Forty Words for Sorrow

25

THE NAUSEA HAD FINALLY LIFTED. For days it had hung over the bed like smog, so that the slightest movement made his head whirl and the bile climb in his throat. A few bites of food and the bed had begun to feel like a boat pitching headlong from crest to trough.

At other times—usually just before Eric or Edie brought in his tray—the nausea would recede a little and he began to think he would soon be out in the sunlight and fresh air. Then strange fancies would take hold of him: the bedposts dissolved into minarets, his feet beneath the covers formed distant dunes, a dripping tap became a tambourine. He would imagine he was in some exotic locale—Bahrain, Tangiers—where he had been laid low with exotic fevers. His eyes felt webbed; his muscles were dead as meat.

The figure on the edge of the bed blurred and shifted. Keith tried to focus. The smell of toast and jam was overwhelming. When was the last time he’d kept anything down? “God, I’m so hungry.” He spoke to where the figure had been, but it had shifted again.

“Take it.” Eric was holding the plate under Keith’s nose. The smell nearly made him faint.

Keith ate four pieces of toast. He began to feel solid again, as if he could get up and do things. “Eric, I need to use the phone. I need a phone.”

“Sorry. Edie doesn’t have a phone. I have one, but I live across town.”

“She doesn’t have a phone?”

“No. I just told you.”

“Karen will be worried. We arranged to call regularly. I’ve been sick for, what—three days?”

“Four.”

Keith started to sit up. His muscles were achy from being in bed so long.

“You’re too sick to go out, Keith. Why don’t you write her a letter?”

“She lives in Guelph. It would take days to reach her. She’d be so pissed off by then, she probably wouldn’t read it. Do you guys have e-mail?”

“No,” Eric said. “Why don’t you give me her number? I’ll call for you.”

“Thanks, Eric. But I think I’d better get to a doctor anyway. I shouldn’t be sleeping like this. I’ll call Karen from the hospital.”

“All right. Why don’t you stand up and give it a try?” Eric got off the bed and sat in the broken chair. Keith made a great effort to lower his feet to the floor. Slowly, fixing his gaze now on the radiator, now on Eric, he straightened. He swallowed hard and forced his right foot toward the door. He gave up and fell back down on the bed with a groan. “Why am I so exhausted?”

“All your travelling. No doubt you picked up some exotic bug somewhere.”

“Please, Eric. Take me to the hospital.”

“Sorry. Can’t. I don’t drive.”

“Oh, come on.” He tried to sound stern, but it was hard when he could barely keep his eyes open. “You told me you had a van. The other night. You said you’d bring the tape stuff over in your van.”

“My licence has expired. I just discovered it this morning. It expired six months ago.”

“Edie, then. Let Edie drive me. God, I’m so sleepy.”

Darkness closed around him. Once more he was drifting down a web-filled corridor, pulled as if on skates toward a receding tower of light. Or was it the CN Tower? Insects the size of cats hung from a low ceiling. Their mandibles worked up a foul white foam that dripped on him and scalded his flesh.

He slept and woke, slept and woke.

Then finally he woke with a new clarity. Whatever succubus had been draining his energy seemed to have relaxed its grip, and except for the aching muscles he felt almost normal. He discovered pen and paper beside the bed, even a stamped envelope. He wrote a letter to Karen, a letter filled with love and longing. He remembered her face with tenderness, her body. Details of the physical joys he and Karen had shared came back to him, and he wrote of them in vivid images. He had to stop for a moment. He was trying to think of another word for rapture. Enthrallment wasn’t right, and he’d already used pleasure, twice. Bliss, he was thinking. He was about to write the word when a noise from upstairs made him stop with pen poised over the paper: the muffled but unmistakable sound of a ringing phone.