Too late

At 3:40 AM, knowing thoughts of sleep were no more than that, I got the thing underway. Lorna was here at 5 AM, and I continued remembering last minute matters, knowing that soon nothing would matter. So why not phone Scotland? This departure day also happened to be the very first that ScotRail...by now my friends...'ask for Claire'...was taking bookings for mid-August. So, with SuperShuttle 15 minutes away, I gave Claire a call. Oh, dear, she told me, this is rather complicated. You'll need singles. Do you have a Disabled Rail Card? Yes, I lied. In the background Claire was going on about how complicated it all was. Could she call me back? Well, what was my dialing code? Oh, dear, oh, dear. I offered to ring her back. Claire, an employee of international telesales for the Scottish rail network, was not allowed to call outside of Britain.

No problem, I said. London to Glasgow to Oban to Edinburgh to London. And, dammit, if Claire's buddy wasn't taking down my Visa number just as the SuperShuttle lift descended. In moments 101 was flying by, and soon I was flying out, and it was too late to worry about what Delta Airlines was going to do to my wheelchair. It was too late to worry about whether I had remembered to pack my mobile phone. I sat alone in business class, no one beside me, happily reading and dozing while the North American continent slipped by. I had an omelette. I finished half a novel. I calmed down. All the while I felt much like The Little Match Girl, having expended thousands of frequent flyer miles accumulated over years, all the mileage going up in flames, just so I could avoid sitting in coach.

Naturally, one pays for such ease. My bag was the last to appear at Kennedy Airport. No one knew where my wheelchair was. SuperShuttle New York made me wait an hour for my $120 chartered, not shared, van into midtown. And yet, there it was, the Manhattan skyline, yes minus the big blocky World Trade Center. There's no explaining why the traffic on E. 37th St. is bumper-to-bumper at 8 PM. I guess plays are starting. The driver is nervous about dropping me on 44th St., in front of the Algonquin Hotel. I assume he doesn't want to block traffic, but, no, he could care less. He wonders how I will make it from street to curb. The Algonquin doorman produces a folding aluminum ramp and I sail inside. I sail right past the front desk, almost too small to be credible. But in seconds I am checked in and rolling into the Oak Room, the famous supper club. Without much thought, I have booked a table for one, alone. There's a famous jazz singer and a famous jazz pianist, but I've arrived so late that there is not time to order anything but a salad before the lights go down. The room is remarkably small, with the feeling of a few diners gathered around a piano in a large living room. It's a good feeling, but I've only been in New York for 30 seconds and it's hard to adjust. It's hard to adjust to spending so much money, but the reasons for this are unclear. Marlou would want me to be here, I tell myself, and urge me to throw budgetary caution to the winds.

As chanteuse and pianist work their way through the Cy Coleman songbook, I nervously add up the cost. About $10 per song, is my estimate. With the lights down it's impossible to eat. When the spotlights come up for the livelier numbers, I am very conscious of the click of my knife and fork on the china plate. I am eating a watercress salad, not a quadriplegic-friendly dish at the best of times. So in the dark I grab a sesame roll, stab at curlicues of butter in an ice dish, and feel rather pleased with myself. Both performers are Britons, and something about this makes sense, all of us looking back and forth across the Atlantic. In the dark, I make my way through a glass of red wine. The waiter had offered me a tiny flashlight to both read the menu and negotiate my food, but I declined. With one hand, I would either hold the light or hold a fork. The only option is a miner's headbandlight, but something tells me these are in short supply at the Hotel Algonquin. The brits will sell their CD in the lobby, we hear at the end of the show, and I'm determined to roll out there and at least talk to them. Except that the lights have come up, revealing my lap as a scene of intense butter and watercress bombing. Embarrassed, I dab at the wreckage, spreading a couple of tablespoons of butter in a wide arc across my trousers. This is all the result of nervousness, both the butter dropping and the spreading, and the situation is getting worse, it seems, for there's no way to exit except through the lobby, right past the famous Algonquin round table, haunt of 1920s and 1930s literati. I retreat to my room.

Or try to. The woman at the front desk is smiling out the news of my room. It isn't the handicapped one, but it's a big one. They are moving me. I follow the bellman upstairs, have him place bags strategically, then begin making moves for bed. The problem is that 10 PM is really 7:00 pacific time. And there's another problem. I cannot get into the bathroom. Literally. The wheelchair does not fit through the door. So I maneuver on shaky feet, mentally grabbing at nonexistent railings. It's all very tenuous, disabled existence. Survival requires a high level of alertness. In a move that might even be satirical, the Algonquin bathroom floor is of the slickest, glass-like ceramic tile. There is nothing to grab and every reason to fall. I prepare for bed with the utmost caution, and the process takes until almost midnight. There was a reason why I decided to take this trip on my own, but staring into the one 1 AM ceiling, it eludes me. At 1:30, I finally give up and take some herbal sleeping pills. I am awake five hours later, par for the course these days.

I have breakfast with Eric, my one New York friend, who takes me to a truly New York place, the Edison Hotel diner. It's got Art Deco designs and decent food, and Eric tells me I'm a good writer and urges me to keep at it and don't lose heart. You probably want a nap before the play, he suggests. Eric is right. I have tickets for a matinee, and my energy is failing. Back at the room it fails some more, but there's more news from the front desk. I have to pack my things, for the wheelchair room is now available. I get the bags closed, but this takes half an hour. I put up my feet for 10 minutes, then roll in search of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It's across the street from the Edison diner, where I just ate with Eric. Which is good, because I'm running on no sleep and simple navigation is a major challenge. The house manager shows me to my wheelchair space near the back of the orchestra. How am I going to keep awake for this, whatever it is?

It's 'Exit the King' by Ionesco, a 1962 absurdist drama. I read the play in my university days, but what has drawn me to it now is unclear. It doesn't take long to find out. The star, Geoffrey Rush, whom I last saw as a Pirate of the Caribbean, proves to be a mesmerizing artist. He has translated the play himself and, moving as lithely as Marcel Marceau, achieves the physical comedy and existential profundity of the finest Beckett. Except that I've never been as moved by, say, 'Waiting for Godot'. Besides, this Ionesco play is all about death. The king has been alive for centuries and now with his kingdom falling apart, he is falling apart, and to great comic effect. He denies death, tries to escape it, tries to find meaning in it, tries to deny meaning in it, and the plot keeps progressing, the certainty of death intensifying, its significance moving farther and farther away. Geoffrey Rush's clowning has the sole-stirring intensity of great Shakespeare comedy. His costar, Susan Sarandon, is the queen who guides the monarch to his death. She is all intelligence. 'It wasn't worth all the fuss, was it?' she asks just before the king breathes his last gasp.

Memories of Marlou's last gasp, calmly indicated by the hospice nurse, drowned out the applause and the curtain calls. People were staring at the guy crying in his wheelchair in the last row as they made their way up the aisle. It couldn't be helped. When the crowds were gone, I rolled back to the Algonquin and had a cup of tea. I stared at the famous round table, noting that it was actually oval. It was time for something else. How was the Star of India, I asked the concierge? Good curries, he said. I rolled up the street.