The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick

the doctors diagnosed correctly as peritonitis, from which you can die. The bishop paid all her medical expenses, which came to a staggering sum; for ten days she languished in the intensive care unit of one of the best hospitals in San Francisco, complaining bitterly that no one visited her or gave a good goddamn. Tim, who flew all around the United States lecturing, saw her as often as he could, but it was not nearly often enough to suit her. I came over to the city to see her as frequently as possible. With me, as with Tim, it was (in her opinion) far too inadequate a response to her illness. Most of the time I spent with her amounted to a one-way diatribe in which she complained about him and about all else in life. She had aged.
    It strikes me as semi-meaningless to say, "You are only as old as you feel" because, in point of fact, age and illness are going to win out, and this stupid statement only resonates with people in good health who have not undergone the sort of traumas that Kirsten Lundborg had. Her son Bill had disclosed an infinite capacity to be crazy and for this Kirsten felt responsible; she knew, too, that a major factor in Jeff's suicide had been her relationship with his father. That made her bitterly severe toward me, as if guilt—her guilt—goaded her into chronically abusing me, the chief victim of Jeff's death.
    We really did not have much of a friendship left, she and I. Nevertheless, I visited her in the hospital, and I always dressed up so that I looked great, and I always brought her something she could not eat, if it was food, or could not wear or use.
    "They won't let me smoke," she said to me one time, by way of a greeting.
    "Of course not," I said. "You'll set your bed on fire again. Like you did that time." She had almost suffocated herself, a few weeks before going into the hospital.
    Kirsten said, "Get me some yarn."
    "'Yarn,'" I said.
    "I'm going to knit a sweater. For the bishop." Her tone withered the word; Kirsten managed to convey through words a kind of antagonism one rarely encountered. "The bishop," she said, "needs a sweater."
    Her animosity centered on the fact that Tim had proved able to handle his affairs quite well in her absence; at the moment, he was all the way up in Canada somewhere, delivering a speech. It had been Kirsten's contention for some time that Tim could not survive a week without her. Her confinement in the hospital had proven her wrong.
    "Why don't Mexicans want their children to marry blacks?" Kirsten said.
    "Because their kids would be too lazy to steal," I said.
    "When does a black man become a nigger?"
    "When he leaves the room." I seated myself in a plastic chair facing her bed. "What's the safest time to drive your car?" I said.
    Kirsten gave me a hostile glance.
    "You'll be out of here soon," I said, to help her cheer up.
    "I'll never be out of here. The bishop is probably—never mind. Grabbing ass in Montreal. Or wherever he is. You know, he had me in bed the second time we met. And the first time was at a restaurant in Berkeley."
    "I was there."
    "So he couldn't do it the first time. If he could have, he would have. Doesn't that surprise you about a bishop? There are a few things I could tell you ... but I won't." She ceased speaking, then, and glowered.
    "Good," I said.
    "Good what? That I'm not going to tell you?"
    "If you start telling me," I said, "I will get up and leave. My therapist told me to set clear limits with you."
    "Oh, that's right; you're another of them. Who's in therapy. You and my son. You two ought to get together. You could make clay snakes in occupational therapy."
    "I am leaving," I said; I stood up.
    "Oh Christ," Kirsten said irritably. "Sit down."
    I said, "What became of the Swedish mongoloid cretin who escaped from the asylum in Stockholm?"
    "I don't know."
    "They found him teaching school in Norway."
    Laughing, Kirsten said, "Go fuck yourself."
    "I don't have to. I'm doing fine."
    "Probably so." She nodded. "I wish I was