The Devil Knows You’re Dead

Chapter 7

“Come on in,” she said. “It was sweet of you to come. You’re looking well, Matthew.”

“So are you,” I said. “You’ve lost weight.”

“Hah,” she said. “Finally.” She tilted her head and looked me in the eye. “What do you think? Is it an improvement?”

“You’ve always looked good to me, Jan.”

Her face clouded and she turned from me, saying that she’d just made a fresh pot of coffee. Did I still drink it black? I said I did. No sugar, right? Right, no sugar.

I went to the front of the loft, where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Lispenard Street. Her bronze head of Medusa, the hair a writhing mass of snakes, stood on its plinth to the right of the low sofa. It was early work; I’d seen it and remarked on it the night we met. Don’t look her in the eye, Jan had told me, for her gaze turns men to stone.

Her own gaze when she brought the coffee, out of those large unflinching gray eyes, was almost as intimidating. She had lost weight, and I wasn’t sure it was an improvement. She looked older than the last time I’d seen her.

Her hair was part of it. It was completely gray now. It had been liberally salted with gray when I first met her, and never seemed to get any grayer. Now there were no dark hairs visible, and that coupled with the weight loss added years to her appearance.

She asked if the coffee was all right.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Aren’t you having any?”

“I haven’t been drinking much coffee lately,” she said. Then she said, “Oh, what the hell. Why not?” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a cup of her own. “It is good,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten how much I like the stuff.”

“What have you been doing, trying to switch to decaf?”

“I pretty much got away from coffee altogether,” she said. “But let’s not have one of those deadly AA conversations about all the things we don’t do anymore. What’s that story about the old guy in the Salvation Army band? ‘Yes, brothers and sisters, I used to drink, I used to smoke, I used to gamble, I used to go with wild, wild women, and now all I do is beat this goddamn drum.’ ” She took another sip of coffee and set the cup down. “Bring me up to date, Matthew. What have you been doing?”

“Beating my goddamn drum. Doing a little day work for a big agency. Working when I get a client, coasting when I don’t. Going to meetings. Hanging out. Keeping company with Elaine.”

“That’s going well, then? I’m glad. She seemed very nice. Matthew, I told you I wanted to ask a favor.”

“Yes.”

“So I’ll just come right out and ask it. I was wondering if you could get me a gun.”

“A gun.”

“There’s so much crime these days,” she said levelly. “You can’t pick up the paper without seeing something awful on every page. It used to be that people were safe in decent neighborhoods, but now it doesn’t seem to matter where you are or what time of day it is. The incident last week, with the young publisher. Right in your neighborhood, wasn’t it?”

“Just a couple of blocks away.”

“Terrible,” she said.

“Why do you want a gun, Jan?”

“For protection, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t really know anything about them,” she said thoughtfully. “Of course I would want a handgun, but there are different styles and sizes, aren’t there? I wouldn’t know what kind to pick.”

“You need a permit to own a gun in this city,” I said.

“Aren’t they difficult to get?”

“Very difficult. About the best way is to join a gun club and take a course, and in return for a fairly stiff fee they’ll help you fill out an application and steer you through the whole process. The training’s not a bad idea, actually, but the entire procedure takes a while and it’s not cheap.”

“I see.”

“If you went that route you could probably get a permit entitling you to maintain a handgun on the premises, and to transport it in a locked case to and from a firing range. That’s sufficient if you want protection from burglars, but you wouldn’t be able to tuck the gun in your purse for protection on the street. For that you’d need a carry permit, and they’re very slow to pass those out nowadays. If you had a store and routinely carried large sums of cash to the bank, then you might qualify. But you’re a sculptor and live and work in the same location. I knew a goldsmith years ago who was able to get a carry permit because he frequently transported quantities of precious metals, but you couldn’t claim that without paperwork to back it up.”

“Clay and bronze don’t cut it, huh?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Actually,” she said, “I wouldn’t need to carry the gun. Anyway, I’m not all that concerned about the legality of it.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t want to go through a lot of red tape applying for a permit. For heaven’s sake, is it my imagination or do half the people in this city have guns? They’re installing metal detectors in the schools because so many students are bringing guns to class. Even the homeless are armed. That poor derelict was living out of garbage cans and he managed to have a gun.”

“And you want one.”

“Yes.”

I picked up my coffee cup and found it empty. I couldn’t remember finishing it. I put it back down again and said, “Just who is it you want to kill, Jan?”

“Oh, Matthew,” she said. “You’re looking at her.”

“It started in the spring,” she said. “I noticed I’d lost a few pounds without even making an effort. I thought, hey, great, I’m finally getting a handle on my weight.

“I didn’t feel so hot. Low energy, a little nausea. I didn’t attach much significance to it. I’d felt that way in December, but I always have a bad time around the holidays, I get depressed and I feel lousy. Doesn’t everybody? I chalked it up to seasonal malaise and let it go at that, and when it came back a couple of months later I still didn’t pay much attention to it.

