Kiss Me as if There's No Tomorrow

*****

The next few days were amazing. Denise showed me around Seattle. We shopped downtown, hiked at the base of Mount Rainier and walked along Puget Sound. After finding a store still selling souvenirs from the '62 World's Fair, Denise bought me a cup and saucer inscribed with the fair's symbols. True to her word, she took me to the Eye of the Needle, that revolving restaurant atop the six-hundred-foot Space Needle, her parents in tow. We could now discuss Denise's illness openly. Her parents still held out hope that she might once again go into remission.

Denise was less than sanguine, telling me she thought her parents were in denial. "They can't handle the idea of losing me," she said. Bundled up and holding each other against the sunny but windy, upper-thirty degree weather, we strolled along the aging, tattered wharves of what would become Seattle's Waterfront Park. My "wild and wooly" hair, as she once described it, blew over my face. "I feel worse for them than I do for myself," she went on. "Losing a child is supposed to be the most painful loss there is."

"I can't much handle the idea of losing you either," I said, holding her face in my hands, taking note of the way her blue eyes sparkled and her lightly freckled skin glowed in the late afternoon sun. She hardly looked like someone terminally ill. "I hope you'll visit me in Baltimore. We've got Fort McHenry, home of the Star Spangled Banner, and the best steamed crabs east of the Mississippi."

"I'd love to. Maybe during spring break." Teasingly, she said, "Would your folks let us sleep together?"

"Oh, I think that can be arranged." I pulled her closer and ran my hand along her hair, now set in one long braid that dropped close to her waist. "Of course, Evy would tell all her friends." She laughed, told me that she too used to tease her older brother about his love life.

We welcomed in the New Year with champagne toasts while watching TV broadcasts of the ball drop in Times Square, three hours before 1965 turned into 1966 on the West Coast. Her parents were out for the evening, so we had the house to ourselves. Not that it would have mattered. As I suspected, Denise's illness appeared to be a catalyst for them letting her do what made her happy. That included sex, of course, and during those wonderful few days, we indulged not only in her room but also in the club basement listening to music. We cuddled at night, falling asleep in each other's arms and then waking up the same way. I didn't spend one night in that guest room.

We were both a mess at the airport when she saw me off, clinging to each other in the terminal, wiping our eyes to staunch the tears that refused to stop. Yes, we kissed as if there was no tomorrow. And yes, my perspective on that line had changed from the time she first spoke it atop the Empire State Building. No longer just a figure of speech, it had shifted from the abstract to the literal.

For weeks, we kept in touch by phone and letter. To say I missed her would be a gross understatement. Denise seemed to be doing okay when she first returned to school. But then, in late January, I got an evening call from her mom using a hospital phone. Two days before, Denise had passed out in the school cafeteria. Rushed to the hospital by ambulance, she had been undergoing tests, and the news was not good. Radiology confirmed that her tumor had grown much larger since early December. When Denise took the phone, I did my best not to cry, with little success.

"I'm not in any pain, Brendan, so cheer-up. I meant what I said about no pity party." She sounded weak, though not distressed. "By the way, what are you wearing?" Struggling to control my grief, I told her the truth: I was in my underwear. "Ohmygod, you're making me horny. And just to let you know, my parents and brother just blushed."

"Well, just stay horny, okay, because we have a date come spring break."

"Yes, we sure do, and I'm looking forward to trying those delicious steamed crabs you mentioned."

Nodding, I groped for something else to say, something light and irreverent, but came up with just this: "I love you."

Seconds of silence passed.

"Denise?"

"Yes, I'm still here." Her voice choked up. "I love you too, Brendan. If we could be together just one more time...just once more...but I know that's impossible..." Her voice trailed off.

Her mom took the phone, told me that Denise was too weak to talk anymore and suggested I call back tomorrow.

I didn't call back. After pleading with my parents to let me go, promising I'd pay them back and double-up on homework, I flew to Seattle the next day. Upon landing, I took a cab to University of Washington Medical Center. Her parents couldn't believe it when they saw me walk into the visitors lounge, just down the hall from her room. We hugged and then I shook hands with her brother David, on leave from UW to be with his sister. "She's very weak," her mom said, her eyes red, I gathered, from tears and sleep deprivation. "But she's awake. You can go in and see her."

Steadying myself, I waded into her room, decorated with a couple balloons and get-well cards pinned to a corkboard. As she turned her head, I said, "So, are you still horny?" She gasped and then burst into tears. "Hey, no pity party, remember," I said, brushing away my own tears, willing myself not to totally lose it. She didn't look that bad, just pale and tired and weak in her blue nightgown. Pain meds kept her semi-sedated. Taking her hand, I bent over her bed and kissed her.

"God bless your folks for letting you do this," she said, her voice shaky and barely above a whisper. "You'll thank them for me?" I nodded. "Now, to answer your question, yes I'm still horny, but I don't think the nurses around here would give me the kind of slack my parents have."

"Well, shame on them," I said, standing beside her bed, holding her hand. "This hospital bed wouldn't accommodate the two of us anyway."

"And if it did, would you pounce?"

"Absolutely."

I stayed with her family up until visitation ended around nine. They let me stay overnight at their house for another day before I took a flight home. In our last moments together, Denise and I held hands while she told me—no, ordered me—to move on. "You are not to grieve for more than a week, understand? You need to move on and not let this 'shitty' thing, your word, ruin your life. Got it?"

"Got it, just a week," I said. "You're always calling the shots."

She managed a weak smile. "Right. Now, let me get some rest."

Her dad called me three days later with the news, not unexpected, but terrible nevertheless. I didn't go to the funeral, nor did I grieve for just a week. In fact, it took me months before I could even date again, much less get serious with someone else. That took some time.

Besides my memories, I have the cup and saucer she gave me, plus a photo of us standing by the waterfront on that cold, blustery day when I invited her to come east during spring break. She took her camera along that day, and we asked a passerby to take the picture. Her dad developed the film months after her death and then mailed me the single photo of his daughter and me, snuggled close and smiling—smiling as if we had endless tomorrows stretched out before us.