Free Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? by Erica Orloff Page B

this good night.
    “After all we’ve been through,” I said. “We come to this. Me holding your barf bag.”
    I heard her laugh, though her face was bent away from me and I couldn’t see her smile. Laughing was good. Laughing people get well. I’d read Norman Cousins’s book. Laughter really was a kind of medicine. So we had laughter and anger—I was covering both the bases.
    “So,” I said casually, “did I tell you that I invited Joe over for wine and cheese?”
    She turned her head from the pot and glared at me. “Wine and cheese? Wine and fucking cheese?”
    I nodded.
    “Wine and fucking cheese?”
    “It’s called a chemo party. They’re all the rage.”
    “What in that demented queer brain of yours would make you think I want Joe here smoking his smelly cigars while I am puking my guts up?”
    “He promised to not smoke. And…to be honest, I didn’t think it was going to be this bad.”
    She looked up at me, her face splotchy and red and her nose running, and she flipped me the bird. “What would you fucking know about chemo?”
    “Only what I see in the movies. And I mean movies like Love Story and Beaches. I wasn’t talking about The Exorcist .”
    “You’re an ass. A total ass.”
    “But I’m an ass who’ll sit next to you while you vomit. That kind of ass is few and far between, my little pea-soup spewing devil child. Come on…we’ll get you down on the couch.”
    She groaned, but she was at a lull in her vomit session, and she did climb out of bed, put on her robe and shuffle down to the couch. My plan was working. Not that it was much of a plan. I had just been reading all this holistic healing crap. Two things jumped out at me. People who have something to fight for live longer, and people who pray and are prayed for live longer, too. I knew if I told her any of this, she would say I was full of shit, so I kept it to myself but said the rosary for her every morning. And decided angry was a less passive emotion.
    The doorbell rang, and I went to the foyer.
    “Mikey!” Joe clapped me on the back when I opened the door. He has this heterosexual male tendency to give other men nicknames. So Michael becomes Mikey or Mikey Boy, and Noah goes by Champ. He called Lily’s last boyfriend Bob-oh.
    I ushered Joe into the living room.
    “Jesus H. Christ, you look like crap!” he said to Lily, who was sitting down in a large leather lounge chair that had once been Spawn’s favorite.
    “One more word about my appearance, and I swear you won’t leave here with your testicles.”
    “You still have your hair.”
    “For about ten days. Then it all goes bye-bye.”
    “Won’t have to shave your legs.”
    “Gee, thanks, Joe. I’m sure that’s a big plus to chemo. As it is I only shave when I think I might be having sex. And somehow, the whole I-have-cancer thing isn’t exactly first-date material.”
    “Eh,” Joe said, waving his hand. “You were never first-date material. Ever. Too opinionated. You scare men.”
    She put the pot down on the floor. “I scare men! I scare men?”
    “You heard me. Frighten off every guy in the tristate area.”
    I went to get him a beer. My plan was working perfectly. You can’t think about giving up when you’re pissed. I came back with the beer, and she was midrant. I walked in on, “And I’ll tell you another thing, you asshole…”
    Then the doorbell rang. She turned her wrath on me. “Who else did you invite, dickhead?”
    “Ellie.”
    “Ellie?”
    “What, is there an echo?”
    I went and opened the door and ushered her in. Whereas Lily scared off guys, Ellie was a magnet for lots and lots of first dates. Usually weirdos—like the guy who stole all her spoons after she took him home for the night. Not forks. Not knives. Spoons. We were stirring our coffee with pencils in her apartment for a year.
    She hugged me when she came in and whispered in my ear, “I promise not to cry.”
    I hugged her back and led her into the living