She reaches across me and casually tosses, like a worn-out sock, the swollen condom into the wicker wastepaper basket beside her bed and says sourly, “It wasn’t that funny.”
For some reason she thinks I am laughing at her. I roll her off my chest and cradle her in my arm.
“It was a good joke.”
She snuggles against my chest, “I like you,” she says, “You understand me, you know?”
So I will not have to answer, I kiss her hair, which is damp from her exertions. In three minutes she is sound asleep, snoring gently against my shoulder. For all her nude pictures, aggressive lovemaking, and vanity, the always kind and pleasant Kim Keogh who appears on TV is the dominant personality. Alcohol and a sympathetic ear have uncovered a wilder side, but before she got halfway through the bottle of Chablis, Kim moved me with her own unpublicized work as a volunteer tutor for the last two years to black girls who live in Needle Park. A nice woman, I think, sleepily, nicer than she’ll sound if I ever tell someone about the pictures….
Remembering Kim’s joke and my extreme reaction to it, for some reason I think of Amy and wonder if she had an abortion. I should call but realize I’m not anxious to be confronted by either of the choices available to her. What would I do if Kim becomes pregnant and wants to have a baby? I yawn so loudly Kim stirs beside me. Somehow, I don’t think either Sarah or Rainey would be pleased….
I awake feeling pain in my rectum and notice a growing need to defecate. I turn my head and check the luminous red dial on her clock. It is just after three. I have been asleep only an hour. Kim has turned over toward the wall, and I slide carefully out of the bed, trying to remember the location of her bathroom. After opening a closet door, I find it and sit on the commode hoping a good shit will take away the pain. Though I strain like a man who has been constipated for weeks, nothing doing. It feels like someone is going into my bowels with a corkscrew, and I break into a sweat as I stand up and look into Kim’s bathroom mirror.
“Gideon,” Kim calls through the door.
“Are you okay?”
I come into the room almost dancing with pain. She turns on the light, and I would feel embarrassed were I not hurting so much.
“Something’s wrong,” I admit and explain my symptoms as if she were a physician making a house call.
Perhaps sobered somewhat by what she is being forced to witness, she pulls the sheet over her breasts.
“Has this happened before?”
I would be less alarmed if the corkscrew feeling were in my stomach. Food poisoning would be bad enough, but I might live. There is no mistaking the location however. I begin to put on my clothes as fast as I can. If I am going to die, I don’t want to do it like this. I can see Sarah’s face as they tell her, “Your dad’s ass started hurting, and then drunk and naked as a jaybird he fell over dead on top of a pile of nude pictures of some TV reporter he had known only a few hours.” I catch my big toe on a belt loop and fall sideways on the bed. She scoots backward as if I were now trying to rape her.
“No,” I say, looking sideways at Kim as I slide up my pants.
“Please tell me if you do,” I beg.
“Do you have AIDS or some disease?”
Kim bursts into tears.
“No!” she shouts at me.
“How do you know you don’t?”
I try to think of the women I have slept with in the last year. There have been only three since I met Rainey, and, of course, they swore (as I did) that they were practically virgins.
I wore a rubber, but as one worried woman told me, even the best roof will eventually leak.
“I just know, damn it!”
The last five minutes, which seems like an eternity, have sobered her as no coffee could. Clinging to the sheet, she whimpers, “I’m sorry you’re hurting. I’m just terrified I’ll get AIDS from you!”
Thanks for the vote of confidence, I think. I have to get out of here. I cram my socks into my pockets and slide on my loafers. The pain, bearable, however, is constant now, coming in steady waves.
“I’ll call you,” I say politely.
She nods, apparently too afraid to move. In the Blazer, I pop the clutch as badly as Sarah used to do before she figured out it wasn’t a device to strengthen your knee. Where to go?
I noticed there was no blood. At least I’m not hemorrhaging to death, but I am even more frightened by the pain than when it first began. Desperate, I turn onto Fairfax, Rainey’s street. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to be like some animal that crawls off into the woods.
I ring her bell and pound on the door like a wild man. In just a few moments I hear her yell through the door, “Who is it?”
I scream back, “Gideon. I’m sick!”
She throws the door open, and standing there in a thin cotton robe, cries, “What’s wrong?”
I tell her and beg, “Will you take me to the St. Thomas emergency room? I’m having horrible cramps.”
Looking dazed and scared, she says, “Of course, wait just a second,” and disappears into her bedroom while I sit on her couch.
In less than a minute she appears, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Her hair is still a mess, and without makeup she appears like a ghost, but at the moment she has never looked better. In her car, she asks, “Where were you when it started hurting?”
There is not hint of snideness in her voice. She is wondering why I didn’t call first. I want to say that I just happened to be in the neighborhood but don’t feel up to it. I swallow hard and admit, “I was watching the local news.”
Rainey taps the steering wheel sharply with the palm of her right hand. She doesn’t require much explaining.
“How interesting she says, her voice taking on a characteristic drollness.
I look out the window into the darkness. There are a dozen snotty things she could say but won’t. Still, I feel like some lowlife snake running back to his wife after playing around and getting into trouble. Why do I feel this way? We’ve agreed to be just friends. For God’s sake, we’ve never seen each other naked, yet guilt begins to bubble up like boiling oil alongside the pain in my rectum. What is a friend for if you can’t tell her something without feeling guilty about it?
Maybe it is true men and women can’t be friends.
She whips into the St. Thomas emergency room parking area, and brakes to a halt at the security guard station. A black guy who looks a hundred sticks his head through the window on Rainey’s side and asks, “Is he going to need a wheelchair?”
Through the light shining through the windshield, I can see the barest hint of a smile on Rainey’s face. She says, “I think he can walk.”
Embarrassed now, I hiss, “Of course I can.”
Fortunately, it is a slow night at St. Thomas. Only a couple of people are waiting, and they look so miserable I can’t tell whether they are family or patients. I look at Rainey, who yawns and says, “I confess that there is a part of me that hopes you’re really sick.”
An hour later (the pain began to recede thirty minutes ago, but I am too embarrassed to admit it has gone away entirely) I am told I am simply middle-aged.
“Prostatitis,” says the intern who had stuck his finger halfway to China.
“How old are you?” “Forty-four,” I say, wishing his pants were a little cleaner.
Dr. Wacker, according to his nameplate (for all I know he may be an orderly pressed into service because the regular doc is off sniffing glue with one of the nurses), looks about Sarah’s age but not as responsible.
“Does this mean I’m going to lose my prostate gland?” I ask. Hell, maybe it would be a relief if I couldn’t get it up anymore. All it’s done since Rosa died is cause me trouble.
“Shouldn’t,” the baby doc says casually.
“You’ve got a little infection, but an antibiotic should take care of it.”