Chapter Nineteen
Later that day, and a little after five o’clock, Rico stood in his doorway and found himself shocked at the number of boxes that were stacked in gravity defying piles in the hallway and in the spaces between the cubicles. Since he’d met with Nels, Wayne had continuously delivered pallets of office supplies to the fourth floor. Labels on the outside of the boxes proclaimed their contents: binder clips, copy paper, pens, pencils, staplers, computers, office furniture, artificial trees, and much more. Many of the boxes marked, ‘Office Furniture,’ had been torn open, the top of the boxes cut with a car key, or scissors. Inside, the employees had hoped to find privacy screens or tall walls with which to modify their cubicles, and remove themselves from the withering gazes of Cuddy and his henchmen, who randomly appeared, clipboards in hand, and demanded more as they marched up and down the aisles.
Looking at the obstacle course that stood before him, Rico loudly proclaimed, “The cowards never started, and the weak died along the way.” He kneeled on the ground, the halls to full to allow passage while standing, and began the arduous journey to his van. In the side pocket of Rico’s coat was the paper bag with Helen’s medication. As he crawled under the boxes he dragged his computer bag and lunch box behind him. The opening in the hall was too tight to accommodate him and his baggage, simultaneously. After a few minutes he reached the end, where sunlight again showed. He wriggled from under the last of the boxes, relieved to escape the claustrophobic tunnel, and stood up in the elevator lobby. “God help us if the fire alarm ever rang in earnest,” he thought.
Arriving in the parking lot, almost twenty minutes after he started, Rico approached his ride. The standard issue, serial killer, pedophile, contractor van in white, was ideal for a performing musician, but he was the first to concede it creeped a lot of people out. He’d converted the back into a pull out bed to make it easier when he played clubs far from home, or found himself in an altered state of consciousness and didn’t want to roll the dice with a DUI, or its ugly stepsister a DWI. Below the platform that held the pull out bed and a couple of mini chairs, sat guitars, amplifiers, and other musical equipment, neatly nested into shelving he’d designed and built. He’d wager, as an accomplished urban camper, he spent upwards of thirty nights a year in the van leveraging the sleep where you parked option.
Rico unlocked the driver’s door and climbed in. As he settled into the driver’s seat, he looked at the map he’d printed and headed out accordingly. From G.O.D.’s campus he pulled eastbound onto a city street, and drove until he accessed the southbound highway. The traffic was bearable and he made good time. As he drove a stick-on, plastic hula dancer shimmied on the dashboard. He didn’t turn the radio on; instead he thought about how he would explain twice sending Helen the wrong drugs. Twenty minutes later he exited the highway, hung a left at the end of the exit ramp, and drove another couple miles to Helen’s street where he hung a final right to find her home the fifth on the left. He parked on the street, walked up the driveway and onto the front porch, and rang the doorbell.
Rico was a little nervous and hoped to avoid a verbal altercation. Although he and Helen had built a reasonably strong relationship over the phone they’d never met, and she had every right to be pissed. After the tech had thrown him the drugs, he called the doctor’s office and pretended to be the pharmacist to confirm that what he had was exactly as prescribed. He couldn’t afford another screw up. While he waited, he drummed his fingers on his leg and figured he’d wait another minute before he rang the bell again. He didn’t want to leave the drugs on the porch and have them go missing. As he moved to ring the bell a second time, the door opened and Helen stood before him.
Helen was in her late twenties, and much, much, cuter than he anticipated. She wore her bright, naturally red hair just past her shoulders and dressed like a college student in faded jeans, a white cashmere sweater, and small, gold hoop earrings. A blue, jacquard patterned silk headband pulled her hair back. Thin and lithe, she looked as if she’d run cross country in college. Even with all the time they’d spent on the phone, Rico had never seen her national news interview and incorrectly assumed Helen was a fat old woman with long grey hair, mu mu, and chunky jewelry. Other than the strain in her face, noticeable in the corners of her eyes, she looked remarkably healthy.
