Ask for Me Tomorrow

His rate of respiration had increased and she knew for sure now that he was awake and simply didn’t want to be bothered either with food or with her.

“If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you something else after Violet Smith leaves for her meeting. Are you hungry?”

One side of his mouth moved and a noise came out. It didn’t sound like an animal or even like one of the plants outside on the patio. It was a vegetable sound coming from a vegetable. “He’s a sorrowful figure,” Violet Smith often said in Marco’s presence as if the stroke that had paralyzed his vocal cords and most of his body had also deafened him. This wasn’t true. He had, as Gilly was well aware, ears like a fox. She and Reed had to be very cautious and time their meetings according to Marco’s pills and injections.

“How would you like to eat in your Ferrari tonight?” Gilly always referred to the wheelchair as some kind of sports car. It was intended partly to amuse him and partly to soften, for her, the constant and imposing reality of it. Reed supplied her with names, most of which were unfamiliar to her — Maserati, Lotus Europa, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Jensen-Healey.

He opened his right eye slowly and with difficulty, as if the lid had been glued shut during his afternoon sleep. It was impossible to tell from the eye’s expression whether he was amused or not. Probably not. It was a very small joke and he was a very sick man. But Gilly could not help trying. Trying was part of her nature, just as giving up was part of Marco’s. He had given up long before the stroke. It was merely a punctuation mark, a period at the end of a sentence.

“Okay, so it’s the Ferrari. The Lamborghini’s in the garage, anyway, having a tune-up... Eat a little fish to keep your strength up... Do you have to go to the john?”

The fingers of his right hand dismissed the idea.

“The doctor thinks you should drink more water if you can.”

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He had given up. His hunger was only for pills, his thirst only for the fluid in the hypodermic needle.

Violet Smith came into the room with the tray, using her bony butt to close the door behind her. She was a tall, light-skinned Indian from South Dakota, Oklahoma, Michigan, Arizona, depending on her mood and whichever state happened to be in the headlines at the time. A severe tornado in Oklahoma was likely to elicit stories of a childhood spent in constant danger darting from storm cellar to storm cellar. At these times her dull brown eyes would start gleaming like polished bronze and her smooth solemn face would crack up with excitement. She forgot all about the forms she’d filled out at the employment agency which had sent her out to Gilly less than a year ago. The information was simple: Violet Smith, now forty-two, had been born and raised, educated and employed, in Los Angeles. Gilly suspected that she’d never been east of Disneyland or north of right where she was now, Santa Felicia.

“I bought this red snapper out on the wharf this morning, fresh caught.” Violet Smith held the silver-lidded tray in front of her like a shield, half proudly, half defensively. “We should eat what the Lord provides for us in His seas and rivers instead of deliberately raising a bunch of cows and pigs and then slaughtering them.”

“Don’t proselytize,” Gilly said.

“I can’t do it if I don’t know what it means.”

“The hell you can’t.”

“Was I doing that what she said, Mr. Decker? Was I?... No? No. Mr. Decker says I wasn’t doing it. He shows good judgment. What a pity he can’t read. It diminishes a man not to be able to read his Bible.”

“He doesn’t own one.”

“It’s not too late. He could be saved in the nick of time like I was, Jesus be praised.”

“Just put the tray down and shut up.”

“I think he could be saved.”

“All right, work on it tonight at church. But kindly don’t use our real name. I won’t have a bunch of lunatics raving and ranting in public about us needing to be saved for committing God knows what sins. People might think this is a house full of thieves, crooks, murderers.”

“We are all flawed,” Violet Smith said coldly. “Just look who’s prosetizing now.”

“Proselytizing. And that’s not what it means.”

“Meaning is in the eye of the beholder. I think you were doing what you thought I was doing. Isn’t that right, Mr. Decker? Yes? He says yes.”

“Hurry up, you’ll be late for your meeting.”

Gilly looked at her wristwatch, noting with surprise how thin and wrinkled her arms were getting, as if her body were shrinking and aging in sympathy with Marco’s no matter how much food she ate or how many times Reed assured her she was still young. “You don’t look a day over forty,” Reed would say. “That’s because I’m not a day over forty, I’m ten years over forty.” “Oh, can that crap. Who counts, anyway?” She counted. He counted. Everybody counted, whether they admitted it or not. Age was the second thing a child learned. What’s your name, little girl? How old are you?... Gilda Grace Decker. I’m fifty.