The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

Chapter 6/ 2007

The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

The crack of dawn drive to the next gig takes, at tops, a half-hour, straight down Sunset Boulevard, my red 69 Chevy Malibu flying down the Strip the way my fingers once flew over the keyboard.  I listen to Chet Baker and barrel over glistening black tar, past sidewalks, newspaper stands and parking meters covered in a fine mist before reaching my destination, the ominous green lushness of Bel Air.  My patient is a eighty year-old movie producer, recovering at his ex-wife’s home from open heart surgery.  I worked on the Cardiac Rehab floor at Cedars-Sinai in the days when coronary artery bypass grafts were the new thing.  I can do this one in my sleep.  The heat of summer stills my gut.  This job is going to work out.  I can start writing again.

At seven thirty in the AM, I stand with the producer’s wife on a thick lawn, whose grass is as green as my urologist’s teeth were white, the shimmering blue of her pool teases us from a few feet away.  Our eyes are shielded from the snickering sun by the thick lenses of our sunglasses, hers Chanel, mine Ray-ban.  Our bodies are hidden from the always deserted streets of Bel Air by a thick white stucco wall.  We silently look at the threatening outline of her sprawling home, whose unwieldiness is given a palatable form by the clear blue sky.

“My eldest left for London the other day.  I miss her already,” the wife says.  “All my girls have been there before.  When they studied world history in high school, I took them to Europe so they could see where it took place.”

The wife digs her bare big toe into the soft ground, the bone white of her skin against the grass making me forget the youthful figures enfolded into the chocolate walls of Century City.  A pale steam rises off of the pool. The wife has not yet applied her makeup, my tabloid eyes spotting the face-lift lines behind her ears.  The wife is a decade younger than her ex, a few hours with a good colorist and she would easily pass for mid-fifties, even in the harshest light offered up by the City of the Angels.

“The girls loved Washington D.C.  We went there during junior high school for American history.”

“Tell me about your home,” I say.  “It’s wonderful.”

“It was designed in the shape of a yacht.  I added my offices on to the stern.  If you look carefully, you can see that the through line hasn’t been broken.  My architect was a genius.”

The walls on the side of the house facing us are floor to ceiling glass.  The morning air is hot and heavy on our backs.  The housekeepers have pushed open the living room’s incredibly heavy sliding glass wall.  Like the table with no boundaries I sat at when I first moved to Los Angeles, this house is opened up and free.  I can breathe it into my lungs with the heavy air.

I cough.  None of what my eyes have seen in the last hour has anything to do with my life.

♦♦

The case runs as smoothly as the antique watches my patient collects but never wears.  Routine is valued.  The days are the same.  The producer wakes up at eight.  I bring him fresh water and the “Los Angeles Times.”  I shower him, wash his hair, help him step into the freshly starched underwear and pressed slacks I have laid out for him the night before.  I put his Lacoste shirt on, comb what is left of his hair, guide his gnarled toes into his UGG slippers.  I hand him his ivory toothbrush and, a few moments later, a splash of mouthwash in a heavy Baccarat Crystal glass.  I follow from behind as he walks.  At nine, he eats a light breakfast.  I give him his pills.   As he brings each pill to his chapped thin lips, he asks me what it is for.  He does this whenever I give him a pill.  Every time.  He is a lucky man to have a patient nurse.  We take short walks.  He sits and reads until lunch.  A nap in the afternoon.  I sit at his bedside in case he wakes up to pee.  Dinner and then into bed at six.  He watches the news until I leave.

At first, he wants me close by.  He will not say why.  We sit for hours in the still heavy air of the living room.  I read “Tony Kushner in Conversation” and Cormac McCarthy’s  “The Road.”  He reads detective novels.  Every fifteen minutes, this big time Hollywood hitter looks at me.  If I smile, he turns away.

“It’s good that you read books,” he says.  Not many like us left.”

I smile.  Nod my head.  I continue reading.

“Look at my two boys,” his wife says as she walks past us to her the shimmering blue of her pool.

