Win continues looking at me, her eyes narrow, as if she is weighing her next words. “I like you,” she says finally. “You don’t bullshit me.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” Win says. “How did you get into this business, anyway?”
“My mother died in hospice, and it turned out I was good at helping people prepare for death.”
“You must see some crazy sad stuff.”
“Some of it’s crazy sad,” I admit. “Some of it is just crazy.”
“I can’t imagine some of the things you must have been asked to do,” Win muses.
“During my internship as a social worker, I was paged to the ER for a man who was brought in dead on arrival—along with his kids’ sixteen-year-old babysitter. He was having an affair with her, and they decided to do meth, and since he’d already taken Viagra he had a stroke and died. The girl was hysterical, and the nurses were trying to get in touch with his family. The wife and kids showed up, but the dead guy still had an erection, so I had to ask the doctor to figure out a way to hide it so the kids wouldn’t see it. We wound up taping it to his leg and covering him with six blankets.Six. Then I slipped out of the room to put the babysitter into a taxi. She asked me if I thought she should go to the funeral. I told her I thought she should reconsider her life choices in general.”
Win bursts out laughing. “I promise you that you categorically will not have to tape down my erection when I die.”
“Well, if I do, I’m charging extra.” Win is someone I could see myself being friends with, had we met under different circumstances. That alone is probably enough reason for me to realize I need more distance; yet I somehow know she will become my client. “Is there anything I can get you right now?” I ask.
“Time,” Win says immediately.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a pillow, or a chocolate chip milkshake,” I answer. But if she is worried about time, it is likely because of the fear of leaving people she loves behind. Felix. Or her son. “We could Skype Arlo.”
“If you can dothat,” Win says, “I will leave you everything in my will.”
“Arlo’s gone,” Felix explains. “He died three years ago.”
“I’m so sorry. I’d like to hear more about him.” But for the first time in our visit, a wall has come up between us, and Win shifts subtly away from me. Eager to change the subject, I try a simpler question. “What have you been doing today?”
She looks up, allowing me to draw her back out. “I’ve been reading up on Willard Wigan, the microsculptor.”
“Microsculptor?”
“He’s an artist, but his art fits inside the eye of a needle or on the head of a pin,” Win explains. “You need a microscope to see it.”
“Felix tells me you’re an artist, too.”
“Wigan’s quite famous. I…only dabbled,” Win demurs.
“Past tense.”
She ignores what I’ve said, choosing instead to talk about the artist. “I’m fascinated by the idea of walking past a piece of art because you can’t see it with the naked eye. Imagine all the times you’ve told yourself,Oh, it’s nothing. Well, nothing can be pretty goddamned big.”
I look at Win and know she is seeing the trajectory of her disease: that first twinge, that dull ache, the way she dismissed it at first. I look inside myself, and I think of Brian.
Lifting my chin, I smile at Win and Felix. “Tell me how you fell in love,” I say.
—
FELIX TELLS MEthat Win was wearing a yellow sundress that looked like electricity wrapped around her body, and he couldn’t turn away. Win says that’s not accurate. He couldn’t turn away because he was paid to make sure she didn’t drive off the road or into a tree.
They swap off, telling their story. They finish each other’s sentences, as if the words are a sweet they’re trading bite by bite.
Win says she had never met someone who was so steady. Ten and two, he had told her. That’s how you keep your hands on the wheel so nothing surprises you. Somehow, she had gotten to her late twenties without anyone imparting that life lesson.
Felix says that he knew he was in love when she told him she knew all the words to “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”
Win says he had kind eyes.
