The Book of Joe

tones about his failed auditions, the slew of odd jobs he worked in order to pay his rent, and the occasional celebrity encounter. In all of these stories, there is no mention of any friends or lovers, confirming my suspicion that those were exceedingly lonely years for him. Beneath the surface of his narrative is a quiet deliberation as if, through all of those solitary years, he had comforted himself with the promise that at some point in the future he’d be in a position to share those years retroactively, and now, with the clock winding down, he is fulfilling that promise to himself.
    After a while Wayne falls asleep again, and Jared goes upstairs to instant-message some of his friends with the computer in my father’s room. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” Carly says. “We were telling stories, and it just popped into my head.”
    “No, it’s fine,” I say. “I had just forgotten about that night.”
    “So you’re saying sex with me is forgettable?”
    “Hardly. But I’ve been carrying so many different memories of us around for so many years, and I guess there’s some sort of rotation. Some get pulled up more frequently, and others get buried under the bottom of the pile for a while, and you forget they’re there.”
    “That’s good to know.”
    “What?”
    “That you’ve got piles too,” Carly says, looking away from me. “I didn’t want to be the only one.”
    I boil water and cook some spaghetti while Carly cuts a salad, and the four of us eat dinner together in Wayne’s room. We all pretend not to notice that Wayne’s food is going largely uneaten. Fabia will supply him with whatever nutrients he requires intravenously, until the time comes that he no longer requires any nourishment. While we’re eating, Wayne seems to fall asleep, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with even, shallow breaths. Carly, Jared, and I continue to speak in hushed tones when, without any warning, Wayne opens his eyes and sits up in the bed. “I want to shoot a basketball,” he says.
    We all stare at him. “Say that again,” Carly says.
    “I don’t think I’ve touched a basketball since high school.”
    “What, you mean that night before you left?” I say. “When you scored like fifty points?”
    “Fifty-two points,” Wayne says.
    “That record still stands,” Jared says.
    Wayne looks at him sharply. “No shit?”
    Jared nods. “No shit.”
    Wayne lies back on his pillow, lost in a moment’s reflection. “I want to shoot another basket before I die.”
    “Maybe tomorrow, if it’s warm enough, we can take you out to the driveway,” Carly says dubiously.
    “No. Not tomorrow, and not on some stupid backyard hoop. I want to do it in the gym.”
    “The high school gym?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s past eight,” I say. “The high school’s closed.”
    Wayne frowns, and turns to look at Jared. After a moment, Jared grins and nods his head. “No problem,” he says.
    We take Carly’s car, which she insists I pull up to the front of the driveway and leave running with the heater on for ten minutes before we bring Wayne down. Jared throws the wheelchair, which arrived courtesy of Owen, into the trunk while Carly and I help Wayne into a second pair of sweats and a large overcoat of my father’s that I find hanging in the front closet. As we escort Wayne toward the front door, Fabia gets wind of what’s going on, and her eyes fly open in alarm.
    “What in the hell you think you doing?” she yells at us. “That man, he cannot go outside, you know. It be the death of him!”
    “It’s okay, Fabia,” Wayne says. “We’re just going on a quick trip.”
    “You catch a cold, you dead,” she says, planting her considerable frame between the front door and us.
    “And what if I don’t catch a cold?” Wayne says to her.
    “What then?”
    Fabia looks at him for a moment and then nods slowly.
    “Okay,” she says, darting into his room. “But you cover yourself with this.” She brings out his comforter and drapes it over his shoulders. “One hour, you hear me? One hour.”
    “You got it,” Wayne says, and we head out the door and down the steps.
    I drive, Jared rides shotgun, and Carly sits in the back with Wayne. “How are we getting in?” I ask my nephew, who is humming along absently to the radio.
    “Buddha will provide.”
    “Has it occurred to you that since I got here, you and I have fallen into the habit of breaking the law together on a regular