86'd: A Novel - By Dan Fante Page 0,63

you a relative?”

“Right,” I said, “I’m her nephew.” The lie came easily. I knew from repeated trips to the ER with friends over the years that only family members are allowed inside emergency rooms.

I was guided through the set of double doors to one of a dozen curtained cubicles. J.C. was sitting up on her hospital bed, putting on her coat, looking weak. “You look a lot better,” I said, telling another lie. “How do you feel?”

“Alive,” J.C. snickered, “as opposed to the obvious other option. Please tell me that you did not call my granddaughter. You didn’t call Marcella, did you?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t want to worry her. She’s three thousand miles from here. She’d just get upset. There’s no point in scaring someone who can’t do anything anyway.”

“Thank you, Bruno. Excellent reasoning.”

“I’m glad you approve,” I said.

J.C. was smiling. “Sic biscuitus disintegrat.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

The old lady snickered. “It’s Latin,” she said. “The loose translation is: That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

We both laughed.

“Look,” I said finally, “are you getting enough rest? You seem very tired. Do you still lay down in the afternoon?”

“What’s that?” J.C. snarled. “What did you just say?”

“I said, do you lay down in the afternoon?”

“Bruno, have you no shame? You’re well read and apparently semi-educated, but obviously beyond any capacity for intelligent application. Have you so little comprehension of the mother tongue you speak? I do not LAY down, sir. I LIE down.”

But then she softened up a little and smiled, eyeing me closely. “Actually, apparently, it is you who should LAY down. You look tired too. I’m certain that you don’t get enough rest.”

I settled the score by quoting her favorite poet: “My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night…” I recited.

“But ah, my foes and oh, my friends—it gives a lovely light!” J.C. chimed in. “Well done, Bruno. Edna Millay again.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Shall I take you home to Hollywood? No post office today, okay?”

“Yes. That would be best,” she said. “I suppose I’ll remain at the mercy of that buffoon in Santa Monica, at least until I meet my maker. I find it incredible that I was just examined at that man’s office this morning. A few hours later I’m plopped down in an emergency room. Perhaps I’ll go home and read his cards. There’s no question that he’s incompetent but perhaps he is actually mad as well.”

Back outside in the parking lot, after helping my client into the passenger seat, I shifted my Pontiac into “D,” then pulled out on to De Soto Avenue heading toward the freeway. Tahuti, for some reason, suddenly left his master’s lap then jumped into the backseat.

“Hey,” I said chuckling, pulling the car back toward the curb, “what’s wrong with your friend?”

But J.C. was unable to answer me. She was dead.

The following day I picked up a weeping Che-Che and her in shock mother, Constance, at the airport, then drove them to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Two days later, J. C. Smart was buried next to her husband at Hollywood Memorial Park cemetery, at sundown, in their double plot near the lake. Joyce Smart had outlived almost every one of her contemporaries, so the service was only attended by a handful of people.

After the minister read J.C.’s favorite, the Twenty-third Psalm, her daughter Constance got up. With Che-Che standing next to her at the grave, she read two of J.C.’s last poems as a benediction.

I felt myself beginning to come apart.

MY BUNGALOW

The chirp of sparrows waking up

Counterpoints to my clinking coffee cup:

I hear the asthmatic morning cough

Of my neighbor’s old Cadillac driving off:

And here and there a garbage can

Vomits at the touch of man:

The substance of my life runs out

Through a rusted, percolating spout

Meanwhile I place upon the shelf

Well-dusted pieces of myself

And cube into my casserole

The severed fragments of my soul.

One continues to decay

Day by day, day by day.

Strange forms of agony are made

By those who have their last years betrayed.

The wolves of nameless doom await

My little house concealed from fate;

And those who lock their door and hide

Will soon be ravished by the beast inside.

And then there was this one too. After Constance read it I cried my ass off.

ANNIVERSARY

I have lingered too long outside in the late light

Amidst the twitterings of sparrows;

Already the eucalyptus cast their purple shadow

And the owl in the deodar has opened his yellow eyes

Unfolded his wings and flown away.

Tahuti, Lord of Magic, my black cat,

Prowls the lawn, dancing on delicate feet.

Beyond him a