Memorial

LXVII.Chester

MAURIE Levin was transferred to rehab. His sister went home to Milwaukee. He was in a good place insurance-wise, but hadn’t improved much physically. He couldn’t talk and only his right hand showed spidery signs of life. The doctors didn’t know whether the fingers’ lightly spastic movements were involuntary or not; Chess hoped they were, because of a typically paranoid, free-floating thought that one day Maurie would be able to pick up a pen and “point the finger.” Chess had the persistent feeling he had actually spoken to Maurie about what had happened, or that his friend knew the details of the prank through some sort of osmosis.

No one was sure how much he understood what was said to him either. Maurie occasionally made rubbery movements with his mouth, as if laboring to speak, but no words came. Laxmi stopped visiting because it was “just too sad.” Chess went every day, and she respected him for that, not knowing he was driven by guilt. He continued to vacillate in regard to telling her the truth, or what most of the time he imagined the truth to be; whenever Chester courted confession, he fantasized about the consequences — Laxmi having an unexpected, antagonistic reaction, police becoming involved, etc — though lately he comforted himself with the heretical thought that Maurie’s “TIA” (trans ischemic attack, as the doctors put it) was definitively coincidental to Viagra, and he’d been putting himself through the ringer por nada. Hell, medical journals and blogs reported cases of the Woodpecker actually helping to save kids with pulmonary hypertension. So how the fuck could it have felled an indestructible, able-bodied, cynical Jew like Maurie? Sometimes Chess thought if he told the cops they’d just shrug and put it in a report where it would gather dust. Besides, how could you even prove something like that? If they’d already run toxicology, no one ever told Chester the results. Maybe they told the sister. It’d probably have been negative, except for traces of weed — and weed never stroked anybody out. So if he did tell the cops, they’d either think he was a nut, or be unable to pursue it, because any traces of Viagra would long since have been pissed through a catheter or shat into a bedpan. (And who’s to say the guy wasn’t using it on his own.) Probably the police wouldn’t even bother taking a report, that’s how negligible and surreal the whole thing had become. How viaggravating. When Chess had such epiphanies, it stopped the nonsense in his head and made him feel as if he’d achieved context and clarity; then the moment would pass and he became paranoid again, eating away at himself.

The nurse said Mr Levin was in hydrotherapy but Chess could “go ahead on.” The RNs liked it when friends or relatives showed interest (not the norm in cases as far gone as Maurie’s). Visitors provided distraction and eased staff burden — unless they were pushy or demanding family members who stopped by just long enough to assess that their loved (more accurately, “liked,” or unloved) ones were being treated with appalling indifference: troublemakers who never felt enough was being done. Chester clearly wasn’t that way. He was in the “How can I help?” category, and his arrival brought smiles.

He walked down the hall, past rooms of stranded patients. It was strange: while there didn’t seem to be any bonafide interaction between so-called caregivers and charges, the place was a blizzard of weirdly concentrated bustle, as if employees were preparing for a presidential visit. Chess felt as invisible as the inmates, which was actually a relief.

He found the hydrotherapy room, a large metal vat attended by a jovial fellow with pinned on his shirt.

“Hey, how ya doin?” said Servano.

Chess hovered in the doorway.

“All right.”

“You a friend of my man Maurie’s?”

“Yeah. How is he?”

“Maurie? He’s the king. Doin real good. We’re getting Maurie ready for the Olympics. Special Olympics. Ain’t that right, Maurie?”

The patient was supported by a wide canvas sling, to prevent him from going under. The water churned and Servano PT’s arms dipped beneath, working Maurie’s legs.

“See, someone so young? When they’re hit hard? My feeling is: get em in the water, ASAP. Cause he’s a young man. Some of these docs’ll tell you we can do this kind of work when they’re in bed, but there ain’t no way. I’ve seen water work miracles. Doctors want to write a lot of these patients off. Now it don’t look like the King is doin much, but this is all about retraining. Retraining muscle groups and electrostatic energy. Ever heard of chakras? What’s your name?”

“Chester — Chess.”

