“Jake, I’m not going to marry him, I’m not even going to sleep with him. I expect him to dance with me, smile, and make polite conversation—at about what a plumber charges. This is doom?”
“I won’t have it.”
“If you won’t—and Heaven knows I would rather be on your arm than that of a paid escort—will you take a nap? I’ll get a nap, too. Do you need help to get to sleep? Money Hums, I mean, not horizontal calisthenics. Although we have that in stock, too.”
“1 don’t recall saying that we were going out. Nor is there anything to celebrate, Eunice. We haven’t won until the Supreme Court rules on it.”
“We have plenty to celebrate. I’m legally me—thanks to you, darling—and you no longer have to report as my conservator; my granddaughters have lost on all points. If we hold off celebrating until the Supreme Court maunders over it, we might both be dead.”
“Oh, nonsense! You know I’m about to leave for Washington; I expect to be able to arrange for an early spot on the calendar. Be patient.”
“Patient’ is what I’m not, dear. Surely, you’ll arrange it; you always do arrange things—and the Administration owes me that and will expect more from me. But, Jake, your jet might crash—”
“That doesn’t sway me, it’s my death-of-choice. Since my genetic background doesn’t permit me to hope for heart failure, I’ve been counting on cancer. But a crash is still better. Anything but a long, slow, helpless dying.”
“You’re rubbing my nose in the mistake I made, sir. Will you let me finish? You once pointed out that you had only ten or twelve years, based on the actuarials—whereas I had at least half a century. Not true, Jake. My life expectancy is null.”
“Eunice, what the devil are you talking about?”
“The truth. Truth you have conveniently forgotten—but which I am aware of every golden second. I’m a transplant, Jake. A unique transplant. No statistics apply to me. Nobody knows, no one can guess. So I live each wonderful day as all eternity. Jake my beloved master, I’m not being morbid—I’m being happy. When I was a little boy there was a prayer Mama taught me. It goes— “Now I lay me down to sleep;
“I pray the Lord my soul to keep. “If I should die before I wake, “I pray the Lord my soul to take.
“It’s like that, Jake. I had not used that prayer in almost ninety years. But now I use it. . . and go happily to sleep, unworried about tomorrow.” (Twin! You lying little bitch! All you ever say is a Money Hum.) (It’s the same thing, Puss. A prayer means what you want it to mean.)
“Joan Eunice, you once told me that you had no religion. So why do you say this child’s prayer?”
“As I recall, what I told you was that I had been a ‘relaxed agnostic’—until I was dead for a while. I’m still an agnostic—meaning that I don’t have any answers—but I am now a happy agnostic, one who feels sure deep in her heart that the world has meaning, is somehow good, and that my being here has purpose, even if I don’t know what it is. As for that prayer, a prayer means whatever you make it mean; it’s an inner ritual. What this one means to me is a good intention—to live every moment as Eunice would live it, did live—serenely, happily, and unworried by any later moment including death. Jake, you said you were still worried about Parkinson.”
“Somewhat. As a lawyer, I don’t see how he can get his hands on it again. But as a shyster at heart—don’t quote me!—who has taken part in many a back-room deal, I know that even the Supreme Court is made up of men, not angels met in judgment. Eunice, there are five honest men on that court. . . and four from whom I would never buy a used car. But of the honest ones, one is senile. We’ll see what we shall see.”
“So we will, Jake. But don’t give Parky a thought. The worst he can do is to strip me of money. Which I wouldn’t mind; I’ve discovered that more money than is needed for current bills is a burden. Jake, I’ve got enough tucked away that even you don’t know about that I’ll never miss any meals. Parky can’t touch it. As for Parky himself, I’ve erased him from my universe, and suggest that you do likewise. He’s damned by his own I.Q.—leave him to nature.”