Fumbling with the door, she cradled a phone against the top of her shoulder and mouthed, “Rico?” to confirm the stranger before her.
Rico nodded.
She smiled briefly, waved him in, and motioned for him to sit by pointing at the couch in the front room. Still invested in her phone conversation she turned her back to Rico.
As Rico walked to the couch, he couldn’t help but overhear what she said.
”Yes Dad, I’ll call them later today and see what they’re doing for clinical trials.
No Dad, I’m not going to do that. Surgery isn’t an option, and I’m not going to die on the operating table.
I understand, and I’ll think about a live-in nurse or somebody to stay with me. I understand how important it is to you and Mom.”
I promise. Okay. Love you too, bye.”
Helen turned the phone off and stared at her bare feet. Her head hung in resignation. She took a deep breath and turned to look at Rico. “You must be Rico,” she looked him up and down, arms crossed, and then reached out to shake his hand. “I was expecting a much shorter man with a large caterpillar mustache.”
“Everyone does.” Nervous, he popped a lozenge in his mouth and began sucking on it. His cheeks dented inwards. “It’s a nickname that comes from my habit of always putting cough drops in my mouth. You’re familiar with the Ricola cough drops? Well, they call me Rico.”
“Rico,” she rolled it around in her mouth as if it was a ball bearing. “Rico, would you like a drink? The drink we’ve often talked about, but never had. I definitely need a glass of wine, and I’m not supposed to drink by myself. Well technically I’m not supposed to drink, but what’s it going to do kill me?”
Rico shrugged, “Sure, why not?” Rico didn’t expect to be inside Helens house sitting on the couch and waiting for a glass of wine, but to leave now would put him in the heart of rush hour. Wine wasn’t his first choice, but he figured he’d kill a half hour and catch the tail end of the traffic jam. Also, it wouldn’t be the worst outcome if he patched things up with Helen. It would make his job a lot easier.
Helen walked back into the room with a glass of red wine and a beer. “You don’t look like a wine drinker, but I can get you wine if you’d rather. Something about you says beer drinker.”
“No you’re right, I prefer beer.” Rico took the bottle from Helen. “Wow, beer in a bottle. I usually end up drinking beer from tall cans. I drink a lot of warm beer in tall cans.”
Helen’s sense of humor hadn’t left her, “Should I pull the six-pack from the fridge?”
“No, no, this is good.” Rico laughed.
Unprompted, Helen sat on the couch next to Rico and put her feet up on the coffee table. She slouched low, as if seated in a chaise lounge with her head and knees at the same height, and stared into the distance. It surprised Rico that he didn’t feel uncomfortable seated next to Helen. Although they’d spent hours on the phone, they’d never met. The same could be said of Helen, who required more personal space than anyone she knew. Yet here they sat, bumping elbows in a surreal Norman Rockwell scene that included the middle aged, wanna-be rock star, and the terminally ill, impish, young redhead. Holding his beer with one hand, Rico reached into his coat with his free hand and pulled out Helen’s meds. She took the bag and set it to her side, opposite Rico. Helen didn’t open the bag to see what it contained, which Rico thought flattering and a little surprising. If the roles were reversed he was certain he’d have checked the bag’s contents. G.O.D. was zero for two on getting her the right drugs the first time.
“I was going to lay into you for the g
rief your company’s put me through, but I think I’ll just tell you my story and hope that will get you to see things from my perspective. I don’t think I’ve ever told you why the meds you send me are so important, lately we always seem to talk about the fun things.” Rico nodded and listened, he figured this was coming.
