T-minus 16 days; Thursday
1
I turned off my life switch six months ago when I arrived home from Janet’s service. She was forty-eight, dead, cremated, and residing in a royal-purple urn. I resolved to keep her ashes with me so neither of us would feel alone. I disappeared from friends and family, grew a wild head of hair, and gained thirty pounds. No one could make me reactivate that switch. No one. But I could be coerced into taking group counseling.
Abernathy, Oregon, population 1,950, was my hometown—a peaceful village where I’d married and raised a family. I knew all the natives, or I thought I did until I attended therapy. The only person I recognized there was Janet, my wife’s ghost.
Don’t think about being sick. Don’t ask why you’d want to live through this, I coached myself.
“Ryan Hogue! Stop whimpering!” Janet, my grief counselor from beyond. “Lighten up—you’re depressing these people.”
Lighten up? Sure. Why not? Easy to say. Look around. I was two stories under a hospital in a concrete box—a ten-by-twenty tomb—trapped with a jock reduced by booze, a prowling widow, a lady commando, and a fashion-plate substitute counselor. Plus my late wife, married for life and possibly longer.
My credentials? Ryan Hogue: fifty, a family man without a family.
The group’s conversation came to a dead stop.
Dead stop? Ha-Ha-HAH.
I started breathing and stared at widow Laura’s tits.
Christ, I’m worthless.
“Not yet, lecher lips. She wants you to look.” Advice from beyond.
“Can ya cook?” the other widower, Bebe—pronounced BEE-bee, he emphasized—asked the women. Bebe was six-five, a retired pro linebacker gone to seed and smelling of whiskey. I admired his style.
“None of your fuckin’ business,” Shirley, 140 muscled pounds attired in sleeveless camo, verbally painted her answer on the wall. Shirley smelled of machine oil—or gun oil.
“I’ll cook your dinner and deliver a dessert to remember.” Laura, a babe with bilaterally symmetrical bosoms, was ready for action. Laura emanated fresh flowers blended with a pheromone fabricated to incite latent lust.
Too bad I’d buried mine.
“Ryan, you haven’t spoken.” Pamela, our forty-something counselor, was a gorgeously innocent volunteer substituting for the regular therapist who was out sick or getting laid or in rehab. Wearing civilian white with a string of pearls, she was nice eye candy but miscast in our room of silently screaming misery.
You can’t sleep with a hard-on. You can’t talk sense either. Can you die with one? Latent lust be damned. I stalled. “I’m not ready.”
Pamela pointed the fickle finger at Laura. “How about you, Laura?”
Laura, a forty-something widow, was offering Bebe a freebee shot down her dress while helping with his nametag. Nice tits.
Nice tits? Good god, where was my head? I was a married man.
Laura winked at Bebe. “My man died. In bed. I’m proud to say he ate well. And equally proud he died in action. I want a new one.”
Died in action? She’d answered my question.
Bebe fought back. “I’ve outlived two wives, and”—he looked at Laura—“I’m not ready for the big time.” Broken blood vessels bloated Bebe’s face. Patchy stubble obscured it.
Shirley jabbed Laura’s butt. “This is for grief counseling, bitch, not for shanghaiing a new playmate.”
Laura slapped a blank name tag over Shirley’s stenciled name: Packer, Shirley. “I was only helping the poor man.”
Poor man? Are we derelicts with cardboard signs?
Shirley had failed boot camp diplomacy. “Yeah, I sensed your grief and smelled your perfume up the hall. What happened to your man again?”
“He died.”
Ms. Packer marched around the table—a formidable woman with wraparound sunglasses, an NRA belt buckle, and a large canvas purse. Her boots made clicking sounds on the hard floor. She snagged the chair opposite me and dropped her purse on the table with a thunk. “Did you smother him with your tits?”
Laura sat by her. “Did you shoot yours?”
“He ran away.”
“He showed uncommon sense.”
Shirley ground out, “And Mom died.”
Have the women bonded yet? Weren’t we were supposed to share personal experiences? Did women do it differently than men? Ask Janet.
“Shirley, are you ready to share?” Pamela had worked her way around the group.
Shirley bit her fist and mumbled, “My mom died.”
Pamela offered textbook solace. “I’m so sorry.”
Shirley grew two inches, and her voice crippled my hope of peaceful dialogue. She cleaned and pocketed her glasses. Her eyes, unsoftened by makeup, scanned us as if doing recon for an invasion. “Cancer killed my mom, and my no-good, son-of-a-bitch, asshole man ran off with my slut sister.”
