Don't I Know You? Page 14

“Bet you a bottle of Macallan it’s benign, even though it’s an ugly-looking sucker.”

  “Doctor, do you want Heather to close for you?”

  “No, for chrissake, I can close up, you think I can’t close up? It’s like the intro to Gimme Shelter, I can do it in my fuckin’ sleep!”

  Rose sensed nips, tiny nips. What was the name of that Frida Kahlo painting of herself wild-haired, bleeding in a hospital bed, the red spilling over the frame? A Few Small Nips. They didn’t so much hurt as tingle. She was floating right under the surface now, but she didn’t want to wake up.

  Then she recognized the voice and knew why she was horizontal. She was being operated on by a seventy-year-old rock star and there was a bottle of bourbon going round the OR.

  Oddly enough, she was okay with this.

  * * *

  “Hey, sweetheart,” said the frayed voice, “how’re ya doin’?”

  Rose opened her eyes. The moon was gone. She looked down; she was in a hospital gown, under stiff, thin sheets, in a hospital bed. The figure sitting beside her wore green scrubs but his little cap had a skull pattern on it—skulls on skull, as it were. All up one hairy, muscular forearm he wore beaded Rastafarian bracelets. His hair was gray and pubic-kinky, escaping from the cap. His face was like something exhumed from deep in the earth but his brown eyes were warm—surprisingly clear and healthy eyes.

  “I feel like I’ve been run over by a garbage truck,” she said.

  “Good, good, that’s what we like to hear. It means you’re alive and your body’s pissed off.”

  Cautiously she shifted so she could look at him more directly.

  Keith Richards, her surgeon.

  “I’m sorry, I hope you don’t find it rude, but I have to ask…”

  “Yeah, don’t worry, I’d be asking questions too.”

  “Are you … like, trained at this? I mean do you do this often?”

  “Depends on whether the band’s rehearsing, but lately I’ve been operating once or twice a week. I did an open heart a couple weeks ago, which turned out pretty well. Not perfect, but the guy survived, more or less. Liver’s my specialty, though.”

  “Where did you learn how to do this?”

  “When I was in Switzerland. I met this cat who was into ‘expressive surgery,’ he called it. The jazz version, you know? He was a cardiologist but what he really wanted to do was play in a band.” Keith rolled his eyes.

  “I get a lot of those. Anyway, I taught him some chords. He wasn’t bad actually, decent sense of time, and then he let me watch him operate.”

  “Wow.”

  “He told me, just do surgery the way you play guitar, and you won’t have a problem. It’s all in the hands, right? Which turned out to be true. I mean, you have to have good backup in the OR. It’s like bein’ in a band that way. But if you kind of feel your way through the body, it usually works out.”

  Rose’s mouth hurt at the corners, where her dry lips had cracked.

  “Really? You improvise?”

  “Well, I did practice. There was this junkie in the clinic when I was there, who was down to eighty pounds and they let me operate on him.” Keith whistled.

  “Oh man, I’ll never forget the look of that liver—it was like roadkill. But I kind of chipped away at it, cleaned it up the way you would your rose garden in the fall, and three hours later, the guy’s got a hepatic unit like a newborn baby’s. He wakes up feeling great, kicks his habit in a week, and now he’s this celebrity meditation guru.”

  “Who?”

  “Sorry, can’t say. Anyway, when the operation was over I was standing there with the scalpel thinking, This is my new instrument.”

  “But doesn’t being a surgeon interfere with the whole music thing?”

  “That’s kind of seasonal anyway. Bit like being a fisherman. I mean, Mick’s always got other stuff going on, he’s off getting his brows done or whatever. Buying new leggings. If I put all my eggs in that basket, I’d be fucked. This way, when we tour, I hang up the knife and don’t book any OR time. But if the band’s between gigs, I can do a little surgery and feel like I’m keeping my chops up, right? It’s all about the hands.”

  “How does Mick feel? About you doing surgery on the side.”

  “He thinks it’s a load of crap. He said he wouldn’t trust his shih tzu to me. Which is a crap thing to say, because operatin’ on animals is no piece of cake. I tried it once on Hooker, my black Lab, and never again!”