Helen didn’t speak for what Rico thought was the longest time, and they sat, each absorbed in their own thoughts, then, without being asked, she began to tell the story of her illness. “It started off innocuously enough. I’d forget words, have a dizzy spell, headaches would linger. I always seemed to wake with a headache. Nothing that says something is really wrong, but enough that it catches your notice. My work was demanding, so it wasn’t uncommon to hear others at work complain of the same things. I even went to see a doctor, and he told me I was dehydrated and under stress.” She held her arms out in front of her, palms up, implying, ‘what the hell?’ “Seriously, stress was his diagnosis. As if I’m a frail tropical bird that suddenly appears in Chicago and is troubled by the lack of a rain forest.
Then, a couple of months later, I woke up in my hallway in the middle of the afternoon in a huge thunderstorm and didn’t remember anything. The tree in the backyard was hit by lightning, and the strike woke me. At first I thought I might have been hit by lightning. There must have been twenty messages on my answering machine from work trying to figure out where I was. I drove myself to the emergency room, and forty eight hours later they gave me my diagnosis and the comforting news I’ve a terminal illness. Now I’m fighting to live out the year, or even live for a few extra months into the next year. You know, move into the top percentile, and become an outlier. How nice it would be to finally be above average at one thing. It’s kind of funny; I used to worry about everything. Now I just have this one thing to worry about.”
Slouching lower on the couch, her knees now higher than her head, she went on, “My arm would have a muscle spasm and I was sure I had Lou Gehrig’s, a weird heartbeat was a valve about to explode. Then I wake up with a bloody nose in my hallway and can’t remember how I got there. Nine out of ten doctors agree, there is nothing like a terminal illness to cure a hypochondriac.
For the first six months every time I woke up, whether from a nap or the night’s sleep, I’d have a couple minutes where I’d forget what was going on, and then wham, I’d remember. It’s like being socked in the gut. I read about a ski racer that suffered a traumatic brain injury. Each day he wakes thinking he and his wife are still married and in love, only to find she left him years ago. Imagine replaying that every day. Anyhow, that’s me.” Helen smiled pensively as she turned to look at Rico. “Now you see why it’s important I get my meds?”
“Yhea. I never thought it wasn’t important. The company I work at doesn’t always make it easy to do the right thing.” Rico didn’t want to try and explain G.O.D.’s inner machinations, or what he’d gone through to get her drugs. Whatever excuses came to mind, he’d surely told her before.
“Well, enough about me and my woes, what’s your story?” Helen wasn’t accustomed to being mad at someone, and with a nearly full beer in front of Rico, and a full glass of wine before her, she moved to make small talk.
Rico was caught off guard at the conversations change in course and the directness of her question. He fumbled to move the cough drop to the side of his mouth before he could answer, but then found his rhythm. “I think I told you, I’m a manager at G.O.D. and oversee a couple dozen customer representatives whose job it is to call patients and schedule delivery, grab payment information, and follow up to make sure our patients are taking the drugs.”
“No, I mean your real story. Your heart’s not in your job. There’s a reason you drive a van. Are you a craftsman or aspiring serial killer? Perhaps an accomplished child abductor,” she grinned teasingly and nudged him with her elbow.
Rico played along, “My fondness for kids is platonic, but I could be persuaded to kidnap if the payout was high and the child unharmed. No, I play music. I’m an aspiring singer songwriter. I’ll answer your next question, before it’s asked. You’ve never heard me play nor have you heard anything I’ve ever written. The emphasis on the description, aspiring singer songwriter, is solely on the word aspiring.”
“Wow. A real life John Denver hanging in my crib, delivering my drugs. Maybe I should call you Keef?” Helen asked. Her eyebrows rose in mock awe. She wasn’t very good at holding these peculiar faces and began to laugh. “You never told me that you were a musician! Aren’t you a little old for high school rock star dreams?”
Rico joined her laugh. “Well, that’s the dream, it doesn’t die, and you asked. You’re surprisingly flirtatious for being terminally ill.”
“What? You don’t believe I’m terminally ill. Seriously, I am terminally ill.” She laughed, punching him on the side of the leg, and then added, “Oh my God I can’t believe I’m laughing about this.”
