Final Adjustment
I’m in the third-floor garret. Second floor is hers. I seldom come down. Late last night, turned over in bed and saw, sitting at my desk, a 25-year-old in slacks, polo shirt, sports jacket. An Adjuster. Final Adjustments had chosen Chronic Leukemia (“CLL”) for my death vehicle. The disease is slow-motion dismemberment. You are created a beautiful statue, but every day, with CLL, a piece of marble is chipped away.
“Intuited your displeasure,” he said, “with your wife’s response to your death diagnosis: rifling through drawers for insurance policies to see what she’d get; sudden attendance at church socials that became drinks in a dive bar with a guy from the choir. You object, but don’t understand. Why shouldn’t she check the face amount on the policy and drink with the choir-man? You’re dying, she lives on. Her life will flower outside this walled-in marriage. She’ll love whomever she wants!”
I had blamed my wife for starting her new life early. It just hurt too much to watch her do it. Told my visitor, “What I’m looking for is something fast-acting.” He offered to switch out leukemia for glioblastoma: the fine wine from a French cellar, the Bentley convertible, the uninterrupted afternoon, of cancer. “If we start you at an advanced stage, you could die in three months. Guaranteed no more than five.”
I said, “I’m beginning to feel better already.”