There are twelve beds in Simon’s ward at San Francisco General. The swinging door that leads inside has a laminated sign – MASK GOWN GLOVES PUNCTURE PROOF NEEDLE BOX IN ROOM NO PREGNANT WOMEN – and a smaller sign that reads No Flowers.
Klara and Robert stay overnight in Simon’s room, sleeping in chairs. His bed is separated from another by a thin white curtain. Simon doesn’t like to look at his roommate, a former chef whose bones now protrude; he can’t keep anything down. Within days, the bed is empty again, the partition drifting in the breeze.
Robert says, ‘You have to tell your family.’
Simon shakes his head. ‘They can’t know I went like this.’
‘But you haven’t gone,’ says Klara. Her lap is covered with pamphlets – When a Friend Has Cancer; Affection, Not Rejection – and her eyes are slick. ‘You’re right here, with us.’
‘Yeah.’ Simon’s throat feels tight: the glands in his neck are swollen. One night, when Robert and Klara leave to get takeout, Simon scoots to the edge of the bed and reaches for the phone. He’s ashamed to realize he doesn’t even have Daniel’s number, but Klara left a pile of belongings on her chair, including a slender red address book. Daniel picks up on the fifth ring.
‘Dan,’ says Simon. His voice is raspy and his left foot twitches, but he floods with gratitude.
There is a long pause before Daniel speaks. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s me, Daniel.’ He clears his throat. ‘It’s Simon.’
‘Simon.’
Another pause, which stretches so long Simon knows it won’t end unless he fills it.
‘I’m sick,’ he says.
‘You’re sick.’ A beat. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Daniel speaks stiffly, as if to a stranger. How long has it been since they’ve talked? Simon tries to imagine how Daniel’s face might look. He’s twenty-four years old.
‘What are you doing?’ Simon asks – anything to keep his brother on the phone.
‘I’m in medical school. I just got home from class.’
Simon pictures it: doors whooshing open and shut, young people walking with backpacks. The thought comforts him so deeply that he feels almost able to fall asleep. With his nerve pain and his twitching, he spends most nights awake.
‘Simon?’ Daniel asks, softening. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘No,’ Simon says, ‘there’s nothing.’ He wonders if Daniel is relieved when he hangs up.
June 13th. Two of the men on Simon’s hall died in the night. His new roommate – a Hmong boy in glasses who keeps asking for his mother – can’t be older than seventeen.
‘There was a woman,’ Simon tells Robert, perched beside him as always. ‘She told me when I’d die.’
‘A woman?’ Robert scoots closer. ‘What woman, baby? A nurse?’
Simon is light-headed. They’ve been giving him morphine for the nerve pain. ‘No, not a nurse – a woman. She came to New York. When I was a kid.’
‘Sy.’ Klara looks up from her chair, where she is stirring a yogurt for him. ‘Please don’t.’
Robert keeps his eyes on Simon. ‘And she told you – what? What do you remember?’
What does he remember? A narrow door. A bronze number swinging on its hinge. He remembers the filthiness of the apartment, which surprised him; he had imagined a scene of tranquility, as might appear around the Buddha. He remembers a stack of playing cards from which the woman asked him to pick four. He remembers the cards he chose – four spades, all of them black – and the hideous shock of the date she gave him. He remembers stumbling down the fire escape, his palm clammy on the railing. He remembers that she never asked for money.
‘I always knew it,’ he says. ‘I always knew I’d die young. That’s why I did what I did.’
‘Why you did what?’ asks Robert.
Simon lifts a finger. ‘Why I left Ma. For one thing.’
He puts a second finger out but loses his train of thought. Talking feels like trying to reach the surface of an ocean. More and more, it’s like he’s drifting toward the bottom, like he knows what’s down there, though he can’t explain it to anyone on land.
‘Hush,’ says Robert, smoothing the hair off his forehead. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters.’
‘No. You don’t understand.’ Simon dog-paddles; he gulps. It is urgent, that he say this. ‘Everything does.’
When Robert leaves to use the bathroom, Klara comes to Simon’s cot. The skin beneath her eyes is swollen.
She says, ‘Will I ever find someone I love as much as you?’
She scoots into bed beside him. He’s become so thin that they both fit easily in the hospital’s twin.
‘Please,’ says Simon: her words, when they stood on the roof as the sun rose, when they stood at the very beginning. ‘You’ll find someone you love much more.’
‘No,’ gasps Klara. ‘I won’t.’ She lays her head on Simon’s pillow. When she turns to look at him, her hair falls over his collarbone. ‘What did she tell you?’
What does it matter, now? ‘Sunday,’ Simon says.
‘Oh, Sy.’ There is a strangled cry, like something that would come from a chained dog. Klara puts a palm over her mouth when she realizes it’s hers. ‘I wish – I wish . . .’
‘Don’t wish it. Look what she gave me.’
‘This!’ says Klara, looking at the lesions on his arms, his sharp ribs. Even his blond mane has thinned: after an aide helps him bathe, the drain is matted with curls.
‘No,’ says Simon, ‘this,’ and he points at the window. ‘I would never have come to San Francisco if it weren’t for her. I wouldn’t have met Robert. I’d never have learned how to dance. I’d probably still be home, waiting for my life to begin.’
He’s angry with the disease. He rages at the disease. For so long, he hated the woman, too. How, he wondered, could she give such a terrible fortune to a child? But now he thinks of her differently, like a second mother or a god, she who showed him the door and said: Go.
Klara looks paralyzed. Simon remembers the expression he saw on her face after they moved to San Francisco, that eerie combination of irritation and indulgence, and he realizes why it disturbed him. She reminded him of the woman: counting down, watching him. Inside him a bud of love for his sister breaks open. He thinks of her on the rooftop – how she stood at the edge and spoke without looking at him. Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t start your life.
‘You aren’t surprised that it’s Sunday,’ Simon says. ‘You knew all along.’
‘Your date,’ Klara whispers. ‘You said it was young. I wanted you to have everything you’ve ever wanted.’
Simon squeezes Klara’s hand. Her palm is fleshy, a healthy pink. ‘But I do,’ he says.
Sometimes, Klara leaves to let Simon and Robert be alone. When they’re too tired to do anything else, they watch videos, rented from the San Francisco Public Library, of the great male dancers: Nureyev, Baryshnikov, Nijinsky. One of the Shanti Project volunteers wheels the television in from the community room, and Robert lies with Simon in his cot.
Simon stares at him. How lucky I was to know you. He fears for Robert’s future.
‘If he gets it,’ Simon tells Klara, ‘he has to get into the trial. Promise me, Klara – promise me you’ll make sure.’
Word has spread throughout the corridor about an experimental medication that showed promise in Africa.
‘Okay, Sy,’ Klara whispers. ‘I promise. I’ll try.’
Why, in his years with Robert, has he had such trouble expressing love? As the days become longer, Simon says it over and over: I love you, I love you, that call and response, as essential to the body as food or breath. It is only when he hears Robert’s reply that his pulse slows, his eyes close, and he is able, at last, to sleep.