So Much for That (31 page)

“Somebody’s gotta pay for it.”

They’d been so anxious to get away from Pogatchnik that Shep had forgotten to leave behind his down vest, which he now stuffed in his backpack. The sweltering sun had been a relief after the ice cave of the office, but only for a minute or two. Shep rolled up his sleeves; even after forgoing their joint weight-training sessions for months, he still had powerful arms. As for the poor fuck’s steady weight gain since January, Jackson battled between an unattractive satisfaction and dismay.

“But the employer thing, it’s just a historical fluke,” Jackson said authoritatively; what the heck, he could probably fill out this entire walk with factual information. That was what real men traded with each other anyway. Properly edified, Shep would never be able to object that he’d been filibustered. “Until about the 1920s, there was no such thing as health insurance. You got a medical bill, you paid it. Even then, private plans were few and far between, really just meant to cover catastrophe. The employer-sponsored thing developed during World War Two, when labor was scarce. Big companies were making bids for the handful of guys left who weren’t in the army, but they were hog-tied by government wage controls, so they couldn’t offer higher salaries. To get around the laws, they added health cover as a come-hither. it was a little perk. Didn’t
cost much, since everybody in those days keeled over fast and young. You couldn’t spend that much on people’s medical care, because nobody had invented chemo, or heart transplants, or the MRI. Pogatchnik thinks he’s being funny, but throwing in health benefits back then really wasn’t so different from tossing the flunkies a coupon for pizza.”

“Yeah, well now the pie comes with mushrooms, and anchovies, and extra cheese.”

“The problem’s not the pizza, it’s the insurance companies, man! They’re fucking evil, man! They’re parasites, parasites on other people’s suffering!”

“They’re not
evil
, Jacks, they’re just companies. Jesus, you sound like my father.”

“Do they produce anything? Do they improve anything? Do they do anything for anybody, besides their own employees and shareholders? Even McDonalds makes hamburgers. Those cunts at Wellness, they just shuffle paper. All they accomplish is a little redistribution of wealth, mostly to themselves. They’re Mooches pure and simple.”

“They’re private enterprises. They’re supposed to turn a profit.”

“That’s the whole point, dickhead! That is the whole fucking point!”

They’d hit the park; maybe Jackson had grown a mite vociferous, since a lady nearby side-eyed him with recognizable urban alarm, shimmying her stroller rapidly in the opposite direction.

Jackson made an effort to moderate his tone to a level that didn’t threaten the safety of small children. “You remember what you told me about gambling? How if most people didn’t, on average, lose, there wouldn’t be a gambling industry in the first place? For there to be money in it, the big picture has to be fixed.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Shep. “But you’re not, still—?”

“Give me a break, I’ve sworn off the dogs completely,” Jackson said hurriedly. So long as he was keeping his trap shut about everything else in his life, he might as well make it a clean sweep and lie about the works.

“I just mean, health insurance works the same way, right? Any insurance. For these companies to run in the black, the majority of their customers have to lose. On average, you have to pay in more over your lifetime than you draw, or these companies wouldn’t exist in the first place.”

“Well, I guess the hard cases are subsidized by guys who live on rice milk and pay high premiums for forty years, and then drop dead in the street. You know, guys like that.” Shep nodded toward an ostentatiously lean, shirtless runner showing off his gray-haired pecs and carrying a dumbbell in each hand. You didn’t stay that taut and skinny past fifty without being a pain in the ass, and at a glance Jackson pitied the man’s family. Puffing to overtake a female jogger up ahead in the midday heat, this geezer didn’t simply run; he was “a runner.” It was obvious that the pill’s miserable circuit around Prospect Park was the most important thing in his life. Fucking pathetic.

“On the other hand,” Shep went on, “Flicka, Glynis—they’ve both cost scads more than either of our families have paid in. We’re the Mooches here. We’ve lucked out.”

“Here we go, yet another improbably upbeat take on a national disaster. You seriously feeling
lucky
?”

“Good fortune is relative.”

Jackson got a little tired of Shep’s ceaseless
reasonableness
, his prissy, Sunday school sense of perspective. “My point stands. The very fact that these companies have to turn a profit means most people pay in more than they get out, period. So health insurance is, ipso facto, a scam.”

“Ipso facto!” Shep chuckled. “Sounds like a fifties detergent slogan.

‘Use Whiz, and, ipso facto! Stains vanish!’ I don’t know where you pick this stuff up.”

