39

“Liliana, eta tui?’

“Da, Mama, Ja doma, Zdrastvui. Kak dela?”

“Xorosho, xorosho—Kto-to zvonil. Iz Ameriki, dumaio.”

“Iz Ameriki? …

From America? Liliana wonders. Maria? Could it be Maria? Or—well, not Mr. Kenny; not likely she getting call from him. But who otherwise she know who will call from USA? Not Mr. Marty—he would not dare, so rude he was, so nasty. But if not single one of people she know from America—only three she know is all—then who could it possibly be?

Good. Mama has number of the person wrote down on piece of paper, and person’s name as well, right here—imya or familia or otchestvo—first or last or second name—impossible to know which one. ‘Cindy’, what it say, in Mama’s sloppy writing. Is proper thing for her to call this Cindy person back? But how much ruble cost for this? What will calling to America they charge? Is important question, yes, but person who called, this person Cindy—she spend lot of money maybe making call to Russia, no? So if important enough for Cindy calling Moskva, just equally important calling back to Cindy from Moskva now….

And so she calls: Two digits here—this going to be USA country code pretty sure. And then three digits more—maybe for province—or in America such provinces people call them ‘states’—And then seven more digits, this for individual telephonical device—many number, like in Moskva or Peterburg, although outside Moskva and Peterburg, Russia not needing so many of digits like this. America maybe having lot more telephones.

She hear the ringing: Funny ring, not like buzz like Russian telephones. And after two ring only, telephone get answered by high-pitch lady’s voice:

“Hello.”

“Yes, hello, excuse please only little bit of English on telephone. Talk in person better, but on telephone not so good, excuse please. Speaking here is Liliana Alexandrovna Glinskaya, and I have notification of person from this telephone number recently call our flat—Yes? Is correct?”

“Ah, yes, great, sure! Liliana—so nice to talk with you. My name is Cindy, and I’m calling on behalf of the person I work for. His name is….”

“Izvenite—I cannot understand these things you say. You say too fast. I am sorry. You say half of person? This I do not understand, half of person. You will kindly please explain?”

“No, not half a person. On behalf of a person—that means on his behalf—for him, I mean. Oh, how can I put it clearer? I’m calling instead of him, in his interest, OK? Look, rather than him calling you himself, he had me call—do you understand me now?”

“Yes, yes. I apologize. My English not so good as I like to be. Was pretty good before, but long time since I speak and practice. But if you talk slow, very slow, maybe I will understand—OK?”

“Yes, OK, fine. So—anyway: There was a picture—is that slow enough?”

“Yes. Yes I can understand better when you talk slow like this. Picture, yes, I understand what picture meaning.”

“OK, well there was a picture sent into FaceMate—are you familiar with what I’m referring to?”

“FaceMate? Yes, I send picture long time ago. Two months, or three, I do not know exact time I send. FaceMate email picture back of very pretty girl afterward. She look like me, a lot I think, but they say she not living anymore. I was sad to hear this in different email from nice man whose name I forget now. Was Edgarn, Edburn, something like this. This is person you maybe know?”

“Yes, Edward. Edward Parker—Is that the man you mean?”

“Yes, I think so; maybe. Yes. Edward, yes. This name, it is sounding right.”

“OK, good, well he’s the one I’m calling for—on behalf of, like I said. You understand?”

“Yes, I think. ‘Behalf’ meaning instead. You call instead of him—right?”

“Right, great—good. Now one more link in the chain of insteads and behalfs—Or forget that; forget what I just said; it’s way too complicated; you won’t understand all that. Listen—can you listen to me carefully and try to understand? Is that slow enough for you to understand it?”

“Yes, this last part I understand pretty good, but not part about chain. I do not understand at all this chain you talking first part what you say.”

“OK, forget the chain. Listen to this, listen carefully: Edward is the person who asked me to call—You understand that?”

“Yes, Edward asked you to call, right?”

“Right. He asked me to call for someone else—another man, a different man—Do you understand that?”

“Yes. A different man. Who is different man?”

“His name is Ben. He’s a very important man, a very rich man, do you understand that?”

“Yes, this is easy to understand. A man named Ben is very rich.”

“Yes, and he’s very ill right now—Do you understand me when I say he’s very ill? Sick, I mean. Ben is very sick.”

“I am sorry to hear he is sick. I hope he will soon be better health.”

“I do too. I can’t even tell you how much I do too. But here’s the important thing: Ben would like to see you, to meet you—Do you understand what I’m saying when I tell you that?”

“Yes, Ben, the person who is sick, he want to meet me. Why he want to meet me?”

