“Maybe they’ll think he made your wife tell him the code, or he memorized the code when your wife disarmed the alarm.”
Max thought about that, then said, “Eh, maybe, but it was still a boneheaded thing to do. And why, why did he have to take a crap in the house, on my Oriental rug? You know how much it cost to clean that thing?”
“Oh, stop with your worrying,” Angela said. “You’ll see. A few months from now, when we’re married, you’ll look back on all this and think how crazy you were acting. Oh, and about the shitting, I heard once that it’s not because burglars are, like, being disrespectful – it’s from adrenalin.”
Max thought Angela was full of shit, said, “You’re full of shit.”
“No, I’m serious. I read it in a book once.”
Max, who had never seen Angela read anything except magazines and the New York Post, said, “I thought you said you heard it?”
“No, I read it, in a book about burglars. It was the history of burglary in America and there was a whole chapter about shitting on the floor. Great book – you should borrow it sometime.”
Now Max was positive that Angela was just being all Irish again, spinning one of her stories that got more and more exaggerated with each telling. He didn’t think Greek women did that. He didn’t know a whole lot about Greek women and he was beginning to think he didn’t know a whole lot about women, period. Why couldn’t they just do lap dances and shut the fuck up?
Angela came out of the bathroom naked. She climbed into bed and pushed Max back, pinning down his arms.
“This is your night,” she said. “You can have anything you want.” The word want had that whole Irish accent thing going on, and it was so fucking sexy.
“I want you,” Max said, trying to mimic it.
“How?” Angela asked.
Max flipped her over and pinned her down hard. He said, “You know we won’t be able to do this again for a long time. It was way too risky to come here.”
“In that case,” Angela said, “you’d better make it good.”
Max started on top, then ordered her to turn over. His blisters – or whatever the hell they were – were hurting, but he decided to ignore the pain. Doggy-style was his favorite position. He liked grabbing onto Angela’s hair or squeezing her butt cheeks and imagining she was anyone he wanted her to be. For a while, he imagined she was Felicia, the stripper from Legz Diamond’s. That worked great, especially when he had his eyes closed. Then he heard something off to his right. He looked over and saw in the shadow near the door some guy in a wheelchair with what looked like an armful of towels.
“What the hell?” Max said.
“Jeez, I’m sorry, Mister,” the guy said. “I’m really, really sorry…”
Jesus Christ, the guy wasn’t just crippled, he sounded retarded, too.
Max told him to get the fuck out of the room and the guy started babbling about how he had to replace the towels and the soap and some other bullshit.
Max yelled, “Get out, you fucking moron!” and that got rid of him.
Max wanted to call downstairs and get that jerk fired but Angela said, “Oh, give him a break. He’s handicapped.”
“So?” Max said. “He should still know better.”
“He’s gone now. I’m sure he’s not going to say anything. He’s probably scared out of his wits.”
“Eh, I guess you’re right,” Max said and let himself fall back onto the bed. “Where were we?”
Angela turned around. Max grabbed onto her shoulders and squeezed hard, picturing Felicia.
Fourteen
Fear much trouble in the fuselage, Frederick.
“It’s herpes all right,” Dr. Alan Flemming said to Max the next morning. “Simplex Two.”
Dr. Flemming was Max’s General Practitioner and they were in Flemming’s Park Avenue office. Although Dr. Flemming was probably only a few years older than Max, Max hoped he didn’t look that bad. Flemming had white hair, a hunched-over posture and a thin, wrinkled face. As Max had heard Angela once say about her Irish grandfather, his wrinkles had wrinkles.
This morning, Max had made an emergency appointment with Flemming when he woke up and discovered that the blisters on his penis seemed to have grown larger.
“You’re sure it’s herpes?” Max said. “I mean don’t you have to wait for the lab results before you can tell?”
“Of course I’ll need to confirm it with a Pap smear,” Flemming said, “but I’m ninety-nine percent certain of the diagnosis. But there’s no reason to panic – herpes isn’t exactly a life-threatening virus. All you have to do is keep the lesions dry and apply some alcohol or witch hazel. You also might want to wear loose clothes. If you wear jockeys, you might want to consider a switch over to boxers. It also might be a good idea to blow dry your genitals from now on rather than toweling dry. But whatever you do, don’t feel like you’re a bad person or something’s wrong with you because you contracted this. You can rest assured – millions of people in the world are going through the same thing that you are and it’s really not as bad as many people think. I’ve had patients who’ve gone for months, hell, years even, without experiencing any symptoms whatsoever. The outbreaks will usually only occur when you’re under a high level of stress or anxiety. With the tragedy involving your wife and niece, I’m not at all surprised to see you having an outbreak now. By the way, have you… been with anyone recently?”
“What do you mean?”
He knew exactly what he meant but he knew he couldn’t let on.
“The only reason I’m asking,” Flemming said, smiling assuredly, “is that herpes, in almost all cases, is a sexually transmitted virus. In all likelihood, you contracted it from someone and if you did it might be a good idea to warn that person.”
“Maybe my wife had it,” Max said. “I mean maybe she had it, but didn’t tell me.”
“Well, the only way she could’ve gotten it would be if she had – well, I don’t think that’s really important now anyway. After I have Christine do a Pap smear – and we’ll also do some blood work – I’m going to put you on a medication to help suppress the virus and a painkiller for your itching and discomfort. Within a few days you’ll be as good as new.”
Max doubted that, doubted it a whole lot.
Flemming picked up his clipboard and started to leave the examination room. At the door, he turned back, smiled and said, “By the way, just as a precautionary measure, if you’ve been having unprotected sex you might want to think about an HIV test.”
“HIV?” Max could barely move his lips to say it, frightened to fucking hell. “Why? You think I have-”
“No, no, I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m just saying it’s best to err on the side of caution. Many people who have herpes also tend to be HIV-positive. That isn’t to say that you’re likely to be HIV-positive. But, given that you have already contracted one sexually transmitted disease, it might be a good idea to check for others.”
“Yeah well, I think I’d like to hold off on an AIDS test,” Max said.
“Are you sure?” Dr. Flemming said. “The sooner you know-”
“I’m not taking the goddamn test.”
Later, riding in a cab to his office, Max could barely breathe. There was no way in hell he was ever going to take an AIDS test. It scared him enough to have to call for his blood work from his cardiologist – he couldn’t imagine making a phone call to find out if he’d been sentenced to death.
Max had heard somewhere that the first sign of AIDS is sometimes lumps on the lymph nodes. Max wasn’t sure where the lymph nodes were, but he thought they were somewhere on his throat. Feeling around, he was convinced that he had lumps.
He screamed silently, Fucking lumps!
When he arrived at his office he hadn’t calmed down much. He marched past the receptionist’s desk toward Angela and said loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, “Excuse me, could you come into my office with me, please? I need to dictate a letter.”