Right to Die

Providence . I hand-carried Steven O’Brien from counting beans at work to leafing through old clippings at home. Just to be certain.
    When I got back to Boston , I dialed Mass General. Paul Eisenberg’s voice told me Maisy Andrus had died two hours earlier.
    That left only one stop more.

    “Oh. John.”
    Del Wonsley’s voice and face both showed surprise in seeing me. “I was afraid you might not have gotten my message.”
    A polite way to ask what the hell had taken me so long. “Can I come in?”
    “Oh, sure. Sorry.”
    I stepped over the threshold into a first-level entry, the walls lined with tapestries.
    Wonsley said, “Please, come up.”
    We climbed the stairs of the Bay Village town house to a second, living room floor. Two men I’d never seen were there, chatting quietly over cheese and crackers and fruit. The men looked surprised, too, as if they had been expecting Wonsley to bring up someone they knew.
    Wonsley introduced us, then said, “Would you like to see Alec?”
    “If I can.”
    “I think he’d like that.”
    Wonsley led me up another flight to a door off the corridor, then whispered so no one below us or behind the door could hear him.
    “Try not to stay too long.”
    “How strong is he?”
    Wonsley’s tongue darted out and back. “As strong as he’ll ever be. Why?”
    “I should ask him some things and tell him some things.”
    “John, it... it won’t matter soon.”
    “Tomorrow?”
    “I think so. He’s asked me to be ready then.”
    Wonsley went downstairs, and I opened the door.
    The bedroom was dark, just some muted track lighting near the four-poster. Alec’s head was framed by the pillows under and behind it. The covers were pulled up close to his chin, the left arm out but with no tubes in it. There was a lot of medicinal stuff on the night table beside him. Small bottles of pills and tablets, the leather case holding some ampules of insulin, a couple of syringes in cellophane blister packs arrayed around it. From two corners I could hear solo piano, a stereo secreted somewhere.
    I got close enough to Alec for him to become aware of me.
    “John? John, good to see you.”
    Much of the hair was gone. Deep pouches under the eyes shaded his cheekbones like a charcoal sketch.
    “Alec.”
    His hand came up from the comforter a few inches. I took it, felt him squeeze. I squeezed back with a little less pressure.
    “ Del called you?”
    “Yes.”
    The wry smile. “I’m afraid the time for makeup has passed. Something about Maisy?”
    He hadn’t heard. I thought about what I’d gone there to tell him, thought about how I’d want to spend the time if I were Bacall. Thought about Beth.
    I said, “No, Alec. I came to have that talk.”
    His eyes asked the question.
    “About life,” I said.
    After a short while he drifted off in mid-sentence, breathing pretty steadily. I squeezed his hand one more time and said good-bye.

= 33 =

    From behind the wheel, Angel said, “You see, España is not a morning country.”
    I nodded at him as we bounced around another bright but unpopulated corner in Gijón, a picturesque city that reminded me of New Orleans . My passenger seat was black leatherette with no headrest, an after-market chrome stick shift rising from a rubber nipple on the floor. The speedometer optimistically suggested that Angel’s SEAT 600 was capable of hitting 120 kilometers per hour, or about seventy-two mph. I decided the plastic Virgin Mary on the dashboard couldn’t hurt.
    The flight that was supposed to leave Kennedy at eight-thirty p.m. didn’t actually take off until ten-thirty. I cadged a nap during the six and a half hours in the air, but with an additional time difference of six hours, it was 11:00 a.m. Spain time before the plane landed in Madrid . At customs, the officer in a tan shirt and black epaulets checked only my passport, not the small duffel bag.
    In Madrid , a cab took me to the Estación del norte, a magnificent marble building with an orange tile roof and an elaborate, platformed interior. Unfortunately, the next train to Gijón wasn’t until ten p.m. My own body clock was so screwed up that I was more hungry than sleepy. For lunch, I had a menu de día that turned out to be four courses, wine included. The weather was pleasant, and my joints were still sore from the marathon, so to loosen up I walked around Madrid for a few hours. Grand public buildings and banks, ornate gold work bordering the doors and windows, blackened