The Prisoner of Vandam Street Read Free

it’s hard to remember these things. When you’re healthy, they may assume a certain degree of importance in a game of trivia or a college exam or some other exercise in vapidity. But when you’re dying, you really don’t give a damn. Dr. Seuss may be painting rings on Joan of Arc’s anus and it’d work for you. When you’re dying, as my friend Speed Vogel says, your heart attack is everybody else’s hangnail. This applies even if you only think you’re dying. Sometimes that’s enough to enlighten you if you ever had any doubts about the fragility of the spider webs of friendship and the fatuous, superficial, pathetic nature of human beings in general. Most of the time we’re not even good enough to be evil. We do things, even good and great things, almost always because, consciously or unconsciously, it suits us to do them. Not that I was expecting Mick Brennan to donate his kidney to me. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted Mick Brennan’s kidney. I was sure I didn’t want his liver. Anyway, when you’re dying or think you’re dying, it’s the people and the animals and the places long ago and far away that always seem the closest to your heart. Everybody and everything else around you sucks hind teat compared with them. And the closer your dearest distant dreams become, the closer you are to death. I was dreaming of the time when my eleven-year-old nephew, David, sneezed on the entire left side of the beautifully presented lox and bagel buffet. Into this cherished moment the sounds of an altercation intruded themselves quite cacophonously. Whatever was happening appeared to be happening right in my horsepital room.
    “Sir!” said a stern female voice. “You can’t bring that in here.”
    “Shite!” said a voice I recognized as Brennan’s. “I’m behavin’ meself, aren’t I? This is America, innit?”
    “There is no alcohol allowed in the hospital, sir!”
    “What about rubbing alcohol, you silly cow? I was here before, wasn’t I? Just popped over to the pub, didn’t I? What is this? A poofter operation? Scratch the word ‘operation,’ luv. I misspoke meself. Don’t want to disturb a dyin’ bloke—I mean a sick bloke—”
    “Nurse,” I said, shivering under several blankets, “are the tests back from the lab yet?”
    “What tests?” said the nurse.
    “The bleedin’ blood tests!” shouted Brennan. “The sawbones is supposed to come tell us, innit he?”
    “The doctor has gone home for the day,” said the nurse coldly.
    “He will be here at seven o’clock in the morning by which time I trust this gentleman will be gone.”
    “Now wait a minute, you ol’ boiler!” shouted Brennan belligerently. “Just who you callin’ a gentleman?”
    Sometime later, after the nurse had driven off in a 1937 snit, I started feeling hot again, kicked the blankets off, then tried to get up and find my pants. As I sat up in bed, the room began swirling around me like a galaxy that had taken mescaline. I lay back down in the hell of my sweaty bed, waiting for a doctor who might or might not show up with test results or no test results at seven in the morning. I had no idea if it was night or day, but seven in the morning seemed an eternity away.
    The fever, if anything, appeared to be getting worse. Wildly contemplating what was wrong with me was pushing me to the edge of panic. It was at that point that I heard Brennan’s words wash over me. They were spoken from his chair beside my bed, sadly, softly, and sincerely, almost, indeed, as if he were speaking to himself.
    “No, McGovern didn’t slip you a mickey,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I think happened.”
    “What?” I said weakly.
    “I think somebody put a curse on you, mate.”
    “Why don’t we wait for the lab tests?”
    “Why don’t we wait for the pubs to open?”
    We waited. I looked at Brennan. He tried to smile, but I could see that he was a deeply worried man. That made two of us. Before I passed out again I saw a grove