Just After Sunset, Page 33

  I was still in considerable pain but able to read a magazine while waiting for my follow-up doctor's appointment, and I considered this a great improvement. Someone sat down beside me and said, "Come on now, it's time."

  I looked up. It wasn't the woman who had come into my father's sickroom; it was a man in a perfectly ordinary brown business suit. Nevertheless, I knew why he was there. It was never even a question. I also felt sure that if I didn't go with him, all the lithotripsy in the world would not help me.

  We went out. The receptionist was away from her desk, so I didn't have to explain my sudden decampment. I'm not sure what I would have said, anyway. That my groin had suddenly stopped smoldering? That was absurd as well as untrue.

  The man in the business suit looked a fit thirty-five: an ex-marine, maybe, who hadn't been able to part with the bristly gung-ho haircut. He didn't talk. We cut around the medical center where my doctor keeps his practice, then made our way down the block to Groves of Healing Hospital, me walking slightly bent over because of the pain, which no longer snarled but still glowered.

  We went up to pedes and made our way down a corridor with Disney murals on the walls and "It's a Small World" drifting down from the overhead speakers. The ex-marine walked briskly, with his head up, as if he belonged there. I didn't, and I knew it. I had never felt so far from my home and the life I understood. If I had floated up to the ceiling like a child's Mylar GET WELL SOON balloon, I wouldn't have been surprised.

  At the central nurses' station, the ex-marine squeezed my arm to make me stop until the two nurses there--one male, one female--were occupied. Then we crossed into another hall where a bald girl sitting in a wheelchair looked at us with starving eyes. She held out one hand.

  "No," the ex-marine said, and simply led me on. But not before I got another look into those bright, dying eyes.

  He took us into a room where a boy of about three was playing with blocks in a clear plastic tent that belled down over his bed. The boy stared at us with lively interest. He looked much healthier than the girl in the wheelchair--he had a full shock of red curls--but his skin was the color of lead, and when the ex-marine pushed me forward and then fell back into a position like parade rest, I sensed the kid was very ill indeed. When I unzipped the tent, taking no notice of the sign on the wall reading THIS IS A STERILE ENVIRONMENT, I thought his remaining time could have been measured in days rather than weeks.

  I reached for him, registering my father's sick smell. The odor was a little lighter, but essentially the same. The kid lifted his own arms without reservation. When I kissed him on the corner of the mouth, he kissed back with a longing eagerness that suggested he hadn't been touched in a long time. At least not by something that didn't hurt.

  No one came in to ask us what we were doing, or to threaten the police, as Ruth had that day in my father's sickroom. I zipped up the tent again. In the doorway I looked back and saw him sitting in his clear plastic tent with a block in his hands. He dropped it and waved to me--a child's wigwag, fingers opening and closing twice. I waved back the same way. He looked better already.

  Once more the ex-marine squeezed my arm at the nurses' station, but this time we were spotted by the male nurse, a man with the kind of disapproving smile the head of my English department had raised to the level of art. He asked what we were doing there.

  "Sorry, mate, wrong floor," the ex-marine said.

  On the hospital steps a few minutes later, he said, "You can find your own way back, can't you?"

  "Sure," I said, "but I'll have to make another appointment with my doctor."

  "Yes, I suppose you will."

  "Will I see you again?"

  "Yes," he said, and walked off toward the hospital parking lot. He didn't look back.

  He came again in 1987, while Ruth was at the market and I was cutting the grass and hoping the sick thud in the back of my head wasn't the beginning of a migraine but knowing it was. Since the little boy in Groves of Healing, I had been subject to them. But it was hardly ever him I thought of when I lay in the dark with a damp rag over my eyes. I thought of the little girl.

  That time we went to see a woman at St. Jude's. When I kissed her, she put my hand on her left breast. It was the only one she had; the doctors had already taken the other.

  "I love you, mister," she said, crying. I didn't know what to say. The ex-marine stood in the doorway, legs apart, hands behind his back. Parade rest.

  Years passed before he came again: mid-December of 1997. That was the last time. By then my problem was arthritis, and it still is. The bristles standing up from the ex-marine's block of a head had gone mostly gray, and lines so deep they made him look a little like a ventriloquist's dummy had carved down from the corners of his lips. He took me out to an I-95 exit ramp north of town, where there had been a wreck. A panel truck had collided with a Ford Escort. The Escort was pretty well trashed. The paramedics had strapped the driver, a middle-aged man, to a stretcher. The cops were talking to the uniformed panel truck driver, who appeared shaken but unhurt.

  The paramedics slammed the doors of the ambulance, and the ex-marine said, "Now. Shag your ass."

  I shagged my elderly ass to the rear of the ambulance. The ex-marine hustled forward, pointing. "Yo! Yo! Is that one of those medical bracelets?"