♦♦

The producer’s seven year-old grandson arrives at noon for his swimming lesson. His instructor waits obediently for him at the pool.  The instructor has no body fat.  His skin is solid bronze.  I’m good.  I do not look at him, not even when his fingers adjust the crotch of his bathing suit whenever the producer and I walk past him.  I keep my eyes on the producer.  That is what I am being paid for.  The family, Jewish on the producer’s side but decked out in high Presbyterian duds, takes over the living room. They talk and laugh, sing the praises of their golden boy, who dives into the pool like a dolphin.  As the boy swims across the cool blue water, the instructor’s eyes watch the producer’s wife as she talks with her daughter.  The instructor is never invited to sit where I sit, with the family.

Not seeing it spread out against the white carpet, I step on a towel laid out for the golden boy to stand on when he runs in from the pool.

“Watch where the fuck you’re walking, asshole,” the producer says.

“Don’t you ever talk to me that way,” I say.  “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

No one moves.  I am the only one in the room who is not holding his breath.  All eyes stare at me.  The instructor smells the tension.  He waves the golden boy out of the pool.

“OK, OK.  Just watch where you’re going,” the producer mumbles.

“We’re out of here,” his daughter says.  “I’ve told you repeatedly not to talk like that in front of my son.”

In a moment quicker than the golden boy’s dive into the pool, it is, once again, the big macher and I in the living room.  We read.  Only now, the producer returns my smile every quarter-hour.

“Tony is enchanting, such a brilliant mind,” the wife whispers as she walks toward the swimming instructor.

♦♦

The next week, I read “Seriously Funny, the Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s.”

“The housekeeper is off tomorrow,” the producer says.  “Do you think you can make my bed?”

“No worries, I can handle it.”

“You’re sure now?”

He is not kidding.

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

♦♦

Having set the water to the exact temperature he requests, I stand with the producer in the shower, the circumference of its grey tiled walls larger than my living room.  And I have a large living room.  Having tamed the full length of the coiled silver shower hose, I wet my patient down, soap him up, rinse him off.  A bottle of Kiehl’s shampoo falls off the shelf and hits his big toe.

“What the fuck are you doing? Goddamn you,” he says.

I laugh.  And laugh.  I can not stop.

“What’s so fucking funny?”

“I’m cleaning out your asshole because you can’t reach it.  You obviously haven’t reached it in years.  That’s funny.  All of this is funny.”

I towel him dry.  Neither of us talks.

“You should be able to get your pants on yourself by now,” I tell him.

I make the bed.  He dresses.  I keep an eye on him.  Just in case.

“You look sharp this morning, sir,” I say.

“Bed looks good, kid.  How’d you figure out how to do that?”

“I make my bed every morning, sir.”

“Let’s go eat.”

♦♦

“Please join us for lunch this afternoon,” the wife says.  “We can discuss the comedians you’re reading about.”

The producer, his wife and I begin to eat lunch together every afternoon.  The housekeeper, a thin Mexican man in a handed down Lacoste shirt, slides plates of chicken, pasta, fish, fresh fruit and steamed vegetables in front of us.  He works silently, no one ever looks at him, the haunted expression on his face, of what could have been, never changing.  We eat, while a few feet from the glass topped table we sit at, the housekeeper, whose eyes never appear to focus, washes dishes and rearranges the provisions on the shelves of the sub zero refrigerator.  I talk about Mort Sahl with the wife.  The producer never once talks during our lunches.

“Enough already,” the producer says when he is finished eating.  “Sahl was a fucking loser.”

I am eating in a way that I have never known before.  Each meal and snack is planned out as an adventure, not a necessity, there is never a thought of cost, the only concern being to delight the palate, the holiness of each movable feast always served by the invisible housekeeper.  I make rent money within the first two weeks of every month.  I start making monthly payments of eight hundred dollars to Citibank.  Slowly, as if returning to a lover whose youth spurned me, my hands work their way over my keyboard.  As long as I can write, life at the new tables I find myself sitting at is worth waking up to.

