Hotel Honolulu

66 Aftercare

"I can breathe," Buddy said, though he was so overwhelmed by the drama of the operation he could not manage anything else. He looked in wonderment upon a world that seemed new to him. Now he dared to hope for more, because he felt he was going to live. His boozing proved it.

Pinky repeated her ambiguous promise: "I take care for you."

Buddy filled his lungs again without much effort. The air was like hope entering his body. He said, "I'm going to be all right."

His hospital stay had been misery. His other operations had not prepared him for this ordeal. To get at his chest cavity, four of his ribs had to be sawed through. The incision was a vicious cut, chest to back and under his arm, like a gory sash. As soon as the anesthesia wore off, he began coughing, and he thought the cut would burst. He was fussed over by masked white-capped aliens. One gave him his stuffed Wile E. Coyote to cling to. When he was able to sit up, he was told to blow into a plastic tube that had a ball inside. Blowing hard, he got the little plastic ball to rise to the top of the tube. The aliens praised him for this, but then he coughed even more, bringing up from his lungs flotsam of evillooking dried blood and dead tissue. But he had survived. He was a new man, and he wanted his world renewed, to reflect this rebirth. No sooner was he home than he began talking of buying a fancier house. He boasted openly, in front of

Pinky, of divorcing her and sending her back to Manila with her relations, of finding a surf bunny, a coconut princess. He bought a new BMW. And: "I should put the hotel on the market. That land's worth a fortune."

"Do you think you'll do it?" I asked, fearing for my job.

"I haven't currently made a determination."

That way of speaking was also a weird novelty, something to do with Buddy's operation and aftercare — his Latinate vocabulary another sign that he was throwing his weight around.

"But in my judgment it's worth contemplating," he said.

Anyone listening to him now was uncomfortably aware of being dispensable. Even I felt it, and was surprised and ashamed of my insecurity. The prospect of my having to prove myself made me face the fact that I had no practical skills. In Pinky's eyes, bloodshot with sleeplessness, I saw a greater fear. Her ruthless tenacity, her eagerness to prove her worth to Buddy, made her my rival. She quarreled with me and tried to put me in the wrong.

The lung operation had first frightened Buddy, and then had made him fearless. The invasive procedure had changed him, cut fear out of him, introduced hope and sewed it up. He was surprised and relieved; he was saved. Though he had always been sentimental, he had no natural piety, so his survival made him arrogant and more obnoxious. From being a boisterously contented man, counting his blessings in a shouting voice, he now spoke of radical changes. His operation had been like a near-death experience. He had seen the truth of the world; he said he now knew what mattered. "Rejuvenated" was a word he used. He became pompous and wordy, with at times an incomprehensible garrulity.

"At this juncture, I want everyone out of my face."

"Dad hybolic," his son Bula said. "That no good fo us."

"Currently, I require personal space. Elbowroom, if you will."

The only hint of indecision in this new, robust Buddy with puffing lungs was his choosing which changes to make first. Pinky took comfort from that. So did everyone who knew him, including me. "Don't be rash," I said, fearing that I might lose my job. I resolved to become a better hotel manager. Pinky sidelined Evie, who had not visited Buddy's bedroom ("No can sleep, meesta") since before the operation. Pinky made the visits now, rekindling Buddy's sexual interest. Her job, her future, depended on it.

Buddy felt so energetic that he put off his exercise, avoided the treadmill, drank much more, and puffed a cigarette now and then. He was indignant when anyone called attention to his habits.

"Do you realize what I've endured?" he said. "I've been through hell, for want of a better word."

That also, his expression "for want of a better word," was new. Like "if you will," it made me smile, but still I was worried about my job.

To help Buddy regain full use of his lungs, the doctor had given him an oxygen bottle. Pinky lugged it around, and every so often Buddy would say, "I need another hit."

"Are you doing your exercises?" Dr. Miyazawa asked at Buddy's first post-op checkup, and Buddy said, "At this juncture, yes," because he felt so much better than before.

The doctor examined him, tapped his chest, slid the smooth cold medallion of the stethoscope across his back, cueing him to breathe; yanked a rubber tube around his arm, cinching it until Buddy's hand was numb, and took his blood pressure; looked down his throat and shone a light into his ears.

"No drinking? No smoking?" the doctor asked in a cautioning tone, delicately broaching the subject. "You sure?"

"Nothing!" Buddy said, much too loudly, showing his tongue, like a child protesting because he is in the wrong.

"This true?" the doctor asked Pinky.

She who poured the double vodkas, she who lit the cigarettes said, "True."

"Remember, this operation only works if you do exactly as you're told," the doctor said. "The exercises. No alcohol or tobacco. Or else catastrophic obliteration of lung."

Tinkering with his body was Buddy's pleasure and preoccupation.

Like the best hobbies, the pastime educated him, made him bold, and gave him something to talk about. Ihe doctor said that he might feel a little weak at the outset, so Buddy bought a wheelchair, which he pushed himself, manipulating the wheels, Pinky following behind with the oxygen tank. Not long afterward, Buddy demanded that Pinky push him. She obliged and steered him briskly through the hotel, seeming to enjoy seeing Buddy's employees, me especially, jump out of the path of Buddy's oncoming chaig his big feet splayed like a cowcatcher.

