Straight Man

“What’s scenario two?”
    He hesitates. “We won’t worry about that until we get the blood work back.”
    “Cancer?”
    More hesitation. “A tumor is a possibility. Remember though. Not all tumors are cancerous.”
    “Wouldn’t a tumor show up on the X ray?” I say, suddenly aware that Phil has turned off the screen before beginning this discussion of scenarios.
    “Not always.”
    “Let’s look again,” I suggest.
    He shakes his head. “We’ll wait for the blood work.”
    “Just flip it on.” I lean forward to do it myself.
    “No,” he says, preventing me. “In the rectal exam I felt an asymmetry that concerns me. Not large. Probably nothing.”
    How to explain this? How to describe the strange exhilaration at this information? Fear? Surely. But more than this, and it’s the “more” that I can’t explain. Because surely fear, given the circumstance, would be a perfectly adequate emotion. Unalloyed fear of death would satisfy William of Occam, and it should satisfy me. It’s my mortality we’re discussing. There’s no need for complexity, no need to multiply entities, no need to court anticipation. But there it is, regardless. I can feel the exhilaration where it begins in my groin and radiates outward and upward like my backed-up urine. “What’s scenario three?” I wonder. “I’m already dead, and this is all your dream?”
    “The third scenario is more remote, more rare,” he admits. “There have been cases where anxiety and tension have resulted in the symptoms you describe.”
    “This doesn’t feel psychological to me,” I tell him.
    “Frankly, you don’t seem like the type, Hank,” Phil admits. “You aren’t experiencing big money problems right now?”
    I shake my head. “Not that I know of. Lily writes the checks.”
    “She and the girls okay?”
    I’ve anticipated this question, so I don’t hesitate. “Fine.”
    “You haven’t taken up with some young graduate student or something?”
    I blink at him. I’ve told Phil Watson about my father’s propensity for forming stones but not, unless I’ve suffered another ellipsis, about his penchant for bedding female graduate students. How has he intuited that I may possess this infidelity gene? “No,” I say, trying to sound convincing, which should be easy. I have, after all, declined to share a peach with Meg Quigley. “Should I?”
    He ignores this. “Any other symptoms?”
    “Of what?”
    “Of anything.”
    I figure what the hell. “Time is slipping.”
    He blinks. “You mean it’s slipping away?”
    “Not exactly.” I explain the phenomenon of what I’ve come to think of as my ellipses. How suddenly I’ll be aware that a small chunk of time has passed without my being able to account for it. I explain what happened in Bodie Pie’s office last Friday, how one second she was sitting there trying not to light a cigarette, and a second later she was asking me where I’d been, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from her lips.
    “Sounds like simple abstraction to me.” Phil shrugs when I finish. “But it’s interesting. How old are you?”
    “Fifty this summer,” I confess.
    He nods, studying me. “Rough age.”
    “I’m having a ball,” I tell him, vaguely pissed off at the direction the conversation has taken. The thrilling glow of anticipation I felt while we were discussing the hypothetical tumor has dissipated.
    “The fifties make first basemen of us all, Hank.”
    “Let me understand this,” I say. “You think I can’t pee because I don’t want to play first base?
That’s
your diagnosis?”
    At this he surrenders a reluctant grin. “I haven’t made a diagnosis. For that we await the blood work.”
    There’s a knock on the door then, and a nurse appears. Phil follows her into the corridor, leaving me to dress. When I hear their voicesreceding down the hallway, I find the switch on the X-ray screen and flip it on. The screen is full of shapes and shadows, and I can’t be sure which is the asymmetry that troubles Phil Watson. As I study the image, I can feel the warm glow of anticipation return and radiate all the way to my fingertips. I confront the question: Is it even remotely possible that I
want
to die?
    When Phil Watson returns, he looks like he suspects what I’ve been up to. “I’ll call you tomorrow with results of the IVP,” he says. “Meantime, try not to worry.”
    “Can’t help it,” I say, though it’s not precisely worry I’m feeling. “This is my