. I just got here, I’m not trying to move on.”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Yes, you fucked him? You fuck all of them?”
Mariana did not say yes and she did not say no.
“You fuck all of them? Jesus, what is wrong with you?”
“What is ‘wrong’ with me? What’s wrong with you? There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Really?”
“Okay, there’s everything wrong with me. Can we be done?”
“No, we can’t be done.”
“It’s just sex, Ted, no big deal.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“I loved it.”
“Thank God.”
“I always love it.”
“Fuck.”
“What?”
“So cold.”
“Am I? You don’t really know the first thing about me.”
“I’m beginning to see that. I’d like to, though. If you let me.”
She sounded now like a mother admonishing a child who wanted too much candy. “Ted. No.”
“What happened to you? I mean, in the past. Talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“There’s everything to talk about.”
“What? Are you gonna make my team win for me? You gonna be my hero? You gonna make all my pain go away? You got that power? You gonna make that promise?”
“I can’t promise.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I’d like to try.”
Mariana stared into his eyes. Was she looking to see if he could deliver or was she just staring into her own darkness? Ted didn’t know. She spoke before turning to leave for good. “I’m sorry, Ted, this is what I do. Make no mistake. I don’t help people live, I help them die.”
She walked down the hall, and her beauty moving like that away from Ted made him cry to see it go.
58.
Marty was unconscious. There was nothing Ted could do. Maria came in to visit. She sat holding Marty’s hand, speaking to him quietly in Spanish. Ted went home, back to his place, where his mechanical fish did not need to be fed. All he brought with him from Marty’s house was the notebook, “The Doublemint Man.” He said hi to Goldfarb. Goldfarb played it cool as usual.
He reread his dad’s novel/journal/whatever again and again. Puzzled over where it stopped. Right in mid-sentence, “They were…” like it was calling to him over the years to complete the sentence. Ted grabbed a pen, sat by the window, and waited for the words to come. He lit up a joint with his Grateful Dead lighter and waited for the high words. Here they came, here they began. Ted put pen to old paper and began to make shapes, and those shapes became letters, and those letters became words.