Bingo. Shirley exuded the madness of extreme anguish coupled with a predator’s fierceness. Even commando girls would get hot after such a double whammy. I’d hoped her mother and man had died hitting the beach in the Middle East.
Janet admonished me as if I couldn’t see the obvious. “You’re in danger. Lady Commando has a problem.”
Shirley’s presentation screamed, “Armed and dangerous,” even if I couldn’t see a weapon. Her right hand pulled a nonexistent trigger twice—pointed once each for me and Bebe. One pissed-off woman who might have a gun outranked two men who might not. Her actions forced me to check the tactical situation. We were isolated with no expectation of visitors. The walls had probably been painted once every ten years since they’d been poured in the nineteenth century. One exit. No one would hear us scream. I didn’t care.
“Ryan Hogue, straighten up,” Janet snapped from her urn inside my backpack. “Stop babbling.”
“Sweetheart, I didn’t expect trouble.” I hadn’t. This was Thursday night in Abernathy, and I wanted to lean on a counselor’s shoulder and snarf donuts. That’s all. I couldn’t cry. My tear ducts had dried.
Shirley mesmerized me. She scared me. Her camo shirt emphasized her musculature, and I wondered if she’d ripped the sleeves off with her teeth. Exit time had arrived. Keep calm, breathe deep, and slip out of the room. I confirmed the backpack’s position so I could pluck Janet and go.
But I needed a summit with Pamela—I know you’re a hospital volunteer, but lady, you’ve got to do better. Shirley has a different look—like a time bomb out of ticks. Does the word psycho come to mind? Look at her pupils. Is she on something?
Shirley stood. She shifted her weight, and her boots’ steel plates clicked. “I’ve got a .32 caliber Colt in my purse. His name is Waldo, and he can put out a man’s eye at thirty paces.”
Shit.
“Men are cheating scum, and I’m here to lay a few out.”
Bebe rose and faced her. “Yer crazy, lady. Guns ain’t named Waldo. Ya hear me?”
Crap. We’re dead.
“I’d say you’re close, oh lusting one.” Janet, from the other side.
Pamela snatched for the wall phone. Then she looked for a number posted by the phone. Help might arrive late.
Shirley reached for her bag while snarling at Bebe and me. “I’ll start with you jerk-offs.”
Laura stripped away the purse and threw it under the table.
There’s more to that woman than a bust size.
“Wow. You’re waking up.” Janet, exercising snarky supportiveness.
Shirley dived in pursuit of her weapon.
Time stopped while I locked gazes with Bebe. Without speaking, we formed a committee, elected a leader, and voted an agenda: to wit, we wished to leave the room alive. I didn’t want to die tonight, and I felt Bebe figuring out he, too, would rather live.
Now what? I came to whine on a soft shoulder and now I’m in a firefight.
I poised with Bebe on Shirley’s either flank as she emerged on our side of the table. I walloped her head with a chair cushion, but the soft seat scarcely slowed her. My life now depended on Bebe, the man currently nipping from his flask.
Screw this. Why fight? Shirley, fire away.
“Ryan Hogue, straighten up.” Janet lined me out. Again.
“Abandon ship!” I screamed, my words sounding like an angry bear with a sore throat. I yanked up Janet’s backpack and checked my escape plan. I didn’t have one.
Did getting away matter? Caught between the sickness held over from Janet’s passing and the rush from an immediate death threat, I didn’t know what I wanted.
I rattled Pamela’s cage. “Is help coming?”
Pamela represented the classy woman I would have been terrified to ask out in high school. Nothing had changed at fifty. What am I thinking? Married men didn’t hypothesize about dating other women.
I was sure Pamela’s anticipation for hosting the meeting had been to look sympathetic and serve refreshments, but the pastries hadn’t arrived and now she was trying to prevent a couple of homicides—including mine.
Janet offered cautionary advice. “Rein in your libido, bereaved one.”
Pamela punched another number, waited, and disconnected without speaking. Then she addressed our free-for-all, “No help, men. Laura and I’ll be fine. So, scram!”
Shirley reached her purse, but Bebe stomped on the strap. Standoff: neither party could move. I glanced from Shirley to her purse to Bebe. Should I run or go for the gun? Run, don’t fight. I nodded to Bebe, and he battered Shirley with another cushion. I dumped a pitcher of water on her head—my bit of satisfaction from the melee—and bolted.
Bebe and I and the backpack collided at the door, but the retired linebacker squeezed us through like floppy dolls. We pulled the door closed, charging into the hospital’s basement.
