“Sure. I mean, you know. It’ll do. Want me to hit your button for you?” Before Bob could answer that he didn’t want him to, Linus was hitting the button insistently with his huge red thumb. “Every day with an opioid drip is a gift, Bob, and you’ve got to take full advantage of it. You’ll be out in the shitty cold of the shitty world soon enough, trust me, I know.”
Bob was pleased to see Linus, and it wasn’t just the drugs. They chatted blithely for forty-five minutes, when Linus became agitated at the realization his favorite television show, a soap opera called The Southern Californians, was about to start. “Okay if I watch it here, buddy? I’ll never make it home in time.” Again, Linus did not wait for an answer, but began removing snacks from his canvas satchel and laying these on a small table he’d unfolded from a hollow of his chair’s armrest. The show began, as did Linus’s commentary: “See that guy, Bob? Bob? That’s the Duke. He’s actually a bricklayer from the old country of Italy but he concocted this big story about his royal lineage and everyone believed it at first, but now they’re starting to wonder a little, and his wife’s starting to wonder a lot, and anyway she’s — there she is, see her? Squinty eye? — she’s falling in love with another bricklayer, this real proud bastard who’s working on their pocket villa and who, daringly, is played by the same actor as the Duke, only he’s got a spray tan and a ponytail wig and a truly bad Italian accent. I can’t wait to find out how they tie the two bricklayers together. But yeah, the Duke’s luck is about to go south, for sure, for sure.”
Bob followed the images but was half-submerged in the narcotics. He dozed awhile; when he woke up, the nurse was standing over Linus with her arms crossed. “You are not a patient here, sir. You looked me in the eye and lied right to me.”
“That’s true, I did.”
“Well I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go.”
“Okay but give me fifteen more minutes. Look, Judge Hartman is finally going to admit he murdered his never-gave-a-damn, blackmail-first-ask-questions-later half-brother.”
“Do I need to call security?”
“Lady, look at me. What’s a security guard going to do to me I haven’t already done to myself? I’m asking you for fifteen merciful minutes.”
The nurse relented and allowed Linus to finish out his show. She stood by, watching the final scenes, and each time a new character came on-screen, she asked, “Is that a good guy or a bad guy?” After, Linus folded up his tray and stowed it away and wheeled toward the door. Pinching the brim of his beret, he said, “Read the letter, Bob. Let us know what you think.”
“What I think what?” Bob asked. But Linus had gone.
He opened and read the letter. Maria expressed her sadness in hearing of his injury, but also a relief of happiness that his prognosis was a positive one. He was very much missed, she said, and not just by her but by most everyone at the center.
Actually, Bob, there’s been something on my mind since I heard about your accident. I brought it up to the residents, and their enthusiasm prompts me to say that if you ever wanted to join us here, join us as a full-timer, you’d be most welcome. Will you think on it? I’ve found another living situation for Chip, but her new room won’t be ready for a couple of months, so you’ve got time to consider my proposal. One way or the other, I’ll wait to hear your answer before I let the room get away, okay? I hope this offer can be received in the simple manner in which it’s meant.
Love, Maria
BOB CAME HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL AND SPENT THREE MONTHS IN bed waiting for his hip bone to fuse back together. He was visited daily by a nurse, or more accurately was visited daily by one in a long string of nurses. He found the lot of them to be both cheerful and efficient, but none came around frequently enough to occasion a friendship. Bob felt bored, then very bored, then patently broody. One day Maria called on him, and he wished to jump up at the sight of her. She bore flowers and gossip and made unsubtle inquiries about Bob’s plans. Had he given any more thought to her proposition? He had, actually; and soon after Maria’s visit, once he was freed from his cast, he put his house on the market, sold his car and the bulk of his possessions through an estate liquidation company, and moved into Connie’s old room at the Gambell-Reed Senior Center.
It was a poky, drafty space that beheld no leftover element of Connie whatever. Bob lined the walls with the choicest books from his collection, installed a dresser and bedside table, set up his favored reading chair and lamp at the foot of the bed, and christened his quarters furnished and complete. Linus was just across the hall, and Jill beside Linus, and they visited Bob often, possibly too often, to complain, or to ask advice, or tell stories, or to borrow small sums of money that Bob eventually understood would not be paid back. The hospital-television-watching era had long since passed, and Bob had resumed his reading; he found he could read for stretches of three hours, four hours, pausing only to eat, or to fall in and out of a shallow sleep, or to watch the world out the window, people walking past on the sidewalk, unaware of the pale, wondering face perched above them behind the glass. He turned seventy-two and the residents threw a party; they sang to him and doted on him and Maria had a book-shaped cake made, its title centered on its face: The Book of Bob. His hip had healed beautifully, the doctors told him; and yet, a tiredness clung to Bob that was new, and impressive in its depth and weight. He continued to dream of the Hotel Elba, that he was living in the tilted tower, or standing out front on the blue steps, scanning a blurred crowd for June and Ida; and still, always the same chemical flooding his brain, the feeling of falling in love, and he would wake up in a state of besotted reverence, but impersonally, with never a face to connect to the feeling. He was alone in his dreams of the Hotel Elba; there was no one there with him, the halls empty but resonant with the sense of someone only just departed.
Less frequent, but no less vivid, were Bob’s dreams of the library. There had been whole eras of Bob’s working life where he knew a lamentation at the smallness of his existence, but now he understood how lucky he had been to have inhabited his position. Across the span of nearly fifty years he had done a service in his community and also been a part of it; he had seen the people of the neighborhood coming and going, growing up, growing old and dying. He had known some of them too, hadn’t he? It was a comfort to him, to dream of the place. His favorite dream was that he was alone and it was early in the morning, and he was setting up for the day, and all was peaceful and still and his shoes made no sound as he walked across the carpeting, an empty bus shushing past on the damp street.
Maria sometimes came to see Bob in his room, sitting in the reclining chair at the foot of the bed while he patted his hands exploratorily across his blanket in search of his reading glasses. Other times, when she felt he was becoming resigned, she sent word by nurse or by Linus that she wanted to speak with Bob in her office, and he liked to pretend such summonings were inconvenient, but soon he would be up and dressed and washing his face, and he’d take the ramshackle two-man elevator down through the spine of the old house and cross the Great Room to knock on Maria’s office door. She wished to check in on him, and to hear the upstairs gossip, and to engage in it, even perpetuate it. She once confided to Bob that she liked to plant stories within the center and monitor the effect over a period of days. These tales were not vicious or libelous, just enough to awaken the recipient and provoke some return. Her pet theory was that a portion of indignation was much the same as exercise.