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“But I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I just wish the whole thing hadn’t happened sometimes. The whole cancer thing.” His speech was slowing down. The medicine working.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Gus was here earlier. He was here when I woke up. Took off school. He . . .” His head turned to the side a little. “It’s better,” he said quietly.
“The pain?” I asked. He nodded a little.
“Good,” I said. And then, like the bitch I am: “You were saying something about Gus?” But he was gone.
I went downstairs to the tiny windowless gift shop and asked the decrepit volunteer sitting on a stool behind a cash register what kind of flowers smell the strongest.
“They all smell the same. They get sprayed with Super Scent,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, they just squirt ’em with it.”
I opened the cooler to her left and sniffed at a dozen roses, and then leaned over some carnations. Same smell, and lots of it. The carnations were cheaper, so I grabbed a dozen yellow ones. They cost fourteen dollars. I went back into the room; his mom was there, holding his hand. She was young and really pretty.
“Are you a friend?” she asked, which struck me as one of those unintentionally broad and unanswerable questions.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “I’m from Support Group. These are for him.”
She took them and placed them in her lap. “Do you know Monica?” she asked.
I shook my head no.
“Well, he’s sleeping,” she said.
“Yeah. I talked to him a little before, when they were doing the bandages or whatever.”
“I hated leaving him for that but I had to pick up Graham at school,” she said.
“He did okay,” I told her. She nodded. “I should let him sleep.” She nodded again. I left.
The next morning I woke up early and checked my email first thing.
[emailprotected] /* */ had finally replied.
Dear Ms. Lancaster,
I fear your faith has been misplaced—but then, faith usually is. I cannot answer your questions, at least not in writing, because to write out such answers would constitute a sequel to An Imperial Affliction, which you might publish or otherwise share on the network that has replaced the brains of your generation. There is the telephone, but then you might record the conversation. Not that I don’t trust you, of course, but I don’t trust you. Alas, dear Hazel, I could never answer such questions except in person, and you are there, while I am here.
That noted, I must confess that the unexpected receipt of your correspondence via Ms. Vliegenthart has delighted me: What a wondrous thing to know that I made something useful to you—even if that book seems so distant from me that I feel it was written by a different man altogether. (The author of that novel was so thin, so frail, so comparatively optimistic!)
Should you find yourself in Amsterdam, however, please do pay a visit at your leisure. I am usually home. I would even allow you a peek at my grocery lists.
Yours most sincerely,
Peter Van Houten
c/o Lidewij Vliegenthart
“WHAT?!” I shouted aloud. “WHAT IS THIS LIFE?”
