I walk an hour to visit Cathy Seipp in the hospital. She’s been there since Saturday because she’s in extreme pain from her lung cancer. I don’t know if she’s going to get out.
I sit with her for three hours and the whole time she clings to her favorite newspaper as though her life depends on it.
Cathy’s moaning in pain the whole day, clutching her left side.
She’s not very spiritual though the cancer thing has really slimmed her.
Amy Alkon camps out in Cathy’s room and provides for all her earthly needs that are sanctioned by the Torah, such as coffee, juice, gown, walks and milkshakes.
I’ve let both of them know that it is never too late to become a Torah Jew.
I know that Amy strikes many of you as an opinionated bitch, but her tender motherly side allows me to sit all day on my bum and read my Anthony Blunt book by Miranda Carter and still believe I’m a good friend.
I reprimand Cathy for deleting Lewis’s blog (there’s no wifi at the hospital but Amy goes on dial-up for five minutes) about Sandra Tsing Loh cooking a dog.
“If you think he’s so funny, then put him on your blog,” Cathy snaps.
She doesn’t have a lot of patience these days and is really not much of a party host.
She says she doesn’t want to entertain people and doesn’t want to deal with any visitors beyond her closest friends and her daughter Maia.
Maia is our main topic of conversation.
When Cathy and Amy ask me what is going on in my life, I pull out my appointment book and scan through it.
After a minute I close it and say, ” There’s nothing I can boast about.”
The sad thing is that the most exciting thing in my life right now is that Luke Ford Fan Blog has updated.
Cathy usually finds it hysterical, particularly the pictures.
We move into the family room on our floor and everyone else moves out.
“I told you that if we moved in,” says Cathy, “everyone else would move out.”
Amy takes Cathy for a walk around her hospital floor.
Cathy must drag her drip set-up everywhere.
Every couple of hours the nurse comes in and gives Cathy a pain injection.
Cathy wears these stern black schoolteacher glasses that I haven’t seen before.
Emmanuelle Richard arrives at 2 p.m.
She nods at my paunch and giggles.
We sit in the sun and gossip about writers Mark Lisanti (he doesn’t go to parties so he doesn’t meet people he writes about), Marc Cromer, Richard Rushfeld, Hugh Hefner, and Matt Welch.
As I get up to leave, I pull out my Sony Walkman.
Emmanuelle points at me and giggles: “How cute! A Walkman!”
On the long walk home, I drown my sorrows in a power-sized protein-boosted chocolate moo’d from Jamba Juice.
Nick emails: “Thanks for the update on Cathy’s condition on your blog. Perhaps you could leave a note on her site for people going there for information on how she’s doing. Lewis Fein is very talented, but I think he’s lost the plot.”