“No, no. I believe you. It’s just not what I expected.”
“Well it’s not what I expected either. Now, tell me about your music?”
“I play mostly covers, but every blue moon I’ll play a few originals. It’s really tough to keep an audience engaged with music they’ve not heard before, but I try to play some of the songs I write once and while.”
“What’s your music like.”
“I do everything from Nancy Sinatra to Sonic Youth.”
“No, your music. That’s their music. What kind of music do you write?”
“Oh. Well, stylistically, is a cross between Elliott Smith and Kurt Cobain, if such a thing can be imagined. I’m flattering myself with that comparison, but I’ll describe it as I’d like others to think of it. I seem to struggle to find the right words to put to my music.”
“I have no idea who Eric Smith is,” Helen feigned. “Your musical style sounds very higgledy-piggledy.”
Rico turned and looked at her for the first time since she’d sat on the couch next to him. “Elliott, not Eric,” he corrected. “Piggily wiggily? That’s not a real word. You can’t just make up words. Only rappers can do that.”
“The word is higgledy piggledy, and it is a word. You want to bet a dollar?”
“A dollar it is.”
Helen pulled out her smart phone a typed in the word. Almost instantly the definition shown on the small screen and Rico conceded she’d won the bet. Rico returned the conversation to the earlier topic, as he fumbled a folded up dollar from his front pocket and handed it to her, “Anyway, you asked about my music. It’s really tough lately, a lot of the open mics are closing down and finding venues to play is becoming more and more challenging. Used to be I’d play at a coffee house and the owner would give me a hundred bucks. A lot of the coffee houses and bars won’t let me play, or they make the musicians play their own music. They’re getting sued by the performing rights organizations to pay royalties for the music played, even though they don’t charge anyone to come and listen. It’s a mess. The industry is collapsing in on itself and they’re going after anything to keep the money coming. With the internet the artists can go straight to the fans and cut out the labels.”
“What’s wrong with playing your own music?”
“Believe me, I wish I could get the audience to hang around and get into the stuff I write. Every once in a while a song or two will click, but I’m a covers guy. I play the stuff others write. I spend all my time driving around to find bars, coffee houses, book stores, you name it, that’ll pay me a little bit of cash for a night’s work.”
Helen pursed her lips as if she wanted to speak, but forced herself not to. After a short silence she awkwardly returned to the earlier topic, “Since my diagnosis I spend almost all my time alone, locked inside the giant medical complex downtown. I moved here about a year ago from California, and now I’m stuck. All my family and friends are on the west coast.”
“Why don’t you fly home? They have h
ospitals in California.”
“I can’t quit work or I’ll love my health benefits, and I’m not at the point where I qualify for disability.”
“That’s good. I mean, that’s good that you’re not sick enough that you qualify. If you didn’t tell me what was going on I’d have no idea what you were facing.”
“I don’t like to think of it as an illness. I like the term ‘predicament,’ and my predicament always hits me the hardest when I’m hundreds of feet in the air on the umpteenth floor and looking down at the canyons between the buildings. I see the city alive with people walking, driving and biking. I just want to be among them, naïve to my mortality. Not inside a sterile building in a paper robe waiting the results of a scan or blood test or physical exam. The ‘why me’s’ always hit the hardest the minute I put on the paper robe.”
“The dreaded paper robe! It’s like wearing a giant, see through, napkin.”
“You are so right! I thought dying would be more glamorous and melodramatic, but it’s really like giving a speech in junior high. Everyone has to do it, but no one wants to go next. Some days I don’t want to fight anymore. I get so tired of it all, and I think, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ I’ll go next and get it done. I know my mental faculties will go, and I’ll forget names and memories. Maybe, at some point, I’ll forget I’m dying. I’m terrified to burden others, but I don’t have the courage to take my life.” Without intending she started to cry softly, but then tried to lighten the mood, “It could be worse; I could have smashed my thumb.”