“Your daddy a chess player?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, Chester Chakra, I’m a big believer. In unlocking energies. I seen it happen too many times! And you don’t need a stem cell transplant neither. Sometimes the brain decides to throw a roadblock up and you got to lift the barrier. Happens all the time, man, and they call it a miracle, but I just call it perseverity. Without perseverity, you’re not gonna have no miracle. I seen it. Dozens of times. I seen it happen to my ontee. This was a few years ago. I went back to visit? In Alabama? She was just layin there. Man, the flies were on her and ain’t nobody there to wave em off. See, cause everybody too busy. Everybody in the world too busy to do what they supposed to. What they paid to do. And I said, Man, get her in the friggin water! What’s the matter with you? You got a tub there just sittin, put the lady in. You ever heard of Lourdes, Chester? And I ain’t talking Madonna’s daughter, neither! She’s cute. I seen pictures of her. Looks just like her mama. Eyebrows all bushy. Probably gonna know how to make money like her mama too. I stayed in Alabama a month, doin it all myself. Puttin Ontee in the water. And they let me do it too, cause they knew I was trained even though I didn’t have a license. Not in Alabama, no way. The only license they care about in Alabama is a driver’s license! Caballero, you better be carrying one when they stop you or they’ll lock your brown ass in jail and throw away the key! So I worked with my ontee and I worked some other patients too — I’m an equal-opportunity healer when it comes to water — we lifted a lotta roadblocks, cleaned up muchos chakras, those folks practically gave me the key to the city when I left! I can go back and practice PT anytime. Hell, I could have myself a private practice. But I like Southern California. I was a little worried about em but the Alabamians turned out to be good people — not too many places would’ve let me do half the stuff I wound up doing. See, people are cool if you give em the chance. There’s a few bad apples but mostly the world’s full o’ good people. And my ontee is fine. Now she walks with a cane, with a hand-carved owl on top. Don’t even use a walker. And this is someone who was almost as bad off as the King here. She’s 63 years young. And she’s workin now, works out of the house, doing telephone surveys. She good at it too! A productive member of society. If you’d have seen her that 1st time? See, I used to work with a vet, in a vetirary hospital. Very fancy one. This vetirary was like the Hilton! The cat’s meow! That’s what they should have called it — cute, huh? The Cat’s Meow. I told my sister that and she laughed. She said I should try to sell that name to someone on the Internet. My sister good at the Internet, sells shit on eBay all the time. So this vetirary facility was the cat’s meow, and the dog’s bark, too! And I saw all our furry friends getting better in the tubs. Most of em didn’t like it at 1st but they chill. See, it’s all about the water — ain’t it, Maurie? Yeah, he doin fine. He doin real fine. Gonna be walkin outta here real soon, aren’t you, King?”

Suddenly, Servano PT laughed.

He switched off the churning and motioned Chess to come over. He pointed in the water — Maurie had a hard-on.

“Now that’s a good thing! See it? See how the water’ll do ya? Now that’s bad ass. That’s badass healing chakra, the roadblocks are liftin! That’s like the Red Sea parting! See? That means he’s feelin better already, that’s his way of tellin us about it! Isn’t it, King? H₂O’ll do that to ya. Get you excited about shit again. And when the body starts to feel itself come alive like that, it’s all good. That’s the lower-body chakras workin and that leads to the heart and head chakras, all that’s gonna be flowin. Sorry, Maurie! Ramona don’t have no shift today!”

He laughed and winked and flicked on the churner. The visitor leaned against the wall, his mood plummeting. After a few more minutes of bullshitting, the PT asked Chess if he was aware that Medicaid was reimbursing rapists and child molesters for their Viagra prescriptions.

Servano said he thought that was a crime.

Why is he telling me this?

“The state does all kinds of crazy shit. See, Maurie, he’s one of the lucky ones. It don’t look like it but it’s true. See, most these places are warehouses, but the doctors here are pretty good. We gotta pretty good level of care. Hell, prisoners get better treatment than civilians on the street. I mean, the jails are in bad shape, man. They got TB and syphilis and AIDS and now they got drug-resistant staph — everybody walkin around with boils on their faces filled with pus — guards too. Prisons are a natural breeding ground. Worse than kindygarden. But instead of cleaning up their act, they spend millions transporting these rapists. Know where they take em when they get sick? Beverly Hills! I am serious, Chester! They get breast implants too! I’m not shittin you, man! Hell, that nurse killer? What was his name, Speck? Speck kills 8 nurses, then goes and gets himself implants, on the taxpayer’s expense. Now ain’t that a bitch? Guess I should’ve said, Ain’t he a bitch.” He laughed at his joke. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead now. Maybe his knockers got all infected or they were too heavy and smothered him in his sleep! Triple Ds! Stupid mother fucker—the state probably would’ve paid for a breast reduction. Naw, I think somebody killed him. I remember reading that. Or whatever. That was one fucker who deserved to die. I’m sorry to use bad language, Chester, hope you’re not offended. But a man who shows no mercy should be shown no mercy. They should have thrown a nurse’s outfit over those tits and hunted him down like he did those poor young girls. Candystriped his sick ass. I’m tellin you there’s hundreds of these guys in jail, serial killers, baby rapers, cold bitches like the Green River Killer or the BTK, they’ll never know how many lives they took and you know what? They get their teeth fixed in Beverly Hills cause if they don’t, they can sue the whole system, they get their little pills for herpes and antidepressants when my sister can’t even afford the copay on Effexor. Hell, just talkin about it makes me want to go all Prozac! But the BTK? He don’t need no copay!”

THE disgruntled lawyer was still opposed to settling out but Chess was adamant and Remar had no choice other than to concede. He said he’d get word to him soon.

