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In Sickness and in Health

Jake

A loud rap on the window startles me from my sleep. The sky has turned dark, and the dash clock reads 5:15 p.m. I’m in the car next to the greasy-looking river. I came here after I walked out and…fell asleep.

I’m freezing. I ache. I’m soaked in sweat.

Another rap.

It’s Dodi.

“What the fuck ,” she says. As usual, there’s no question mark at the end of it.

I crack the door.

“What’s going on here?” she demands. “Why are you camped out here by tent city like a homeless person?”

“I am homeless. I left Grant’s.”

“You’re homeless,” she says flatly. “In a Lamborghini.”

“A what?” I glance around me at the interior of the car. I’ve never understood how people can identify car makes. Cars are the most uninteresting thing in the world to me.

I watch her draw two deep breaths in through her nose. She looks frantic and furious.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“It was kind of hard not to notice the giant black supercar lurking one block from work. You’re going to get robbed. You need to check yourself into a hotel.”

“I don’t think I can drive right now.”

She peers closer at me. “You look terrible. What’s going on? You drunk?”

“No.”

“Sick?”

“Sort of.”

“I’m not going to keep digging.”

“Well, I’m dying, you know.”

She narrows her eyes at me, and then, surprisingly, she touches my forehead, my cheek. Her touch is so gentle. “Jesus,” she mutters. “Did you pick something up on the plane? You know you’re not supposed to lick the tray table.”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Idiot,” she says without looking at me. “You can’t stay here. You could get stabbed.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’ll just move up the funeral planning, then. Cremation or mushroom box in the woods?”

I tip my head back against the headrest and look at her face. “Are you still helping me, then?”

“Of course I’m helping you.”

I’m so relieved I could lie down and catch up on every hour of missed sleep from the past eight years. “I’d like to be cremated, and I want you to make decorative hand soaps with my ashes and hand them out at the office.”

Her lips press into a flat line. “I think you’re going to learn to love toadstools.” She glances to the left and then the right, like she’s searching the environs for inspiration. “Can you follow me?”

I open the car door to step out, but she stops me.

“I meant in the car. You can’t just leave the car here.”

“Why not?”

“You really don’t know a fucking thing about cars, do you?”

“No.”

She swears under her breath.

In the end, we leave my car where it is and take hers out toward the freeway. She cranks the heated seat for me and I nod off with the side of my head pressed against the icy glass of the window. The next thing I know, she’s shaking me awake. We’re in a parking lot surrounded by a familiar mushroom forest of squat apartment blocks. In the elevator, I notice she’s holding my bugout bag, and on the third floor she lets me into an apartment that couldn’t be more different from Grant’s penthouse. It’s small and cramped, and it smells like food and Dodi’s perfume. The lights are golden and warm, the furniture cheap and worn, and every surface is a petri dish for a living, growing colony of clutter. A special type of brightly colored, predominantly plastic clutter.

Toys. There are toys all over the place. Legos, art supplies, and Barbies—Barbies everywhere .

“I know it’s a mess,” Dodi says defensively. “You try keeping up with a six-year-old.”

“Do you have allergy meds?” I ask.

“What? Why?”

“I’m allergic to cats.”

She glares at me and stalks off without saying anything. She rustles in the bathroom, knocking cabinet doors open and closed, and I peer around the living room. I circle back to the front door and lean my head into the tiny kitchen. No scratching posts, no food dishes. No cat hair or cat toys.

Was there ever a cat? Did the cat turn into a human child? Because I still feel like we had actual conversations about a fucking cat —

I step on something and discover the dismembered Ken doll in a little heap on the floor, his glasses bent out of shape now.

“Cat’s been playing Frankenstein with your doll,” Dodi says, standing in front of me with a folded towel.

Cat. A little girl named Cat.

Silence, silence yawning wide and deep and endless and…

“Her meeting you was never part of the plan, and I don’t want her feeling nervous about a strange man staying in our apartment. You can crash here for one night if you stay in my room. If you so much as step a toe outside, you’re dead.” She undermines this threat by gently pressing the towel into my arms and dropping an aspirin into my hand for my fever.

“Where is she?”

“I have to get her from dance class. You’re going to do whatever you need to do, and you better be locked up in that room by the time we get back. You can use the shower and wash your clothes. If there’s anything edible in the fridge, you can have it. I think there’s a nice bottle of mustard in there. Check the expiration date.”

She turns and leaves without looking at me, the door clicking softly shut behind her.