Needles Part I
Posted: February 28, 2010 Filed under: Pseudo-Fiction | Tags: Blood, Bone Marrow, Cafe Vienna, California Dreaming, Coffee, Hell, Ice and Snow, Needles, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Tattoos 3 Comments »* * *
The first time, I get the machine.
With Smells Like Teen Spirit in the background, a raspy voice shouts, “Thanks for calling Nikki’s Needlework. No one’s here. If you were calling for Steve, his number is six-oh-four, not six-oh-three. The listing is wrong. Deal with it. We’re open noon to midnight every day. Now, when you hear the beep, resist the impulse to give me your life’s story.”
Ella shakes her head.
It beeps and I hang up.
Ella leaves me on the couch, walks to the Seven-Eleven for coffee filters, comes back ten minutes later with a steaming cup in each hand.
“They were out, so this will have to do. I’m not digging the car out for coffee filters.”
It’s a tolerable dark roast, so it was probably made within the last hour or so. Last year I would have been jokingly angry she’d bought convenient store coffee. Within the last couple months, maybe angry for real, and she knows it, visibly bracing herself for something. God, I’ve been an asshole lately.
“Well, we’ve got cream and sugar right?”
She smiles relief, stomps the ice and salt off her shoes and un-bundles.
“I could stir in some honey and cinnamon?”
“It’d either be the best Seven-Eleven coffee ever, or the world’s worst Café Vienna, but I’m game. Just bring the codeine on your way in.”
She waits a beat, and I’m thinking exactly what she’s about to say.
“I think it’s a little early, you just had some at six.”
“Dammit. So ten o’clock then?”
“Just a couple hours, hon.”
I set my watch alarm.
The wind whistles outside.
“You want my take on Hell? It ain’t hot. Hell is where you shovel snow, naked, for all of eternity, and you never quite go numb.”
The windows rattle.
“Sounds like we’re already there.”
“Compare that to burning forever, and at best it’s a draw.”
We laugh tentatively, pretending to like the coffee and go on watching morning news shows to kill the time.
Around one in the afternoon I dial Nikki’s Needlework.
“Hello?”
It’s a girl’s voice over music and lots of people, and there’s this weird intermittent buzzing sound.
“Hi, I’m looking for, uh-”
“This is Nikki. What’s up?”
I blank.
“So, interesting message.”
“Heh, yeah. I just hate it when people call, all high and shit. Leave their ideas for the best design ever in a fifteen minute voice mail. I don’t have time for that shit.”
“So, you do monograms or something?”
She laughs, and if there was any doubt, it’s gone. If you bred a hyena with a banshee, the offspring would still sound maybe half as shrill as Nikki’s ear-piercing cackle, but to be fair, you’d have the demeanor about right.
“Look kid, you want a monogram, you’ve called the wrong place.”
“No. Look, I’m not really sure how to put… you know, it’s just… it’s been a while.”
She covers the phone, there’s some muffled shouting, then the music dies. After a beat, that intermittent buzzing picks up again.
“Junior, is that you?”
My stomach sinks.
Nikki had this thing, back in high school, since I was always taller, but she was older, she had to make sure people knew I was her ‘little’ brother. So when I was a freshman and she was a sophomore she called me ‘Junior.’ It translated to ‘younger’ in her mind, but sometimes it backfired. With my height, people who otherwise didn’t know me assumed I was a junior instead of a freshman and bam, I’m in like flint. It was the nicest thing she never meant to do for me.
“How’s it going, Nik?”
Her voice was tentative.
“Well I don’t know. If you’re calling me, I mean, it’s just so wild. Totally out of the blue, you know.”
“Yeah, definitely out of the blue.”
“You’re killing me here. What’s up? Like, are mom and dad okay?”
“Do you even care?”
I don’t actually say that. What I say is that the folks are fine. What she says is, well, okay. But she draws out the “a” in such a way, it’s more like a question. I don’t know what the next step is, so I take a stab at small talk.
“So Nikki’s Needlework?”
“Oh yeah, it’s my tattoo shop.”
“No shit?” I chuckle, completely surprised. I never saw her as an artistic personality. Like, at all.
“My, my, my, how things change. Swearing? I suppose you’ve taken up smoking and drinking as well, Junior.”
“Oh, I penciled them in for the New Year, but things kept coming up.”
She laughs a little easier at that, different than before. Still a notch too loud, but not entirely disaffecting.
“So that’s cool. Tattoos. Thought about getting one of those, myself.”
“What kind of tattoo does a music pastor get, anyway?”
“Oh, well there’s that whole thing.”
Her voice drops an entire register, old-fashioned, town-gossip style.
“No-o.”
“Yep. I’m no longer in ministry.”
“Well, my, my, my, indeed.”