  An image of Frank, her aging wheaten terrier, came into Rose’s thoughts and made her eyes tear up. Her neighbor with the cockapoo was taking care of him. She didn’t even tell her ex, and certainly not the kids, that she was going in for surgery.

  “But Mick doesn’t like me having a life of my own. He just wants me to get out there on stage, stay upright, and be more or less in tune.” His chest rumbled. “I think he’s jealous. I think he’d like to do surgery himself.”

  “Has he tried? I mean, do you guys all have special permits or something?”

  It was one thing for rock stars to snag the best table in a restaurant but she’d never heard of them getting backstage passes for hospitals.

  “No, but he’d probably pick it up fast. Mick’s a detail guy, very neat. Good motor skills.” Keith made sewing gestures. “But he’s got a low fucking boredom threshold, and there’s a lot of drudgery involved in operating. Darning socks sort of thing. Mandrax is good for that part.”

  A nurse came in, her stockings making a slithery sound, and gave Rose two white pills in a small paper cup. Just holding her head up to swallow them made her ribs ache.

  “But I do like the liver,” Keith went on, sitting on the end of the bed as he absentmindedly massaged Rose’s feet through the sheets. “I’ve operated on quite a few close friends, actually.”

  “Anita, you mean? Did you do surgery on Anita Pallenberg?”

  “No. Although we did fantasize about it.” He gave a warm chuckle.

  “That woman had the constitution of a Clydesdale. But I did, let’s see … Eric Clapton, and Nick Cave, and funnily enough, Pavarotti—he had early stage bile-duct cancer and I managed to nip that in the bud.”

  “So if my … tumor turns out to be benign, should I worry about something worse, down the road?”

  “Nah, your chances stay the same as anybody else. I think our bodies like to grow stuff, like mushrooms in the forest—it’s their artistic side coming out. Cancer is just creativity run amok,” he said, fishing in her bedside drawer for any stray codeine pills.

  Rose felt a wave of fatigue. She didn’t want to have a creative body. She wanted a dull one that behaved itself.

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I think you need to use more anesthesia when you operate,” Rose said. “I could sort of feel you inside me when I was on the table.” The phrase made her blush. “And I could hear you kibitzing with the nurses.”

  “You’re joking! Oh that’s not good. I’ll speak to the anesthesiologist, or whatever you call him.” He gurgled. “You don’t want to be conscious for the sloppy bits.”

  “It’s okay. It wasn’t torture, it was just weird. Especially since your voice sounded so familiar. I’m a big fan, by the way. I play Main Offender all the time.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Good one, that.”

  “So … it was confusing, that’s all.”

  “Look sweetheart, I’ve had surgery too. It’s no picnic.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was after I fell out of that fucking palm tree in Fiji. It was only seven feet off the ground but I hit my head, and had an aneurism. Nearly croaked. They flew me to the mainland, operated on my brain, and I was in a coma for weeks.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “World’s worst hangover when I woke up from that. And I’ve had a few.”

  “Did you think you were dying?

  “I had the tunnel thing happening. The white light … train come in a station sort of thing.” He laughed. “Yeah, I was jamming with the
big boys.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “Silly. I felt pretty arsed about falling out of a tree, and not a very tall one either. I thought about Patti, how I’d miss her, and the kids. Plus the band, of course. Even Mick. Basically I felt embarrassed to be dying.”

  A slithery sound as the nurse came back in. Her name tag read “Shell.” She wore dark lipstick and looked more like someone in costume as a nurse.

  “Dr. Richards, the lab reports are in. Do you want to take a look at them now?”

  “Yeah, I’ll step outside with you.”

  Rose reached out for his hand, and he took it in both of his.

  “I won’t make you wait.”

  They left the room and Rose lay there trying not to care too much about her life. She wished she’d said yes more often in the past, yes to risky things that might have taken her down different roads. But she had been brave, more than once. Marrying Eric (a mistake, as it turned out, but the first ten years were good). Having Ceri. Not giving up on the writing.

