When he was in college, he wore a cologne called Gray Flannel, and he almost thinks he rehearsed somehow for this. Didn’t he always know he’d end up here? Didn’t he see himself with this office bigger than most, a polished desk and a phone system that looked like it was designed by NASA? Didn’t he see himself out with clients with a company credit card, going for drinks at Hamilton’s or a long meal at The Dock, where they would pass around spreadsheets and project plans and toast a new merger? Didn’t he see this future even when he drove that Volkswagen with the bumper hanging off, even when at twenty he had to work as a bar runner at Sidecar for eighty-five dollars a week? Didn’t he raise his hand as high as he could in classes and turn in his papers early because he felt somehow he was inevitable? He believed in this future. He knew he would keep pushing, keep staying late, keep accepting projects and paperwork, always smiling, always unruffled, and saying, “You got it” to whoever handed him anything. He thinks of himself then and can’t help smiling. Nervy little shit.
He hands a file to Pamela, who has worked at the same gray desk for almost four decades, more or less. “I’ll get right on this,” she says. She wears bright lipstick and a starched blazer. He wonders if he will be able to say he did anything for forty years, have a job that long, a life that long.
He will turn forty in four months. That is, he should turn forty. Four months has turned into a century, it seems. He can’t even think about four weeks. Four months would take him to February. He hopes to be shoveling snow. He hopes to see Addie in her hat and mittens, their dog bounding in newly fallen flakes. His driver’s license has to be renewed then, too. He wants all these things. He wants February so badly.
He tries to keep his feet over the pattern divots in the carpet because every so often he feels as though he could swerve, that dim sensation gripping him. So he puts one black shoe down and then the other and tries to look like he’s calm. He is one of the VPs here, and he does not have to hurry. Perception is reality, right? No one knows anything except his boss, Alex Lionel, and Greg has barely missed a half day since the diagnosis last week.
In August, after a routine blood test, they called him in, said they were concerned, said it was in the precancer or smoldering stage, and it might not progress any further. He hated both terms: precancer reminding him of prealgebra, and smoldering reminding him of a cheap romance novel.
They told him back then a round of experimental drugs might keep it at bay, keep it from becoming anything. But last week, he and Freddie got the bad news: it wasn’t at bay, it was no longer pre-, it was more than smoldering. He will always remember that date, October 17, as the day his life was upended. The ticktock diagnosis, he calls it in his head. If he’s not lucky, it’s tick-fucking-tock.
But he can still do an hour at the gym after work most nights, and he swings Addie around when they’re playing the space ejector game, and except for his wife’s pitying looks and her “Now can we start addressing this?” prods, he’s holding his own. Sometimes in a whisper, in a quick hiss, he hears the name of his disease rush through his head: multiple myeloma. Cancer of the plasma cells. He hates the name: the double m’s, the way some hospital staff members trip over the pronunciation. He hates his plasma cells that failed him. He hates that his disease is mostly unknown—it could be like anemia or high blood pressure for all anyone knows. None of the serious name recognition of brain cancer or heart disease.
“I would call it a bone marrow defect,” his doctor said that first day.
“Bad bone marrow,” Greg tsked, mock-slapping his thigh.
“It would do you well to not minimize this,” the doctor said.
“Will it make my bone marrow less defective?” Greg shrugged after he said this—yes, yes, he knew he was cracking, and he could feel Freddie’s tearful eyes glaring at him. The oncologist with his white hair and starched gingham shirt reminded him of a doctor in a Hallmark Channel movie. If he stops for a moment, he can list the titles on the doctor’s bookshelf. He can describe the exact turpentine-and-lemon furniture polish smell that the office had. But he hasn’t stopped, and he doesn’t plan to. A rolling stone and all that. But he felt something that day about Freddie, some confession in her crying that she loved him and needed him so much. He always knew this, but it was validated in that moment. He remembers leaving the doctor’s office and thinking I am loved before anything else.
Now it’s Alex, his boss, in Greg’s office doorway, leaning to the side. Alex, with his face tanned from golfing, thinning hair, thick gold wedding band, an air of expensive cologne, shining cuff links. He hates these new eyes Alex has for him, and the way he never suggests the club anymore, or a long lunch at Martin’s Steakhouse—the way he tries not to dump too much on Greg’s plate. Some days he wears suspenders or a bow tie. When Alex bought Greg a Mercedes when he promoted him to VP, he said, “Once in a lifetime, kid. Don’t get too used to me buying you stuff.” Alex who can’t do half the push-ups Greg can, but he will probably live to be ninety.