♦♦

The producer’s youngest daughter arrives with her boyfriend.  She is a size zero with skin whiter than her mother’s.  At 3 PM on a broiling Los Angeles summer afternoon, the daughter is wearing a Prada dress and open toed sandals, her smooth arms embracing a Birkin bag and a vintage Dior clutch purse.  The boyfriend is dark, sullen, stubbly.  Distressed jeans and a tight Armani shirt cover his compact body.  I read about Lenny Bruce.  Father and daughter strategize about her job at Paramount.

Boyfriend leaves to change for the pool.

“He’s good for you,” the producer says.

“You think?” the daughter purrs.

She extends her arm out towards her right, then slowly positions it slightly behind her, the empty glass in her hand hanging in the heavy air.  The housekeeper refills it with iced tea, poured from a pitcher he keeps in the fridge in case unexpected guests arrive.  Not one of us can hear the housekeeper’s feet moving over the blinding white carpet.

“He’s wonderful,” the wife says.  “Much more suitable than the last one.”

“He doesn’t even make sixty-thousand a year…how could I be serious about someone like that?” the daughter asks.

“I’m talking about the housekeeper,” the wife says.

I get up and move to the door.

“Stay Jake, I want you here,” the producer says.

“You guys need some alone time.  I’ll sit in the next room.”

I sit on a brown corduroy couch.  I watch the boyfriend as he gazes into the deep blue of the pool.  My eyes move down to my book.  I read a page and look back to the pool.  The boyfriend stares straight at me.  He smiles.

“What do you have planned for your days off?”  the wife asks as she walks into the room.

My fingers mime typing.

“You’re a writer?”

“I just had my first story published.”

“I’d love to read it.  We so like having you here.  You’re a perfect fit.  I don’t know what’s inside you, but you keep him in line.”

♦♦

A half-hour later, the boyfriend enters the room though its sliding glass door.  He is wet.  His feet leave tiny footprints on the brown hand painted ceramic tiles.  He looks down at me as I read.

“Do you need something?” I ask.

“A towel…a towel if you’ve got one.”

I bring him a white bath towel.  He turns his back to me.  His muscular arms spread out horizontally before me, the small of his back tightens.

“You don’t expect me to towel you dry like I do the old man?” I ask.

He turns around.  We lock eyes.  He hasn’t shaved in at least a week.  Me either.

“You better go find that skinny girl,” I say.  “If you need another towel, you come around.  I’m here till seven every night.”

Toweled off and dressed, the boyfriend and the daughter say their good-byes a few minutes later.

“Nice seeing you today,” she says to me.

I look up from Lenny, my eyes moving past her to the boyfriend.  I stare at him for a moment too long.

“Sorry, I was reading,” I answer.  “What did you say?”

♦♦

The next weekend, I walk to my car to retrieve a biography of George Cukor, a long ago friend of the producer.  The father of the golden boy parks his Hummer behind me.

“Nice car.  Really cool,” he says.  “The old guy likes you.  They’re going to ask you to work with him when he goes back to his apartment.”

I am set.  A good paying job.  With the speed at which I annihilate a heckler, I open the hood and show the golden boy’s father my rebuilt engine.  We take our sunglasses off and talk about transmissions and tires.

“It’s a great car.  Must be a bitch to maintain,” he says.

“My best friend Mark talked me into buying it before he died.”

“Old cars cost so much to keep up.”

“I could never sell it…it would be like betraying Mark.”

“So many things can break on these babies.  How do you manage all the repairs?  The maintenance alone must cost a fortune.”

I slam the hood shut.  I look into the blue pools of his eyes. They shimmer only for the ugly daughter he married, the one he met back in the days when he was bussing it down Santa Monica Boulevard to his job as a background artiste on “General Hospital.”

“And?” I ask.

He does not answer.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say.  “They’re upset about the bombing at the airport in Glasgow.  They’ve already called your sister-in-law.  She’s fine.”

Golden boy’s father tells me he is here to commiserate about the tanked Friday night box office of a Will Ferrel movie he worked on.

“Guess a lot of things go wrong with those babies too,” I say.

Golden boy’s father laughs.  Inspite of the always empty streets, he parks bumper to bumper behind my Malibu every weekend.  He never removes his sunglasses in my presence, never mentions the cost of repairs again.

