Part of my job as Zach's assistant was apparently to be on call every day for the rest of my life. After sitting in on five of his seven classes in my first week, spending no less than three hours on the phone with his agent and grading essays for the lower-level class he hated being bothered with and giving myself an allergy attack dusting the upper shelves in his office, my phone rang late Saturday afternoon as I was watching the classic movie channel at home with my husband in one of his rare off moments.
Bijendra waited while until I hung up the phone, and then followed me through the house as I gathered up shoes, keys, bag.
"So, you're going to go now?"
"What do you want me to do, BJ? I work for him, he's working now."
"I understand that, Katy, but I've been on for two weeks and I'm home now."
"And when the great doctor is home," I said with a pointedly sarcastic look, "the world stops turning. I forgot."
He had a quick temper. Generally he kept it well in check with respect to women, and me in particular, but he didn't like my sarcasm. He nodded to himself. "Good. Good for you--you're a smart ass, are you proud of yourself? Go to work, then. Have fun. I have surgery in the morning. I'll see you this week, when I have time."
Slinging my bag over my shoulder violently and feeling the suppressed anger of many months bubbling to the surface, I stalked after him as he withdrew into the living room. "Do you think that's a threat, Bijendra? You're going to go to work to punish me? You're always at work. You can be as mad at me as you want, I won't know about it. I never fucking see you anyway. Why should I suddenly care now?"
The louder I got the quieter he was. I was never sure if it was some facet of the scientific temperament or just him, but it drove me crazy. He was almost a foot taller than me, thin and dark, standing a few feet away like a glowering tree of some kind. "You feel better now? Little girl, do you want to cry some more? The work I do…"
"The work you do," I said, standing on my toes to say it into his face, "is not the only thing that matters in the world."
Later, many months later when the present argument had been completely overshadowed by many others, I would be defending Zach and his work in the same tone my husband was using to defend his to me. Except I would be shaking with indignation, tearfully protective and almost hysterical. Of course, I didn't know that as I stomped out of the house and slammed the door.
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Zach was well accommodated, living in a brand new building just blocks from campus. There was an accessible apartment on every floor, meticulously designed by an architect with a disabled daughter. Highland Towers was renowned in the disabled community, spaces there highly coveted. Not that he cared, as long as his computer and his books were around, he would have lived in a trailer park. The apartment was surreal to me the first few times I was there. The light-switches and countertops were lowered to make them accessible. The doorways were wider than I'd expect doorways to be. The bathroom was totally unlike any I was used to seeing, with steel bars everywhere and the bathtub built into a sort of shelf to allow him to slide into it easily from his wheelchair. He could open the front door from several feet away, in his foyer, by use of a big button mounted on the wall. It was not what I was used to.
The afternoon I showed up flustered after a fight with my husband was the second time I'd been to Zach's apartment. The first time, a few days earlier, the place had looked wildly different. It had been clean almost to sterility, almost like a museum. This time was different; the place was a wreck. I let myself in with the key he'd given me and found him at the computer, a beer in his hand, scowling. To each side of the wheelchair was a stack of notebooks. There were empty bottles covering the coffee table. He'd evidently bought a new printer at some point, since the empty box and packaging materials were strewn all over the place. The discarded printer had simply been removed from the computer desk and lay on its side on the floor. I dropped my bag and keys onto the floor, pulled off my shoes and walked over to stand behind him.
"What's wrong?"
His head whipped around almost violently. "Don't stand behind me."
I jumped back a few steps, lowered my eyes, feeling like a child who had been scolded. "Sorry."
He shrugged, wheeled away from the computer a few inches so he could face me better. "I can't stand to have someone stand behind me while I'm working. It drives me nuts. Sorry I snapped at you."
I laughed. "Oh, don't worry. I handle snapping remarkably well. So what's up?"
He narrowed his eyes. "I just need your help with something I'm working on--I found a little problem. But it can wait. What's wrong with you?"
I shifted uncomfortably, put my hands in my pockets. "Can I have a beer?"
He nodded. "Bring me one. I need to take a break anyway."
I returned with the two bottles and sat down on the floor a few feet away from him. It was something I did--sitting on the floor. It seemed to disconcert him for the first few days, but he adapted. Anyway, the couch was covered in sheets of paper and old, dried-out highlighters so it was just as well I disdained the furniture. I looked at him. He looked back at me.
"What's wrong with you? You've been crying."
I shrugged. "I had a fight with my husband."
"Because of this."
"Because he's arrogant. It's not a big deal. I'm not upset anymore. And I want to work, that's why I'm here. So what do you need?"
