Zombie Mountain (Walking Plague Trilogy #3) (15 page)

Numi continues not looking at me. He has taken my illness hardest of all. No surprise there. “Because you’re the only one who can help him, man, and you ain’t dead yet.”

It’s not that Numi forgets I’m sick. It’s not that he forgets that I’ve been diagnosed with an incurable AIDS-related cancer that has spread to my lungs. It’s not that eight months ago, I was given six months to live and that I’m now living on borrowed time. It’s that my old friend is in some serious denial, and he only wishes it was a damn river in Egypt.

“
True,” I say. “I’m not dead yet.”

I look at my coffee in front of me and I want to reach for it, but my shoulder hurts so much that I don’t want to move. All I want to do is sit there and close my eyes and feel the hot sun on my arm. I have no business being up and about. The doc had insisted I stay in bed. But I figure if I’m gonna die, I might as well do it with a latte in my hand.

“Just talk to him, cowboy.”

I look at Numi and he suddenly grins broadly, showing a blindingly white row of tiny bottom teeth. I know this smile. It is a new smile meant for me, created for me. It’s a little too big, too unnatural, too patronizing, too euphoric. It is a smile that Numi gives only me when he’s willing my world to be safe. As if my African friend can will away my sickness with his bright smile. I wish he could. He has given it his best shot.

I take in some air, which rattles around in my chest. “Help him, how?”

Numi thinks it’s his smile that has willed me forward, and so he flashes it again, and this time, reaches out and takes my hand. Numi is gay, and I am not. Lately, he has taken my hand a lot and I have let him. Mostly, I do not have the strength to pull it away. And truth be known, I appreciate his comforting touch. He is the only one who touches me, outside of the prodding and poking of doctors. Instinctively, I want to pull away, but I don’t. He squeezes my hand and his touch alone, his very strong touch,

gives me a jolt of strength.

Numi says, “Someone close to him is missing.”

Now, I do pull my hand away and sit up. The effort alone causes a wave of dizziness that nearly overwhelms me. I feel myself swaying in my chair and I nearly vomit, but I fight through it. After all, this is what I did years ago, before the sickness. Before I was diagnosed with AIDS. Before the cancer. Before all of that, I found those who were missing. I found them, one way or another. Dead or alive.

“
Who’s missing?” I ask.

Numi shakes his head and then flicks his eyes over my shoulder. “I don’t know, man, but he’s coming now. He can tell you.”

Chapter Two

A moment later, Eddie comes around and stands in front of me and looks down at me as he might a dying grandfather. His lips are pressed together and he’s sort of smiling, but sort of not. He’s happy, it seems, to see me again, but clearly sad to see me in this current dilapidated state. Mostly, he’s unsure of how to react to me. I’m used to it.

He’s also a little standoffish, which I’ve also grown used to. Someone who’s dying of AIDS doesn’t elicit a lot of physical contact, although that doesn’t seem to stop Numi. Nothing stops Numi—at least, not when it comes to me.

Eddie settles for a gesture I’m used to. The gentle shoulder pat. I’m so used the gesture that I barely notice it anymore, or let it bother me. Where once, my close friends hugged me, they now pat me on the shoulder. And handshakes are nonexistent. It is my reality. I accept it.

Numi doesn’t accept it. Eddie’s little gesture bugs my Nigerian friend. I can see it in his alert eyes. He wishes people would treat me the same. Sometimes, he insists on it. But lately, he has eased up on people. Insisting that people act a certain way generally causes conflict. People do not want to be told how to act, especially towards someone with an infectious disease.

Eddie sits opposite me, next to Numi. I try not to think that he’s sitting as far away from me as possible, but I suspect he is. Such thoughts get me nowhere. Such thoughts remind me that I’m less than human, unworthy of contact or love or compassion. Sympathy maybe. Distant sympathy.

Do you blame them?
I think again for perhaps the thousandth time.
They value their lives. Contact with a diseased man isn’t valuing their lives, now is it? It’s putting themselves at risk, or so they think.

Wrong or not, I get used to it, and so I sigh as Eddie gestures awkwardly towards me. He opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. His hand sort of flops around like something dying on a hook. Finally, he drops it to the table, unsure of what to do with it or himself or what to say to me.

So I help a brother out. “Eddie, I have AIDS. Full-blown fucking AIDS with a lung cancer chaser. I’m as good as dead. So stop behaving like a scared dick. I don’t have time for dicks. Just be real.”

He nods. We’ve known each other since high school, where he and I had been close friends. Eddie went on to marry his high school sweetheart, Olivia, a girl who had been my sweetheart as well. Secretly, of course. Eddie and I had met Olivia on the same night. We both liked her, although I suspected that I liked her more. As I had been working up the courage to go talk to her, Eddie had beat me to the punch. I had hated him for that at the time, but went on to accept it. Eddie and Olivia hit it off, although once, when she had been drinking, Olivia admitted to me privately that she wished I had asked her out instead of Eddie.

My connection with Olivia would carry on into our adult lives. A sweet connection really, since we never acted inappropriately. Still, more than once we had discussed what life might have been like if the two of us had gotten together. It was a sweet thought, and often I caught her looking at me sadly.
Eddie,
I think,
caught us looking at each other as well, but said nothing.

Now Eddie looks sheepish and finally says, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“So am I.”

“
I should have come by more often.”

Numi, who is sitting perfectly still with his hands folded in his lap, says, “
By more often you mean never one time?”

Numi and Eddie have never liked each other. Numi had always thought Eddie was an asshole. Probably because Eddie made it a habit to cheat on Olivia. And Numi knew of my fondness for Olivia.

Eddie looks at Numi long and hard. Numi continues staring forward, hands resting comfortably in his lap. He literally doesn’t move a muscle.