♦♦

A new night nurse arrives.  Overweight, sweaty, his elastic waisted jeans need a good washing.  He wants in on the action.  Bad.  The house, the food, the housekeepers, the original paintings on the walls, the DVDs from the Academy have nothing to do with me.  Lucky man that I am, I knew that from day one.  The night nurse pants in the heat of the quiet Bel Air evening, his shaking hands would benefit from a twelve step meeting.  The morning after the second night he works, the house reeks of garlic.

“I run a catering business on the weekends,” the nurse tells me.  “I cooked a feast for him last night.  You know, so he’d have something decent to eat.”

“You should finish up your nursing notes,” I respond.

“I’m also involved in marketing a health drink.  I’ll bring some tonight.”

“Sign off on the med sheets before you leave.”

The wife rolls her eyes as the nurse walks sleepily to the stucco wall.

♦♦

“It’s not you,” the wife says the next morning.  “He doesn’t want to eat lunch with either of us anymore.”

“He’s getting better,” I tell her.

“I want you to think about taking care of him in his condo.  Oh and I finally read your story.”

For the first time since I have been in her home, I hold my breath.  Her father was a big time director.  Gained Hollywood cred in the 70s for surviving the blacklist.  The wife grew up here.  She and her ex know everyone, they talk constantly about their friends: writers, actors, show runners, directors and agents, as in literary agents.  I could get my book of short stories published.  My life would turn the corner.  I could be a truly lucky man.

“It shows such skill…and sensitivity.  Your longing grabbed me in my throat.”

I don’t know how to work it, the sentiment of which grabs me forcefully in my intestines.  I smile.  Nod my head.  Stare at the floor.

“It’s amazing that you…that you could write something like this.  One day, another nurse will be sitting in my living room reading your stories.”

The wife hands me my story back.  She tells me she is going for a dip before breakfast.  I watch her in her pool.  She holds on to a huge inflated yellow duck to keep her afloat.  She splashes around.  The sun hits the water and makes it shine.  She puts her Chanel sunglasses on and splashes some more.  Lucky her.

♦♦

“Nice shirt you have on,” the producer tells the night nurse that evening.

The producer’s whimpering MO is to compliment you on your attire or point out some detail about you which only he notices.  If you question him about either a few minutes later, he will have forgotten why he gave you the shout out.

“I bought this at the Goodwill,” the nurse says.  “You don’t have to buy second hand clothes.  You’re worth so much.”

“Am I?” the producer asks.

His wife puts the remote down.  She looks at the nurse, then over to me.

“I Googled you and looked you up on IMDb.  You made out real good.”

The wife walks me to my car.  I know my colleague has crossed the line, but I think it is as funny as the morning the Kiehl’s shampoo assaulted her ex’s big toe.

“He knows that I live alone…how isolated I am here,” the wife says.

The fear in her voice grabs me in my throat.  I smile and air kiss her cheeks good-night.  She walks slowly back to the door in the stucco wall.

My cell vibrates at Sunset and La Brea.

“Bro, what happened in Bel Air?” the staffing co-ordinator asks.  “The guy just told me about the nurse we sent in.  He’s really mad.”

I give him the 411.

♦♦

The next morning the housekeeper is off.  I push open the sliding glass wall in the living room.  It must weigh a few hundred pounds.   I am Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill.  A sharp twinge of pain like a heated knife moves from my groin to my toes, its heat bounces back and rests in my balls.

♦♦

“Can I ask you something?” the producer asks.

I have just brought in his water and newspaper.

“Sure, sir.”

“Why the fuck did you tell your agency about that asshole nurse?”

“They called and asked me.”

“All I told them was that I didn’t want him back.  You opened your fucking mouth and told them all about it.  Stay the hell out of my business.”

My balls are throbbing.  I feel like I’m going to hurl on to the producer’s three hundred count sheets.

♦♦

The mail arrives.  The bill from the agency on Sunset is due.  To the tune of 40K.

“They told me Medicare would cover this shit,” the producer screams.