Rico took a long, deep pull on his beer and nearly finished it. He spoke afterwards, “Not sure I follow.”
“It’s something I used to joke with my Dad about. No matter how bad anything gets, it’s always worse if you add a smashed thumb. I’m not sure why I’m telling you all of this. I guess I’m just tired and looking for someone to connect with.”
“No, no, it’s cool.” In an effort to lighten the mood, Rico added, “You’re not going to die today, right?”
“No. Not today, but soon. And that sucks. Do you want another beer?”
“Yeah, sure.” Rico didn’t have anywhere he had to be, and he wasn’t in the habit of saying no to another beer. When he parked, an hour ago, he figured he’d simply knock and hand the bag to Helen through a crack in the door, but he found himself really enjoying Helen’s company.
Helen eased herself from the couch, concealed the paper bag in her hand opposite Rico, and walked down the hall and into her kitchen. She returned a couple of minutes later absent the bag. Under her arm she’d tucked a beer, while her hands held a tray with cheese and crackers. Helen set the tray on the coffee table, and flopped back onto the couch. Her wine sat mostly untouched.
Rico took the beer, nodded thanks, then leaned forward and scammed a couple of crackers and a few slices of cheese. Realizing he was hungrier than he thought, he grabbed a few more. Helen moved the tray closer to him.
“You know what sucks?” Helen asked.
Before Rico could answer, Helen held her hand up, “That’s rhetorical.”
Rico pursed his lips in silence, and nodded to confirm he understood a response wasn’t needed.
Helen went on, “I’m forced to deal with my mortality and my spirituality at the same time. It seems a better approach is to get the spirituality thing worked out, and then get after the mortality. Before this happened the only God in my life was the one printed on the dollar bill in my wallet, and I used that to buy milk. I wasn’t prepared to sort out whether I believed in God, or what God I believed in, in twelve months. Now I’m constantly asking myself why the hell I didn’t sort this out while I had time. It’s overwhelming to realize how short our time on Earth is, when time is infinite. Or at least I think time’s infinite. I never finished that Hawkins book, a Brief History of Time. Did you know that book is touted as an approachable introduction to theoretical physics? For whom was the book intended, MIT post-docs? It gave me a headache, and I never did figure out what happens when we die.”
“I tried to read it, too. I’m not sure that’s what the book was trying to explain. I don’t think anyone knows. I guess you know when you know, or maybe you never know, and only those that are left know what happened. That’s why it’s called faith. Are you religious?” Rico asked curiously. Having never sorted out his spirituality, he was always interested in others’ perspectives.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Helen softened the bite of her words with a smirk. “My parents are staunch Catholics. I was raised likewise. I made it through first communion, but I rebelled before the confirmation. Mostly laziness, it wasn’t the history of abuse, religion as means of world domination, or the sexism of the Catholic Church that kept me from going, although I guess when I line them up like that I might have a pretty good strategy for my defense. I wanted to sleep late on Sunday’s and could never rally the energy to sit in the pew for an hour; sit, stand, kneel, repeat.
How pissed am I going to be if it turns out I should have been there on Sundays? I have this image in my mind of God playing my life before my eyes like a sports highlight reel, and making notes each time he sees me sleeping in bed on Sunday; a big red pen circling my head, John Madden style, with an arrow showing how I should have been in Church. You know what else completely sucks?”
“What?”
“You get to a point with all the anxiety about dying that you flip your sleep routine, and you can’t sleep without someone watching over you. Up all night, then sleep during the day. It’s a fear that you’ll die in your sleep when it’s dark, but the daylight protects you. It’s very irrational, but an easy trap to fall into. It can’t help my cause to stay up all night worrying, only to get up exhausted, go to work, and then fight with G.O.D.”
Rico let the words hang in the air, and then commented, “In your shoes, I’d hate G.O.D. too?”