“Then my stomach started bothering me. I had a pain right here, and one day I realized I’d been having it on and off for weeks. I didn’t want to go to the doctor because if it was nothing I’d be wasting time and money and if it was an ulcer I didn’t want to know about it. I figured if I ignored it maybe it would go away. So I did and it didn’t. It got to the point where I had to go to sleep in a half-seated posture because sitting up relieved the pain. Well, denial can only get you so far, and finally I decided I was being ridiculous and I went to the doctor, and the good news was I didn’t have an ulcer after all. Now you’re supposed to ask me what the bad news was.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Cancer of the pancreas,” she said. “Do you want some more good news and bad news? The good news is they can cure it if they catch it early enough. All they have to do is remove the pancreas and the duodenum and reattach the stomach to the small intestine. You have to shoot yourself up with insulin and digestive enzymes a couple of times a day for the rest of your life, and your diet is extremely restricted, but that’s the good news. The bad news is they never catch it in time.”

“Never?”

“Almost never. By the time noticeable symptoms appear, the cancer has invariably spread to other abdominal organs. You know, I beat myself up at first for ignoring the weight loss and the other symptoms, but the doctor made me let myself off the hook. He told me it had unquestionably metastasized before I felt the first twinge or lost the first ounce.”

“And the prognosis?”

“It couldn’t be much worse. Ninety percent of people with pancreatic cancer are dead within a year of initial diagnosis. The rest of us are dead within five years. Nobody gets out of this alive.”

“Isn’t there any kind of treatment they can try?”

“There is, but it doesn’t keep you alive. They can do certain things to make you more comfortable. I had a surgical procedure last month to bypass a blocked bile duct. They connected — well, what’s the difference what they did, but it relieved the pain and got rid of the jaundice. It also left me feeling the way you’d expect to feel if they cut you open and sewed you back up again, but I think it was worth it. The first thing I noticed after surgery was that I’d gone completely gray, but that probably would have happened anyway. And if it bothers me I can always dye it, right?”

“Right.”

“It won’t fall out, because there’s no point in trying radiation or chemotherapy. Aw, Jesus, it just seems so… I was going to say unfair, but life’s unfair, everybody knows that. What it seems is so fucking arbitrary. Do you know what I mean? God picks your name out of a hat and you’re it.”

“What causes it, do they know?”

“Not really. Statistically alcohol and tobacco seem to be factors. Much higher incidence among drinkers and smokers. Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons hardly ever get it, but they hardly ever get anything. It’s a wonder they don’t all live forever. What else? A high-fat diet may play a role. And they think there’s a connection with coffee consumption, but it’s hard to tell because eighty percent of the population drinks the stuff. Not Mormons, of course, or Seventh-Day Adventists, God bless ’em. All they do is beat their goddamn drums. Well, that’s about all I do, isn’t it? I drank for as long as I could, and I smoked like a chimney for years. And of course I’ve always been a heavy coffee drinker, and that’s one vice that certainly didn’t stop when I got sober. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Is that why you’ve been staying away from it lately?”

“Of course. What else do you do once the horse is stolen? You buy a new lock for the stable door.” She heaved a sigh. “Although I swear I don’t think coffee had a damn thing to do with it. And I think the real reason I stopped drinking it is because that kind of behavior is automatic for people in Twelve-Step programs. What do we do in times of stress? We give up something that gives us pleasure.” She got to her feet. “I’m going to have another cup,” she announced. “Can I bring you some?”

“Sit down. I’ll get it.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I don’t have to conserve my strength. I’m not an invalid. I’m just dying.”

A little later she said, “I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m sick of the world and can’t wait to get out of it. Every day is very precious to me. I want to have as many of them as I possibly can.”

“Then what do you want with a gun?”

“That’s for when I run out of good days. I went over to the library and read up on the subject, and it seems that when the good days run out the bad days are pretty bad. You don’t just turn your face to the wall and expire. It’s apt to be pretty agonizing, and it can go on for a while.”

“Aren’t there things they can give you for the pain?”

“I don’t want that. I missed whole chunks of my life because I was too full of Smirnoff’s to know what was going on. I don’t want to jump out of this world and into the next one with a head all muddled with morphine. I had Demerol after surgery and I couldn’t stand the way it made me feel. I made them take me off it and give me Tylenol instead. ‘But you’ve got breakthrough pain,’ the resident said. ‘Tylenol won’t touch it.’ ‘Then I’ll live with it,’ I told him, and it wasn’t so bad. Do you think I was being a martyr?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because I don’t think so. Dammit, I’ve got too much invested in a sober life to settle for anything less than a sober death. I’d rather have the pain than something to cover it up. What the hell, this is the hand I was dealt. I figure I’ll stay in the game as long as I possibly can. Then I’ll fold. It’s my hand, I can fold when I want to.”