On that first occasion, in town for the checkup, Buddy had Pinky wheel him into Paradise Lost, where he sat with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, shaking his head. He coughed, his eyes were bleary, his skin was blotchy from vodka. He was mystified by Miyazawa's insight: "How do you suppose he knew?"

Buddy's confidence grew even as his strength seemed to slacken.

The operation had made him tyrannical and short-tempered. "In my judgment, your time is up!" he said to Keola because a leaky showerhead had not been promptly repaired — fired, just like that. Keola blinked, smiled, and said, "Sorry, boss." Though Buddy allowed me to rehire him, Keola was a different and much warier man from then on.

Too impatient to argue or explain, Buddy simply issued orders. He warned Tran, his longtime bartender: "I'm recommending you for probation." Even his old friend Peewee he scolded. I assumed I would be next. I hated Buddy's dropping in, because for the time he was at the hotel, he was the boss and I the underling. The way Buddy bellowed reminded me that his lungs were rotting, and that was all I thought about, Buddy's lungs, their frailty, and how they somehow gave him the coarse, commanding voice of a chain-smoking hag.

With Pinky's skinny fingers on the handles of his chair, pushing him forward like a bulldozer, Buddy terrorized his family, threatening them, sending them on pointless errands, seeming to test their loyalty. "You owe me in a major way!" he roared to Bula. In between sucks on his oxygen, he wheezed, he gagged, he choked, making his scoldings sound more severe. No foolery, no laughter. He had become a survivor, the operation a close call, and like a man yanked back from the brink, he was frantic and incoherent. In his convalescence, this spell of drunken shouting, he was impossible.

"I want everyone in compliance, for want of a better word, at this juncture."

The muddle of his first weeks was over. Buddy continued to be assertive, but his physical condition had not improved. Indeed, for all his conviction, he appeared much weaker than before. He had monkey breath and boiled eyes, yet believed the doctor to be clairvoyant for suspecting he was covertly smoking and drinking.

"I can't understand what I'm hearing," Dr. Miyazawa said, coiling his stethoscope on his hand. "Are you sure you're doing your exercises?"

It was too late for Buddy to begin. He was too weak, and just thinking of the effort demoralized him. So he lied — lied with such indignation that the doctor doubted himself, mistaking Buddy's assertiveness for good health, even for strength.

"This is a new procedure," the doctor said. "We've had all sorts of results and we've got to watch for septicemia."

I had never witnessed such a thing. Now I knew what it meant to be reprieved. Buddy was saved, his life had a sequel. He was transformed from an ailing and uncertain man into an angry and impulsive one. He talked about marrying again, raising a new family. "Little kids everywhere you look! I got the money, I got new lungs — what's the problem?"

"What about me?" Pinky said.

"Get your sister."

Keeping everyone in suspense was more brutal than disposing of them. He behaved like a man with secrets. The boyish side of Buddy was absent, yet there was something childlike in his tyrannizing, and at his most demanding he was like a kid bellowing for candy. He was selfish, greedy, overeating again; he made no pretense of pleasing anyone but himself. I was reminded of his practical jokes, how I had concluded that such a joker is at heart a sadist.

Once Buddy saw a stripper at Foodland and invited her back to the house. Indifferent to Pinky's rage, he offered to swap sex for room and board. But he could not perform and, breathless, rang for Pinky to bring the oxygen tank. The stripper, still naked as Pinky entered Buddy's room, hurriedly dressed and left.

With a crumpled smeary face, Pinky wept as she handed over the oxygen mask, which made Buddy look like a porpoise. What could she do? By becoming a big, strange, disaffected man, whom she feared, he had broken her. He was capable of anything — and she was someone who knew the deranged possibilities of the word "anything."

Hearing him breathe, I was warned of Buddy's condition, but I did not seriously worry about his health. He would not just pull through. He would be a giant again — someone so loud, who so dominated a room, he would inevitably get his strength back. He had never stopped shouting.

He hired a driver, Chubby, and gave him Bula's bedroom. During the job interview, to Buddy's pestering questions the man had said he did not believe in God or an afterlife. "That's the best qualification for a safe driver," Buddy said. He sat beside the man in the new BMW, Pinky in the back, the oxygen tank on her lap. He banished Pinky's uncle and aunt to the tiny room under the stairs.

"I'll marry your sister!" he taunted Pinky.

His eyes bulged, he grew fatter, he began wheezing badly. And as the weeks passed the conviction in his voice was like a form of despair. The staff at the hotel worried about their jobs, but Buddy was more desperate and driven than any of the employees or any of his family. His desperation made him a terrifying visitor to the hotel.

In the past he had been predictable, as healthy people are, but now we had no idea what he would do next. I had thought that his operation, meant as a cure, had made him ill, and now it seemed to me that the operation had very nearly destroyed him.