[sic]: A Memoir by Joshua Cody Page B

coffee?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    “Where are you?”
    Odd question. “Right now? I’m walking down to Battery Park. Why?”
    “Because I’m around the corner from your apartment. Do you want to come back to your apartment and make coffee?”
    No, I thought. I don’t. “I’m on my way to see a film. I’m halfway down to Battery Park.”
    “What street are you on, exactly? I’m driving. I’ll come meet you.”
    “Okay, I’m on West Broadway and Warren—”
    Our conversation was briefly interrupted by the sound of scraping metal. “Fuck! Sorry, hang on, I just hit some asshole. Listen, wait there, I’ll be right down.” She hung up. Her parents had something like thirteen Mercedes.
    Given the automobile accident, she made good time. We went into a Viennese-style café; I ordered an espresso. She ordered a doppio venti nonfat mocha soy vanilla hazelnut white cinnamon thing with extra white mocha and caramel, a scissors, a roll of Scotch tape, and a Scotch tape dispenser.
    “What?” said the barista.
    “One doppio venti nonfat mocha soy vanilla hazelnut white cinnamon with extra white mocha and caramel, a scissors, a roll of Scotch tape, and a Scotch tape dispenser.”
    “You want a scissors, and Scotch tape?”
    So this meeting was sort of a nice bookend to our hospital check-in, when she berated the woman on the cell phone. But just like the woman on the cell phone, the guy was compliant; maybe people treated Sophie with such sympathy because her vulnerability was so apparent, as were her brave attempts at masking it. He gave her the scissors and the tape, and she sat right down at the biggest table in the place, pulled out her massive leather portfolio, and got right to work, matting huge printouts of design prototypes. I tried making conversation, but I felt bad, interrupting her concentration. I did learn that she was going through a dry spell sales-wise, and had moved temporarily back into her parents’ McMansion, the thought of which, she said, turned out to be more depressing than the actual experience, which was actually kind of fun, hanging out with them, not living alone, not constantly worrying about rent.
    That’s about all I learned. I sat there in silence for a time, watching her slowly cut ecru cardboard along scored lines, unwinding a strip of tape from the reel, applying it with a single bony finger.
    I watched her single finger, tracing a line.
    And all of a sudden, it occurred to me.
    After I learned that the chemotherapy didn’t work and that therefore things looked a little dimmer, but before I started up the next treatment, I had made a little, very modest feature film with some friends, because one of the things I’d always wanted to do in life—ever after having seen Raiders of the Lost Ark after having read an early draft of the screenplay a family friend somehow had been able to secure or steal from Lawrence Kasdan or somebody close to him (I know I said before I wasn’t interested in the arts as a child but that actually wasn’t true), I had memorized the screenplay and had essentially directed the film in my head, so every directorial decision, every cut or added scene, was a revelation—was to make a movie (and I would recommend it to everyone, by the way). My movie contained a scene in which a character, at a party, does lines of cocaine. We went through various mixtures of vitamin B 12 , powdered milk, corn starch, powdered goat milk, soy baby formula, and baking soda before coming up with a simulacrum authentic even at macro-lens close-ups. Packed into little plastic bags, it was very convincing—even for an ex-addict. Afterward, I threw the props into a bag and brought it home and forgot about it.
    Never had the heart to tell her.

V
     
    SISTER MORPHINE
     
Le R ê ve est un seconde vie.
[Dreaming is a second life.]
    —Gérard de Nerval, “Aurélia, ou Le Rêve et la vie.”
    At this point a question may well have been inadvertently raised, if not voiced, and thus