THE RABBIT

 

 

“I just started driving. I had nowhere to go, but I went driving.” It’s Vince, calling early.
“Are you driving now?”
“I feel like I’m driving, but I’m not.”
She props herself up on her pillows. It’s a quarter to six. He sounds scared, maybe disoriented. “Are you okay, Vinnie?”
“Not so much. I think I’m loosing it. I’m all bled out. I should go off and die in the woods like an old wolf.”
The urgency in his voice forces her out of bed. “Tell me what’s going on, Vince. Talk to me now. Is it really bad at work?”
“I don’t want to tell you. You don’t need to hear about that.”
She slips on Vince’s corduroy shirt and goes to the kitchen to start coffee. “Talk to me, Vinnie.”
“I heard about an emergency room doctor at Presbyterian New York who killed herself on Sunday. The thing is, you see too much. Human beings are not meant to process all this. You can’t. Did you know we’re very fragile . . . very fragile? You don’t know how fragile we are, Pina. Some docs will do themselves in now, some later.”
“Do you feel like you might harm yourself, Vince?”

Vince is quiet now, really beginning to frighten her.

“Should I come to you, Vince? I’ll come if that will help.”

Vince’s laughter begins as a low rumble and grows so loud she turns the volume down on her phone. “Where are you now?”
“It must be fatigue,” he says. “Fatigue has a way of getting under your skin.” He breaks into song, in a crooked voice: ”I’ve got you under my skin.”
“Will you tell me where you are, Vince?” The teakettle starts whistling “Tea for Two.” It sounds like a cruel joke this morning.
“Yeah, it’s got to be the fatigue,” Vince says.

A blush of normalcy returns after she coats the coffee grounds with boiling water and the dark aroma rises.
“Tired to the bone,” he says, and starts up with a raspy blues song: “Tired to the bone, like nothing I’ve ever known.”
“Then why did you go driving?”
“Tired to the bone,” he bellows, full voice. “No, I’m not a rolling stone.”
“Vince,” she shouts into the phone. “Then why the hell did you go driving?”
“Hey, back off, Pina, back off. Why did I go driving?”

Pina grips her mug of coffee with both hands and lets the heat radiate before taking her first sip. What is Vince fucked up on? Clearly he’s fucked up.

“Why did I go? I’ll tell you why . . . I wanted to come up and see you, Pina, if only from a distance. But then I drove in the other direction. That way there wouldn’t be any temptation.”
She tries to gauge if there is any truth to what he’s saying. “So where did you drive to?”
“I didn’t go anywhere. Downtown. I drove downtown. Drove in circles. Hardly any traffic but the red lights were still on. Drove me crazy. They served no purpose, no purpose at all. Red light. Red Light. Red light. Where’s the motherfucking green light? I tell you, I was either at a red light or aimed the wrong way down a one-way. This is the truth. This is the absolute truth. I’m not fucking bullshitting here. I felt like I was stuck in a video game, some fucking nightmare I couldn’t get out of. WHO DO I HAVE TO FUCK TO GET OUT OF THIS MOVIE?”
Pina holds the phone away from her and tries to stay calm. “What was your reason for driving downtown?”
“My reason? You’re asking me my reason. Is everything with you about reason? Are you fucking Pythagoras? Is reality a mathematical equation for you?”

Pina wonders whether to end the call, but she’s too worried about Vince to leave him like this.
“I don’t know, I don’t know why I went. Something stupid—I wanted to race around the financial district in my Miata. I pictured it, zipping around corners, no other cars or pedestrians. Dream come true. I know . . . I know . . . if it had been you, you’d have driven to the ocean, Pina.”
She slurps down what’s left of her coffee. “Where are you, Vince? Are you at home? Tell me where you are. I can be there in an hour.”
“Cut it out. Don’t talk nonsense, Pina. You’re not coming here. You are not coming. That would . . . that would defeat the whole purpose.

What purpose, she wonders, to keep her safe? Now she hears the woman downstairs weeping. Pina hasn’t seen or heard any sign of her for days. The crying is almost a comfort—that’s how strange things have become. The woman must have the opposite experience of her. Having to hear Pina clanging pots and pans while she’s cooking, listening to her do her powerwalking around main room.

“Did you have a cocktail, Vince?”
“Of course. Why . . . why do you ask questions that you know the answers to? Yeah, my mixology was a bit off—too much adrenalin. My heart was pounding, a real quarter-pounder. All that adrenalin, it’s not good with stoplights. Not good at all. Good. No I wouldn’t say things are exactly good. I’m scared, Pina. People I work . . . people everywhere, I mean rally everywhere, getting sick. All around me sick. I’ve lost whatever courage I had, which probably wasn’t much in the first place.”
“Where are you, Vince?”
“Quit asking me where I am.”
“Then tell me.”
Silence, except for his raspy breathing. He’s probably been up all night tripping.
“Is there somebody you can talk with, Vince?”
“I’m talking with you. Aren’t I talking with you? This . . . this is a conversation. Are you missing that point? That’s what’s going on here? I mean it’s pretty clear . . . all you have to do is apply your advanced reason to see what’s going on.”

