Varla, the nurse, glanced at Donny in the chair. “Just drowsy.” She smiled and swept past.
Tabie informed me, “Some of the meds they give patients during chemo kinda wipe them out.” She watched Donny, green eyes warm with friendship. “It’s crappy what he’s going through.”
“Crappy’s a good word for it,” I offered, before crossing the room and quietly unfolding a chair next to Donny’s recliner. I smiled at the Hispanic man hooked to an IV in the next recliner, full head of black hair that hadn’t fallen out yet, knee bouncing impatiently.
Donny’s chest rose and fell inside a Joker T-shirt, breaths deep and smooth. A comic book lay cover-down on his stomach along with his cell phone. A needle taped to the back of one hand, the thin IV tube curled up to a half-full bag of clear liquid hanging from a metal stand. This was Donny’s third treatment of six in his battle against Hodgkin’s. Doctors were optimistic.
I sat and watched him for a few minutes. Eventually he snorted, eyes fluttering as he left a dream to focus on my smile.
“Ah, fair maiden,” he said tiredly.
“Sorry to bother you.”
He got his bearings, sitting up. His cell started to slide off his lap but I caught it.
“How you feeling?”
“I’ve fared better.”
“Too bad you’re not a superhero. You wouldn’t have to go through this.”
“Didn’t help Captain Marvel.”
“The guy that said ‘Shazam’?”
He shook his head. “The other one. Mar-Vell, Captain of the Kree. Jim Starlin gave him cancer and killed him off in ’eighty-two.”
“Raw deal. Who’d’ve thought a superhero’s greatest archenemy would be the writer?”
He grinned. “Indeed.”
“You’ll beat it.”
He tilted his head to the slowly dripping IV bag. “Though my weapon be of liquid chemical and not forged broadsteel, the enemy shall nonetheless be vanquished. Or like my mom always says, ‘One foot in front of the other.’”
“I hear you.”
“I’m thinking of having a T-shirt made that says ‘Chemo Boy.’”
“What’s the logo on your chest, a big IV bag?”
He barked with joy, strong and loud, “Absolutely.” Chuckling.
“Where’s your mom?”
“I’ll text her when I’m done and she’ll pick me up. I don’t like her hanging around here.”
Wanting to fight the good fight on his own. Karen’s usefulness came into play at home, where she could cook him meals when he felt like eating and force him to eat when he didn’t, put some weight on those weary bones of his.
“Hope you don’t mind, I talked to your friend Calico last night.”
“About what?”
“Not much. How long were you two an item?”
Donny glanced across the room where Tabie leaned in the doorway, watching. She grinned sadly and turned into the hall.
“Not long. I wasn’t musically inclined… had no place in the whole War Kittens thing. Not that I wanted to, anyway.”
“And their war against conventional rock and roll?”
He sputtered. “They’re at war with everything. Well, Rex and Manx are, anyway. At war with politics, religion, life. Haters.”
“But not Calico?”
“She never used to be. I don’t know… Once I was diagnosed… I guess it was too much for her.”
“It’s a tough thing for some people to deal with. Don’t be too hard on her for it.”
“Never. But that doesn’t mean I have to like that jerk she’s seeing.”
“You think he’d have any reason to hurt Gamera?”
“Does he seem like the kind of guy who would need a reason?”
“Thanks for the ride,” Donny said, weak as he kept pressure on the taped gauze on the back of his hand.
“Don’t mention it,” I answered.
In their backyard, Karen fed Gamera a leaf of redhead lettuce.
“Hey, buddy,” said Donny, and the tortoise lifted his head at the sound of his best friend’s voice. Donny knelt to scratch him on the chin.
After a moment, Donny stood and nearly lost his balance, his legs wobbly. Karen helped him up, kissed his cheek. “I’ll check on you later, hon. See if you want a soft-boiled egg or something.”
“’kay.” Donny shuffled into the house.
Karen stared after him. “You a mother?” she asked.
I shook a no.
“It’s tough seeing him sick like this. When he was a little boy he’d scrape a knee and I’d kiss it better, give him some ice cream after a sore throat. But I can’t just kiss this better.”
“Frustrating, I know. May I?”
I held my hand out for the leaf of lettuce drooping in her grasp. She’d momentarily forgotten Gamera. The tortoise stretched his leathery neck out trying to snatch the greens, but Karen had the lettuce just out of his reach.
“Oh. Sure.” She handed the lettuce over.
I knelt before Gamera and he glanced at me with his cold tortoise eyes before fixating on the lettuce in my hand. I held it out for him. The oxygen tube in his nostril didn’t seem to be impeding him as he bit down on the lettuce, tearing off a tatter and chewing slowly, jaw grinding side to side. He stuck his neck out in a grand gesture when he swallowed — galulp — and took a step toward me, wanting more.
Karen watched Donny’s upstairs window. “You believe in reincarnation?”
She required no answer, just needing to talk: “I think I do. But before we come back, we’re shown the life we’re about to be born into. And we’re given the choice whether to come back or not. Even if the life we’re shown is full of pain and suffering, the only way for us to learn is to come back and live it. You probably think that’s hippie-dippie nonsense.”
She chuckled, self-deprecating, and continued:
“Anyway, with each life we lead, we learn more and our souls get stronger. Donny’s got a strong soul. He’ll get through this bump in the road.”
I scratched the big tortoise under the chin as Donny had done. “What about Gamera? He have a strong soul?”
“All animals do,” she said. “We’re the ones who still have a lot to learn.”
I nodded my assent, and during the pause that followed, changed the subject: “What do you know about the War Kittens?”
“Marise… I mean Calico, she and Donny went to high school together. The two guys went to Gresham, I think. There was another one, too…” She pondered, trying to recall a name.
“Donny’s not part of the Kittens so Calico drops him for the drummer? Doesn’t make her look so loyal.”
“There was more to it than that. By then Donny had been diagnosed. Calico was standing in my kitchen when I told her. She lost it. Her legs gave out under her. We held each other on the floor for a good ten minutes.”
“Maybe the drummer was her out, so she wouldn’t have to deal with Donny being sick.”
Karen shrugged. “I hoped she’d be bigger than that. I think she still has a flame for Donny, but I’d never tell him that, get his hopes up.”
“Any lingering jealousies that you know of?”
“Boys don’t usually open up to their mothers about their love lives.”
“I meant from the drummer, Rex.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Karen opened Gamera’s chicken-wire cage, picking his front end up and setting him down pointed in the right direction. She nudged his backside until he crept into the enclosure, trailing his oxygen tube, one hind leg weak and nearly useless from his wounds. But he kept trudging.
“That’s it, boy,” she said. “One foot in front of the other.”
Off Moreland on one of the side streets, not far from Mount Tabor Park, The Rue Morgue crouched between the back of an auto-parts store and a closed carpet warehouse; a giant black stone cat, its gaping-fanged maw curtained off with ebony canvas, being tended by a doorman at a red velvet rope of all things. Rumor was the deed to the club belonged to a Northwest author with heavy coin he’d made selling the movie rights to his horror novels.