‘My, my, my’ was always her catch phrase, but somehow she avoids sounding like a sixty-year-old nanny.
“But you didn’t call to tell me that,”
“No, I guess not,”
“… so the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is,”
“… why am I calling.”
“… so spit it out, Junior.”
I put the phone against my forehead, depress the speakerphone button then slide the receiver gingerly into the cradle. In the silence, the wind outside whistles against the windows.
Nothing to do now but say it.
“I need you to get a blood test.”
You can tell if someone is smiling by how their voice sounds, even over the phone. I learned that working customer service for a bank during college. Well right now, if you asked me, Nikki is definitely not smiling. It’s not a change in pitch, it’s more a change in tone and demeanor.
“Oh, hold on now. What are we talking about?”
“I need, uh…”
“Aren’t there, you know, blood banks? I mean, trust me, you don’t want my blood. I can’t even donate.”
My stomach drops.
“Why not?”
“Way too many tattoos, Junior. They won’t even test me to see if I’m carrying anything… I mean…” She trails off. Her voice, relaying from tower to cell phone tower may as well have been broadcasting into the emptiness of space. I was out of my head, watching myself talk.
“Are you? Carrying anything?”
“Jun-…” She sighs. “Evan, what do you need?”
“What I need,” I closed my eyes, “is a familial bone marrow match.”
After that, the line dies.
***
I open the door to the porch. Ella smiles until she sees I’m not, then folds herself into my chest.
“Evan?”
The icy wind takes my breath for a moment.
“What happened?”
“I guess she hung up.”
My words hang clouded and meaningless in the space between us until another gust of wind carries them away.
My bones ache, but it’s not the icy wind. It’s the leftovers of the chemo, the pills I take now, and the stiffness of the biopsy wound. The wind is almost nice, just to feel something other than a codeine-induced haze that numbs a person from far more than just side effects.
Ella squeezes me, crying quietly, and it hurts my bones, but I bear it. Those first couple days out of the hospital, I took so much out on her when the pain killers weren’t enough. I probably still do.
My socks are getting wet, with the snow so deep it’s melting down into my shoes.
“God damn snow.” But I don’t say it out loud, because Ella still has this thing about taking the Lord’s name.
My ears are numb, ringing, but then it’s not my ears and Ella’s pushing me inside, toward the phone.
I don’t recognize the number at first, but it’s the same area code I remember dialing for Nikki.
“Evan, are you there?”
Her voice is composed, but cautious.
“I dropped my phone. Are you there?”
“Jeeze, Nik, I thought you hung up.”
“No, but my phone didn’t survive the fall. Now would mind telling me why I’m about to lie to AT&T so they cover a new one?”
“It doesn’t sound like it would make a difference, Nik.”
She waits a long moment, the buzzing sound moves further and further into the background until I hear a door close.
“Are you still in Minneapolis?”
Oh, here it comes.
“Yeah, I’m still here.”
“I can be there in a few hours. If… you know, you wanna start that drinking habit, talk this thing out.”
I glance over at Ella, she’s frozen. “Evan?”
“No time like the present, right?”
“Jesus, Evan. What did mom and dad say? Are they up there?”
“They have,” I begin drumming my fingers on the desk, “They’ve had prior commitments.”
“Why didn’t they call me?”
There it is. Where does Nikki fit in? What story does Nikki get to tell her friends? Start with blaming the folks for not visiting me, add a dash of it’s always been like this, then move right on to how they never treated her right, either.
“You know, Evan, some people never change, do they?”
Right on cue.
“I mean, when I was in high school, they never…”
I can’t listen. It’s not that ‘we’ were in high school and the folks never did this or that, it’s that ‘she’ was in high school. Like I’m a sideline character in her story, even when it’s my recital, my art show, my life hanging in the balance.
I head back out to the porch, silent as my chest begins to heave opposite the rhythm of my breathing. The snow on the railing is so perfect, I can’t bear to touch it. And maybe I’m too cold or too numb to notice anyway. And what then? I don’t want to know.
Inside, Ella tries to sound upbeat.
“Hey Nikki, this is Ella.”
“Why hello, Ella. Are you the one taking care of my little brother?”
“Doing my best.”
“I can be there in a few hours. Let’s call it six o’clock. Does that work?”
“Sounds great.”
Nikki takes a deep breath. “What do I say? To Evan, I mean. What do you say to someone?”
“Sometimes you just sit quietly. Other times, if you talk, you talk about anything else. Except the weather.”
“That sounds like Evan. Still aiming for the West Coast?”
“California Dreaming.”
“Mm hm. Alright. I’ll be there, soon as I can. Can’t wait to meet you, Ella.”
* * *
© Anthony David Jacques MMX