“That picture you sent in and the picture of the girl that FaceMate sent back—Oh, look, forget it; this is hopeless; this is driving me nuts! Listen, Liliana, are you going to be home for a while?”

“Yes, I will be here at home—in flat—We with Mama live in flat—I staying here until tomorrow morning. Then I go to work at ballet.”

“OK, let me get back to you. I’m going to find someone who speaks Russian and have them call you back. This is too fucking important to handle in some pidgin English, stupid, half-assed goddamn way.”

Alex sat on the floor, arms clasped around his knees, rocking rhythmically side to side, and, with every third or fourth lateral movement, knocking his head—bang!—against the wall. The walls of his enclosure were solid, plaster over concrete block, built to his specific specs to make them impervious to any possible intrusion, built to make them soundproof, and to ensure they were excellent at thermal insulation. The temperature inside the room, accordingly, was eighty-six degrees. Alex was sweating profusely, and he was crying as well. Rajiv had seen him sweat before, that was not an issue. But he had never seen him cry. Nevertheless, it wasn’t the sweating or the crying or the stifling heat that was so disconcerting to Rajiv at the moment. It was those solid walls and Alex’s motion, and the resultant fear that he might seriously hurt his head. And so Rajiv got down on the floor next to Alex, reached out his arms, and held his partner tightly to his chest, arresting the motion and thereby protecting his best friend’s head, and doing his best to comfort this acutely suffering soul, in hopes of which, he whispered very softly in Alex nether ear:

“It’s OK, Aley, it’s OK. You couldn’t have known. It really wasn’t your fault.”

Alex’s response was not what was expected. No, his response was, to escape from Rajiv’s tight restraint, to move his body violently to the right, and, for at least the dozenth time, to bang the wall again with his bleeding head.

“Don’t, Aley. Don’t do that. What good is that gonna do?”

“I hurt him, Rajiv. I did something bad to Ben.”

“You didn’t know, Aley. How could you possibly have known?”

“I’m not dumb, am I? Do you think I’m dumb?”

“How can you even say that? How can you even ask me that? You’re smart as hell. You’re the smartest guy I know.”

“But I did a dumb thing. I really did a dumb thing.”

“It wasn’t dumb if you didn’t know, was it?”

“I knew about the heart, though, The computer warned us about Ben’s heart.”

“No it didn’t. All it said was, there was a possibility that Ben might be affected by some rare disease, not that he’d get it for sure. Nobody knew he actually had it, not even Eddie, not even Ben’s wife—He never even told her. Eddie called the doctor who did the test a little while ago, and he had to threaten to sue the guy to get any information out of him—besides which, I guess there’s this Federal law that says a doctor can’t give information out without the patient’s consent. And anyway, Ben made the doctor promise not to tell anyone, even despite the law. So it was only Ben and the doctor who really knew. You sure couldn’t have even suspected—No way.”

“OK, but even if he didn’t have the heart thing, I shouldn’t have asked about the girl. I thought they would have told him about the girl. The reason I put the girl in to get matched was because I thought Ben would want to see her again. I thought Ben would be happy to see her again. I never thought it would upset him.”

“It didn’t upset him, Aley. He wasn’t upset when he saw the picture, he was shocked. You know the story of what happened to his girlfriend Lizzie, don’t you? I told you that. So when he saw that picture, as exact as the Russian girl is to the girl who died, you can see why he was shocked. And then with the heart problem—Well, it couldn’t have been avoided. Sooner or later, he was going to find out about that Liliana, and what happened was going to happen whether you said something or not. It just happened a little earlier—which may turn out for the better: At least he can get some treatment now.”

“What if he dies, though. Rajiv? If he dies, I’ll be the one who killed him. Oh God, Rajiv, I wish it was me in the hospital instead of him. I wish it was me with the heart problem and not Ben.”

“Don’t say that, Aley. Don’t beat yourself up anymore about what happened. Ben’ll be alright. Hey, they’re taking him to the best place in the country to be treated. Eddie’s got it all arranged. Look, we’ve got a purpose now, remember? Think of what Ben would want us to do if he wasn’t there to do it himself, OK? This Tommy guy is his legacy. Let’s do whatever we can with our billions for him.”

Funny how there wasn’t any pain. You would have expected it, wouldn’t you? Expected something anyway: heaviness, maybe; pressure; a little tightness in the chest—But no: No discomfort of any kind, really, just that sudden lightheadedness and the feeling that you couldn’t quite catch your breath—Then lights out. Yes but … not completely out, for there was the feeling of, well, not falling exactly, but rather floating like a feather down, down, blissfully toward whatever place you were going to sink to in the end…. And the next thing Ben remembered, he was lying on the floor.