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Late into the night I sat on his living room floor poring over the latest manuscript. It was a 600-page novel that was over-due by some time. There was some kind of chronological discrepancy, according to Zach, that he couldn't quite locate but that would render the entire plot line impossible and therefore remove all credibility from the book. He wanted me to outline the whole plotline from each character's point of view, in chronological order and not the convoluted flashback-reality-pattern he used. Upon giving me his instructions he turned back to the computer with a quick, "Sorry." He was convinced he'd given me a hellishly awful assignment and I was thrilled. There I was, drinking beer and reading the new Zach DiMarro book, before it was even published, with the author. And I was getting paid. It was like a wet dream from my college days, except… except I was married, and Zach wasn't exactly coming on to me from six feet away with his eyes trained on the computer screen. I looked up from my reading every now and then, to watch him while he was working. I wasn't sure what he was doing, exactly, since I wasn't allowed to see the screen.
All I could tell was that he was deeply involved in something. His fingers flew over the keys faster than I'd ever seen before. He typed furiously for awhile, and then he leaned back in his wheelchair, reached for his beer and squinted at what he'd just written. Every few minutes he put his hands palm-down on the armrests of his chair and lifted himself up slightly, shifting his weight. (To prevent sores from forming; I knew because I'd noticed the habit earlier and asked BJ.) Occasionally he'd mutter something profane, chug the beer, ask for a new one and then start pounding at the keyboard again.
At midnight I stood up to stretch, caught him looking at me and smiled. "What?"
"I didn't mean to keep you here so long. I get carried away, you know. I forget that time passes, and other people have lives. You can go." The tone in his voice was dismissive, but his eyes didn't move from mine.
"I don't want to leave." There are times in my life when my mouth opens and words come out when they should not, when they do not have my permission or have not been properly screened. This was one of those times. "I mean, I'm not finished. I've got a hundred pages left, and I only found that one thing with Rebecca's mom, so, I'd like to keep working. Unless you mind?"
He shook his head. "I don't mind."
The next time I looked up, when I finished with his manuscript and had tears standing in my eyes, he was just sitting in his chair, rubbing his lower back with both hands. He noticed the movement of my head and looked over at me, tilted his head inquisitively.
I shook my head and my tears ran down my cheeks. He was immediately alarmed.
"What? What'd wrong with you?"
"This is the most beautiful thing I've ever read in my life."
He lifted a hand and started to wave away my comments. I got up and walked over to him, sat down almost on top of his chair and continued.
"No, Zach, really. I've read a lot of books, I've a lot of really, really great literature. This is… I don't know what this is. This is brilliant. It's fucking brilliant."
"I'm glad you like it. Did you find the mistakes I told you about?"
"You're paranoid. There's just that one thing, and you can fix it by taking out that scene…"
"Oh, really? You want to rewrite it for me?"
I blushed. "No. But, that was all I found. The time line is perfect, it's just complex. The only thing is…"
"Oh, she has criticism now?" He laughed. "What?"
"Does she have to die in the end?"
He looked at me for a minute and then nodded. "She's sick. You know it from the outset."
"I know, but... but she doesn't necessarily have to die. Not everyone dies from--"
"She does." He turned away from me then, back into his world on the screen in front of him. "She dies."
I straightened up before I left, threw away beer bottles and newspapers and re-capped pens; I made stacks of books on the floor and fluffed the pillows on the couch. He didn't question my behavior. He was still pausing every so often to rub his back. I could see the muscles twitching underneath his t-shirt; from the way he winced sometimes I assumed it must hurt him. I thought that I'd like to rub his back, that he could lie down, and I could work out all the tension in my fingers kneading them into his muscles, but it was inappropriate so I just cleaned and kept quiet.
Sometime just before the sun came up I went to lean on his desk, beside the monitor so that there was no way I could see the screen and no way he could avoid seeing me.
"Aren't you tired?"
He took another drink from his beer. "No. I don't sleep when I'm working."
"Okay. Well, you've only got two of those left. Do you want me to get you some more? I don't think you ought to drive."
"Two is fine, but thank you. Are you going?"
I wanted him to sound disappointed, I admitted somewhere in the back of my mind. But he was just stating fact. I nodded.
"Thank you for coming, Katy. That shit was driving me nuts, really. I just needed someone else to see it. I'll try not to call you on short notice, but..."
"But writers are artists and artists are all crazy," I offered.
He smiled. "Pretty much."
I stood there a moment longer, silent. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to drop down onto my knees and thank him for allowing me to see him work, to read his new book, to be near him at all. I wanted to pull him out of that wheelchair and onto the floor and...
"Drive safely, Katy," he said, holding out his hand to me.
I shook his hand, mentally contrasting his calluses to my husband's pristine surgeon's hands. "Good night, Zach."