The pain has eased up, but I can feel the swelling in my right ball.  It is early July.  Open enrollment for my insurance ended in April.  I am stuck for another year with the PPO, the deductibles and the co-pays.  It will be, at minimum, four thousand to cover the Outpatient Surgery Center.  I will need to work two jobs to cover it.

“I don’t know why they told you that,” I say to the producer.

“Fuck it, I’m not going to pay.”

“Why do you think Medicare would pay for this?   It’s not like you’re following the cardiac diet or doing your daily exercises.”

“Because I need it, that’s why. Goddamn it.”

The producer screams all day.  He screams as we walk past the swimming instructor.  He screams as we walk around the three Mercedes SUVs in the driveway on our way to the door in the stucco wall.

In the bathroom, he screams into his cell:  “My lawyer is on this…you won’t get a nickel out of me.”

The pain is throbbing again.  I am afraid to go into the bathroom and pee because then I will see and feel how big my balls have grown.

After his nap, the producer takes his cell into the bathroom and slams the door.

“Don’t send this guy here anymore.  Today is his last fucking day.  I don’t need his help.”

I put the producer in bed after dinner.  I ask the gardener, whose demeanor is as affectless as the housekeeper’s, to help me push the glass wall closed.  I let him do most of the work.

“Why the fuck are you asking him to help you?” the producer shouts from the bedroom.  “That’s not what he’s here for.”

“Why don’t you get some rest?” I answer.

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

“You know you’re not going to see me tomorrow.   You know this is my last day.”

Finally, finally he is still.

“Did you think I couldn’t hear you screaming while your were in the bathroom?”

“Do you know that the people you work for charge more than double over what they pay you?”

I smile.  Nod my head.  Stare at the floor.

“Did you know that?  Did you know that?” the producer yells.

I look at him.  If he keeps going like this, his bridge work will crack apart and hit me in the face.

“Yes, all the agencies are like that.”

“You let yourself work for people who do that to you?  You’re a fool.”

“Yes, I’m a fool. I’m a fool. You’re right. I’m a fool.”

It is the pain and the fear talking.  At least, I think it is.

♦♦

“I didn’t mean to upset him.” I tell the producer’s wife.

We are alone in her office.  The sun is setting.  We look out at the orange surface of her pool.

“When the agency called me, it sounded like he had told them everything that happened.  I didn’t want the nurse harassing you two.”

She smiles.  Nods her head.  The producer enters.

“You can get out of here now,” he says.  “Stop bothering us.”

I look at his wife.  She glances at her keyboard, then up to her computer screen.  I am no longer her lucky man.

“Let’s get you back to bed,” she says to her ex.  “I feel like watching something silly with you tonight.”

♦♦

I drive home.  An hour and a half down Sunset.  My balls are killing me.  I stop at the boyfriend’s.  I can not figure out if I want to cry or have him marvel over the sudden enormity of my balls.  He is not home.

I soak in the tub to get the swelling down.  I listen to Sinatra CDs.  I sing along to “One for My Baby,” the first buzz of Vicodin kicking in.  I think about how blue light shimmers off of the pools in Bel Air.

Must be nice to have a rubber duck to hold on to.

I am Introduced to a Valuable Nursing Skill: How to Place a Plastic Bag in a Trash Can.

Chapter 5/ 2007

I am Introduced to a Valuable Nursing Skill: How to Place a Plastic Bag in a Trash Can.

Much to the displeasure of the straight boyfriend, my balls have shrunk to their normal size.  The bottle of Vicodins waits on the shelf of my medicine cabinet should the balls swell up again and bring the nausea inducing pain back.  I have charged the month off work to credit cards, covering their unyielding demands for minimum payments with the scratch I make doing insurance interviews.  A few twelve hour shifts a week and I can start paying the principal down.  The realization that–on top riding the perfect storm of having to shell out more for groceries, bills, gas, car repairs, co-pays and deductibles–my rent was just raised causes my intestines to coil into knots which only hours of sleep can unwind.