And then the fog lifted a little bit…. And there was Tommy—damn kid, no matter what went wrong with anything, he knew how to fix it—What a guy! “Here, get his feet up and his head down as low as it’ll go.” Those words came at him dreamily through the fog. All the other people up above him, scattering the light, were jumping back and forth aimlessly looking for something purposeful to do, it seemed. Not finding it, however, while meantime the kid was taking care of everything himself. Up went the legs, down on the floor went the head, until Tommy folded up his sport coat to slip underneath. Which felt a whole lot better than the flooring did—cheap wood, rubber tiling, linoleum squares—He hadn’t really noticed what was down there, but whatever the hell it was, without that sport coat as a pillow, it sure as hell felt hard!

Everything was smothered in that pea-soup haze for quite a little while—it could have been a minute, it could have been an hour; who could tell?—the ceiling lights spinning round and round, then up and down and sideways; the eyes peering down at him like muffled searchlights in a fog….

Until the ambulance people got there—anybody’s guess as to how long they took to find the building and get their equipment up to Four. Then one look at them and their white coats and their stethoscopes—Whoa! that sure shocked a fellow into real-time consciousness—and fast!

“Hey, what the hell…? Who are these…? What are you doing with my shirt there, huh?—Hey, look: All that happened is, I got a little dizzy is all, and….”

He remembered saying that; and, having said it, he started to remember when he got a little dizzy. Which got him to remembering why he got a little dizzy. Which got him to remembering a picture on a screen, and when that picture popped back into his head—Zing!—There it was again, the funny feeling in his heart and the tiny little pang, and the breathlessness. But his head was low this time, flat on Tommy’s sport-coat on the floor; and his feet were high, propped up on a chair; so he didn’t pass out completely like the last time quite a while ago. No, instead of passing out completely, his mind stayed conscious all the while, permitting him to experience the funny feeling in his heart and the breathlessness (and the tiny little pang right in the breastbone, barely noticeable)—And he remembered vividly—too goddamn vividly for comfort, truthfully—that mesmerizing image on the screen.

“I want to see it.” That’s what he’d told Eddie, when he heard that Alex’s computer had found a picture, yelling that at poor, good-natured, frantic Eddie in the most authoritative voice he had ever told Eddie anything demanding in.

So Eddie had climbed around to the other side of Rajiv’s desk, and sat down at the computer and opened up his email. Six weeks ago, or eight—he wasn’t sure until he found it, and opened it, and Ben saw Ed’s face get that funny kind of look, and stepped around the desk himself and glanced down at the screen:

And there it was, all gold and cream and beautiful: And you know what? Damned if it wasn’t her—Damned if it wasn’t Lizzie! Definitely Lizzie, no mistaking that face—which was one of a kind: Make it, take one disbelieving look at it, then throw the fucking mold away. Not like Lizzie, no. Not some pretty girl with a striking resemblance to Lizzie. But her—HER! The eyes, the look in those eyes, the set of that mouth, that minute, immeasurable tilting of the neck to one side so you could always see the helix of her ear when you snapped a shot. It was her—it was HER! Only someone as intimately familiar with the real thing as Ben was, could tell if some sham copy posing as genuine was genuine in truth. And this person in the photograph was genuine, alright. It was Lizzie—his Lizzie—beyond the faintest, flimsiest shadow of a doubt!

“I want to see her,” he’d said, in as forceful a voice as he could summon under the circumstances. And two seconds afterward, damn it, but the lights just plain went out.

They took him in an ambulance. Hell, he didn’t want to go anywhere in an ambulance, too much fuss with all the sirens and the speed. But there are procedures to be followed, when they find you lying on the floor: Forms to be completed, questions you must answer, regulations it is imperative that you obey. Once you’re a helpless captive of those deputies in white, those entry-level members of the medical-industrial complex, you’re in for the long haul, down on the canvas for the count.

First stop, the emergency room on a stretcher, where the blood gets drawn, the leads get fastened to your chest, the initial, interrogatory X-rays, probings, pokings, soundings, as many billable procedures as they can think of, just as long as the fees are likely to be paid. Nobody had better health insurance then Ben, so nobody got more procedures ordered and done—that was the norm for his periodic physicals. But this time he got smart: he fessed up before they went too far:

“I had that test already.”

“What? An echocardiogram, you’re saying? You had one done—Recently?”

