Reprieves

In my last days there, the University of London residence halls acquired an overwrought, tropical feel.  Devoid of air-conditioning, my wing of the block boasted an unfortunate combination of glass and sun.  During the northern European winter the effect must be salutary in that weather-defying modern way.  It is probably fun to watch wintry blasts denude Bloomsbury's plane trees from the warm side of a plate glass window.  

But not in June.  At least this particular June, when London had its first heat wave in ages, and I made my nightly way back up the glass corridor to the sauna of a room.  To keep me late night company as I undressed, I played Radio 4 or the comedy on Radio 7.  I needed company.  Not only was the room close, but bad feelings were closer, closing in.  The whole thing felt fetid and septic and a good place for bed bugs.  

Jake, my cousin's son, mentioned the latter, how there was something of an epidemic about London.  I woke each morning to red welts on my legs and knew the ugly truth.  The bugs, bed bugs, the insect vermin which infested Leslie Caron's L-Shaped Room, had also infected mine.  With the oppressive quality of the night heat, the faux tropical Petri dish of a bathroom...it was all to be expected.  I regretted not showering on my day of departure for the States.  Perhaps if I had had a final go at bathing before the flight back, I would not have brought the infestation home with me.  But it was too late.  In Menlo Park, I awakened to more red welts.  And unless I was seeing the obscure symptoms of disease, and this was not to be ruled out, the bugs had come home to roost.

'Let's have a look.'  I pulled down my trousers.  The dermatologist shook his head.  He wasn't hard to read, this guy.  He pulled off these 15-minute skin inspections on a regular basis, often blasting away at my forehead with his can of liquid nitrogen.  I liked him, liked him quite a bit, particularly liked him since he kept nipping things dermatological in the cellular bud.  We would chat about his holiday, my holiday, then go our mortal ways for another six months.

He was talking to me now with that grave, head-shaking tone that was all credibility, diagnostic prowess and doom.  What he was seeing in the contrasting white and pink of my welts, note the outline...surely we could skip the Introduction to Skin 1A...these were all telltale, not to mention classic, indications of hives.  Like for bees, I wanted to ask?  My addled brain already drifting in the general direction of the bee shortage, problems with pollination and California's almond trees....  

I looked up at him.  It's nerves, isn't it?  He slowly nodded.  I buttoned my trousers, told him about Marlou's death.  The morning sagged.  He leaned against an examining table, folded his arms, stared at the floor.  His father had died of melanoma, he said.  That's why he became a doctor.  His wife dying...he couldn't even imagine.  Outside, a metal cart rumbled down the hall.  Well...he was filling in a slip...come back in six months.  

'I guess this bruising comes with age.'  I held up my forearm, showing him the dark purple spot.  My 83-year-old father in law bruises this way.

'Take aspirin?'  The dermatologist was back at the form, pen scratching.  Yes, I said, I did take aspirin, two pills a day.  Another nod from him.  Yeah, well, it's mostly the aspirin, slightly your age, partly sun exposure on the forearm.  Hand this to the receptionist, he added.

And having had two reprieves in almost as many minutes, having evaded tenement insects and taken two decades off my dermatological age, what was there but to roll into downtown Palo Alto and kick up my quadriplegic heels?  I deposited Marlou's beneficiary check in my investment account.  The burden had been lifted from this day.  And it stayed lifted.

In the late afternoon, journeying with Marlou's visiting parents into San Francisco for dinner with their niece, I stared down the Caltrain tracks into the sun.  A sliver of sun began dancing around my eye, growing jagged in a frightening and familiar way.  There's a history to this, a detached retina, and dark blobs of blood still floating around my eyeball.  But history is history.  This particular pattern, I had learned, meant an optical migraine was in full gear.  About which there was nothing to do but avoid my usual panic.  And get out of direct sunlight.  And believe in tomorrow.  Dick and John and I headed up Fourth Street to the restaurant, and at some point not noted, the glowing incisor teeth pattern of the optical migraine simply went away.