The Love You Crave

51.

Jeff and I sleep most of the way to Chicago. About an hour out, I give Bob Koltech a sack of cash and have him order a limo on his dime, so I won’t leave a paper trail.

“How much extra to spend the night here?” I ask.

“Just our rooms, food and transportation,” Bob says.

“How’s five grand sound?”

“Generous.”

I peel off fifty bills from one of the stacks in my case and add it to Bob’s bag.

“Don’t buy any liquor with that,” I say.

“What time you want to leave tomorrow?” he asks.

“I don’t know. We might even leave this afternoon, if my lady friend wants to come to Vegas.”

“Okay then. No liquor.”

When we land, Bennie the limo driver’s waiting for us with a stretch limo and a big smile. “You guys headed to UIC?” he says.

“We are,” I say.

“Good thing I’m your driver,” he says.

“Why’s that?”

“UIC has more than a hundred buildings on campus.”

“Over how many acres?”

“Two hundred forty.”

Bennie’s a proud father. Because his son is enrolled at UIC’s medical school, we get the full lecture on the ride over. The part I remember, UIC’s the nation’s largest medical school and has an annual budget of more than three hundred million dollars. Bennie claims thirty-five percent of the students speak English as a second language, which impresses him, for some reason.

“That’s amazing!” I say, noting the smirk on Jeff’s face.

Bennie says, “Which building you want?”

“Center for Magnetic Resonance Research.”

“Never heard of it.”

I punch the information into my cell phone. “1801 West Taylor Street.”

“Oh. You shoulda said MRI. So, you gonna enter the beast?”

“We’re just doing a short tour.”

“If you’ve got a pacemaker, or any metal inside you, they won’t let you near the beast. Can’t even enter the building! That’s the big boy I’m talkin’ about, the biggest MRI machine in the world.”

“Maybe we’ll get to see it,” I say.

Bennie looks up in the mirror to catch my eye. He nods his head to the side, indicating Jeff. “He don’t talk much, does he?”

“English is his third language.”

“No shit?”

“Hakuna uchafu,” Jeff says.

Bennie says, “What’s that?”

“Swahili,” Jeff says.

“No shit?”

Jeff smiles. “Exactly.”

Jeff and I enter the building. The small leather bag slung over my shoulder contains toiletries, a change of clothes, and a gun. The suitcase in my hand contains what’s left of the cash after paying Bob for the flight and his overnight expenses.

I look around till I spot what I’m looking for, an old man and his wife. Jeff heads to the reception area to strike up a conversation with the two ladies working the desk.

As I approach the elderly couple I say, “Which of you is getting scanned this morning?”

The woman has a patch over one eye, and her other one is rheumy and filled with cataracts. Nevertheless, she thinks she knows me.

“I’d know you anywhere!” she squeals.

“You would?”

“You’re that movie star, what’s-his-name!”

“No.”

“You are! I’d know you anywhere!”

I wink at her and say, “Please, I’m trying to stay in character.”

She giggles, displaying the whitest set of dentures I’ve ever seen. It makes no sense anything on the planet earth could be this white! Herman Melville spent the entire Chapter 42 of Moby Dick trying to explain how white the whale was, but Moby had nothing on this lady.

White teeth aside, she’s right. I do strongly resemble the famous movie star whose name currently escapes her, except that I’ve gone back to my original black hair color. When Doc Howard, Dr. Petrovsky, and their team of surgeons reconstructed my face, attempting to give me a new identity, they used a movie star’s photo as a guide. Personally, I liked my old face better, though I did have an enormous scar on it back then.

“I love your eyes!” she says.

Of course she does. They’re back to the original jade green color I was born with, now that I’ve stopped wearing those ridiculous blue contact lenses.

“I’m Mildred,” she says. “But you can call me Millie. And this is Walt. He’s the one with the nine o’clock appointment.”

Walt appears to be near death, but raises his eyebrows as if to say hi. I don’t speak eyebrow, so I just say “Hi Walt.”

Millie winks at me with her one eye. Or maybe she blinked. It’s hard to tell. She says, “If I were twenty years younger…” then her voice trails off.

If she were twenty years younger she’d what? I wonder. Twenty years younger would still make her fifty years older than Miranda!

I sit beside her, despite the fact I think she’s coming on to me. She pats my arm. I wonder if there’s an eye underneath the patch, then decide I don’t want to know.

“I can’t believe it’s you!” Millie says.

I get that a lot. You’d think people would come up with something more intelligent, but inevitably they say, I can’t believe it’s you.

Who else would I be? Who else would anyone be?

But wait. Millie’s not finished.

“Is it really you?” she says. “Are you really sitting right here next to me?”

She’s making as much sense as Ricky Ricardo singing You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille.

Then again, I recently asked a woman if she was okay after watching her walk into a lamp post and fall on her ass.

Before her head blew up.

“What’s in the suitcase?” Millie asks.

“Money.”

“Aw, you shouldn’t have!” she says, jokingly.

“Let me ask you a question.”

“Shoot!”

“Are you and Walt rich?”

Millie starts cackling.

Even Walt’s eyebrows manage to smile.

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” I say.

“Didja hear that, Walt? He’s propositioning me!”

This time I don’t try to interpret Walt’s eyebrows. I say, “Millie, I’ve got a five-forty appointment to be scanned today. If you’re willing to swap appointments with me, I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars cash.”

Millie gasps.

I look her in the eye. “What do you say?”

“Twenty thousand dollars…and a kiss!” She says.

Oh no, oh hell no! I’m thinking. But what I say is, “How lucky for me!”

Millie doesn’t just kiss me, she tongues the shit out of me! And hers is not an ordinary tongue, either. It’s a flippin’ freak of nature! It’s long, thick, and dry, and feels like sawdust wadding up in the back of my throat. I have to fight to hold back the gag reflex. As she extricates her tongue, her dentures dislodge. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but moments later, she speaks to the receptionist with me standing there, and before you know it, I’ve got Walt’s appointment.

I ask Jeff to check the inner offices, where I’ll have to change into one of those silly hospital gowns, even though they’re only scanning my brain. While he’s in there, I tell Norma the receptionist that if my scan turns out to be normal, I’m going to ask my girlfriend to marry me. I hand her the small gift-wrapped box.

“I haven’t told anyone about this, not even Jeff,” I say.

“Why not?” Norma says.

“I want it to be a surprise. Will you hold it for me, just until I come out?”

“Well, I’m not really supposed to hold items for patients.”

“Please? It would mean the world to me!”

“We have lockers.”

She tries to hand it back to me.

“Please? I’m not comfortable leaving it in a locker. It’ll only be twenty minutes.”

She sighs. “Okay.”

“Can you put it in your pocket?”

She sighs again. “Fine.”

“Promise not to tell anyone?”

“I promise,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“I hope my scan is normal,” I say.

Norma looks doubtful, but says, “I hope so, too.”

I get the impression she feels bad for my girlfriend.