Vince is not generally a nasty man, but with certain compounds, the rush he wants brings an edge. “Vince,” she says, “you need some help. Get yourself some Thorazine and talk with somebody.”
“What?” he snarls. “I should get some Thorazine? You’re telling me to get some Thorazine. When did you start prescribing, Pina? I missed that, And you want me to talk to somebody. Can’t you rise to the occasion, Pina? Is that too much for you? I mean, I’m out here . . . I’m out here all the time. All the time. And you, you’re telling me to take Thorazine . . . telling me you can’t talk me down, you don’t . . . you don’t know . . . you won’t talk me down . . . talk me down from here. Is it always about you, Pina?”
“Tell me where you are, Vince, tell me how I can help.”
“Help. Ha. You can’t help. I’m fucked.” And with that, Vince slams the phone down.
Pina tries calling him back several times, but he does not answer.

 

Some time during the night Charlie left an oversized baggie at the door with six facemasks. A note says, “Dear Pina, I plucked these right out of the dryer with a pair of tongs. They should be good to go. Wishing you a sweet day, Charlie.”

The day hasn’t gotten off to a sweet start, but she allows herself a moment to think of Charlie. It was only yesterday that they held each other’s hand. It seems so long ago. Maybe that’s as far as it goes. Maybe that’s as far as it should go.

She chooses a black and brown batik facemask and heads to the car without a plan. Didn’t shower and barely brushed her teeth. She runs the engine, revs it, and turns on the radio, as if Morning Edition will tell her what to do. She knows what to do, just doesn’t want to do it. A quick story about online dating, just before the hour, and she puts the car into drive.

There’s no traffic so she gets to San Francisco in forty-five minutes. Drives up Divisidero, with only a few small grocery stores open. When she crosses Market Street, she gazes with something close to disbelief at the empty streets of the Castro. Granted it’s early, but only one man is walking on the sidewalk under the rainbow banners.

Pina pulls into the driveway of the house on Liberty Street. Sweet Liberty. It’s more than six weeks since she’s been here. She slumps down in the car, almost hides beneath the dashboard. How much she resented being shipped to Sonoma. For her safety. It seemed like an invention. It’s so long ago now—how many deaths later? Who’s counting? Everybody. The count’s the big thing. She sees the numbers everywhere. They prove what’s getting worse—496 Hormel pork packers, who are 79% Latino, have tested positive. The numbers are flattening, they say, but the flattened numbers sure look crooked to her. Now they’re saying that flattened may be a sustained condition that we live with for the foreseeable future. All this is a distraction to delay going into the house.

She ties on her facemask. In the rearview, the batik is suave. She tugs on the drawstring so that it fits snug. Next she slips on a pair of gloves and climbs the outside steps. Before turning the key, she takes a deep breath and tells herself to touch nothing, even with the gloves.

It’s hard to push the front door open against all the mail on the floor beneath the mail slot. The stench is overpowering. When the fuck did he last dump the garbage? She’s going to retch. She’s never seen so much mail on the floor, not even after a three-week trip to Europe. Snail mail has meant nothing to her since people stopped writing personal letters. She takes care of all her bills online, but the mail doesn’t stop coming. She kicks at the pile to see if anything jumps out. Catalogs. A shitload of catalogs. Almost all of them addressed to Vince, the avid consumer.

She leaves the front door open. Let the awful smell spill out onto the street. It’s hard to believe that two months ago she lived here and life was more or less normal. What the fuck did he leave in the garbage? She’s not about to find out. No way she’s going anywhere near the kitchen. She calls his name, more from reflex than anything else. He couldn’t possibly be here, not with this smell, and his car no place to be seen. He probably hasn’t stayed here for weeks. No point wondering where he’s been. If she hadn’t just had the crazy conversation with him she’d think he was dead.

Up the stairs, there’s a display of family photographs, mostly Vince’s: his parents, two brothers, and several photos of him as a child, of his late wife Anita and all four of his children. He invited Pina to put up some family photos of her own. They could have one homogenized family, he said. Right, people who never met each thrown into an absurd collage. No way. She did, however, set off a distinct section in the stairway for her family—just four framed photos: her mother and father, Marco, and Zia Giulia, not one of her. She didn’t need to see herself on the wall.

In the years she lived in the house she learned to navigate the stairway so that she hardly ever faced Vince’s family. Except Anita. Every few months she’d pause in front of Anita, a dimpled, dark-eyed young woman in the photograph. Pina used to wonder what she and Anita had in common beside Vince, who likely cheated on her as well. Anita had been an RN, a practicing Catholic. Still, the only reason she made it on wall is that she died. No way their marriage would have lasted this long.

Pina thinks to lift her photos off the wall, but forces herself up the stairs. She screams after she pushes open the door of the master bedroom. At first she thinks the room has been ransacked by thieves, but a little voice in her head whispers: Vince. The bed’s unmade and there’s blood on the sheets. When she starts spotting needles on the ground, mixed in with the piles of clothes, she drops a hand over her mouth—there’s no point in screaming anymore. Vince is an addict who’s gone off the rail. When did he start? He can’t have gotten to this point in so short a time.