“Which way?” I wanted to know.
Bebe demonstrated team leadership skills. “She’ll go toward the lobby. Let’s head away from how we came in.”
We raced down the concrete passage and entered a section with a dedication plaque from 1895. We stopped at the second intersection, where Bebe held a finger to his lips. He pointed for me to go straight and him to the right. Not a bad idea—Shirley would bag only one of us. I heard an echoed click-clack from her boots. I hoisted the backpack and hurried in my assigned direction.
I felt Janet’s spirit moving with me. Did I need an exorcist? Her prodding was one of the reasons I’d come to counseling. Our daughter, Michelle, had provided the other.
I carried Janet’s urn through the labyrinth, hugging her like a lifeline. I met nobody, not a living soul. Nor any dead ones. Janet had spoken to me first a month ago and hadn’t stopped. Now her presence paced me through the tunnels. I cherished her royal-purple urn—her home since last November. The calendar now read May, and I was alone and going nuts.
Janet spoke up. “Sweetie, why’re you running? Weren’t you planning suicide?”
“You’re dead. Why can I hear you?” I choked words out past hoarse vocal cords. Speaking was painful, as was living. Everything hurt. Why hadn’t I told her every day I loved her?
Janet spoke from everywhere. “Stop whining. You hear me because you haven’t accepted my death.”
“Bullshit. You surround me.”
“You exaggerate.”
She had no idea of her thumbprint’s size. I couldn’t run and argue, so I stopped moving. I listened and heard echoes of Shirley’s boots. Screw it—I had a conversation to pursue. “Magazines addressed to you arrive daily.”
“So cancel them.”
I would, but I’d have to seek out the magazines’ phone numbers—and think. Give her something new to stew over. “I sleep on my side of our bed.”
“You have my permission to move.”
I didn’t want to change sides. She might come back if I left space. “I stare at your empty closet.”
“Jesus. Get a life”
I had one until you left.
I was dizzy from running and too many restless nights. I had more to unload. “I sit on furniture you bought.”
“Then buy new.”
I’d never shopped for furniture alone.
I put my body in motion and wobbled along the wall with company from reverbs of Shirley’s footwear.
Take another tack. “I try to cook in your kitchen.”
“Pay attention. You know how.”
I used to, but good cooking interfered with my master plan of knife-and-fork suicide. To hell with tit for tat—fire the big gun. “Michelle is twenty-four and walks and talks and smells just like you.”
“Our darling has grown up. You should too.”
And my little girl didn’t need me. Nobody did. I examined the gray concrete walls adorned with steel conduit—a stark reflection of life without Janet.
Shirley sounded closer. Am I in the tunnel to hell?
Janet took the lead. “Do you hate yourself because you think you let me die?”
“No. Yes. Damned if I know.” I did know. I must have missed something critical at the hospital, and she died.
“I’m gone, and I won’t be back.”
Forever gone is too long. “Don’t tempt me to try to bring you home.”
“Ryan, honey, I died in my own time. You can’t fight destiny.”
“Not fair. I don’t want to be here without you.” And the truth set me free—dying young appealed to me.
“You’ll find someone.”
Not a chance in hell—especially if I don’t try. “Why should I? You were perfect.”
“You have a selective memory—ask Michelle about my perfection.”
“I’m a married man. I’m too scared to look for someone new.” Another truth from the man hiding from the truth.
Shirley’s voice carried from out of sight, “What do you mean, you’re his girlfriend? I’m his wife.” No other voice—she must’ve been on her cell. “He told you about me and you still went with him?” Another pregnant pause. “Slut!”
No more conversation. I guessed Shirley’s mood hadn’t improved.
Janet didn’t seem to care about Shirley. “Are you afraid of finding someone better than me?”
*You have no idea. “No. Yes. I’m afraid of finding anyone at all.”
“Are you afraid I won’t love you if you find someone?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Ask me something I can answer. My turn to interrogate. “Why’re you pestering me?”
“Michelle’s asking me for help I can’t provide, but you can.”
Self-assured and bossy—our daughter was the opposite of what Janet believed. “Michelle and I aren’t close. I’d fail.”
And the absolute bottom line was Michelle didn’t need me.
Then the lights dimmed.
Not the hospital’s—mine.
Crap. Not now.
“You announced you wanted to die this way.” Janet sounded faint.
“I can’t die today. What would Michelle do with my company?”
“Not your problem if you’re gone.” Janet was sweetly brutal.
No singing. No bright lights. No angels. Just unwelcome darkness.
