STUPIDITY

Full story originally appeared in Story.

According to Daphne, hundreds upon hundreds of cargo freighters currently drift abandoned in remote areas of the Russian Arctic, in a vast swathe of territory between the Barents and Kara Seas. Unmanned and forsaken, these derelict vessels had been left to crumple and sink, their hulls worn to rust by the elements, their cargo undelivered. Imagine what crazy shit would be left there, she’d wonder. Crates of gold bullion. Nuclear warheads. Martian skeletons.

When she began talking this way, swoony and veering, I knew the ziconotide had kicked in. It softened her edges, making her very pleasant to be around, though trying to follow her train of thought could be kind of pointless. One minute she speculated about mid-century U.S. entomological warfare programs, and the next she began free-associating about the travesties of Diana Ross’s decades-long Grammy snubs.

None of Daphne’s vile family lived close by, and what friends she still had in the city weren’t really the hospital types. So, most of the time I was her only visitor, which suited us both fine. Truthfully, I had little else to do those days. In the mornings I brought flat whites and cinnamon donuts, and we watched The Price is Right and The View and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sometimes we bitched about people from the old days, characters recalled from warehouse parties and basement noise shows. We tried looking them up on our phones to see how gross they’d turned out, which as it turned out was usually pretty gross. One guy who’d sold us incredible ketamine was now a UX designer for Morgan Stanley. A party promoter we’d both swooned over ran an Acura dealership. This chick we’d gleefully despised had some sort of herbal supplement multilevel marketing thing going on. Hairlines retreated; waistlines expanded; mediocrity abounded. It was all pretty depressing and great. Daphne laughed and laughed, saying, Oh, dear lord, that’s grim.

The team of nurses running the oncology ward were a salty crew, brusquely shooing me out of my chair when they needed room to get past, scolding Daphne for not finishing her ravioli. They continually referred to me as the boyfriend, even when both Daphne and I assured them I was nothing of the sort. One nurse, who should have been older than us but was likely years younger, started calling me Twinkie, for reasons that were never made clear to me.

Move it or lose it, Twinkie.

Quit riding my jock! I said back, which got a laugh. There was a lot of laughter most days. Really, there was. But there were also days when Daphne didn’t feel like joking around, so I let her just lie there and do whatever. Sink into her thoughts. Let the analgesics course through her bloodstream. Bask freely in her own fury. Sometimes, when I asked if she was feeling comfortable, if she needed anything, she’d deliver one of those classic blistering grins of hers and say something like, Accept it, the system works.

One morning she seemed particularly taciturn. I didn’t feel all that chatty myself, so we silently watched CNN; some sort of congressional initiative outlawing federal investment in biodegradable plastics for the next century was on the cusp of unanimous passage. When Daphne eventually spoke, it was in a voice so quiet, so unlike her usual unrestrained tone, I couldn’t hear what she’d said over the TV’s chatter. I muted the sound and said, What?

There’s something I need you to do.

Nothing too grotesque, please.

I said this because in preceding days she’d charged me with popping pimples on her back, trimming her toenails, all sorts of nasty maintenance tasks—because she trusted me or just to fuck with me, hard to say. That was how things were between us.

I need you to go to my condo and clear out some things, she said. Specific things.

No problem, I said. I can bring you anything you need.

Not to bring. In my desk, bottom drawer, there’s this purple box labeled taxes. I need you to find it and get rid of everything inside.

I grinned. Ooh. Cayman Islands devilry. Respect.

Just find that box and destroy everything in it. Burn it. Or maybe don’t even open it, just burn the whole box.

You know I’m going to ask why, I said.

Her face was so thin then. She’d always kept things tight and lean, flab minimal, but cancer had really drawn out her cheekbones’ contours. The price paid, and all that.

It’s a matter of personal honour, she said. I just need to know it’s gone before I am. Please. Vow this to me.

Of course I could vow this, and I did. Without hesitation, without chagrin. Destroy a box, destroy anything—no act in her defense was too great or too minuscule.

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The thing about the abandoned ships was one of those fixations of hers, factoid-y things she’d bring up again and again and then forget how many times she’d already done so. Whether attributed to the persistent nature of the fixation itself or to weeks of chemotherapeutic bombardment melting her brain, who could say. Mammoth tankers run aground, mired in desiccated seabeds, barnacle-caked and crawling with vermin, left to crumble in the wind and salt. To try to imagine the process behind such decisions, the flaunting of assets against anything resembling rationality, against even time itself, to create such things so ostentatiously and then surrender them to nature’s ravages—who were the humans pulling such levers? Oligarchs, despots, zillionaires. Or the hapless flunkeys stuck doing their bidding, spun around and spat out by unfathomable macrostructures.

Daphne would rue, This world has wasted more than older generations could have ever dreamed. A premise both fascinating and offensive. It was, she’d say, all so tacky.

Once, as we lay together plumped up by pillows in her bed, scrolling through images on her phone of abandoned ships in the Aral Sea, I’d suggested we might go there to see these things. Book a charter flight to Moynaq, hire some Uzbek guide, go crawl around those decayed ships ourselves like a pair of psychotic rats. Why not?

To this, Daphne smiled, then put away her phone. Why not, she’d repeated. Why not?

Read the rest here.