The medicine cabinet in the bathroom has been plundered as well. Pill bottles, as well as loose capsules and pills, are spilled across the floor, with disposable razors, tweezers, fingernail clippers, band-aids, containers of talcum powder, combs and brushes, and random toothbrushes. The plastic reservoir for the Waterpik is splintered; it looks like it’s been stepped on.

She wants to get out of the house quick, but first rushes down the hall to her office, wondering what disaster awaits. Somehow he’s left it alone. Was this out of respect for her? Oh, Vince, what have you done to yourself? She takes a quick look around the office, still without touching anything. Does she need something from here? No, she doesn’t need anything. Then she spots the carved rabbit lamp, with the beautifully marbled shade, that Marco gave her on their first anniversary. The life-size carving is Indonesian, crafted from an unknown hardwood, painted in a dark finish with a yellow dotted necklace of flowers that Pina decided, long ago, means that the rabbit has been deemed holy. She’s never believed in holy or in the luck that rabbits have or convey, but she wants this bunny with her. She yanks the plug from the socket, coils the cord, and holds the rabbit in her arms as if it were a baby. Come with me, she whispers, out of this house of horrors.

Once she’s settled the rabbit into the passenger seat up front, she pulls off her gloves and tosses them into the trunk of the car. She shoots several squirts of sanitizer into her hands. There’s only so much it can sanitize. She calls Vince again. Pick up. Why don’t you pick up? Who else to call? She tries Bernard, his best friend, his chess buddy, and is surprised that he answers.

“Pina,” Bernard says, in his lilting British accent, “everything okay?”
“You know,” she says, buying time. She feels oddly exposed standing on the sidewalk, but she needs the fresh air; she’s not ready to get back in the car.
“You’re up in Sonoma still?”
”Actually down in the city today. Have you been in touch with Vince?”
“Can’t say I have. Tried him a couple times but figured the poor man’s deep in the trenches.”
“I spoke to him this morning and he was very disturbed.”
“Oh, no.”

She’s not sure how much to tell Bernard.

“If there’s anything I can do,” he says.

She’s not sure what anybody can do. How do you care for an addict, even one you once loved, in the middle of a plague? Her conversation with Bernard trails off into sweet niceties and she’s left with herself on the sidewalk.

Before she gets in the car, she looks up and down the street. Somebody must know when Vince was last around. She shouldn’t do it but she does—walks right across the street and knocks on Robyn’s door. It’s a brazen thing to do given their history, but not as audacious as sleeping with your neighbor’s mate, as Robyn did with Vince for more than six months.

Pina waits down several steps and still can hear voices inside the house. Earl, Robyn’s husband, a dentist—Dr. Sconcy—has probably been off work for weeks, and, far as she knows, they have a couple of teenagers at home.

“Robyn,” she says, when the door opens and she sees the tall redhead looking quizzically into space.
“Oh, Pina. I thought you were . . .”
“Yes. I’m looking for Vince.”

Robyn steps outside and shuts the door behind her. “You know, I haven’t . . . we haven’t . . .”
“I know. I just wondered if you’ve noticed Vince coming and going.”
“Why would I? I mean . . .”
“Maybe you’ve noticed his car in the driveway.”
Robyn shakes her head. “Is something the matter?”
“You mean, beside the world going to hell.”

Robyn laughs a little too loud.

Pina is surprised to feel so little animus toward her. She’s just another woman who fell for Vince’s charms, but at least she had the decency to tell her and express contrition.

The front door opens.

“Hey Earl,” she calls to the bespectacled dentist.
“Pina. Everything okay?” That seems to be the benign question of our age.
“Peachy. Just saying hello.”
“Hey, I like your facemask. Very stylish.”
“Thank you. It’s the only fashion statement we have left.”

After Pina says goodbye to the Sconcy’s, she heads across town toward Kaiser, but before she crosses Market Street she needs to pull off on a side street to vomit. She heaves more, it seems, than last night’s dinner and is ashamed to leave her dis-ease on the curb.

She has no idea what she’s going to do at Kaiser. Surely they won’t let her into the building. She finds a parking spot across Geary on Lyon, and sets her facemask in place again, after worrying about what will happen if she has to vomit again.

After a quick search through the doctor’s parking lot for Vince’s car, to no avail, a security man approaches her. Can he help her? She tells him she’s waiting for her husband, Dr. Lester.

“Well, you can’t wait here, Ma’am.”
“I’m not waiting here,” she shouts, “I’m looking for his fucking car.” She’s surprised by her rage and apologizes to the guard as he hustles her out of the lot. Pina hurries off to the parklet on the northeast side of the main building. Staff members often catch a bit of fresh air there. What does she expect to accomplish? She approaches two beleaguered nurses, from safe distance, and asks whether they’ve seen Dr. Lester. One gives her little more than a blank stare, while the other repeats his name, “Dr. Lester . . . Dr. Lester,” and shakes her head.

Despondent, by the time she gets back to the car, she notices the carved rabbit, sitting shotgun. He appears ready to go for a ride and she’s pleased for the companionship.