  An image came to her, of her thirty-one-year-old self. Her blond hair was long and she was in a taxi, heading into New York with the manuscript of her first book, Night Crossing, beside her. No appointments set up—she literally pushed it through the transom over the door of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “Your submission created quite a stir in the office,” the letter began, when it arrived weeks later. It was a rejection but an encouraging one.

  Rose looked back on her own innocence as if she were out walking a dog that had stopped far behind her to explore the woods until she had lost sight of him. And kept waiting, patiently, for his return.

  Keith Richards and Shell came back into the room.

  “I knew you were a lucky girl,” he said, his face crinkling. Shell beamed too, as if they were a couple announcing a pregnancy.

  “It’s negative?”

  “Yes. Harmless, but sizable, which explains the pain. You’ll be fine now.”

  Rose wept a little.

  “I was prepared for the worst,” she said, swabbing her cheeks with a tissue. “I always imagine the worst.”

  “And now, we’re going to toast you.”

  Another nurse brought in a trolley, with a silver shaker on it, an ice bucket, martini glasses, a jar of olives, a lemon, and a zester. Plus a glass dish that contained something mottled and oysterlike: Rose’s hemangioma.

  “Olive, lemon, or…”

  Keith pretended to slurp the tumor down, and they all laughed nervously.

  “No takers? They say it’s like a Malpeque, quite briny.”

  Then he mixed some Grey Goose vodka with ice and made a noisy show of shaking it up. He poured it into three martini glasses and added curls of lemon zest.

  Rose sat up, smoothing her hair behind her ears. She had an urge to cut it very short, and dye it patent-leather black, or fuchsia, or both. Bangs with fuchsia tips. Her daughter would be appalled. But there was the rest of her life to live now, after all. The martini glass felt silvery cold in her hands.

  Keith held up his drink and tipped his head forward like a monk. The fingers on his right hand were a little gnarled with arthritis, Rose noticed. But they had moved so gently inside her. She had a fleeting desire for something more—an appendectomy?

  He met her eyes.

  “To your continued health.”

  Before the World Was Made

  Our bus driver was a little red-haired guy with bushy ginger muttonchops. We were heading north out of the city into the faded high rises of Don Mills, on one of the routes where they still announce the stops live. “Chipping Road next,” he said with his lips against the mesh of the microphone. Then he began to croon.

  Down on Cyprus Avenue … with a childlike vision leaping into view …

  He was driving like a show-off too, swinging the bus way out on the curves like a matador flaring his cape. Across the aisle from me was an elderly woman who gave me a fearful, what’s-with-our-driver look. The only other passengers were two teenage boys with corpse-sized duffel bags slumped at their feet, and hockey sticks. But they didn’t seem worried.

  Ahead of us was a cluster of schoolgirls, long hair whipping in the wind, waiting by the curb. As cars honked the driver plunged across two lanes of traffic to pick them up. I’m not even sure it was a regular stop. The girls were dressed identically in white knee-highs, white shirts, plaid ties, and micro-short tartan skirts. When the door opened they came bubbling up the steps, all long legs and knapsacks—so much beauty, like five young Cate Blanchetts. As they moved down the aisle their unzipped parkas shed cold winter air on us.

  One of them, ginger-haired like the driver, punched him on the arm as she went by.

  “Hey Van, ’sup. Would you kiss-a my eyes?”

  This caused the other girls, who had already staked out the back of the bus, to shriek with laughter. It was three o’clock on Friday afternoon and they were revved up for the weekend. Everyone on the bus seemed to be heading home but me.

  I’d given myself a full hour to get to my interview on Castlefield Street, a long street on the Google map that petered out into blankness. The street view showed carpet outlets, appliance warehouses, and the headquarters for Flo-Q, a company that sold upscale bathroom fixtures and spa water features. The LinkedIn listing had said they were looking for a writer who could “bring sparkle” to their online catalogue copy.

  Lately I’ve been writing fiction but my last novel, Night Crossing, didn’t perform well. Too literary, my agent said. So my new plan is to use my “skill set” to get an undemanding job in “communications,” in the “water-feature field” if necessary, while I get up every morning at five a.m. to write. I’m already 120 pages into my next novel, Havoc, which has thriller elements. I’m pretty happy with it so far. I just need this job.

