You Only Live Once
That nursing home was Dulce Dishwater. Thursdays, Jell-O. Fridays, the physical therapist with his little blue ball. Every day at nine, the pills. Every day at six, the game show on TV with the volume at 42, which was the number Edna set back in 2019 and nobody had dared touch since. Once a month, a bingo game where you don’t win anything. And in the middle of all that, Bernie.
Bernie was 87 years old and had a new idea every ten seconds. He proposed a book club. The only one who signed up was him. He proposed going up on the roof to watch the sunrise because he said you could see the river from up there. “It’s cold,” said Mabel. “It’s July.” “It’s cold anyway.” He proposed a trip to the beach. “And what bus are we taking?” asked Gladys. “Those are minor details.” “Right, minor details.” And that was the end of the trip to the beach.
So then he started sneaking out at night. Nothing fancy. He opened the garden door with the key card he had stolen a long time back and took a walk around the hedges in the dark, in the darkest robe he owned. The first night was exciting. So was the second. By the fourth, he was just sitting on a bench staring at his toes. There’s a limit to walking around a garden by yourself at night, and Bernie found it in four days. He did everything by himself. Every single person in that building had signed a pact with death. Nobody wanted to live. “Maybe my time is about up,” he said to himself one day. That day he went back to his room and he didn’t come out again.
Mortimer was a Magikito who would not stand for somebody giving up on dreaming. He went and paid a visit to the storage room. The storage room of a nursing home is like a cave of mysteries. There are wheelchairs with a wheel missing, a Christmas tree from 1994, 200 stacks of old photographs, and things nobody knows where they came from or who they belong to anymore. And in the back, under a tarp, there was a barbecue grill. Dusty, with one leg bent crooked and a half bag of charcoal from some party back when they still threw parties. It took Mortimer two nights to drag it all the way to Bernie’s room and leave it leaning against the wall next to the closet.
And then came the good part. He stole the little box of pens off the director’s desk, climbed up on the table and got to writing. One note for every room. Forty-one notes in shaky handwriting, which is the only handwriting a Magikito can manage with a human-sized pen. Every one of them said the same thing. “The 19th, two in the morning, behind the last tree in the garden, there will be a treasure. Don’t tell anybody or it won’t be anybody’s. Absolute secret.” He slid them under the doors before dawn, one by one.
On the 18th, the whole nursing home was acting real strange. Nobody said anything, but they kept looking at each other. “Hey, Stanley.” “What?” “You doing anything tomorrow night?” “Me? Same as always, sleeping. Why?” “No reason.” “Right.” And the two of them went right on watching the game show, with one hand down in the pocket of their robe, squeezing a little slip of paper. Mabel spent the whole afternoon ironing a blouse. Stanley asked three times what day it was. Gladys put on the best comfortable walking shoes she owned, which she hadn’t worn in years.
And on the 19th, at quarter to two in the morning, the quietest parade in the history of that building got underway. Mabel went out first with her walker, which she had put wool socks on, one on every leg so it wouldn’t make a sound on the waxed floor. Stanley didn’t trust the stairs, so he rode down in the laundry elevator, sitting on top of the dirty sheets. Gladys came along in her comfortable little shoes. And Harold was last because he had stopped to comb his hair. Forty-one old people crossing a dark garden in a line, not one word out of any of them, slippers in hand so they wouldn’t get mud on them. Nobody saw anybody.
Behind the last tree, Bernie was down on his knees blowing on a coal that would not catch. He had brought that grill that turned up in his room, two pork chops he had traded the kitchen guy for a pack of cigarettes, and a flashlight. He was going to have dinner by himself. Again. He lifted his head when he heard the first walker. And then the second one. And then he watched forty-one old people in bathrobes come out of the dark, looking at him like they had no idea on earth what was going on. “Ah, so this was the treasure,” said Stanley. “What treasure?” asked Bernie. And forty-one people pulled the same little slip of paper out of their pockets at the same time. Bernie didn’t say anything for a good long while. Then he got up, brushed off his knees, and said the only thing there was to say. “I don’t know about treasure, but we’re going to need more pork chops.”
The old folks laughed themselves silly, every last one of them. Harold pulled a flask out of his robe pocket that he had kept hidden since 1998 in the lining of his suitcase. Mabel went off to the kitchen with Stanley, and they came back with a tray of sausage, bread, and a whole wheel of cheese that nobody has ever missed. Gladys brought a couple of bottles of wine. The charcoal finally caught at 2:20. By a quarter past three, they were dancing. The night watchman, whose name was Tyler and who was 23 years old, came out with his flashlight to see where all the smoke was. “Folks, it’s three in the morning.” “So?” said Gladys. “Have you had dinner?” Tyler had not had dinner. He went back to his office at 5:30 with a paper napkin full of sausage for breakfast, and he didn’t put a word of it in the log.
Ever since then, there’s a barbecue every 19th, with a sign-up list, because starting with the third one, people from town began showing up and somebody had to put some order to it. And the bingo cage doesn’t get used for bingo anymore. It gets used to draw who has to bring the meat. Mortimer could not be happier. Those living dead had come back to life.
