I was stunned. I really couldn’t believe it. Osano looked so cheerful. His sneaky green eyes were so brilliant. “There’s nothing that can be done?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” Osano said. “But it’s not so terrible. I’ll rest up here for a couple of weeks and they’ll shoot me up a lot and then I’ll have at least a couple of months on the town and that’s where you come in.”
I didn’t know what to say. I really didn’t know whether to believe him. He looked better than I had seen him look in a long time. “OK,” I said.
“Here’s my idea,” Osano said. “You visit me in the hospital once in a while and help take me home. I don’t want to take the chance of becoming senile, so when I think the time is right, I check out. The day I decide to do that I want you to come down to my apartment and keep me company. You and Charlie Brown. And then you can take care of all the fuss afterward.”
Osano was staring at me intently. “You don’t have to do it,” Osano said.
I believed him now. “Sure, I’ll do it,” I said. “I owe you a favor. Will you have the stuff you need?”
“I’ll get it,” Osano said. “Don’t worry about that.”
I had some conferences with Osano’s doctors, and they told me he wouldn’t leave the hospital for a long time. Maybe never. I felt a sense of relief.
– -
I didn’t tell Valerie about anything that had happened or even that Osano was dying. Two days later I went to visit Osano at the hospital. He’d ask me if I would bring him in a Chinese dinner the next time I came. So I had brown paper bags full of food when I went down the corridor and heard yelling and screaming coming from Osano’s room. I wasn’t surprised. I put the cartons down on the floor outside another patient’s private bedroom and ran down the corridor.
In the room was a doctor, two nurses and a nursing supervisor. They were all screaming at Osano. Charlie stood watching in a corner of the room. Her beautiful face freckles startling against the pallor of her skin, tears in her eyes. Osano was sitting on the side of the bed, completely naked and yelling back at the doctor, “Get me my clothes! I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
And the doctor was almost yelling at him, “I won’t be responsible if you leave this hospital. I will not be responsible.”
Osano said to him, laughing, “You dumb shit, you were never responsible. Just get me my clothes.”
The nursing supervisor, a formidable-looking woman, said angrily, “I don’t give a damn how famous you are, you don’t use our hospital as a whorehouse!”
Osano stared at her, “Fuck you,” he said. “Get the fuck out of this room.” And stark naked, he got up off the bed, and then I could see how really sick he was. He took a lurching step and his body fell sideways. The nurse immediately went to help him, quiet now, moved to pity, but Osano struggled erect. Finally he saw me standing at the doorway and he said very quietly, “Merlyn, get me out of here.” I was struck by their indignation. Surely they had caught patients fucking before. Then I studied Charlie Brown. She had on a short tight skirt with obviously nothing underneath. She looked like a child harlot. And Osano’s gross rotting body. Their outrage unconsciously was aesthetic, not moral.
The others now noticed me too. And I said to the doctor, “I’ll check him out and I’ll take the responsibility.”
The doctor started to protest, almost pleading, then turned to the supervisor and said, “Get him his clothes.” He gave Osano a needle and said, “That will make you more comfortable for the trip.”
And it was that simple. I paid the bill and checked Osano out. I called up a limousine service and we got Osano home. Charlie and I put him to bed and he slept for a while and then he called me into the bedroom and told me what had happened in the hospital. That he had made Charlie undress and get into bed with him because he felt so bad that he thought he was dying.
Osano turned his head away a bit. “You know,” he said, “the most terrible thing in modern life is that we all die alone in bed. In the hospital with all our family around us, nobody offers to get in bed with somebody dying. If you’re at home, your wife won’t offer to get in bed when you’re dying.”
Osano turned his head back to me and gave me that sweet smile he sometimes had. “So that’s my dream. I want Charlie in bed with me when I die, at the very moment, and then I’ll feel that I’ve gotten an edge, that it wasn’t a bad life and certainly not a bad end. And symbolic as hell, right? Proper for a novelist and his critics.”
“When can you know that final moment?” I said.
“I think it’s about time,” Osano said. “I really don’t think I should wait anymore.”
Now I was really shocked and horrified. “Why don’t you wait a day?” I said. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. You still have some more time. Six months is not bad.”
Osano said, “Do you have any qualms about what I’m going to do? The usual moral prejudices?’
I shook my head. “Just what’s the rush?”
Osano looked at me thoughtfully. “No,” he said. “that fall when I tried to get out of bed gave me the message. Listen, I’ve named you as my literary executor, your decisions are final. There’s no money left, just copyrights and those go to my ex-wives, I guess, and my kids. My books still sell pretty well, so I don’t have to worry about them. I tried to do something for Charlie Brown, but she won’t let me and I think maybe she’s right.”
I said something I would not ordinarily say. “The whore with the heart of gold,” I said. “Just like in the literature,” I said.
Osano closed his eyes. “You know, one of the things I liked best about you, Merlyn, is that you never said the word ‘whore’ and maybe I’ve said it, but I never thought it.”
“OK,” I said. “Do you want to make some phone calls or do you want to see some people? Or do you want to have a drink?”
“No,” Osano said. “I’ve had enough of all that bullshit. I’ve got seven wives, nine kids, I got two thousand friends and millions of admirers. None of them can help and I don’t want to see a fucking one of them.” He grinned at me. “And mind you, I’ve led a happy life.” He shook his head. “The people you love most do you in.”
I sat down beside the bed and we talked for hours about different books that we had read. He told me about all the women he had made love to, and for a few minutes Osano tried to remember fifteen years ago, the girl who infected him. But he couldn’t track it down. “One thing.” he said, “they were all beauties. They were all worth it. Au, hell, what difference does it make? It’s all an accident.”
Osano held out a hand and I shook it and pressed it and Osano said, “Tell Charlie to come in here and you wait outside.” Before I left, he called after me, “Hey, listen. An artist’s life is not a fulfilling life. Put that on my fucking tombstone.”
I waited a long time in the living room. Sometimes I could hear noises and once I thought I heard weeping and then I didn’t hear anything. I went into the kitchen and made some coffee and set two cups on the kitchen table. Then I went into the living room and waited some more. Then not a scream, not a call for help, not even grief-stricken I heard Charlie’s voice, very sweet and clear, call my name.
I went into the bedroom. On the night table was the gold Tiffany box he used to keep his penicillin pills in. It was open and empty. The lights were on, and Osano was lying on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling. Even in death his green eyes seemed to glitter. Nestled beneath his arm, pressed against his chest, was Charlie’s golden head. She had drawn the covers up to cover their nakedness.
“You’ll have to get dressed,” I said to her.
She rose up on one elbow and leaned over to kiss Osano on his mouth. And then she stood staring down at him for a long time.