“Let me clarify,” as she looked at the ceiling she spoke loudly, “I don’t hate God.” Then she leaned into Rico and whispered conspiratorially, “I can’t take any chances this close to the departure date. Anyway, I don’t hate your company. I hate how hard it is to get the drugs I need to stay alive. Every time I talk to a rep for a refill they want all sorts of information: blood pressure, weight, side effects. Your rep told me the data is collected to sell to the pharma companies. I think this is my doctor’s job, and it’s my business not the pharmaceutical drug companies.” Helen sat up straight and looked directly at Rico. Other than the time Rico challenged her word choice, they’d both been facing the same direction, like kids sharing a seat on a school bus.
“Also, you know you’ve mailed me the wrong medication the last two times. It took me two months to get the charges reversed on my credit card from the first wrong shipment. Remember how much time we spent on the phone?” Helen softened her tone, “So that’s not really helping your cause. My belief is if you operate in an industry that deals with health or mortality, you better exceed the airline and cable TV industries in customer care. I don’t have the answer, but before we build weapons of mass destruction, fund other governments, or send rockets into space, we should provide health care. It’s a right of life, or at least it should be. You know your company’s outsourced quality control to the patients? The patients! After the customer service rep let me know that, he asked me whether I had any pets. Pets!” She hit Rico harder this time.
“Ouch.” Rico rubbed his arm. “I don’t disagree with anything your saying, and I wasn’t aware of the quality control thing or the question on pets. It must be one of our CEO, Doug’s, brilliant plans. Somehow the specialty pharmacy industry’s evolved such that there is no margin in buying and selling drugs. We live off the money we get paid by the drug companies. They pay us for the data we collect and report on the patients who take their drugs. The companies sponsoring the drug benefit, like your employer, beat the hell out of us on price. It’s not uncommon for us to sell for less tha
n we paid. Without the data fees we’d lose money. Actually, they are starting the beat the hell out of the employees and shifting a lot of the drug benefit cost to you guys. You’ve got to be seeing that?”
“My credit cards are maxed and I’m in a weird footrace. Do I run out of money before I run out of time?” Her hands mimed a balance as she spoke. “At some point I’ll have to sell my car, maybe my house. I’m not allowed to drive so I should just suck it up, get over it and sell the damn thing. I’ll need the money soon enough.” Helen bit the inside of her cheek, and pursed her lips tightly. She looked hesitantly at Rico.
Rico emptied his beer and reflected on what she’d said. “I’m not sure anyone’s smart enough to figure out what you’re proposing. But I’m the first to admit a little compassion could go a long way.”
“Exactly.” Helen picked Rico’s bottle from the table and shook it, highlighting its emptiness. “Beer?”
“Are you trying to get me drunk? I should probably get going before I pose a threat to the fair citizens of this town on the public thoroughfares.”
“No, I’m really not. I find more and more I hate to be alone at night,” her voice was more pleading than she intended. The sun had begun to set.
“Okay, last beer, but only if you refill the cheese tray. I’m starving.” Rico had continued eating as they talked and the plate was nearly empty. “What do you do for work?”
“Hang on, let me grab a beer, get more food, and then I’ll tell you about work.” Helen stood, and it appeared she was about to fall. She reached out and Rico grabbed her hand and steadied her by resting his other on the small of her back. Rico would have thought her a little drunk if the untouched glass of wine wasn’t evidence to the contrary.
“Better?”
“Yes, I’m fine now. The meds make me a little dizzy, especially when I stand up. The doctor said to expect it.”
Helen returned with Rico’s beer, a block of cheese, some apples and pears, a box of crackers, and a knife. Setting the food down Helen casually mentioned, “You’re probably going to hate me when you learn what I do for work.”
“Hate you? I don’t think that’s possible. But you’ve piqued my interest, what do you do for work?”
“Do you remember earlier when we were talking about coffee shops and bars paying royalties to the performing rights organizations? And how you’re struggling to pay your bills as a musician, and committed to a life sucking, dead end job at G.O.D.?”
