Jerry’s Last Problem by Jennifer Maloney

The Doctor is cleaning up Jerry’s mess, as usual. With a grunt, he bends, grabs the dead boy beneath the armpits and drags him toward the stairs. While the Doctor works, Jerry hides in an attic bedroom of their mind, eyes closed, fingers in his ears.

Pretending the Doctor doesn’t really exist, dancing around what he might actually be, is long-standing practice for Jerry. He prefers to think of him as my practical side, the part of himself that gets things done. Denial is Jerry’s only really well-developed muscle.

In life, the dead boy had a dancer’s grace, too, gliding between tables at Jimmy’s Bar and Grill like Baryshnikov, a spin here, a high step there, sure-footed and laughing even while balancing a tray of bottles and half-empty glasses over his head. Jerry tipped, the dead boy smiled, Jerry tipped more. Eventually, Jerry mentioned that he lived just down the street and tucked a wad of cash in the front pocket of the dead boy’s jeans, letting his hand linger there. “Bring something with you,” he said, and the dead boy grinned a dimpled, winning grin, his dark hair falling over his forehead. Like Baryshnikov.

Now, Baryshnikov is just a side of beef. Tall, muscular, at least 180 lbs, the literal definition of dead weight. Jerry and the Doctor are 65 years old and neither one of them has seen the inside of a gym since college, despite Jerry’s ex-husband’s snarky nagging.

The Doctor wrestles the dead boy’s body down three flights of stairs, panting, sweating, stopping every couple minutes to catch his breath. Much more of this and the Doctor thinks he and Jerry might have a heart attack and die, too, right here alongside Jerry’s dead friend. He chuckles, picturing their fifty-ish housekeeper letting herself in Monday morning to find their bodies sprawled on the stairs, small packets of pills, powder, rocks, and weed sprinkled over the scene like confetti…well, it had been a party, after all.

All the way down the stairs, the dead boy’s feet beat out a useless SOS. Dot-dot-dot, daaash-daaash-daaash, dot-dot-dot, dirty old tennies banging against the risers, sliding around the newel posts. “No rescue for you,” the Doctor snickers. “That ship has sailed, hah!”

The Doctor knows that it’s important to be able to laugh at oneself. He doesn’t understand why other people make such a big deal out of it, though. He doesn’t find it difficult. He’s a funny guy. He makes himself laugh all the time.

He finally reaches the first floor, their poor heart, already dealing with all the cocaine Jerry smoked tonight, pounding hard and, more worryingly, sort of stopping, lurching, and stopping again. Fucking Jerry and his addictions, drugs and boys. He’s going end up killing them both, and the Doctor does not want to die.

The Doctor enjoys life. They have money, a respectable reputation (which the Doctor manages to maintain through a combination of insinuation, intimidation, and generous pay-offs, despite Jerry’s continued stupidity with junior staff), a club membership (at which there are employed both a fine masseuse and a really stellar chef), a subscription to the local philharmonic, and yearly, weeks-long vacations to a summer house in Maine, often accompanied by friends, some with benefits.

Speaking of houses, the Doctor can’t help thinking that none of this would have happened if they had bought the property outside of town they had looked at after the divorce. Gorgeous, huge, private, they could have afforded it, could have rented office space and commuted, but oh, no, Jerry needed his historic house in the city, needed to be “close to the culture and community.”

Bull. What Jerry needed was to be close to his drug dealer and potential hook-ups. Baryshnikovs. Jerry is an idiot, and the Doctor is done with it.

In the kitchen, the Doctor straightens, rests for a moment. Contemplates. Out the sliding glass door to the backyard and around the side of the house to the car? The dead boy will fit in the trunk, he thinks.

Should he wrap him in something? A sheet, some garbage bags? The Doctor sighs. Goddamn Jerry. What a pain in the ass. This is the absolute last time, he promises himself. No more dirty work. Things are going to change.

The Doctor is reaching for the dead boy’s collar when the dead boy opens his eyes.

Kind of—gasps. Coughs.

Speaks. “Wha—what? I—what? Help, help me, I can’t—”

From the farthest reaches of their shared consciousness, Jerry opens his eyes, too. “Oh my God, he’s alive,” he whispers. “Call an ambulance, he’s alive!”

“No,” the Doctor snarls. He slams the door of the bedroom in their mind. Jerry screams as he locks it, but the Doctor is finished dancing with Jerry, finished with answering his frantic SOS’s. Finished, especially, with paying off Baryshnikovs. He’s going to buy a house in the country. He needs his money.

The Doctor solves Jerry’s last problem with enthusiasm and efficiency. He feels like a new man already.

Jennifer Maloney

Image: Pixabay.com – Drug paraphernalia