Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

eloquent plea for sterile dressings.
    He returned five minutes later, breathless from the climb. He leaned against the bark wall and slid to a sitting position. “Whew,” he said.
    “Brilliant as usual,” said Booter.
    “You’re not just saying that?”
    “No. It was very moving.”
    “Nobody laughed, at least.”
    “No,” said Booter. “You could’ve heard a pin drop.”
    Jimmy took off the wig and mopped his brow with a Kleenex. “Stupid ol’ Lonnie Muchmore missed two light cues.”
    “Didn’t show,” said Booter.
    “It didn’t?” Jimmy glanced up hopefully.
    “Looked fine from here. The audience liked you.”
    “Yeah,” said Jimmy, grinning. “They did, didn’t they?”
    Jimmy’s plasma scene went without a hitch. Back in the wings again, he unwound with Booter. “I forgot to tell you,” he said. “I met George Bush.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    The bewigged face smiled. “I guess you could say I met him. I peed on a tree next to him.”
    Booter nodded soberly. “Congratulations.”
    Jimmy laughed. “When I joined this outfit fifteen years ago, all I ever heard was: So-and-so peed on a tree next to Art Linkletter or John Mitchell….”
    “Henry McKittrick peed on a tree next to J. Edgar Hoover.”
    “There you go,” said Jimmy.
    “You’re not really a Bohemian until you’ve peed on a tree next to somebody.”
    “So there I was, answering the call of nature.” Jimmy spun his yarn with histrionic relish. “And I look over, and who’s standing there not five feet away but ol’ Number Two himself.”
    “Doing number one,” said Booter.
    Jimmy ignored this witticism. “Right, and I look at him big as life and say: ‘What’s the matter? Don’t they have toilets up at Mandalay?’” He laughed at his own joke, then began coughing violently.
    “Take it easy,” said Booter. “You O.K.?”
    Jimmy nodded, gasping. “Never better.” He hoisted himself to his feet. “I gotta change for the finale.”
    “Another costume?”
    “Well, there’s a different sash, at least. I put this red cross on the front of …” For a moment, it seemed he was considering something, then he fell back against the wall, clutching his chest.
    “Jimmy, for God’s sake …” Booter lunged for him, but Jimmy collapsed into a heap on the floor, thrashing his legs about like an injured thoroughbred. “Jimmy, is there medicine? Where the hell is your …?”
    Jimmy’s eyes looked up at him, blinking. Then he registered another jolt, groaning between clenched teeth, clamping his palm against the pain. In another instant, his body went slack again and there was no movement of any kind.
    Booter knelt next to him. “Jimmy, damnit … don’t do this, ol’ man.” He checked Jimmy’s heart, his pulse. Nothing. “You’re gonna miss the big number, fella….”
    Down below, the orchestra was piling strings upon trumpets upon drums, thundering toward the finale. Roman candles burst above the hillside in a festive facsimile of warfare. The chorus was singing angelically about the formation of the Geneva Convention.
    The stage manager rushed up, out of breath. “Wake him up, will you? He’s missing his entrance.”
    “No he’s not,” said Booter.
    The stage manager looked exasperated and left, issuing orders to other nurses behind other trees. The music soared, the sky burned with pink phosphorescence, the forest reverberated with applause.
    When it was over, Booter removed Jimmy’s wig and hung it back on its nail. Then he took a Kleenex and—slowly, meticulously—removed Jimmy’s lipstick. It wouldn’t do for him to look like this when they came to take him away.

Goodbye and Hello
    W REN WOKE AT EIGHT THIRTY-EIGHT WITH A vague sense of being behind schedule. Her limousine from the city was due to arrive at ten, which left—what?—three hours or so before the departure of American Airlines flight 220 to Chicago. Her head was already cluttered with numbers again. The wilderness had lost its hold on her.
    She ate a farewell breakfast on the porch, gazing down on the cruising vultures, the ancient forest, the diamond-bright landscape of bluest blues and greenest greens. She would miss it, she decided. She would miss the exquisite texture of being alone in such a place.
    Rolando would be waiting for her at O’Hare—seven-fifteen Chicago time—overflowing with candy and wilted carnations, looking dear and out of it in a suit. She had welcomed this respite from his boundless energy, his