Finally, Eddie looks back at me. “I just didn’t know what to say, you know?”

I nod. This is coming from my closest high school friend. A guy I had spent most of my youth with. Hell, I had been his best man, watching him as he married a girl I knew I had feeling for.

“
It’s okay,” I say as Numi frowns. “You’ve been busy.”

I know I’m making excuses for Eddie; I’ve done this for most of my life. Eddie was always getting into trouble and getting me into trouble as well. I also know that most people aren’t so busy that they can’t take a few minutes to visit a dying friend. But I’m not here to make people hate themselves. I do enough self-hating for everyone.

“No, man. I’m unemployed again. I have no excuse. I don’t know what to say.”

I like that about Eddie. He can be real and honest. Most of my friends are honest. It’s a trait I look for in friends. If you’re dishonest, then beat it. Who needs you, right?

* * *

Anyway, Eddie is growing a goatee and I see a tattoo hiding under his short sleeve. I wonder about both, especially the tattoo. I try to grasp its meaning: two vertical lines topped with a horizontal one, kind of like a capitol T but the two lines make it plain it is a symbol of some sort. The horizontal top is curved a little. Maybe it’s his mane in Chinese or Sanskrit or who the hell knows. I figure Eddie is going through some kind of midlife crisis with the tat and goatee.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“
Look, I’m and asshole. I’m the worst fucking friend.”

“
No,” I say. He doesn’t need to be down on himself. His reaction is normal, after all. I didn’t expect anymore, or any less. “You’re not an asshole.”

Numi makes the smallest movement of his head to indicate that he disagrees with me. I ignore Numi.

Eddie doesn’t notice. He says, “A friend of mine, a good friend of mine is…”

“
Dying,” I say.

“
Yeah, that. And I don’t even have the balls to see him.”

“
You have little balls,” I say. It is part of our humor. My balls are big, his balls are small, and vice versa.
Har, har.
It’s what guys do. Simple creatures we are.

But Eddie isn’t up to my playful ribbing. I’m barely up to it myself. That joke took a lot of energy. He says, “How… how did this happen?”

“How did I get AIDS?”

He nods and shrugs a little. Even mentioning the word makes him clearly uncomfortable. More so, I see that he’s embarrassed that others might have overheard us. Numi misses nothing. He sees Eddie’s embarrassment and frowns even more.

“I had a steady girl,” I say. “She had it and didn’t know it. A few weeks into our relationship, the condom came off and never went back on. We saw each other on and off for a few months. Months that were filled with lots of sex. She had some random blood work done and the results came back. She had it, and now I have it, too.”

Eddie turns a little pale. I avoid using the word “AIDS” for his benefit. He says, “But I thought, you know, guys didn’t really get it from girls.”

“Not common, certainly, but there are times when it’s not safe to have sex with a woman.”

He nods. “Her period.”

I nod. “Bingo.”

“
Jesus.”

“
It happens,” I say. “It’s in the blood. I must have been chafed at the time. Like I said, too much sex.”

“
But I thought AIDS was, you know, treatable these days. You know, Magic Johnson and all.”

“
Sure,” I say. “Except when it’s not.”

“
I don’t understand.”

“
Neither do the doctors. Not really. It’s called AIDS-related cancer, and the connection is not completely understood, but the link probably depends on a weakened immune system. Had I just had AIDS, I would probably beat it. My AIDS was the prelude to my cancer.”

“
And having AIDS…”

“
There’s no fighting the cancer,” I say. “Although we tried.”

Months of radiation had proved fruitless. It had only proven to weaken me more.

“I’m sorry,” says Eddie.

“
I’m sorry, too.”

We’re both silent. Numi’s silent, too, but he doesn’t count. He’s usually silent, especially when Eddie’s around. Numi, I think, was glad that Eddie disappeared. Showed his true colors, as Numi tells me. I watch a small, fat bird nibble on some fattening crumbs.

“Do you still see her?” Eddie asks me.

“
The girl who gave me HIV?”

“
Yes.”

I shake my head. “She lives with her family in Montana. Last I heard, she’s living a fairly normal life, just with HIV.”

What I don’t tell Eddie is that she doesn’t talk to me, which I find hard to believe. She’s ruined me, but I’m not worthy of a phone call?

She didn’t ruin you, asshole.

I know this. I have to take ownership of this. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do: taking responsibility for my AIDS. A hundred times a day, I’d wish I’d never met her, I’d wish I’d never pressed her for sex, I’d wish I’d never developed a relationship with her, I’d wish the condoms had stayed on, I’d wish I hadn’t been so reckless.

I’d wished for a lot of things. Now I wish for nothing.

That’s the funny thing when you’re given a few months to live. You quit wishing. You quit hoping. You quit dreaming. There’s not enough time for dreams to come true, and if they did, there isn’t enough time to enjoy them.

Dreams are dead to me. Hope is dead. All I want is my morning latte.

The day isn’t half over and I’m already losing my strength. I need to sleep, and badly. A week ago, I could make it until evening. At this rate, I will soon not be able to even get out of bed.

Numi sees this. Numi sees everything. He’s always watching me, studying me, monitoring me. In Numi’s eyes, Eddie is wasting my time and energy, neither of which I have in spades. Although Numi has okayed this meeting for reasons I still do not comprehend, Numi doesn’t like the way things are progressing. I know this, because I know Numi, too. As well as he knows me.

“What do you need, Eddie?” asks Numi.

Eddie looks at him, blinks, and realizes for the first time that when you talk to me, you also talk to Numi. Eddie looks back at me, and seems to size me up again. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking, but it can’t be good.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he says.

“
The man is on borrowed time,” says Numi, leaning forward. “Maybe we can waste a little more of it?”