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

they know?”
    “Not really. Statistically alcohol and tobacco seem to be factors. Much higher incidence among drinkers and smokers. Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons hardly ever get it, but they hardly ever get anything. It’s a wonder they don’t all live forever. What else? A high-fat diet may play a role. And they think there’s a connection with coffee consumption, but it’s hard to tell because eighty percent of the population drinks the stuff. Not Mormons, of course, or Seventh-Day Adventists, God bless ’em. All they do is beat their goddamn drums. Well, that’s about all I do, isn’t it? I drank for as long as I could, and I smoked like a chimney for years. And of course I’ve always been a heavy coffee drinker, and that’s one vice that certainly didn’t stop when I got sober. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
    “Is that why you’ve been staying away from it lately?”
    “Of course. What else do you do once the horse is stolen? You buy a new lock for the stable door.” She heaved a sigh. “Although I swear I don’t think coffee had a damn thing to do with it. And I think the real reason I stopped drinking it is because that kind of behavior is automatic for people in Twelve-Step programs. What do we do in times of stress? We give up something that gives us pleasure.” She got to her feet. “I’m going to have another cup,” she announced. “Can I bring you some?”
    “Sit down. I’ll get it.”
    “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I don’t have to conserve my strength. I’m not an invalid. I’m just dying.”
     
     
    A little later she said, “I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m sick of the world and can’t wait to get out of it. Every day is very precious to me. I want to have as many of them as I possibly can.”
    “Then what do you want with a gun?”
    “That’s for when I run out of good days. I went over to the library and read up on the subject, and it seems that when the good days run out the bad days are pretty bad. You don’t just turn your face to the wall and expire. It’s apt to be pretty agonizing, and it can go on for a while.”
    “Aren’t there things they can give you for the pain?”
    “I don’t want that. I missed whole chunks of my life because I was too full of Smirnoff’s to know what was going on. I don’t want to jump out of this world and into the next one with a head all muddled with morphine. I had Demerol after surgery and I couldn’t stand the way it made me feel. I made them take me off it and give me Tylenol instead. ‘But you’ve got breakthrough pain,’ the resident said. ‘Tylenol won’t touch it.’ ‘Then I’ll live with it,’ I told him, and it wasn’t so bad. Do you think I was being a martyr?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Because I don’t think so. Dammit, I’ve got too much invested in a sober life to settle for anything less than a sober death. I’d rather have the pain than something to cover it up. What the hell, this is the hand I was dealt. I figure I’ll stay in the game as long as I possibly can. Then I’ll fold. It’s my hand, I can fold when I want to.”
    I looked out the window. It had grown darker still, as if the sun were setting. But it was hours too early for that.
    “I don’t consider it suicide,” she said. “There’s a part of me that’s still Catholic enough to find suicide unacceptable. God gives you your life and it’s a sin to take it. But I don’t see this as a case of taking my life. I’d just be giving myself a gift.” She smiled gently. “The gift of lead. Do you know the poem?”
    “What poem?”
    “Robinson Jeffers, ‘Hurt Hawks.’ He finds an injured hawk in the woods near his home and he goes on about how he admires hawks, how if the penalties were the same he’d sooner kill a man than a hawk. He brings food to this one and tries to help it, but the day comes when the only thing he can do for the bird is put it out of its misery. ‘I gave him the lead gift in