Love, in Theory: Ten Stories

Theory of Transportation

115 When the two of them were young dance partners in a De Mille revival on Broadway, Christopher looked like a sailor out of Querelle, packed and muscly and beautiful, with a plump round face like Sluggo, the cartoon character. “You do not realize how much a face can change,” Tuni will tell me later, but what frightens her that day in the hospital is how little Christopher looks like himself. How generic illness makes one, how in the end the very old and the dying young look alike, as if it were not life but particularity that ebbed away, and its lack that finally kills us. As they walk down the hall to his room, there are friendly catcalls and wet smacking kisses from the doorways they pass. “Love those hoofer legs,” calls a six-two brunette in room 504 whom Christopher introduces as Leroy. “Charmed,” Leroy says, getting up from a makeshift vanity on which he has arrayed face creams, waxy lipsticks, powders , to offer Tuni a soft, pawlike hand. “Just visiting?” he inquires. “Just visiting,” Tuni smiles. T H E O R Y O F T R A N S P O R T AT I O N ˛ T H E O R Y O F T R A N S P O R T A T I O N 116 “Lucky you,” says Leroy wistfully. Christopher has made a lot of friends here in part because he spends a portion of each day distributing to other guys the gifts people send to him. The rest of the time he keeps busy redecorating the nurses’ stations and ordering in remarkable foods. When they reach his room, an order of pickled herring and cheese pierogi has just arrived from an East Village Ukrainian restaurant that never delivers. “Dan, up the hall, had a hankering. So,” Chris says as he fishes for cash in the pocket of a coat hanging in the closet. “I know the owner at Veselka’s. I called. Made a little deal.” He gives a twenty to the delivery guy and waves away an offer of change. “I figure, since I’m here I might as well have a good time.” He picks up the brown paper bag and starts out the door. “I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.” Tuni sits down on Christopher’s bed and begins examining the various bottles on the night table when Leroy, now in full makeup with a bedpan on his head and a flower behind one ear, runs past the door, shouting, “Can we get some help in here?” “This is really sick,” Tuni says, when Christopher returns. “That’s why it’s a hospital, dear,” he says. He takes her hand to lead her to the cafeteria. “Don’t worry about the grub,” he says. “I’ve ordered in sushi.” In the cafeteria they set up their picnic at a window-side table with a view of the river. The trees below look skeletal in the winter light and the water is gray as a cadaver. Christopher seems not to notice , absorbed instead in the slow dissection of a California roll. “My sister from Cincinnati calls me every day to console me,” he tells her. “She says, ‘Christopher you’re dying. My little brother’s dying .’ Then she bursts into tears and hangs up.” He looks up from his plate. “I suppose it makes her feel better to be able to pity me.” “Jesus,” Tuni shakes her head. “Anyway, it takes her mind off the bastard she’s living with. She T H E O R Y O F T R A N S P O R T A T I O N 117 was always envious.” Christopher spears a cylinder of rice encased in seaweed and inspects it for a moment on his fork. “Thomas has been fabulous since all this started.” He looks up at Tuni. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’d do the same in his shoes.” “You would.” “Don’t try me.” “I won’t.” For a moment they can’t seem to find anything to say, and Tuni feels the silence spreading around them like a rising tide, threatening to strand them on separate shores. She wants to ask him about the medications he’s taking—what the blue pills are, the pink. She wants to make a place for him to teach her about...