She was young, Asian-American, like Rajiv, but not Indian. A Filipina, probably. The name on her nametag was Spanish, but her very pretty face was Polynesian, with a dash of Lopez or Mendoza tossed into the eclectic mix. American-born, though, this Marina Andralon: If she had an accent, it was USA mid-western: slightly flattened vowels, but not as flat as a Chicagoan—So probably raised right here in Ohio. Intelligent coal-black eyes; Ben guessed she was competent enough and ethical enough not to put him through the ringer just to make the ER an extra couple bucks.

“The echo? I don’t know—a week; less than a week now, maybe three, four days. That qualify as recent?—So; you’re Philippine, I’m guessing—Chicken adobo and calamares en su tinto—right??”

“My folks eat that kind of nonsense, sir, but for me, it’s Big Macs and KFC. I was born and raised right here in Columbus, Mr. Atherton.”

“Sounds familiar; do you know a fellow named Rajiv? Maybe you might have met him at the KFC.”

“I don’t think so, sir. Rajiv? No, I don’t think so—Umm, but the echocardiogram—What did it show? Did they tell you the results?”

“Probably what you’re looking for, Doc. Didn’t you talk to young Dr. Mulroy yet—the nice-looking kid in the waiting area? Five-ten or so; sandy hair?”

“Is he a doctor? He didn’t mention that he was.”

“He will be a doctor. Right now, he’s the next best thing. But the real doctor—You want to know who did the echo, right? His name is Harvey Axelrod, and his office is in Red Bank, New Jersey. I’ll need to sign a records release for you, though. Otherwise he’s sworn to silence, and he won’t divulge a thing. I told him I’d have his knees shot out if he spilled the beans.”

He signed the form, and she scurried off to get the records sent, but before she did, she pulled the curtain open that had separated him from the rest of Columbus and its populace; and no sooner did she pull it open, than there were Tommy and Eddie, standing just behind the rails of his stretcher, one to either side, with matching lengthening faces and red-rimmed eyes.

“I thought your heart was normal,” barked Eddie. “You lied to me, Ben. Didn’t you tell me that your heart was normal?”

“Didn’t you tell me that your buddy Alex wasn’t going to match Lizzie’s picture up? The way I see it, pal, we’re even, tit for tat.”

“Yeah? Well I had a reason, Benny. I thought it was better for your state of mind if I didn’t tell you.”

“And I had a reason too, Eddie. What good would have it done to tell you? I mean, look at you—and you too, kid.” With which, he turned leftward toward Tommy, who looked equally depressed, distressed, and alarmed by Ben’s condition. “What good would it have done to tell either of you? Or Carole, or Charlotte, or Cindy, or any of the crew back at AthCorp? Would telling anyone have made things better in the least?”

Eddie was angry. Not at Ben. In the forty-odd years of their friendship, he had never been angry at Ben. But if not at Ben, then whom? Then what? Maybe he was angry at the fucking heart disease, or the researcher who discovered it, or the doctors who weren’t doing anything to make Ben well. Or maybe he was angry at God, or chance, or fate, or whatever his current philosophy of the time could find to blame. And the anger came out, not as much in his words as in the harsh abruptness with which he spoke them:

‘What good? What good? What about getting the damn thing treated, huh? The longer you wait with this goddamn heart bullshit, the less chance there is of getting you well.”

“Calm down, Eddie. Ask Tommie here. He’s done the same research as me. Both of us have the same connection to the Net; and he’ll tell you if you ask him. There is no treatment. You get the damn thing and you die. Sometimes you die in years, sometimes in months, sometimes in seconds. Look it up; I did. The heart muscle thickens, and eventually it can’t pump, or else it gets so thick it closes off the blood vessels that supply it with blood. And then game over. So what? I’ve lived fifty-five fabulous years. I’ve done everything I ever set out to do; and more than ninety-nine percent of people ever achieve in the longest lifetimes. Hell, guys—and you remember this, Tommy; it’ll stand you in good stead for the future—If you haven’t achieved what you wanted to achieve in the first fifty-five years of your life, why the hell should God or fate or heredity grant you twenty more?”

“We’re not giving up, Ben. I don’t care what you say, we’re not. From what I hear, the Cleveland Clinic has the best heart team in the country—in the world, that means—Tommy and I are gonna get you there.”

“Hey, suit yourself, Eddie; I’m in no shape to protest. But they say that lifespan is dependent on the will to live, don’t they?”

“They do. So in that regard, Benny, you gotta help us out.”

“OK, then do your best to get that girl here—that perfect double of my Lizzie that you showed me on the screen. For thirty years I’ve dreamed an impossible dream of seeing her again. You get her here, just so I can look at her, and hear her voice, and touch her hand, and I may just fight like hell to stay alive a little more.”