“That wasn’t a very kind reason.” What he just said hurt me.
“Well–he got more uncomfortable–she’s a lot younger than me. And part of the way I feel these days is I don’t want to do anything that might exert myself.”
“Then you’re afraid of having sex.”
“Shit,” he said, “why don’t you just wave it like a flag.”
“Marino, I’m a doctor. All I want to do is help, if I can.”
“Molly said I made her feel rejected,” he went on.
“And you probably did. How long have you had this problem?”
“I don’t know, Thanksgiving.”
“Did something happen?”
He hesitated again. “Well, you know I’ve been off my medicine.”
“Which medication? Your adrenergic blocker or the finasteride? And no, I didn’t know.”
“Both.”
“Now why would you do anything that foolish?”
“Because when I’m on it nothing works right,” he blurted out. “I quit taking it when I started dating Molly.
Then I started again around Thanksgiving after I had a checkup and my blood pressure was really up there and my prostate was getting bad again. It scared me.”
“No woman is worth dying for,” I said. “And what this is all about is depression, which you’re a perfect candidate for, by the way.”
“Yeah, it’s depressing when you can’t do it. You don’t understand.”
“Of course, I understand. It’s depressing when your body fails you, when you get older and have other stressors in your life like change. And you’ve had a lot of change in the past few years.”
“No, what’s depressing,’ I he said, and his voice was getting louder, “is when you can’t get it up. And then sometimes you get it up and it won’t go down. And you can’t pee when you feel like you got to go, and other times you go when you don’t feel like it. And then there’s the whole problem of not being in the mood when you got a girlfriend almost young enough to be your daughter.” He was glaring at me, veins standing out in his neck. “Yeah, I’m depressed. You’re fucking right I am!”
“Please don’t be angry with me.”
He looked away, breathing hard. -1 want you to make appointments with your cardiologist and your urologist,” I said.
“Uh-uh. No way.” He shook his head. “This damn new health-care plan I’m on has me assigned to a woman urologist. I can’t go in there and tell a woman all this shit.”
“Why not? You just told me.”
He fell silent, staring out the window. He looked in the side mirror and said, “By the way, some drone in a gold Lexus has been behind us since Richmond.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. The car was a newer model and the person driving was talking on the phone.
“Do you think we’re being followed?” I asked.
“Hell if I know, but I wouldn’t want to pay his damn phone bill.”
We were close to Charlottesville, and the gentle landscape we had left had rounded into western hills that were winter-gray between evergreens. The air was colder and there was more snow, although the interstate was dry. I asked Marino if we could turn the scanner off because I was tired of hearing police chatter, and I took 29 North toward the University of Virginia.
For a while, the scenery was sheer rocky faces interspersed with trees spreading from woods to roadsides. Then we reached the outer limits of the campus, and blocks were crowded with places for pizzas and subs, convenience stores and filling stations. The university was still on Christmas break, but my niece was not the only person in the world to ignore that fact. At Scott Stadium, I turned on Maury Avenue, where students perched on benches and rode by on bikes, wearing backpacks or holding satchels that seemed full of work. There were plenty of cars.
“You ever been to a game here?” Marino had perked up.
“I can’t say that I have.”
“Now that ought to be against the law. You have a niece going here and you never once saw the Hoos? What’d you do when you came to town? I mean, what did you and Lucy do?”