I’ll take care of it.
You’re turning down free rent? If I were your wife, I’d say that’s a terrible fiscal decision.
It’s such an odd and hurtful thing to say that I shrink back, as if he’d pinched me on the arm.
No, no, no, he says. What I meant was, you need a friend, Kelly. A second opinion.
What I need, I say, is my own time and space.
Because you’re ambivalent about signing on? Still? I thought we went over this. I thought you gave me a pledge.
Martin, I say, stretching out my legs, who wouldn’t be ambivalent? Who, in their right mind, would be one hundred percent in? Can you think of someone? Maybe you should hire them instead. I mean, have you considered the long-term implications of this, the things they’re going to say about you? This is going to make Malik Williams look like Mister Rogers. What you’re talking about — one way of looking at it — is that this is the most fucked-up reverse-eugenics experiment since Tuskegee. You’re going to be accused of some kind of bioethical genocide. Trying to destroy race as a category.
I’m not on a mission to destroy racism, he says, and I’m not on a mission to destroy races. What I think is that people should have options. I believe in free choice. That’s the American way, right? I mean, not now. Now it’s purely a matter of speculation. The technology has to develop, the procedures have to develop, the processes have to get streamlined and affordable. I’m like a hand-lathed Daimler-Benz back in the 1890s, twenty years before Ford invented the assembly line. Maybe I’ll never even see it in my lifetime. But you want to know the essence, the kernel, of this thing we’re doing? It’s just that. Choice. Options. All that outrage, all that kicking and fussing, it’s always just a period before the whole thing gets absorbed and normalized. All that energy has to be expended.
Okay. Okay. Anyway, beyond all that. Beyond the theoretical questions. You’ve been incredibly generous to me. And you’re promising more—
I am. You want specifics, now, finally? Let me break it down. Fifteen percent of the whole package. Interview deals, photo deals, the book, the movie. Whatever else. Corporate sponsorships. Other relationships. We’ll get it on paper when there’s some product from your end. For now it’s a handshake deal. But this is what I mean: serious money. Money for you to have a fresh start.
Can I be completely honest? It’s freaking me out a little. The numbers. You know I’m not a money person. But the check, the offers, the language you use: it’s disturbing to me. It doesn’t feel right.
Because?
Well, if I knew that, I’d have said it already, wouldn’t I?
You think I’ve got some hidden agenda other than my hidden agenda? Some meta — hidden agenda? I think you’ve been dipping into too much postmodern theory. Foucault will screw you up. I learned that after one semester in college. You’re always looking for the man behind the man behind the curtain.
Well — and here I give him my best teacher’s laugh, my seen-it-all Harvard laugh — one of my professors said, you can hate Foucault, but you can’t argue with him. In other words, just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Listen. Maybe we should turn this conversation around. I mean, look, you’ve heard just about every bad thing there is to know about me. What about you? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, Kelly? Isn’t that fair game?
Nothing I’m too ashamed to admit.
Seriously? No secrets, in a whole thirty-odd years of life? Never cheated on Wendy? Or anyone? No secret girlfriends, no escorts, porn habits, nothing?
You make me feel like a Puritan.
And what about what happened with Alan?
My face turns hot, then cold; my pulse skitters in my wrists. What do you mean? I say. What happened with Alan when?
Oh, come on. You mean you didn’t see my car? Really, Kelly? You didn’t see it?
See it when?
See it pulling up behind you when you left? When he OD’d, when you were in the house to see it? I mean, evidently. When I went in it couldn’t have been more than five minutes later, and he was gone. I mean stone-cold dead. I kept meaning to ask you about it. I thought you’d come forward. Even at the funeral, I was expecting you’d say something.
I thought Cheryl found the body.
I was there, trying to call her, when Cheryl came home. It’s all in the police report. You missed us both by less than fifteen minutes.
He looks at me blandly, splaying his fingers across his knee. Something about his posture reminds me of a Roman fresco: a philosopher lounging about, toga thrown across his legs, pointing a languid finger at the heavens. Stress him, I’m beginning to see, and he becomes more relaxed. More at one with his own certainties. While I have hot crabs of panic crawling over my face.
You’ve waited all this time to tell me that I’m a liar? Or, what, a murderer?
You tell me.
Seriously?
Seriously. That’s not a rhetorical question. Tell me, Kelly. Whatever it is. I’ll take it. I’ll take your version. I’m not into justice on principle. But I’m still waiting for an explanation.
The backyard has emptied now; a young woman from the catering staff circles the pool, stacking abandoned glasses in a bus bin. On the far side of the house, soft screeches and pounding feet: the roundup of the children has begun. Every animal, every being, is ignoring me. This is what I tell myself. No one, no one but these two people, has any interest in what I’m about to say.
It’s very simple. I went to see him; he looked bad. Tired. Said he needed his insulin shot. I got him the needle and went downstairs to make him some soup. When I got back upstairs he was asleep. He’d cooked up and hid the evidence; I realized that later. So I left. End of story.
And you never told anyone — because?
I raise my hands over my head in a parody of a sleepy stretch, trying to slow my breathing, to give myself a window of coherent thought.
Why the fuck do you think? Because of this. Because of how you reacted just now. I didn’t want to complicate things any further for anyone. He died by his own hand. By choice. Whether I was there or not didn’t matter. He would have just gotten up off the couch and found the syringe himself. Maybe not that day. But the next day, or the next. Believe me. He was ready to die. He wanted to die. In his mind it was as good as done. Was it selfish? Of course. I take full responsibility for that. Was it criminal? Was it immoral? I don’t think Alan would have wanted me to fuck up my life because of an absolute, incontestable accident. With the wrong DA I could have been accused of involuntary manslaughter. Do you know that? I could have spent five years in jail.
You talked to a lawyer?
Years later. In graduate school. After an acute attack of conscience. And you know what he said? He said, you’ve suffered enough. Go live your life. And so I did.
An enormous lump rises and beats in my esophagus, a vibrating tumor. I feel like a bullfrog.
And so I have to ask you. Are you going to let me live my life, Martin?
He gets up and throws his arms around me, around my arms, confining me in a reckless hug.
I want to do more than that, he says. I want to give you a life. You’ve had too much wretchedness for one already. Let it go, man! We both ought to let it go. Don’t you think? We can help each other do this thing.