Laughing with the Reaper

by Lloyd B. Abrams

I hope that Yvette will be here when it happens. At this moment, she's not exactly with me, but somewhere around. "Sal, baby. I really gotta get the fuck outta here," was how she so delicately put it when she air-kissed my cheek and sashayed out of sight, maybe hoping the vision of her deliciously swaying ass was the last thing I'd ever see.

I knew she'd fled outside to grab a smoke, to gab on her cell, and probably to talk up any good-looking guy who passed her way. But at least she was somewhere close by. Closer than my first ex-wife, Agnes Not-of-God, who I had called "Angus" too many times to her face. Never could get that beast to laugh, or even to smile and moo. And closer than my second ex-wife, Lilith, who the epitome of evil. Closer even than our three kids, Maureen, Lawrence and Curlin. Mo, Larry and Curly. Get it? Not funny? Oh well. At least I'm having the last phlegmy laugh.

So I'm lying here, looking like shit - Yvette's gentle words - hooked to a morphine drip. I'm thumbing the goddamn button but I'm getting no relief so I hit the call button, get a tinny voice in a thick Jamaican accent, "May I help you, Meestaher Grobner?"

"Yes ... you ... can," I hear my voice croaking. I'm having trouble clearing my throat. I need another ice cube. Some Jell-O. Anything. "More pain stuff ... pleeeeze ..." Whining has never been my style. Bitching, however, certainly has been.

"Right away, suh," responds the disembodied voice in a condescending patois. I know it'll be a while. We've gone more than a few rounds together.

It's not that I'm ungrateful. Or nasty. Or a downright pain in the ass. Well, yeah, maybe I'm a little of each. Maybe more than a little. But isn't everybody? Wouldn't you be if you were in my place?

And my place? You've probably figured it out by now. I'm in a hospice. The Sunnydale-Meadowfields-Up-In-The-Goddam-Clouds-somewhere-or-other hospice. And, yes, they've punched my ticket. I'm on the way out.

Feel sorry for me now? Are you ready to forgive? Aw, come one. All you gotta do is say, "I'm sorry for thinking that you're such a miserable prick." Repeat after me ...

No, huh?

Well, then lemme tell you a little bit more. My father ran off just after I was plopped into our fine world. Never thought I was his, and was probably right. My mother never loved me, thought I was a mistake and a hindrance and a burden, which, I suppose, I was. She loved my sister a helluva lot more. Catered to her. Spoiled her. Olivia, who was six years older, dressed me up in party dresses and Mary Janes when my mother went off to "socialize." I got to like the way it made me feel until I started liking it way too much. Olivia put a stop to it when I started rubbing against her leg like a lovesick cocker spaniel. May they both rot in hell or rest in peace. I haven't decided which.

I once tracked down my father, Salvatore, after whom I was named, who was living in a trailer park outside of Ocala. I was surprised that he was still among us. I sat in a rented Impala watching him soaking up Winn-Dixie beer over a five-dollar hibachi, waiting to confront him, wanting to find out why he left us, but I realized in the end that it wouldn't matter one bit. What he did was what he did. And living a shit-hole life in his tin-can prison served him just right. I never did get out of that car. Maybe I should've. Oh well.

Agnes was a huge mistake, it turned out. I kinda knew it from the get-go. Angus was wide-bodied, but not big-hearted. But the sex? Man, the sex was awesome. Her appetite was insatiable. Everything else stank. Our marriage began rotting when the rutting got stale. Thankfully, no rug rats were produced to carry on our species-defiling genetic combination.

Lilith was a beauty. She was luminescent. I thought I saw a glow about her when she was undulating on top of me, but it was probably her being backlit from the Phillies game on mute. Ever hear of Jekyll and Hyde? Well, that was her in a nutshell. One moment, as sweet as apple pie. The next, as contemptuous as the devil incarnate. More than once, I woke up to her standing over me with a Ginsu carving knife in her claws.

I'm glad the kids turned out all right. They all deserve decent lives after all the crap we'd put them through. It's not that we did anything specific to them. It's all the fallout from the contentiousness between that infernal demon and me. Mo's a black-belt, a physical defense instructor in Boston. Larry's a hair stylist in San Diego; I laid out a heap to help him buy his own salon. And Curly graduated magna cum laude from Northwestern. He's now a neurosurgeon living in Chicago.

Yvette just came back into the room. "Hey baby ... you miss me?" Her lipstick is smeared and her belly shirt is wrinkled, but I say nothing. Can't say much of anything; I can only grunt. I wanted to ask her why she has to flaunt it. But then I realize that that's Yvette. I had run into her one night in Donnelly's back when and of course I knew what she was like. And she was real appreciative about the way I spent money - and lots of it - on her.

And now, I'm too sick, too tired to be angry. I wasn't perfect. I've got my faults. All the crap - all my crap - screwed up my marriages, alienated me from my kids, lost me a job or three along the way. I've been told I gotta let go of it. And I am letting go of it. I apologize. I'm sorry. What the hell else can I say? They are who they are, they were who they were. And, like Popeye, I am what I am. And soon I am going to be no longer.

Rev 6 / January 20, 2010

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January, 2010…Copyright © 2010, Lloyd B. Abrams