I looked out the window. It had grown darker still, as if the sun were setting. But it was hours too early for that.

“I don’t consider it suicide,” she said. “There’s a part of me that’s still Catholic enough to find suicide unacceptable. God gives you your life and it’s a sin to take it. But I don’t see this as a case of taking my life. I’d just be giving myself a gift.” She smiled gently. “The gift of lead. Do you know the poem?”

“What poem?”

“Robinson Jeffers, ‘Hurt Hawks.’ He finds an injured hawk in the woods near his home and he goes on about how he admires hawks, how if the penalties were the same he’d sooner kill a man than a hawk. He brings food to this one and tries to help it, but the day comes when the only thing he can do for the bird is put it out of its misery. ‘I gave him the lead gift in the twilight,’ I think that’s how the line goes. Meaning a bullet. He shot the hawk, and then it was able to take flight.”

I thought it over, and said, “Maybe it works better with hawks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gun suicides are messy. And they don’t always work. When I was fresh out of the academy I heard about a guy who put a gun to his temple and shot himself. Bullet glanced off the bone and plowed a furrow up the side of the skull, tunneled underneath the scalp and came out the other side. The poor bastard bled like a stuck pig, deafened himself permanently in one ear, and had a headache he couldn’t even begin to describe.”

“And lived.”

“Oh, sure. He never even lost consciousness. I’ve known of other cases where people managed to put a bullet in their brain but lived anyway, including a Housing Authority cop who’s spent the past ten or twelve years in a profound vegetative state. But assuming you’d get it right the first time, is it really the kind of gift you want to give yourself? It’s such a violent physical insult to the body. You wind up with the top of your skull gone and your brains all over the wall. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be graphic, but—”

“That’s all right.”

“Aren’t there gentler ways, Jan? Isn’t there a book on the subject?”

“Indeed there is,” she said. “I’ve got a copy on my bedside table. I had to buy the damned thing, too. I went to the library and there were sixteen people on the waiting list. I couldn’t believe it, I thought I was at Zabar’s trying to buy half a pound of lox. You want to kill yourself in this town, you have to take a number and wait.”

“How do they get it back?”

“How does who get what back? You lost me.”

“The book,” I said. “If it does its job, who’s around to return it to the library?”

“Oh, that’s rich,” she said. “You’d have to make a provision. ‘I, Janice Elizabeth Keane, being of sound mind—’ ”

“That’s your story and you stick with it.”

“ ‘—do hereby request that my just debts and funeral expenses be paid, and that my copy of Final Exit be returned forthwith to the Hudson Park branch of the New York Public Library—’ ”

“ ‘—in the hope that others may get as much out of it as I have.’ ”

“Oh, Christ, that’s wonderful,” she said. “And then they call the next person on the list. ‘Hello, Mr. Nussbaum? We have the book you requested. Please get your affairs in order.’ ”

How we howled.

The problem with the book, she said, was that most of the recommended methods involved ingesting some sort of mood-altering substance. Typically you were advised to swallow a fistful of sleeping pills and wash them down with a glass of whiskey. Since one of her prime motives for suicide was the desire to die sober, such methods struck her as counterproductive.

And suppose it didn’t work? Suppose she woke up twelve hours later with a hangover, and all she’d managed to do was lose her sobriety? My name is Jan and I’ve got one day back and two weeks to live. No, to hell with that.

“They also recommended carbon monoxide,” she said. “You attach a hose to the tailpipe and run it through the window. Tough to do without a car, though. I suppose you could rent one, but what would I do, park it on the street? Just as I was fading out some crackhead would break in and steal the radio.”

So a gun seemed like her best choice. She was going to be cremated anyway, so what did it matter what she looked like? The person who discovered her body might have a bad moment or two, but that was just too bad, and life was full of bad moments, wasn’t it?

She had thought of traveling to some southern state where they’d sell a handgun to anybody who wanted one, but she wasn’t sure just how the laws worked. Could you buy one if you were from out of state? Or did you have to show local ID? Maybe you could establish residence, the way people used to do to get a Nevada divorce. Anyway, how would you go about getting the gun back on the plane? She could always make the return trip on Amtrak, but she hated the idea of spending that many hours on a train. For that matter, she wasn’t crazy about the idea of flying anywhere, either.

“And then I thought, for God’s sake, the city’s full of unregistered guns, and it shouldn’t be that hard to get one. If schoolchildren can get them, if homeless derelicts walk around armed, how tricky can it be? And I asked myself if I had a friend who would know how to get his hands on a gun, and who maybe loved me enough to do it. And you, my dear, were the only person who came to mind.”

“I guess I’m flattered.”

“And thrilled in the bargain, huh?”

Was it raining outside? It looked as though it might be raining.

I said, “You know, I hate all this. I hate that you’re sick. I hate the idea of you dying.”

“I’m not crazy about it myself.”

I said, “I’ll get you the gun.”

“You will?”

“Why not?” I said. “What are friends for?”