I am assigned by the agency on Sunset to weekend shifts caring for another man with Lou Gehrig’s.  Driving to the case for my first shift, I get lost in Century City and use the last of my cell phone minutes to call for directions.  A voice mail recorded before my patient was trached and put on the ventilator picks up, a deep languid voice with a hint of the bad boy insists I leave a message.

My patient’s exhausted wife opens the glowing yellow door to their home.  She is in her early thirties, dark eyes, long stringy hair, skinny, haggard but stunning, nevertheless.  Pottery Barn and Bombay Furniture have colonized the young couple’s living room, kitchen, den and bedrooms.  Bits of Crate and Barrel are scattered throughout, interspersed with hints of Target and Pier One.  Each room’s walls are painted a different shade of hunger inducing chocolate.

“My fear is his trach will come out when the dog jumps up on the bed,” the wife tells me as she staggers down a hallway whose darkness makes me feel like I am sliding down the descending colon of Nursing Hell.  “Sometimes, the alarm doesn’t go off when the trach disconnects.”

The wife brings me into the den, turns on the miniature flat screen and hands me a notebook, between whose sea foam green covers lie her profoundly thought out and lovingly researched treatise on life amidst the chocolate walls with her hedge fund manager husband.  It is like reading “The Secret” for people who can no longer manipulate the financial markets.  Each laminated page is illustrated with brilliant sunsets or melancholy half-moons.  The wife postulates that caring for her husband will transform his caretakers into spiritually connected human beings, glowing with a vitality whose lightness will bounce off the shadowy walls.  I read about how tending to this master of the universe will teach me what love is.  I knew what love was when I sat up until dawn with my own friends as they lay dying.  I am fifty-five, but I still have that to give.  All the love buzzing around Century City can not explain why, for the past year, the wife has been unable to fill the weekend shifts.

Like a silent submarine, the happy couple’s bone white Akita enters the room and devours my morning yogurt in one wet swallow.

♦♦

“Why do you keep coming in here?” the wife asks.

She is sleeping on a small bed next to her husband, who is on a queen sized bed, propped up on two pillows.  As with the professor, the only functioning muscles left in the bad boy’s mid-thirties body are attached to his eye balls.  To the right is “Yes.”  To the left “No.”  Bad boy’s massively bloated gut is dripping a thin orange fluid onto the flannel Bed Bath & Beyond sheets, the veins beneath the stretch marks on his abdomen are swollen blue with anger.  If the Akita hits the bed, I fear my patient’s body will explode.  In my thirty years of nursing, I have never seen anything like this.

“I like to check every fifteen minutes to make sure the dog didn’t mess anything up,” I tell the wife.  “He ate my breakfast so quickly.”

“He’ll do that.  Don’t come in here for anything until we’re both awake.”

The wife does not open her eyes when she talks to me.

“Don’t ever come in here without Purelling your hands,” she says.

“Got it,” I respond.

Her husband’s yellow waxy skin is not covered with a sheet or blanket, but at least he has his tighty whities on.

♦♦

A caretaker, who I’ve been told by my denim jacketed Nursing Supervisor is supposed to assist me, arrives at noon.  He is late.  He never once arrives on time.  The still sleeping couple hired him off of Craigslist to help out before the paralysis, trach, G tube and vent came on board.  Before he came into this home, the caretaker had no patient care training under his thick leather belt, no experience caring for anyone, not even a boundary challenged Akita.

“How about you and his wife orient me this weekend?” I ask the caretaker.  “It’ll be great to have someone to work with…so much easier to move a man like him around.”

“It’s all about taking care of him,” the caretaker says.  “It’s been so hard to find a nurse who fits in here.”

Blonde, blue eyes, tanned skin, pale pink lips.  I have trouble looking at the caretaker at first.  Good health, strength and defined muscles breathe through his jeans and V neck tee shirt.

Then the caretaker opens his mouth.  He opens his mouth a lot.

“You Americans are so lazy,” he says after eating his breakfast at 1 PM.

He follows this statement with his afternoon nap.

“You Americans are so shallow,” he whines after discovering the wife has not TIVOd that week’s “American Idol” for him.

“You Americans are so devious,” he says, sucking on a big red strawberry.