The moment he hung up, Chess’s phone rang — someone from an offshore pharmacy. They’d taken to calling at all hours to see if he wanted to renew his Vs: Vicodin, Valium, and Viagra. (They sent emails too: “FEEL BETTER TODAY!!!”) Why had he given out his cell number? That was insane. And why the fuck did I ever order online. They got my credit card now too. Yesterday, the person from “Support Team 24” sounded like a righteous gangbanger. The cellphone flashed UNKNOWN CALLER and when he picked up, a Mexivoice said, “How ya doin, man?” The salesman/homeboy quickly corrected himself: “I mean, how are we doing today, sir?” There was a big turnover among the refill drones, and people were obviously being recruited from streets and malls. The most loyal Internet customers were the readily identifiable dope fiends; every 2 weeks Chess was alerted that it was discount week, and he was “good to go.” What a farce. As a goof, he’d taken to saying, “Mr Herlihy overdosed — he’s dead.” But they just kept calling. He was in the machine now. Scary.

A piece of mail awaited, from New Horizon Credit Recovery. They were acting “on behalf of the US Department of Education” regarding a student loan Chess took out 25 years ago. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. The collection agency was demanding 83 dollar monthly payments in lieu of “garnishing wages.” They said it was in their power to seize tax refunds and even Social Security payments if he didn’t comply. Chess panicked — the loan came to almost $27,000, including 7 % interest. What if they found out about the FNF settlement? They were probably onto it already: that was their stock-in-trade. He got paranoid, and popped an Inderal/Vicodin/Xanax combo.

The timing of the letter was strange, to say the least. Maybe he was in a secret database of people who were about to get windfalls. He wondered if that was something he should consult Remar about but the lawyer wasn’t too happy with him right now, and might use it as another reason why Chester should hold out for a jury. A fleeting thought occurred that Remar was actually in cahoots with New Horizon, or even that the “recovery center” was a “dummy” entity the law firm resorted to using with hard-head clients. It didn’t really make sense — that would be totally illegal, and he doubted if Remar would so actively jeopardize his livelihood. But if New Horizon were real, maybe the lawyer had been in touch, promising them X amount on the dollar, and was soon to leverage the debt as a tool to force Chess to hang in and sue for everything FNF’s parent company was worth.

He pushed the weird notion from his head.

He lay down and smoked a joint, drifting back to that 1st time he was alone with Maurie after the “incident.” It was at the desert hospital: Chess cried and told his friend he was sorry. At least, that’s what he thought had happened. He distinctly remembered something. Still, much of it was a blur. (Chess figured he probably had a little PTSS goin on.) He couldn’t perfectly recall if, in a seizure of guilt, he had actually said something to Maurie about having pill-Punk’d him. The more stoned he got, and the more he obsessed, both false and real memories became deeply plausible. Why did he have such a big mouth? If Levin did get better, and was finally able to write or speak — even if he was still wearing a diaper—it would definitely be the major thing on his mind to share with the world, i.e., hospital staff and police—every fiber of his being would be marshaled to ask Chess what the fuck he’d meant by his weepy bedside apologia, or even likelier, stealthily bypass the man who had paralyzed him and wheel his drippy ass right to the authorities, or Servano PT, or whoever was handy.

Chess was seized by vertigo. He gripped the mattress and waited a few minutes for it to pass. He washed down 3 Compazines with a can of Squirt then idly picked up the letter from New Horizon. At the very bottom was a paragraph that said the debt would be canceled if a physician signed a form stating the borrower was “totally and permanently disabled.” Yeah well there’s my “out” right there. Maybe I should just change my name to Maurie Levin. It was almost funny.

He left the bed, steadied himself, and sat in the den to do a bit of Googling. There were chatrooms devoted to articulate people victimized by “credit recovery scams” long after falling on hard times. The collection agencies supposedly added 20 % to whatever you owed. If the company going after you was legit — and your debt was remotely tied to some defunct government loan program — there was no way to dodge paying it back, not even through bankruptcy.

“These people are like the Sopranos,” wrote TheLoan-Deranger. “You’d have to enter a witness protection program to get away, and even then it wouldn’t help”:

the principal cellist of the Louisiana Philharmonic owed a hundred thousand dollars and the lawyers said he should cut back on expenses like Internet access and gym membership and his cat. They actually told him to get rid of his f-ing cat!!!!!!! This is a musician who teaches at Tulane but only makes 20K a year!!!!!!!! Because that is what AMERIKA pays its artists!!!!! So a judge threw the case out but it was overturned and a fed appellate court said he should go find a job as a music store clerk. He can’t even visit his sick mother anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He got depressed and went back to bed.

He was running low on cash. Remar said that once the settlement was agreed on, it would take “around 2 weeks to cut a check.” Before that happened, Chess would have to sign a release. Maybe he’d call the firm and ask the secretary if he could come in and take care of that early, to save time. She probably wouldn’t know anything about it and would put him through to Remar. He doubted if the guy’d even take his call, unless it was explicitly about reversing engines and going ahead full steam with the suit. He thought about asking for an advance but remembered the lawyer saying he would only do that if his client promised to go all the way. That was out of the question now. Still, Chess was convinced he was doing the right thing.

He decided to go visit his mom again.