  We were crossing a bridge over a ravine, with a browny-silver thread of water twisting below. The Don River, presumably. The girls at the back of the bus were passing around a phone video laughing with self-conscious loudness as they fell against one another. The driver began to sing, gripping the wheel with both meaty, freckled hands.

  And I’m conquered in a car seat …

  Good voice, vaguely familiar, although it sounded more like a musical instrument—a tenor saxophone? The girls clapped. The woman across the aisle tucked her scarf more tightly around her throat. She was wearing a tailored wool coat and a proper felt hat with a little brim. I looked down at my puffy parka with the ski-lift tag still dangling from the zipper. They’re almost impossible to get off.

  The thing is, when you work at home, eccentricities can start to pile up. Maybe you leave the house in the morning without checking for toothpaste at the corners of your mouth. Or you bike to the corner to buy milk, then leave one leg of your jeans rolled up all day.

  “Attention,” the driver said into his mike, “would the people in the back of the bus please move up into my lap?” The girls whooped and the redhead ran up the aisle to perch on one of his thick thighs. He nuzzled her neck, making fart-noises like someone blowing against a baby’s stomach.

  Wow. How can he get away with this? I wondered. Maybe he’s already given his notice, and this is his last day on the job. The hat lady now looked truly frightened. We were moving through fringes of the city past boarding kennels and scrap-iron lots.

  “I maaaay go crazy,” the driver sang, “be-fore that mansion on the hill…”

  “Too late for that,” said the girl as she twirled his red hair into ringlets. “Where’s your crazy little captain hat, Van?”

  He reached into a briefcase at his feet and pulled out a brown corduroy cap with gold braid. She put it on. A bright-eyed, pointy-nosed girl who looked like a young Winona Ryder came up the aisle and started taking pictures of them.

  I checked the time: less than half an hour left to make my interview. Out the window, Don Mills had vanished, replaced by farm fields with a scattering of sheep here and there, like soft gray boulders. The syringelike spire of the CN T
ower grew smaller and smaller behind us.

  I rehearsed what I would say in the interview. (“The taps and faucets we use every day can either enhance or diminish our quality of life…”) and reminded myself to act fifty percent more animated than felt sane or normal.

  I made my way to the front of the bus.

  “How much farther to Castlefield?”

  He looked up at me with his wide, flushed face and smallish green eyes. Squinting, he put a finger to the center of his forehead for a few seconds, then stabbed it in my direction like a fork.

  “Night Crossing, right?”

  Now I was frightened too.

  “Underrated, man! The last third, with the Nigerian stowaway dude in the container ship? Fan-tabulous.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Hey, don’t worry about Castlefield,” he said, checking his mirrors. “You don’t need that bath shit anyway. We’re taking the scenic route today.”

  “I can see that, but—”

  “Just loosen up, angel,” he said, giving my hip a fist-bump. “The next one’s cookin’.”

  “Are you referring to … my current book?”

  “Yeah!” He gripped his forehead. “Gimme a sec—Hassock. Hassidic…?”

  “Havoc.”

  “Right! But here’s the problem.” He eased up on the gas and looked at me again. “You okay with a little feedback?”

  “I guess so.” Anyone who said that was going to give it to you anyway.

  “You’re too on the beat. You need to stay behind it a little, know what I mean?” He drummed on the steering wheel to demonstrate. “Unn-chukka, unn-chukka…”

  I nodded.

  “There’s a kind of a choke thing going on with you.”

  The road curved ahead of us. He accelerated, causing the schoolgirls to shriek and cling to one another. I braced myself against a pole. As we pulled past an eighteen-wheeler the trucker gave us a long, angry blast of the horn.

  “And I’d rethink the title. Havoc sounds like something you’d buy at IKEA.”

  I could feel my face burning.

  “I like the title.” I said. “It sounds like a thriller.”

  The hockey boys had scrunched up a piece of newspaper and were kicking it up and down the aisle like a soccer ball. No longer trying to hide her panic, the hat lady was on her feet, yanking on the stop cord. We pulled over to the curb and the doors hissed open.