The caretaker is as easy to read as the wife’s Oprah inspired musings, his story is that he was brought to California by an American woman he hooked up with in Europe.  His plan is to move back home after he completes his studies as a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.  The next day I suss out he is planning to skip out on both his hookup and the student loans financing his education.

The caretaker has many questions.

He starts asking them on day two:  “Why do you ask him if he wants a pain med before you give it?”  “Why ask if the pain med worked?”  “Why do you tell him what you’re doing before you do it?”  “Why do you look him in the eyes when you talk to him?”  “Why do you ask him if he likes the music playing in his room or what’s on the television?”

I have my own question.  On both days, I have watched the caretaker shoot, in rapid succession, two cups of hot coffee, two glasses of ice water and a nutrition shake into our patient’s G tube with a pistol syringe.  The caretaker accomplishes this in less than two minutes.

“Let me understand this,” I begin.  “You jam this stuff into his stomach even though he can’t taste any of it?”

“That’s the morning routine,” the caretaker answers.

My gut twists, but I do not volunteer that it is late afternoon on what had been a cobalt blue sky day in the City of the Angels.

“What do you mean he can’t taste it?” the wife asks.

“Your husband’s taste buds are in his mouth, not his stomach.  All he’s getting is a feeling of fullness and the sensation of hot and cold.  Could explain why he’s bloated and passing so much gas.”

“He can’t taste it, he can’t taste it,” the wife repeats.

The wife looks at the caretaker, her eyes tearing up.  The caretaker Purells his hands and notes the shake on the flow sheet taped to the bedroom door.  I add the coffee and water and initial that he administered all three.

I Purell my hands and announce to my audience:  “This sheet is a great tool for us.  Since we’re all working together, let’s each write down what goes into him.  That way he won’t get something twice.  I’m real old school with this type of thing.”

The wife and caretaker stare at me.  Their eyes, which soon stop looking into mine, blink uncontrollably.

My gut quiets down as I continue:  “I’ve noticed that his narcotics and tranquilizers are being given quite frequently…and way too close together.   This sheet can help us keep on top of his meds, we wouldn’t want to overmedicate him.”

The wife grabs the half full Purell bottle.

“That’s what happens when you have a Virgo in the house,” I say to the wife as she massages the clear goo into her hands so vigorously her huge diamond engagement ring cuts into her palm.

♦♦

Later that afternoon, the caretaker asks me another question:  “Have you ever been to my country?”

He has tuned in yet another program on the flat screen without asking me if I want to watch it.  Which is fine, I did not come into this house to watch television.

“I kind of avoid Germany when I’m in Europe,” I answer.  “Most of my family was killed in Bergen-Belsen.”

♦♦

The soon-to-be pin puncturing doctor catches on quick.

On the Saturday of my second weekend on board the Lou Gehrig love express, the caretaker arrives at two in the afternoon and reads the flow sheet before eating his strawberries or changing the channel on the flat screen.  Without taking a break to eat fruit, watch television, drink coffee or take a nap, I have completed the entire day’s work by nine in the morning.  The caretaker stops smiling, but he does not stop talking about the deficiencies he observes in every American he encounters.  He rambles on and on about how “You guys” expect so much without being willing to work for it.  After his nap on Sunday, the caretaker, the wife and I sit at the kitchen table perusing the Sunday papers.  The caretaker Purells his hands and makes coffee.  He and the wife drink from their steaming mugs without asking if I want one.  I don’t.

For the next three weekends, every time I get up from the couch and move in the direction of either the kitchen or bedroom, the caretaker glides past me with the agility of Roger Federer running to lob a ball over the net,  always making it to the kitchen before I do, where he proceeds to prepare the next scheduled medication or feeding.

“I’ve been assigned here to do certain nursing tasks…sit down, relax…there’s more than enough work here for the two of us,” I tell the caretaker at least once a shift.

He eyes flash light.  He Purells his hands and eats any variety of fresh fruit.  He never answers me.

♦♦

I bypass the Nursing Supervisor and call the head of the agency to get advice on how to deal with the caretaker.

“Observe and record,” she says.

“Isn’t this against the law?  Him handing out narcotics?”

