The Resort by Sol Stein Page B

before showering each morning, as he had done all of his adult life. Then one day he had what he thought of as a stitch in his side that wouldn’t go away with bourbon, aspirin, or trying to walk it off. He went to see his doctor, whom he called a funeral director to his face, and the doctor sent him to a specialist who told him, after various diagnostic procedures the old man hated, that he had the disease that comes to most people if they live long enough, and it seemed inoperable.
    “It’ll go fast now,” the specialist had said.
    “How fast?” Sam asked.
    “Month or two. Anybody’s guess.”
    At first Sam intended to keep the news a secret. Then he thought it would be great fun to watch the different reactions of people in his life to the announcement of his forthcoming passage. If anybody behaved greedily or insincerely, he thought, hell, there’s still time to change the will and twist a few tails. The problem was, however, that Sam looked so well nobody believed him except Abigail. And the reason she knew was that she called the doctor on her own from Los Angeles, and he referred her to the specialist, who told her that the diagnosis was locked up in the confidentiality of the relationship between patient and doctor. Abigail figured that if the news was good, it wouldn’t be confidential.
    Early the next morning, she phoned Lucinda to tell Sam she was coming. She caught an early plane from Los Angeles to Dallas, and a feeder from there, so it was afternoon by the time she arrived. Lucinda said that Sam was lazying.
    “You mean he’s still in bed this time of day?” Abigail asked. To her it was the worst news she had heard.
    She went up to Sam’s bedroom, knocked, heard his feeble “Come in,” and entered quietly.
    Sam’s smile told her she was welcome, but the rest of his face looked like it had aged in Tibet since she’d seen him last.
    “Close the door, girl,” he said.
    She obeyed.
    “Turn the lock,” he said.
    She did as she was instructed.
    “I knew you’d come without asking,” Sam said. “You know, you get a vibration about something and I think it goes through your head just as it does mine.”
    “Telepathy,” Abigail said.
    “Something like that. I got something to ask you.”
    She came close to the bed, bent down, and kissed his forehead.
    “You and me,” Sam said, “woulda made a great couple. Much bettern me and Lucinda or you and Merle.”
    Abigail smiled. “Yes,” she said.
    “And we been on absolutely good behavior all along.”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Well, can you tell what’s on my mind?”
    She thought about money, oil, wills, but said none of that.
    “You see,” he said, “sometimes it doesn’t work. Telepathy. I guess I’ll just have to tell you straight-out.”
    She sat down on the edge of the bed.
    “I think it’s over,” he said.
    “What’s over?”
    “Life. Mine. Couldn’t get out of bed this morning without feeling I’d fall on my face. I don’t want to finish off with a pratfall and have Lucinda scraping me off the floor. There’s something else I want.”
    She looked closely at his face and thought he was in pain.
    “You taking your pain-killers like the doctor said?” she asked.
    “Not today when I heard you were coming.”
    “Why not?”
    “Don’t want it to interfere.”
    “With what?”
    “With what I’m going to ask.”
    She began to realize what his request might be.
    “I know you’re my daughter-in-law, and I know it’s wrong in some people’s eyes, but not in mine. I want you to touch it.”
    When she rolled down the coverlet, Abigail felt as if she was about to perform a religious ritual. Even in those flannel pajamas he looked like a skeleton. She could see the outline of it between his legs.
    “Go ahead,” Sam Clifford said, his voice stronger than it had been.
    And so she put her hand, the palm and all five fingers on it. She moved her fingers just a bit, then felt it stir. She looked at Sam’s eyes and they were