The first night at the beach house, after he experienced what he called his eerie vision, he sat by the double-leaf window. The saline wind penetrated his nostrils, expanding his lungs like the words from the “Cancer Patient Manual.”
15. The first night at the beach house, after he experienced what he called his eerie vision, he sat by the double-leaf window. The saline wind penetrated his nostrils, expanding his lungs like the words from the “Cancer Patient Manual.” They drilled softly, passive-aggressive: metastatic cancer isn't curable, but treatment can slow tumor growth and ease symptoms. Hope is a thing with feathers. Or fetters. The chances offered sounded like a novice weather report: it's possible to live for several years with some types of cancer, even after metastasis; but also it’s possible you might die. He felt certain he was going to die.
He didn’t mention his respiratory arrest experience to anyone. It was too intimate, and he had been hurt too many times. He had learned to keep both joys and pains to himself. Even though Joanie could read him like the Bible that was always open in her living room, a habit she took from her mother. Zero had many imperfections, but the one he couldn’t hide was his lack of trust. He dealt with pain by locking himself away from everybody. He admired Thoreau, who daared to shut out the world and live in the woods of Walden Pond. Zero wanted to do something similar.
He would leave the world in the blink of an eye if he had to. He had already decided that he had no function in space or place, that his translucent presence lacked reasons to shape him into a thing; not a thing, a human; not a human, an accomplished human. That day, Joanie called crying to tell him she had lost her job at a Medical Equipment Company. They said a salesperson needed to establish a presence in situ to meet sales goals. Who sells hospice services and equipment via Zoom? We’ll call you back when things normalize, they said. It never happened, but Joanie ended up at a much better company as a marketing director in the same line of business.
Had that phone call been delayed one or two minutes, Zero wouldn’t be fighting cancer, but he wouldn’t be looking outside the window into the Rincon night, either.
16. He felt too anxious to sleep. Besides, he opposed the idea of trying to find time to sleep. But, what if you don’t? He wondered. What if you caught the old man illness, the burden of ages plotting against the need to sleep because the body is a boat, and its final journey will likely come with the serenity of sleep, where sleep is the closest state to death. No, Zero wouldn’t drag himself into something he didn’t want to do. For that, he had his youth, the long walks from his house to school. And he had Amanda Mass, who was openly in love with him and told everyone at school, so Zero became her boyfriend out of peer pressure and fragile masculinity. How could he not like one of the school darlings?
One day, at school, she confronted him under the bleachers of the basketball court during lunch break. The sound of sneakers squeaking and basketballs bouncing elevated to the ceiling, creating a sonorous dome that would keep their conversation in secrecy.
I think you don’t like me because you’re gay, she challenged him.
I’m not gay.
Prove it.
So Zero kissed her, slid his hand under her pants and panties, and grabbed her sex fervently but softly. She gasped, and he felt her wetness drool down his fingers. She bit his lip and ran away.
Zero thought he was free of Amanda for a while, only to find out the whole school now knew they were a couple. Though the premature sex never bothered him, he never felt anything for Amanda. His friends envied him, but Zero wondered if he could love someone back.
17. He poured himself a good glass of Macallan. Who brought this here? He wondered. This is expensive shit. Even though his lungs were partially obstructed, and breathing was harder that conscious for him, he decided to light the roach or a joint he found abandoned in the ashtray. He still thought about his near-death experience, as he became assertive-sharp about what he had experienced. It seemed quite more elaborated to be just a dream. At least, his dreams, since usually, his dreams focused on characters, animals or people, not scenery. This experience, this dream, had real people in it. He just felt they were real. He didn’t need to request ID proof or touch them, he sensed them alive. He remembered their names. A name is a reassurance of existence because it’s always given by somebody else, which means you’re an Other.
When God named Adam and Eve that’s what He did, Zero thought. Bring them into existence. You name somebody, a pet or a kid, you’re yielding life into them, so they are part of you as you of theirs. Such was the case with Samantha, a name agreed on unanimously by Julianna and Zero when their daughter was born. But then the girl herself decided on Sam. Ambiguous. Nonbinary. Sam as in Samantha, or Sam, as in Samuel. Or Samira. Or Samo. And so on. The thing is that Sam was always special. Well into the first days of her formal education, she came home from school excited because she had seen the film that tells the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. She could not stop talking about how God created Adam and Eve and wondered if they were already married, since the rest of the story is already well known. When she did away with the story, she dropped one of her usual Molotov questions.
Dad, why did God leave the tree of wisdom in the middle of the garden unattended, if He didn't want them to eat from it?
Surprised by the question, Zero limited himself to the standard answer, and he provided a Chat-GPTish answer with all that yada yada yada that such question is meant to incite. God planned the tree to be there, because it was about obedience. He said, “Don’t touch it,” and they were supposed to obey.
For the record: a Molotov question answered diplomatically will only generate an illumination bomb-like reaction.
Bah. I don't get it, she answered; if I were Eve, I would have eaten from the tree, too.
What a memory for a dying man, thought Zero.
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