“We don’t want to upset the way their household functions,” she answers.

She puts me on hold.  After a ten minute loop of Nazi composer Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,”  I hang up.

♦♦

I ask the wife what I am supposed to be doing in her home.  She Purells her hands, reloads the CD player and smiles.

“You’re my right hand guy,” she answers.

I would not want to be either of her hands.  Every afternoon, she and the caretaker hoist her naked husband up on the Hoyer lift.  She positions herself below her husband and, with her bare unPurelled hands, disimpacts him of large amounts of stool.  The wife does this every afternoon for a half-hour to an hour, as Elliott Smith and John Mayer sing heartbreaking ballads from the bedroom speakers.

I watch in silence, thinking:  “Wait till the boyfriend, with his various anal issues, hears this one.”

Knowing in my gut that I am nearing the end of my run walking the intestine like hallways and tired of watching the wife’s knuckles going into her husband, I move into the den to sit on the couch.         I wait to feel the breeze blow on my shoulders.  The curtains covering the open sliding glass door a few feet away move gently as the air hits them, it has been weeks since the air touched my skin.  The Akita slides in and eats the caretaker’s strawberries and melon slices.  I should laugh, but my gut will not let me.  I can not react to anything the way I did a month or two ago.  I have not thought about writing since escaping the crone and becoming trapped between the pages of the wife’s sea foam green notebook.  The air of the City of the Angels refuses to caress me.  I want that more than the straight boyfriend’s lips on my neck.

Lucky man, the rent is getting paid, I’m buying healthy food.

♦♦

On my last weekend of the bare knuckle vaudeville show, the night nurse informs the caretaker that I have been documenting on both the nurse’s notes and the medication sheets that he is giving the meds and doing the treatments.  Awakening from his after lunch nap, his sensual lips ask me why.

“You’re talking to me today?  Shocker.  Your story is that you’re in acupuncture school?  You must have some sense you’re breaking the law administering big time narcotics without a license.  Bottom line is I’m not going to jail because you’re pumping this guy full of controlled substances without bothering to ask if he wants them.  At least try giving them at the right time.”

“You Americans are so dramatic.  What could happen?”

“He could overdose.”

“He’s on a ventilator…he can’t stop breathing.”

“Right, he’ll be a brain dead guy the vent breathes for.”

♦♦

Having my own gut problems, I skip the afternoon’s bowel show to fold the laundry.  In the bedroom, the wife and the caretaker perform the nursing work I was hired to do.  I place folded towels, sheets and underwear on the creviced surface of the dining room’s faux antique table.  I return to the den, where the breeze fondles the curtains, but not me.  Uninterested in the flat screen, I watch the caretaker standing in the dining room.  He shakes his head, his hair falling over his shining eyes, his long fingers picking up the wife’s red thong from the top of one of the piles of lavender smelling laundry and snapping it against her nicely curved butt.  The wife turns around and looks up at his face, her fingers lightly brushing his hair away to get a better look at the deep blue pools of his peepers.  The two smile and move closer to each other.  They are pure white against the darkest wall in the house.

So, that’s the deal.  I close the door between us.

♦♦

“I need to show you the right way to put a plastic bag in the garbage can,” the caretaker tells me an hour later.

I brush the hair off of his face.  I stare up at his eyes.  I take a good look.  I understand the wife’s attraction to him, he possesses the stuff us lesser mortals make sacrifices for.

“No way in hell,” I say.

I pack up my books and what is left of my food for the trip home.  I am in a rush, tonight is the final episode of “The Sopranos,”  I’m leaving early to watch the East Coast feed.

“See you next weekend,” the wife says.

“No way in hell,” I repeat.

I open the door.  My car, shining pools of red light, is waiting for me at the curb.  I turn around and walk to the dining room table.  I Purell my hands.

“You know this stuff is totally useless against really deadly viruses,” I say.

The wife and the caretaker take a step back.  I walk out.

Lucky man traffic-wise, I get home in time to catch “The Sopranos” finale, its blackout ending less elusive than my attempts at landing an upright gig, a downright ongoing  job.