He was standing in the intensive care hell of the Clinica de Merida where Eva had just fainted and Tommy was dealing with the bureaucracy. One minute a holy soul, the next minute a lifeless carcass to be removed post haste from the premises.
Eva and I didn't know Stan was a lousy bastard at that moment. We found that out later. The boys knew it, though, and that is what prompted their year of scamming dangerously. The ultimate high for a scammer is to outscam another scammer.
Whilst Eva was being scammed by the boys, we found out that Stan was the biggest scammer of all of them, having scammed Eva for the entire 30 years of their marriage.
Stan's paper thin lungs collapsed during the panicked intubation for one last heroic measure. He had signed a DNR, but as many people do, ignored his carefully thought out plan and died violently instead of peacefully.
Two weeks earlier my phone jolted me at 1:30 a.m. It was Bob. "Call an ambulance for Stan!" he cried. "We don't speak Spanish and Eva doesn't know who to call."
Stupid gringos. And stupider still, Tommy tipped the volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver 10 pesos when they arrived at the E.R. Free mbulance service and he gave him one dollar?
"I can't believe you did that," I said, enraged. "I'll take care of it," Tommy said. "I'll go to the Red Cross and make a big donation." A lie. He always said he'd take care of it, and never did. He had no cash, remember?
Bob and Tommy's work had come to fruition. Their subtle, silent poisoning of Stan hastened his death from an already complicated case of pulmonary fibrosis. Yes, we now know that's what you did. He lunched and dined at your house and you slipped things into his beer, his food, turning him into a crazy man before he died.
At the end, Stan turned jumpy and impossible. Couldn't be in the house, wanted to be roaming the streets. He wouldn't bathe. He stank. "Take a shower old man," Eva said. "You're not getting into my bed smelling like that. What has gotten into you?"
On his last night on earth, heading towards his death, Stan only wanted to talk to Tommy, to give him all his banking information. Eva couldn't understand why her husband of 30 years wanted to talk to a man he had met only 5 months before. When he did talk to Eva, all he said was, "I've lived a selfish life."
Eva is in Miami now piecing together a new life, trying not to think about the sham of a marriage she had lived. I called her tonight to tell her it was one year ago. She did not care. "The man," she would not call him her husband, "can have all the Chinese hookers he wants in hell."
No comments:
Post a Comment