“I read a lot. You should try it.”

“Yeah, right. After I work all day, hit the A-and-P, make dinner, fetch Glynis her meds, and water, and skin cream…Give her a shot in the ass of Neupogen after drugging her out with lorazepam to keep her from getting hysterical about the needle…Keep her company because she can’t sleep, do the laundry at two in the morning and pay the bills at three…Then I can put my feet up with a big, thick, educational tome before the alarm rings at five.”

“What’s the diff? Flicka, pal, is a full-time job by herself, and I fit in plenty of books.”

“You’ve got Carol.”

It was the very subject of recent reflection that indeed Jackson did not “have” Carol, now less than ever. “Yeah, well, this isn’t a contest.”

“A contest over which of us feels more sorry for themselves? Now, that could be vicious.”

“I never said I felt sorry for myself,” said Jackson.

“Well, I do.”

“Why would you feel sorry for me?” Jackson snapped.

Shep shot his friend a look. “I meant I feel sorry for myself, dickhead. Feeling sorry for you, too, would be a tall order.”

“Well, skip it then.”

They strode on in stiff silence.

Jackson had noticed that whenever he bought a new pair of shoes, he went through a period thereafter when he couldn’t stop looking at other people’s shoes—wondering why they might have chosen that particular pair, appraising them as handsome or hideous. The same phenom now pertained to other men’s dicks. With every jogger and dog walker they passed, he found himself compulsively checking out the mound under the fly, bitterly eying the well-endowed. Cyclists in their tight Lycra attracted his gaze to the groin, where they surely packed smooth, straight, functional equipment that they foolishly took for granted. Now a whole park full of jocks probably thought he was a fag.

“Glynis went in for another blood transfusion yesterday,” Shep said after a bit, making a stab at convivial conversation. “Her white blood cell count was knee-high. They had to cancel her chemo. She’s not strong enough.”

“At least she gets a break,” Jackson grunted.

“Yeah, but the cancer gets a break, too. Goldman’s decided she can’t tolerate the Alimta and cisplatin anymore, and when she does go back to chemo they’ll change the cocktail. How do you like that word, huh?
Cocktail
.” Jackson had to hand it to him, Shep was really trying—either to pretend everything was fine between them, or to make it fine.

Jackson made a grudging effort in return. “Yeah, I picture this gorgeous Tiffany martini glass, gleaming with sweat and toothpicked with a stuffed olive—only what’s shimmering inside isn’t Bombay gin and a splash of vermouth, but strychnine.”

Yet Jackson had no sooner congratulated himself for being so
supportive
than it grew hard to pay attention, because he was tortured by a memory from about ten years before. He’d been replacing the rickety risers of some schmuck’s staircase, and though a one-man job it stretched over three or four days; by happenstance, the landing was right outside this loser’s study. Jackson had always prided himself on being a lively presence in other people’s homes, not just your average tight-lipped hired brawn. So long as a customer seemed obviously glad to lend an ear, he kept up a running patter—sometimes about the job itself, but more often about your basic issues of the day. Sort of like whistling while you work, but less annoying. Given Jackson’s status as a well-rounded autodidact—like, he had taught himself the meaning of
autodidact
—edifying narration gave these homeowners a chance to learn something. The soundtrack provided free stimulation, free information, and they should have been grateful that he didn’t charge extra for it.

But when Jackson was heading out on the third day of the riser job, Shep had pulled him aside and said, “This guy in Clinton, he wants you to, well…He wants you to shut up.” Apparently the riser guy was some kind of fiction writer—and Jackson had the measure of the twit, so he was unquestionably some posturing amateur—and couldn’t “concentrate” with all the commentary from the staircase. The customer was completely full of shit, since he’d eaten up everything Jackson had said, and was doubtless already planning to use this improbably intelligent, verbally agile, larger-than-life “character” from the world of home repair in one of his otherwise dull, unpublishable short stories.

