Free The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block Page A

of red tape applying for a permit. For heaven’s sake, is it my imagination or do half the people in this city have guns? They’re installing metal detectors in the schools because so many students are bringing guns to class. Even the homeless are armed. That poor derelict was living out of garbage cans and
he
managed to have a gun.”
    “And you want one.”
    “Yes.”
    I picked up my coffee cup and found it empty. I couldn’t remember finishing it. I put it back down again and said, “Just who is it you want to kill, Jan?”
    “Oh, Matthew,” she said. “You’re looking at her.”
     
     
    “IT started in the spring,” she said. “I noticed I’d lost a few pounds without even making an effort. I thought, hey, great, I’m finally getting a handle on my weight.
    “I didn’t feel so hot. Low energy, a little nausea. I didn’t attach much significance to it. I’d felt that way in December, but I always have a bad time around the holidays, I get depressed and I feel lousy. Doesn’t everybody? I chalked it up to seasonal malaise and let it go at that, and when it came back a couple of months later I still didn’t pay much attention to it.
    “Then my stomach started bothering me. I had a pain right here, and one day I realized I’d been having it on and off for weeks. I didn’t want to go to the doctor because if it was nothing I’d be wasting time and money and if it was an ulcer I didn’t want to know about it. I figured if I ignored it maybe it would go away. So I did and it didn’t. It got to the point where I had to go to sleep in a half-seated posture because sitting up relieved the pain. Well, denial can only get you so far, and finally I decided I was being ridiculous and I went to the doctor, and the good news was I didn’t have an ulcer after all. Now you’re supposed to ask me what the bad news was.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Cancer of the pancreas,” she said. “Do you want some more good news and bad news? The good news is they can cure it if they catch it early enough. All they have to do is remove the pancreas and the duodenum and reattach the stomach to the small intestine. You have to shoot yourself up with insulin and digestive enzymes a couple of times a day for the rest of your life, and your diet is extremely restricted, but that’s the good news. The bad news is they never catch it in time.”
    “Never?”
    “Almost never. By the time noticeable symptoms appear, the cancer has invariably spread to other abdominal organs. You know, I beat myself up at first for ignoring the weight loss and the other symptoms, but the doctor made me let myself off the hook. He told me it had unquestionably metastasized before I felt the first twinge or lost the first ounce.”
    “And the prognosis?”
    “It couldn’t be much worse. Ninety percent of people with pancreatic cancer are dead within a year of initial diagnosis. The rest of us are dead within five years. Nobody gets out of this alive.”
    “Isn’t there any kind of treatment they can try?”
    “There is, but it doesn’t keep you alive. They can do certain things to make you more comfortable. I had a surgical procedure last month to bypass a blocked bile duct. They connected—well, what’s the difference what they did, but it relieved the pain and got rid of the jaundice. It also left me feeling the way you’d expect to feel if they cut you open and sewed you back up again, but I think it was worth it. The first thing I noticed after surgery was that I’d gone completely gray, but that probably would have happened anyway. And if it bothers me I can always dye it, right?”
    “Right.”
    “It won’t fall out, because there’s no point in trying radiation or chemotherapy. Aw, Jesus, it just seems so . . . I was going to say unfair, but life’s unfair, everybody knows that. What it seems is so fucking arbitrary. Do you know what I mean? God picks your name out of a hat and you’re it.”
    “What causes it, do