“I don’t remember giving that description of my job, but I remember the part about how I’m stuck working at G.O.D. because it’s so difficult to pay my bills playing music given all the venues are drying up.”
“Well, I work for the performing rights organizations. My job is to find all the places live music is played in Chicago and get the venues either to pay the annual licensing fees, or stop playing live music. Let me be precise. Original music they can play to their heart’s content. It’s profiting off music that isn’t in the public domain that I target.”
“Fees? How much money do you think the coffee shops make off the open mic night?” Rico struggled to keep his voice at an indoor level.
“It’s irrelevant. The songwriters are entitled to compensation whenever their work is played. The proprietor needs to pay into all three organizations: ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. We distribute the fees to the members, the musicians like you. End of story.” Helen rose to the building argument, cheeks flushing with blood.
“You charge a coffee shop two thousand dollars a year to have an open mic night. The shop doesn’t charge anything to the patrons or the musicians, and they make no money off the music. My experience is it is short sighted greed. If you hear a song you like, you buy the CD or download the tune. You’re the group that sued the Girl Scouts for singing campfire songs a few years ago.” Rico was dumbfounded by her logic.
“Yes, but we settled on a symbolic one dollar per year licensing fee. Look, the Supreme Court ruled in 1917 that restaurants must pay songwriters even if the business didn’t charge directly for the music.” It was clear to Rico that Helen had argued her case many times before.
“There is no way to keep track of what’s played where. It’s based on radio playlists, and I assure you the obscure songs I play aren’t on the radio, or if they are its college radio. I understand your position, but the reality is the local music scene dies and these are the locations where the seeds that become the next big stars sprout, American Idol notwithstanding.” Their discussion was passionate, but not hateful or heated. Rico figured they weren’t likely to change each other’s perspectives, and he moved the conversation in a different direction, “How did you get into this line of work?”
“I grew up on the west coast. My dad worked in the entertainment industry and was an executive at a small label, and then an agent. Sorry, he’s a long time out of the business, but back in the day he could have gotten you on Lawrence Welk.”
“Lawrence Welk? Oh, my God! My grandmother loved that show,” Rico’s tone softened as they found common ground.
“Well here’s a funny story. My dad used to know the show’s musical director and on a dare from a friend of his he convinced this poor guy that, One Toke Over the Line, was a modern spiritual. The guy bought it, and if you look on YouTube you can see the original footage of a hundred blue haired old ladies and their husbands singing, ‘One toke over the line sweet Jesus, one toke over the line.’”
“I never heard that story. I’ve played that song a few times and have, perhaps, been one toke over the line on occasion.”
Not willing to leave it alone, Helen sarcastically asked, “Were the writers fairly compensated?”
“I don’t even know who wrote it.”
“It was Brewster and Shipley.”
“I don’t remember. I was pretty stoned at the time.” Rico laughed and changed topics, “What did your mother do?”
“My mom isn’t the most grounded person. I love her to death, but my high school graduation present was either a boob job or college. Her advice was to make an investment in myself and get some boobs.” Looking down Helen shrugged, “Well safe to say I went to college. Apparently common sense skips generations in our family, at least on my mom’s side. My grandmother sat me down and helped me get into college.”
They continued to talk, and Rico ate his way through another platter of food. The subjects became much lighter, changing from mortality and corporate responsibility to pop culture. At around ten pm, inspired by their talk of American Idol, they flipped on the TV. Rico provided a musician’s perspective on the performers and called out when the singing seemed pitchy.
With the TV on, and Rico rambling on about off key singing, Helen fell into a sound sleep. It was the first meaningful sleep she’d had since her diagnosis, and, with a person she’d met only a few hours ago watching over her, she wholly gave into the darkness. Rico watched TV for a few more hours, Helen asleep at his side, and then around two in the morning he draped a blanket over Helen, and walked out the front door into the cold, dark night.