Love, Death and Raquetball

LOVE, DEATH AND RACQUETBALL

Joe’s death was long and agonizing. The disease came and went, then came again a few years later and put the squeeze on like a giant boa. Terence’s was immediate. He lost control of the car exiting the highway, hit some pylons and the car exploded. Members of the Jewish burial society had to come with body suits and gloves to search for the pieces of him which all needed to go in the casket so that when the Resurrection of the Dead comes God can put him back together intact. His was a closed casket funeral. Joe didn’t have that problem. He checked out in one piece so he was good to go from the moment he passed. 

In this life, they didn’t know each other, or perhaps they did, remotely, it hardly mattered. But they had a lot in common. Both men were in their 60s; they had swag, brains, money, influence, positions of communal leadership, families, children, wives and, yes, girlfriends. Did the wives know about the girlfriends? The wives didn’t let on that they knew, but they knew. That’s how it is; Watergate, Iran-Contra gate, Clinton-gate, men are no good at covering their tracks. Terrence’s was a transsexual, which didn’t lessen the betrayal. The girlfriends knew about the wives. One wife, Barbara, was an artist and the other, Terrence’s, did volunteer work with children with special needs. Terrence had a daughter with Down Syndrome, for which he blamed his wife. Not that he didn’t love the child, but the way he saw it, Laura would be made to do penance by overlooking and keeping quiet about his girlfriend.

Angie, formerly Greg, offered Terrance the cat and the meow. He took them. She was fully intact, Greg’s legacy, and had a feline knack for landing on her feet. Terrence showed up when he wanted, when it was convenient for him without calling and Angie liked that. How real and un-suburban, he thought. They did lines of coke that he bought on the down low from a connection he made through his previous girlfriend, followed by rough sex that shook the tumble down apartment building where she lived. With Angie, all semblance of Terrence’s buttoned up day life vanished. He day dreamed of her versatility and sniffled his way through philanthropic meetings and religious services. His moods bounced around and kept Laura entertained if not a bit concerned that he needed professional help.

Joe paid for his’s apartment. For that and the stipend he gave her she took care of all of his salacious needs on average one weekend per month. She had kids to feed and no child support coming in so why act coy. The idea that a man should remain faithful to his wife was lost on Joe. His dad and grandfather before him took mistresses. Their wives didn’t disavow them, why should his behave any different? Barbara the artist knew that Joe was splashing his paint onto someone else’s canvas. She blamed herself. Oral sex repulsed her and vaginal was a struggle without the popular lubricants that she read were carcinogenic and the women in her family had a history of cervical cancer.

Terrence was on his way to see Angie when he died, when his car flipped over and exploded on impact with the pylons. At that instant, Laura felt a fleeting tremor like a subtle weight lift off of her soul. She would never forget it. She suspected some seismic shift in the world or in her life but she didn’t know what it was. She picked up the phone to call her husband; it went straight to his voice on voice mail. She left a message, hung up and sent him a brief text to please call her. She went outside to get in her car to go to the grocery store with her DS daughter and they found ten five dollar bills scattered about her front lawn. There was no apparent explanation; for all anyone knew they had fallen out of the sky. The young lady’s allowance was $5.00 per week that her father always gave her. She gathered up the bills while jumping up and down , laughing and shouting. She gave a few to her mother and kept the rest for herself. They hugged laughed and jumped up and down together.

Joe was religious in the early years of their marriage when the kids were small, but as everyone aged he traded it in for the limelight, big money, side deals and side women. In his last twenty plus years he was spiritual as long as someone was looking at or listening to him. He had a certain fondness for the sound of his own voice; his kids teased on his death bed that it was probably the last thing he would hear and the one thing he would miss most when he departed this world. He tried to smile but the coughing drowned it out. Barbara winced when he coughed but she didn’t reach over to touch or comfort him. 

He knew that his extra marital liaisons over the years cast a long shadow but he wasn’t sure what more to make of it. The God thing didn’t resonate. God brought peace not judgment, that’s as far as got with it. He had a few religious friends who would have disagreed but that was why he ditched religion, it was a buzz kill and spoiled the party. The idea that his demise, whenever it came, originated as a punishment from Above for his philandering splashed in the moat outside the castle of his ego and drowned there. The heavy toll it took on Barbara never entered his calculations or conscience. He lay there alternating between his bed at home and a hospital bed with days or weeks left, no one knew, thinking of his girlfriend and the good sex they had or of the magnificent business deals he had managed to pull off over the years. 

Joe lay dying in a 5th floor hospital room, dying. He knew it, Barbara knew it. The kids had said their last goodbyes. The room overlooked the freeway that Terrence was trying to exit when he crashed and died. Joe heard a loud thump like a sonic boom, got up with effort and looked out the window. There was a car on fire flipped over on its side with smoke pouring out. He told Barbara he wished he could do something for the occupant. Barbara came over to take a look. She gasped. Emergency vehicles rushed in from all sides, the sounds of their sirens muted by the distance and the thick window glass. ‘Now that’s how to die,’ Joe murmured to himself, his head resting against the window, ‘not in and out of hospitals for four years.’ 

The getting up and walking 3 steps winded him. Joe went back to lie down. Everything hurt. Through the haze of the pain and the pharmaceuticals he saw himself 20 years ago dressed up to play racquetball at his club. He leaped back and forth on the court reaching difficult shots and scoring winners. He remembered the name of the guy he was playing against. It was Terrence, a good looking guy who Joe seemed to possibly recall said he had just had a baby girl. Joe smiled wanly with a remote satisfaction that he could still remember a name from so long ago in his current condition. He wondered whatever happened to him, closed his eyes and died.