A Small Matter Read Free

need to nuke
the bacon for two minutes more.”
    In spite of her nausea, she knew she’d have
to eat. She remembered how her own mother had wasted down to a
stick from the same disease. The lesson? When you had cancer, you
had to eat big--you were “eating for two”--yourself and your tumor.
If you didn’t feed it, it ate you. She took a sip of coffee,
frowned at the bitterness and stirred in several spoonfuls of
sugar. Was her desire to eat, even while nauseous, a sign of her
wish to fight back against the tumor? She wondered just how well
she really knew herself, wondered if she had the guts to simply sit
idly by and watch the tumor kill her.
    “After breakfast,” she said, “I’m sending you
out to fill this prescription--my back is absolutely burning. It’s
like somebody’s poking me with a hot curling iron.”
    “What’d the doctor prescribe?”
    She scrutinized the hieroglyphic the doctor
had scrawled. “Something unpronounceable.”
    “I hope it’s non-habit-forming.”
    “What difference does it make?”
    “I wish you’d let me take you over to see
Sensei Toyama,” Dalk said. “Or at least try some acupuncture.”
    “No thanks.”
    “If you’re going to refuse traditional
medicine, you could at least look into Toyama's alternative
treatments.”
    Vickie had expected this pitch from her
brother. Dalk, after their mother’s death, had left the L.A. area
to spend a decade in Japan studying a little-known school of the
martial arts, which focused on killing a great many people quickly
and without a lot of fuss--but which also contained an element of
magic and miracle healing. He’d done well and attained a high
degree of proficiency before leaving Japan and bringing home with
him his Sensei, Master Toyama.
    Together, the two of them had opened a school
in Panorama City, a bad business move which quickly turned into a
hand-to-mouth operation, during which time Dalk had married, but
when his childless marriage of 5 years fell apart under the
economic strain of his faltering self-employment, ending in a
bitter divorce and leaving him with a need for steady income to
handle the alimony payments, he’d left Toyama to run the dojo alone
and taken a consultant job with the LAPD as a self-defense
instructor, a position he’d held for the past year.
    “C’mon Dalk. You know how Toyama is--he’s
going to tell me I’m possessed by the spirit of a fox, or
something. I’d have a better chance seeking a cure from Sabrina the
teen-age witch.”
    Toyama, Vickie knew, lived alone in a back
room at the dojo, where he devoted himself to his magic, keeping
himself attuned to the tenets of his magic-based messianic religion
which made him prone to offering to those around him some rather
unusual remedial methods when confronted with the darker face of
human frailties.
    “Toyama will respect you,” Dalk said. “And
his religion does have a bona fide track record of healings. In any
case, whatever Toyama attempts will be cleanly controlled and
dignified.”
    “He’ll start shaking his gold charm in my
face like he did the last time I had the flu. And I’ll tell you
something else--Last week Toyama called me on the phone after you
told him I was having my biopsy, and he told me he had a special
dish of beans, cheese, and roast mice guaranteed to draw out the
evil fox spirit inside me.”
    “Eat your pancakes. And is it so farfetched?
Toyama offered to draw out an evil spirit from your back using a
roast mouse as a lure--compare that to the folks at the HMO who’re
waiting to go in with their knives and gut you like a fish.”
    Vickie’s fork dropped to the floor.
    “Oh Vickie. I’m so sorry. That was impossibly
tactless of me--it wasn’t really me talking. It’s just that I can’t
bear to lose you like this. The grief is killing me. I can’t sleep,
and I can hardly eat--I’m on an emotional roller coaster here.
Sometimes, I even wish it was me instead of you.”
    “Dalk, you’ve got to stay strong