I make a last call and this doctor friend, who already knows Brian’s diagnosis, who has already sat with me while I sobbed over multiple coffees, says to me, “So, I guess you’re saying you need a barbiturate for sleeping because Ambien isn’t enough for your insomnia.” And I’m late for my cue but I do manage to stumble through my line. I agree that my insomnia is an intractable bitch and only sodium pentobarbital （words I didn’t even know three weeks ago） would help. “Well, then,” the doctor says, “I’ll prescribe sodium pentobarbital. Be very careful with it.” I am enormously grateful, but it will come to nothing. I hand the scrip to the pharmacist at CVS, who does not call the police or the FBI or even the manager. She looks at it and makes a phone call and I loiter near the feminine-hygiene products until she jerks her head and I go to the pickup area.
“I put in the order,” she says, and I can hear now that she has a German accent. “I wouldn’t count on it. Is very hard to get.”
“But it’s legal,” I say, in my Helpy Helperpants way, telling the woman things she knows.
“Yes, but the distribution of it in America is…not good. Call me in ten days.”
I wait the ten days and reach the pharmacist.
No go.
“You might try Walgreens,” she says. “They use a different distribution system. I will never be able to get this for you.”
I call Walgreens and the pharmacist there says instantly, Nope. I’ll never be able to get this for you.
No go.
* * *
—
I could try to order sodium pentobarbital from Germany or Denmark or China, where they still make and distribute the stuff, but the internet tells me that customs does random drug screening on packages. I could claim that I didn’t know who sent it, and my color and age might protect me, but even if I didn’t go to jail, I still wouldn’t have the sodium pentobarbital and Brian would still have Alzheimer’s, worse than he does today, and I would have failed him. I picture the police at my doorstep, interviewing me and walking into the TV room to interview Brian.
I ask Jack about the dark web, and Jack tries to tell me.
“Well, basically it’s like Yelp. The dark web is this tiny part of the deep web, where you have these encrypted sites that require specific software to access. But once you’re in, it’s almost like a new-age version of the classifieds, but better, because vendors have reviews. The better their reviews, the more likely you’ll actually get what you’re buying. They’re paid in Bitcoin. It’s a file stored in a digital wallet. You can pay for it with a credit card or through a wire transfer, or trade for it with other goods, and then you buy stuff with it.”
Sure.
“Basically, you set up your computer to do some really complex sums, and occasionally a Bitcoin will pop out. But at this point, it’s so complex, even with a really powerful computer it could be years before you get a hit.”
Sure.
I tell Jack he’s been very helpful. I study up, right on the internet, about blockchains and blenders and discover one morning that the FBI has just shut down the dark-web marketplace and shut down one of the biggest vendor-review sites and a few blenders, to boot. The dark-web community is not, according to the article, comfortable.
Done with that.
* * *
—
I turn to our local casino to brighten our days, because Brian has been a happy and, I think, competent blackjack player since I’ve known him. I don’t know anything about gambling; I know that I think it’s idiotic. Dog races, horse races, side bets, slot machines, baccarat, and blackjack—it seems a lot like throwing money out the window, but that’s because I do not get the thrill of the chase. Brian does. I noodle around the Mohegan Sun website and read this:
ASPIRE LUXURY SUITE
Each Aspire Luxury King Suite features up to 1,145 square feet of luxurious furnishings including a bedroom with plush King bed, a living room featuring a pull-out sofa and walk-in closet with automatic lighting. A spacious bathroom with a Jacuzzi and 1/2 bath along with high-end amenities round out this upscale experience.
I used to write copy. My boss told me: If you gotta say it’s upscale, it ain’t. My boss said, It’s like that guy who tells you he’s funny.
I read the description aloud to Brian. He shrugs.
“You could play blackjack,” I say. I don’t know if he can still play blackjack.
“Do you want to see a picture of the room?” I say.
It’s just what I expect, a banal version of grand, with tufted carpeting and a polyester bedspread, and it’s still a thousand dollars a night. We will be spending money we don’t have. I can’t write, and Brian is suddenly retired, three years ahead of schedule but still, he could gamble a little and get a decent steak. We’ll sit in some plushy chairs in a room with low lighting and scented air while he has a club soda with many slices of lime and I drink half a martini and then he’ll go play blackjack. I’ll people-watch while he wins and loses and maybe wins five hundred dollars after a couple of hours. I take out my credit card. I want his face to light up, as it used to over so many things. Lighting up, that two-handed delight: Let’s get both kinds of cheesecake, go to Le Marche for a month when we retire, build a grape arbor—hell, open a winery!—drive to Montreal, stay in bed all morning, watch The Lady Vanishes this weekend. That’s what I miss.
This disinterested dusk is hard.
He’s not toying with me. This is not a marital game of who-gets-what/fair-is-fair. （We have not been bean counters, mostly. I’m a bean-counting bitch about the way Italian food dominates every other cuisine in our house and the way barbecue sauce is counted as a basic food group, for all the good it does me. My mother-in-law once sent us a box of cured meats as an anniversary present. Ten pounds of cured meats and three barbecue sauces.） Brian’s not performing lack of interest in the casino to get me back on board with a holiday in Florence or Paris and then maybe compromising with a long weekend in Manhattan. He’s not doing anything that has anything to do with me. The casino doesn’t appeal; the idea of gambling, the wish to win or chase, has faded. Practicing hours of blackjack on his laptop as he used to, getting ready for an evening of cards with a dealer and other players, seems a lifetime ago. Brian never brings up the idea of a holiday again.
All fall, I find myself making suggestions for trips I don’t want to take: Florence and Paris, or one or the other—they could be lovely in late November, I say （which is not what I think; I think it will be beyond melancholy and I will regret that I don’t drink heavily）。 I remind him of the beach resort we went to twice, each time one of my parents died. He loved it and I remind him of all the things he loved about it: the private beach we got dropped off upon and frolicked about upon for a few hours, naked and too old to be naked and still happy about it, like extras in a Fellini movie. The big afternoon tea, which allowed us to skip the overpriced lunch, where he could drink two pots of Earl Grey, fill his pockets with cookies, and while away a happy hour. I remind him of the evening when we walked to the little restaurant up the road and the flirtatious waitress, who managed to make both of us feel irresistible. He smiles distantly at all of this. And then I go online to show him some photos of his very favorite hotel in Manhattan and I talk about the morning we had breakfast in the room, took a walk, and came back for another, fancier breakfast, and he shakes his head, the way you do when someone has insisted on reminding you of an unimportant detail.