Don’t stand there holding the pump like a mummy, Jane says. Kumar Walekar did that and bang, one shot to the heart. She ducks down in the passenger seat of our mustard-colored Buick. I start the gas pump and then crouch beside the back tire, out of any obvious line of fire, but who can be sure?
The oncologist leaves us waiting. And waiting. On his desk is a picture of his wife and daughter framed in painted Popsicle sticks. His wife’s skin is pale and her lips bright like pink valentine hearts, but she isn’t beautiful in the way that Jane is, with her tawny skin and wistful, almond gaze. On a previous visit, before we knew hopelessness, she considered seducing him. He doesn’t deserve you. I told her. True, she said, but if I could please him in some way...
Two blocks down the road the car dies again and we have to catch the 104. We can’t sit idle on a bench by the bus stop, Jane says. Sarah Ramos did that and bang, one shot to the abdomen. So we find a nearby tree and cling to its base like a pair of terrified koalas.
The hospital parking lot is strangely empty: A blue pickup truck, a red sports car with black racing stripes, a white van. I scan every car window for the dark barrel of a gun poking out. All clear, I say, and we take off for the door. I try walking quickly, but it feels like I’m moving through a thick, mossy bog. Jane passes me in a zig zag: four steps left, four steps right, left right left right. Don’t’ forget Linda Franklin, she yells over her shoulder, it’s harder to hit a moving target. Linda Franklin slowly pushed a shopping cart through the parking lot of Home Depot. When she stopped at her car: bang, one shot to the head.
The oncologist finally saunters in. How are we doing? He often says we. It makes our situation feel conspiratorial, like he is suffering beside us in this hollow, desolate desert, but when he goes home to the wife and daughter in that Popsicle frame, he forgets.
There’s a mountain I’d like to climb, Jane tells him in the flat pitch of despair. It’s not very tall, up and right back down in a day.
He looks at her with eerie bewilderment. His eyes move from her, to me, to her again. He puts his hands behind his head, elbows up and out like hawk wings. Let’s put it this way, he says. One wrong move and you crumble like a cracker.
Her eyes are circled in red. She closes them and moans as if in a dream.
We’ve never seen Paris or Barcelona or Rome, she whispers.
Overrated, I say and take her hand. Her fingers are cool, her nails a faint blue. As the hours pass, her skin blossoms into a tapestry of lilac and rose.
Please put me somewhere pretty.
I am struck by how tiny the urn is: the size of my palm; the size of a miniature glass bottle with a penny inside that I won for her at the county fair on our first date.
From the mountain’s summit, the green spine of a vast valley unfolds around me. Down below, a river veins the rocky terrain in shades of blue. She is the color of moon as the wind lifts her into the pale pink sky.
I take the 106 back to our south side trailer, darting in a zig zag across the gravel driveway, through the flimsy white door and safely inside.
