The Book of Joe

two alone for a little while?”
    Wayne leans back against his pillow and grins, affording me a glimpse of his black, wasted gums, the mucus-colored teeth protruding from them like driveway gravel. Everything about Wayne is dying fast, but his mouth seems to be leading the charge. “My mother told me that it had been medically proven that jerking off could lead to blindness,” Wayne says.
    “It was nice that you guys could talk so openly about sex.”
    “I know, right? And what were Mr. Goffman Senior’s thoughts on masturbation?”
    “He said if I messed my sheets, I’d have to do my own laundry.”
    Wayne smiles and returns to the obsessive contemplation of his fingers. “It’s just such a waste,” he repeats sadly.
    There’s a knock at the door and Fabia, the stout Jamaican nurse who also arrived courtesy of Owen, steps in quietly and begins preparing some pills for Wayne. “I got to give you your bath now,” she says in her thick, musical voice, her daily cue for me to take my leave.
    “Where’s Carly?” Wayne asks me.
    “Still sleeping.”
    “In whose bed?”
    I shake my head at him as I head for the door. “She’s in Brad’s old room.”
    Wayne shakes his head right back at me. “Joseph, Joseph,”
    he sighs. “You’re killing me.”
    I pause at the door and we look at each other seriously as the irony in his choice of words dissolves slowly into the room around us. “See you in a few,” I say hoarsely, and leave the room.
    Carly and I moved Wayne into the house the day after my ignominious trip over the Bush River Falls, from which I’d somehow emerged miraculously unscathed. Mrs. Hargrove glowered at us the whole time we were there, but raised no objection as we carried Wayne’s things out. When we were walking Wayne out, Carly on one side and me on the other, he stopped us at the door and turned to face her, his eyes wet and his jaw quivering. “Good-bye, Ma,” he said. “I just want you to know that I love you and I’m sorry for what I put you through.” His mother nodded, and I was sure that she would break down right there and beg him to stay, but she just said, “I’ll pray for you,” and continued to nod mechanically until Wayne finally turned away and we headed down the stairs.
    He paused one more time, just before we got into Carly’s car, to get one last look at his childhood home, and then we left.
    What must it feel like, I thought, to look at something, anything really, and know that it’s for the last time?
    I sat in the back with Wayne while Carly drove. As we rode through the neighborhood, Wayne stared out the window, determined to take in everything on what would surely be his last view of the Falls. From my seat behind Carly, I could see the small convulsions of her shoulders as she cried silently to herself. “It’s okay,” Wayne said softly, maybe to Carly or maybe to himself; it was hard to tell, since he was still looking out the window. “It’s okay,” he said again, and all I could think was It’s pretty much as far from okay as it can possibly get.
    Once we arrived at my father’s house and safely deposited Wayne into the hospital bed and the aggressive care of Fabia, Carly and I worked together in silence to unload Wayne’s things. We did not discuss our current state of discord at all, but she summarily disposed of her anger, the two of us instinctively understanding that we would not sully Wayne’s final days with our trivial differences. I was forgiven by default, which left me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, because with the process of making up having been circumvented, we were robbed of the fresh intimacy that comes with a hard-fought resolution. When we were done unloading the car, I stepped outside to find her pulling a small overnight bag from her trunk. “Don’t give me any crap about it,” she said self-consciously. “He’s my friend too.”
    I nodded. “No crap.”
    Carly came up the stairs and stood in front of me. “He’s very close,” she said, speaking softly as though she feared Wayne might overhear from inside.
    “I know,” I said.
    She nodded pointlessly, swallowing back her tears, and rested her head briefly against my chest. We stood that way in the dwindling sunlight for a full minute as a noisy fall wind tinged with the first steel hint of winter blew the auburn and yellow leaves in a circular dance across the sidewalk. “I’m glad you’re here,” Carly said.
    That was two weeks ago. Since