“A few hundred times, Rufus. You told me a few hundred times.”
“Sounds like amnesia, but it’s the opposite.”
“I know what it means.”
“It’s my superpower.”
“Guess you’re ready to join the Avengers.”
“I remember most everything in the books I read. Most, not all. Hypermnesia. There’s a word for you, just in case. Means that I have an abnormally vivid or complete memory or recall of the past. I can see everything that happened to me growing up. I remember everything.”
Thousands of books decorated their library, all either hardcover or leather-bound. And he’d read some of those novels at least twice. That almost got an envious smile out of me.
Then we passed the media room—a space the size of my apartment that had six televisions anchored to the walls, most tuned into different sports channels—and moved into the kitchen. One of the televisions was on some tabloid show. Eric Benet, Kobe, and Bill Clinton were being made poster children and highlighted on a segment called “Why Men Cheat.”
I put my Green Goblin on the floor and posted up at a barstool at the kitchen counter. Rufus put on a pair of thin rubber gloves like doctors wore. He did that more for my protection than his own. He opened a bottle of peroxide and started cleaning my wound.
He didn’t mention the tear in my suit pants or the blood on my shirt and suit coat.
He said, “I’m doing better. Thanks for asking.”
I ignored his sarcasm. “Good.”
“They have some experimental drugs down in Mexico.”
I made an uncomfortable sound, then said, “Uh huh.”
“With the cocktails, the new advances in research, doctors think I might outlive you.”
“Cocktails?”
“They call ‘em cocktails. It’s about fifteen meds mixed up. Like a cocktail.”
“You got insurance?”
He nodded. “Cremation. No funeral.”
“Quit tripping.”
“Not tripping. I’ve buried a lot of my friends. Not as many lately, but I’ve sang at so many funerals. Been to so many.”
“We all have.”
“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. We saw gunshots and knife wounds when we grew up. But the people I know ... my friends deteriorated inside-out, looked they had been exposed to plutonium. Tried to blame it on Mother Africa. That shit came from some nuclear experiment.”
“Rufus.”
“What?”
“Don’t like thinking about that kinda shit. You’re my brother, you know.”
“So cremate me. Just e-mail the people on my buddy list and tell them I’ve crossed over to receive my glory. Ridiculous how a funeral and a casket cost twenty thousand.”
“That’s how they get you. You go in all emotional and while you’re crying over your dead momma they stick a vacuum cleaner in your wallet.”
“You know? And if you add in how much money people pay to come see you get put in the ground ... I don’t want to leave people in the same situation Momma left us in.”
I nodded. “Daddy too. He didn’t leave us nothing but a stack of bills. ”
“That cancer ate him up.”
Momma used to say Reverend Daddy’s sins were eating him alive from the inside. Cancer turned his hulking frame into an ashen shell. His will to live was gone long before he made it back to the dirt. No matter how I felt about him, wasn’t easy watching my old man die. Momma used to pray, ask Him why she was being tested. At times I think she thought about killing herself. Sometimes I think she thought it was her fault. People always looked for somebody to blame. She hated my old man. Not because of the lies in the pulpit or the women he had bedded, but because he was dying, and his deterioration was a financial burden on us all. The closer my old man was to death, the less my momma called out to God. And the irony of it all was the closer my old man was to death, the more he called out to God.
Rufus asked, “What about you?”
“Anything happens to me, don’t claim the body. Let them bury me in a pine box.”
“You can be so morbid.”
I told him, “You think I’m joking?”
“Twenty thousand to put somebody in the ground.”
“Rufus, focus on my head wound.”
Rufus didn’t think I’d need stitches, but getting stitches would help it look better when it healed. I didn’t care. With all the scars I’d earned, I didn’t care about one more. He had some kind of special Band-Aids; they were narrow and were used to close up wounds like mine.
When he was done he said, “Time for a game of bones?”