Tony, the tall, broad shouldered driver of the limo, stood patiently watching Stuart Rainey take the last drag off a borrowed cigarette.
Almost cosmic looking tendrils of smoke remained high above Rainey’s head as if refusing to leave without tarnishing his lungs.
The menthol felt to Stuart as refreshing as a coca cola did, though he’d never admit that his fingers shook with the giddiness of smoking again after quitting for 12 years.
There was so much that had happened in those years, mostly all negative. Like some kind of karmic acid, it ate away his mind like the smoke that was intruding on his lungs.
It all started by marrying Julia.
Julia.
It was quite possible that he now hated his wife.
‘Stupid’ he’d thought many times, so many men would take Julia in a moment.
For one thing, her shape hadn’t changed since High School. She simply glowed with youthful beauty. She was a tigress in bed, and for the better part of their 12 years together; Stuart had found himself mentally deflecting other men’s glances at her. Yet he couldn’t remember any one happy time they’d had together.
There was a deeper more sinister Julia that failed to rise to the top in front of other people however, and after all this time of matrimony, he’d grown tired of her histrionics, and of her controlling behavior. Julia made him feel as if he’d been emotionally castrated. She was the man, the woman, and the boss.
Tony drove them expertly through the city traffic towards home. He’d been driving Stuart for years. He was a burly but soft-spoken man.
As the car slowed down towards the interstate on ramp, he turned down the stereo, and tilted his head towards Stewart.
“So, what’d they say?” He probed.
“ It ain’t good.” Stuart told him.
“ Not good how?”
“Like potentially life changing.”
“C’mon!” Tony wouldn’t let the subject go.
“They need more tests” Stuart shrugged, “You know how doctors are. We blow smoke around the whole business just to get the patient’s money”
If Tony wasn’t fooled, Stuart couldn’t tell. The driver relaxed a little as he sped up on the interstate. He changed the subject.
“So why the smokes now?”
“What’re you, my mother??” Stuart lightly punched him in the shoulder.
“ No…I just meant… you like cigars too? I got some Cubans.”
“Where’d you get Cubans? Stuart half laughed half scoffed.
As far as he knew Tony never traveled anywhere. He’d grown up in the city all of his life, in the ghetto holes beyond the industrial tracts. People who were raised there seldom got beyond middle class.
“I got people.” Tony said indignantly, yet with playfulness in his voice, “You come over one day, we’ll smoke’s em up, eh?”
Stuart got it now. Tony had seen through him. The offer of Cubans was a sympathy offering.
“You got it.”
They passed Julia’s Audi in the driveway, which was candy apple red with tinted windows, five thousand dollar chrome rims and meticulously pampered by their mechanic. The car was supposed to be an anniversary gift, only now, it was a symbol of Julia’s excess, used for her many excessive shopping trips
Tony stopped there and let him out. Stuart passed him a 20-dollar bill and straightened his tie.
“Do I smell like smoke?” He asked nervously.
Tony shook his head no and put the bill inside his jacket pocket.
“Same time tomorrow bud?”
“Yep.” Stuart said.
“Good enough.”
The car was gone in a moment; it’s taillights faint while navigating the long driveway to the thoroughfare.
Stuart stepped into the huge foyer with its stone flooring and wooden cross beams, and hung his over coat on its usual hook, third from the left.
No one greeted him, but he knew Julia was there. He could count on her to be in the same room every afternoon watching her soap operas on television. The only thing of equal importance in Julia’s life other than Stuart Rainey’s money, was watching her soap operas.
He looked at his watch. The last one would be on now, he guessed. Julia would expect him to take her out to eat soon. He glanced into the den as she sat perched there gazing in the T.V. , her two Maltese pups curled like so much yarn in the curve of her legs. The dogs looked up simultaneously, long enough to see a familiar face and settled down happily again.
“Hello Julia,” Rainey offered. “How was your day?”
The truth was, she didn’t even have to answer him. He knew how her day was. He’d long ago memorized her meaningless routine.
