kidding, “It’s the sweat lodge ceremony that did it.” He turned swiftly, a little wild-eyed. “What?”
I held it out to him. “Smell it,” I urged. It was fragrant with sage and other herbs.
Hesitantly, with distaste, he lowered his nose to within six inches of the bag, then moved away. He said nothing and left soon afterward, having reminded me to show up for my next course of chemo on September 29, a week from that day.
Rob and I went out to lunch, giggling and, like the doctor, wild-eyed, but with wild smiles beneath. I did not know how much hope to attach to the disappearance. The doctor had insisted that the cancer would recur; it was expected to recur; he did not want me to get my hopes up. But why should I not? How often did this happen? Wasn’t it at least a sign? Rob was so happy that I suddenly realized how depressed he’d been. It was a good development, wasn’t it, despite the doctor’s behavior?
At home, I immediately telephoned my friends. Charlotte went over the moon: she leaped to the conviction that my cancer was gone forever. I was cured; it was a miracle. Her assurance shocked me. She was so uncompromising, so absolute, she could not even hear me say that the oncologist had almost promised it would return. Her relief made me realize how heavily my illness had weighed on her, what a reprieve it would be for her if I recovered. I did not know until years later how distraught she had in fact been. Charlotte was my agent, had been for sixteen years; but almost from the start we were also friends. She was as close to me as a sister; I loved her deeply. And she seemed to feel the same. Dazed, I had not noticed that during these past three months, Charlotte had been a wreck. She “looked like hell,” her more observant friends said; she often went without eating and slept in her clothes; and in this frenzied state, she had run her business, appearing sane and in control.
The coven, overjoyed, planned a celebration dinner for the next night. I said we could have it at my house—I had not hosted one of our dinners in a long time; Gloria had had them all (Esther had a houseful of people living with her, and Carol had moved to Westchester). I called a caterer and ordered a lovely meal.
The next evening, Wednesday, September 23, the waiter arrived early, bearing dinner, and set the table in the dining room. He had forgotten to bring wine, and I had none in the house, so he called his kitchen and asked someone to deliver a couple of bottles. Esther and Carol arrived around seven; we were sitting in the study, eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping drinks, when the boy arrived with the wine.
Suddenly, all the lights in the building went out. The electricity died, which meant that not just the lights, but the stove, the refrigerator, and the elevator were not working. And I was on the twentieth floor. We all crowded onto the front terrace and, looking down, saw fire engines below. The telephone rang (I later discovered that my telephone was the only one working in the building): it was Gloria. She had arrived a little late because she had been working on strategy with Bella Abzug, who was campaigning to fill the seat of a just deceased congressman. The firemen would not let her come up. (She would have had a terrible time walking up forty pitch-black airless staircases—two to a floor.) Actually, she was some blocks away, because there was no phone on my street. She said she would walk back and wait, and perhaps they would get things under control and allow her up.
The waiter was beside himself. He worried, he paced, he called his kitchen. The delivery boy just shrugged. I did not understand why anyone should feel frightened; I felt no fear myself—after all, clearly there was no major fire, and if there were, surely we could be rescued from one of my terraces by helicopter. It would be an adventure! Carol, well-known to all city officials, got on the phone. Calm and gracious, the complete
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