Yeah, Jackson had dispatched the rest of the job keeping his mouth shut—or when he remembered to keep his mouth shut—but he’d have appreciated a little more solidarity from Shep. Instead, when Jackson had objected that you know what these pompous
writer
types are like: horrified by the blank screen and just dying for any distraction, any excuse to escape the impoverished confines of their pygmy imaginations, and “I’m telling you that customer was rapt, like he was practically taking notes,” Shep didn’t agree,
Yeah, I bet he was, too
, but interrupted and said, “Look, keep a lid on it, right? Just this once? We got work to do, they got work
to do. You’re not a talk show host, you’re a handyman.” That was really putting the boot in, since Shep knew full well that Jackson detested the word
handyman
, which he’d lobbied hard to replace on their business cards with something more dignified, something less low rent—you know, like
domestic construction consultant
. But no, the cards had to say
handyman
, because that’s the word that customers “understood.” Worse, Shep had pretty much implied that Jackson’s running commentary got on everyone’s nerves, and that this was merely the first guy to lodge a formal complaint. Well, Jackson had been supportive as all get-out through the sale of Knack and the deep-sixing of Pemba and now with Glynis, and frankly that support hadn’t always worked the other direction.

“These blood transfusions take, like,
five hours
,” Shep was explaining. “And Glynis still gets faint when they put in the cannula. Still, this neighbor of ours, Nancy, has been incredible. Comes with Glynis whenever I can’t go. Holds her hand and distracts her with recipes and shit—so Glynis comes home yesterday able to recite every ingredient in a complicated cottage-cheese-and-pineapple dip that sounds disgusting. The idea is to keep her from watching the needle. That’s not a small job, either. Lately they’re having a hard time finding a vein, and have to jab her several times. Nancy’s unbelievably boring, but nice. I’m starting to not care about boring. All I care about is nice.”

Jackson wasn’t sure if this compliment to some broad he’d never met was meant as a veiled reproof. Faithful at first, he hadn’t gone to see Glynis for several weeks. Entertaining customers was one thing; keeping up the packaged rant with a friend going through hell had admittedly grown artificial. But he didn’t know what to talk to her about otherwise, and he had his own problems.

“Meanwhile, they’ve moved my father out of Androscoggin Valley,” Shep continued, “and into a private nursing home nearby. It’s meant to be only temporary, while he recuperates. But he doesn’t believe it. He’s convinced he’s been dumped there for the rest of his life, like a sack of old clothes tossed in a Goodwill drop-off. So he gives Beryl a lot of grief. My sister’s solution is just not to visit him.”

“Neat,” said Jackson, with a guilty recognition that he’d arrived at the same solution to the Glynis problem.

“That means I’ll have to keep taking trips to New Hampshire. Which is tricky, since I can’t leave Glynis alone for long. I can’t take any more vacation or personal days than I absolutely have to. Still, I don’t want him to feel abandoned. Oh, and the Medicare people have cut him off, since they’ve now covered his ‘crisis care.’ So this Twilight Glens place is all on my dime. Eight grand a month, believe it or not, and a three-month deposit up front. With every aspirin extra.”

Ordinarily Jackson would have sympathized, even though after selling Knack Shep had more in the bank than he himself would ever see in one place. But none of his ostensibly
restorative
operations had been covered by either World Wellness or IBM’s outfit, since technically they constituted elective plastic surgery. So he’d been forced to charge all his medical bills to credit cards, at 22 percent interest; he was still paying off the original surgery as well, and those were just the debts that Carol knew about. Barely managing the minimums, he wasn’t the usual soft touch for Shep’s batty benevolence.

“As ever,” Shep was droning on, “I’ve got to pay Zach’s tuition, and keep topping up Amelia’s rent—”

“
Why
are you such a pushover?” Jackson exploded. “With your dad, just
don’t
go up to Berlin, right? You can’t. Your wife has cancer. Period. And when the next bill from that nursing home arrives,
just don’t pay it
. Fuck, you have the power! What do you think will happen, they’ll toss him on the street? It’s bad, but it’s not that bad. You’ve told me he’s got that house, which disqualifies him from Medicaid. Well, fine, when you don’t pay the bill, this private shit hole will just transfer him to a public shit hole, right? I bet there’s not much difference, when you’re pissed off anyway and flat on your back. Then Medicaid will step in, and maybe they’ll commandeer the house. Let ’em have it! Let ’em kick your self-centered, asshole sister out on her butt. Just walk away, bro! And while you’re at it, pull Zach out of that overpriced sports club and resign yourself that he’s an average fuck-off student who might as well be average and fucking off in a public school that you already pay for! Tell Amelia
she’s a grown-up now, and if her salary doesn’t cover her rent and her own goddamned health insurance then she gets another job that does, whether or not it fulfills her tender creative urges! Why are you the only one who has to be responsible? Why can’t you throw people on their own devices the way you’ve always been thrown on yours? Why can’t you start to treat other people the way, for years, they’ve been treating
you
?”