She’d have her tea in the breakfast nook, and she’d take a little dry toast with strawberry preserves. She’d run to make her work out with a personal trainer for an hour. Mid morning she’d hit the spa, stopping on the way home to have her hair done. She’d meet one of her simpleton friends, for lunch and shopping, and then dash home for her soaps at two p.m. bringing in the two dogs to leave their white hair all over his couch. How she never got tired of her little routine, was beyond him.
“Hmmmm.” She said absentmindedly, never taking her eyes off the television. She wore a flimsy looking, flowing garment that made her look innocent and beautiful, while showing off her perfect breasts. A matching scarf captured her long hair into some style reminiscent of the early seventies. A pair of tidy pink slippers rested askew on the floor.
“I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.” She informed him flatly.
“Okay then” He answered and went upstairs to their bedroom, a huge master suite decorated in rich satins and billowy fabrics. The carpet alone was three inches thick.
Stuart sunk into the mattress with its silky duvet cover surrounded by many needless pillows.
His cell phone was vibrating already. He plucked it out of his waistband and looked at the caller I.D. The hospital.
“Doctor Rainey.” He answered.
“Hello Doctor” The voice matched Reese Thomas, his lab assistant. “I have the results you wanted.”
“Uh, okay.” He cleared his throat, steeling himself for the news.
“I think you’ll have to come in tomorrow, sir.” She told him, “It’s a match.”
“They’re sure?”
“For you, we ran the test four times. I’m sorry.”
“Okay Ms. Thomas. Thank you.”
His head pounded. He looked around the bedroom at several statues that decorated every level of dresser, desk and night table there.
A gaudy abstract painting hung over the bed that they seldom shared on Stuart’s whims alone, but the bed that Julia ruled. The painting was some crazy purchase she told him reminded her of her childhood. It reminded Stuart of something he threw up once: ‘1200 dollars for mashed potatoes and peas’ he scoffed inwardly.
His brain hurt. He hadn’t the energy to sit up, let alone go to dinner with her.
Stuart forced himself up off the bed however. He went into the bathroom adjacent to the room and wet his face with cold water, shaving the five o’clock shadow, and following up with a few careful spritzes of after-shave and cologne. His body was still fairly well built for middle age, no man boobs yet; the scattering of hair on his chest hadn’t turned gray.
‘Not many women would pass on this’ he thought, letting out a sarcastic twitter as he pulled on a gray cotton dress shirt that he knew Julia would probably order him to change.
Nothing he did even remotely satisfied her; nothing that was, except his money. He had tried for the life of him to please her, thinking back to the early days with Julia. Was there anything resembling love then?
A huge black hole of emotions encircled Stuart. He came close to hating that he’d ever been so successful in life, but that would’ve meant hating the father and grandfather who’d fairly risked their family fortunes trying to make Stuart comfortable in life.
His father became a corporate executive and his father before him also, so naturally everyone in his family expected the same grand results from him.
Stuart opted to become a doctor instead.
While not exactly disappointed, his father Aaron Rainey became a petulant watchdog over Stuart’s life. The ten years his son went through medical school, were laced with warnings. Family blood, though thicker than water, held little options for Stuart.
He would succeed, or else.
As Aaron often told his son, “You only have one chance with my money, don’t you dare fuck it up!”
Stuart Rainey spread a fair amount of cocaine out on his shaving mirror. He cut the drug, twice as much as he normally snorted, into tiny lines. Life saving lines, he reasoned.
Dinner would be twice as hard to get through. He’d tell her tonight, he figured.
He sniffed it up fairly quickly risking a nosebleed. Julia would be coming upstairs to change his outfit soon. He didn’t want her to know he was using again. He was fairly sure she’d go into a rage at him, as she’d done in the past when she found out: scratching his face, throwing things at him, maybe even punching and kicking him in the groin.
Now days he couldn’t even say that he wasn’t above hitting her back, but he knew something deep in his brain told him that Julia’s family, a powerful and fiercely loyal family, were also not above retaliation of a very final kind.
He’d tell her tonight, yes, he’d mention it over cocktails.
He had terminal liver cancer, and he had six months to live.
Things cool people say.....