  The paramedics turned to look; one of them, and one of the cops who had been talking to the panel truck driver, went to where the ex-marine was pointing. I opened the rear door of the ambulance and crawled up to the Escort driver's head. At the same time I clutched my father's pocket watch, which I had carried since he gave it to me as a wedding present. Its delicate gold chain was attached to one of my belt loops. There was no time to be gentle; I tore it free.

  The man on the stretcher stared up at me from the gloom, his broken neck bulging in a shiny skin-covered doorknob at the nape. "I can't move my fucking toes," he said.

  I kissed him on the corner of the mouth (it was my special place, I guess) and was backing out when one of the paramedics grabbed me. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked.

  I pointed to the watch, which now lay beside the stretcher. "That was in the grass. I thought he'd want it." By the time the Escort driver was able to tell someone that it wasn't his watch and the initials engraved on the inside of the lid meant nothing to him, we would be gone. "Did you get his medical bracelet?"

  The paramedic looked disgusted. "It was just a piece of chrome," he said. "Get out of here." Then, not quite grudgingly: "Thanks. You could have kept that."

  It was true. I loved that watch. But...spur of the moment. It was all I had.

  "You've got blood on the back of your hand," the ex-marine said as we drove back to my house. We were in his car, a nondescript Chevrolet sedan. There was a dog leash lying on the backseat and a St. Christopher's medal hanging from the rearview mirror on a silver chain. "You ought to wash it off when you get home."

  I said I would.

  "You won't be seeing me again," he said.

  I thought of what the black woman had said about Ayana then. I hadn't thought of it in years. "Are my dreams over?" I asked.

  He looked puzzled, then shrugged. "Your work is," he said. "I sure don't know anything about your dreams."

  I asked him three more questions before he dropped me off for the last time and disappeared from my life. I didn't expect him to answer them, but he did.

  "Those people I kiss--do they go on to other people? Kiss their boo-boos and make them all gone?"

  "Some do," he said. "That's how it works. Others can't." He shrugged. "Or won't." He shrugged again. "It comes to the same."

  "Do you know a little girl named Ayana? Although I suppose she'd be a big girl now."

  "She's dead."

  My heart dropped, but not too far. I suppose I had known. I thought again of the little girl in the wheelchair.

  "She kissed my father," I said. "She only touched me. So why was I the one?"

  "Because you were," he said, and pul
led into my driveway. "Here we are."

  An idea occurred to me. It seemed like a good one, God knows why. "Come for Christmas," I said. "Come for Christmas dinner. We have plenty. I'll tell Ruth you're my cousin from New Mexico." Because I had never told her about the ex-marine. Knowing about my father was enough for her. Too much, really.

  The ex-marine smiled. That might not have been the only time I saw it, but it's the only time I remember. "Think I'll give it a miss, mate. Although I thank you. I don't celebrate Christmas. I'm an atheist."

  That's really it, I guess--except for kissing Trudy. I told you she went gaga, remember? Alzheimer's. Ralph made good investments that left her well-off, and the kids saw that she went to a nice place when she was no longer okay to live at home. Ruth and I went to see her together until Ruth had her heart attack on the approach into Denver International. I went to see Trudy on my own not long after that, because I was lonely and sad and wanted some connection with the old days. But seeing Trudy as she had become, looking out the window instead of at me, munching at her lower lip while clear spit grizzled from the corners of her mouth, only made me feel worse. Like going back to your hometown to look at the house you grew up in and discovering a vacant lot.

  I kissed the corner of her mouth before I left, but of course nothing happened. A miracle is no good without a miracle worker, and my miracle days are behind me now. Except late at night when I can't sleep. Then I can come downstairs and watch almost any movie I want. Even skin flicks. I have a satellite dish, you see, and something called Global Movies. I could even get the Pirates, if I wanted to order the MLB package. But I live on a fixed income these days, and while I'm comfortable, I also have to keep an eye on my discretionary spending. I can read about the Pirates on the Internet. All those movies are miracle enough for me.

  A Very Tight Place

  Curtis Johnson rode his bike five miles every morning. He had stopped for a while after Betsy died, but found that without his morning exercise he was sadder than ever. So he took it up again. The only difference was that he stopped wearing his bike helmet. He rode two and a half miles down Gulf Boulevard, then turned around and rode back. He always kept to the bike lanes. He might not care if he lived or died, but he respected the rule of law.

  Gulf Boulevard was the only road on Turtle Island. It ran past a lot of homes owned by millionaires. Curtis didn't notice them. For one thing, he was a millionaire himself. He had made his money the old-fashioned way, in the stock market. For another, he had no problem with any of the people living in the houses he passed. The only one he had a problem with was Tim Grunwald, alias The Motherfucker, and Grunwald lived in the other direction. Not the last lot on Turtle Island before Daylight Channel, but the second-to-last. It was the last lot that was the problem between them (one of the problems). That lot was the biggest, with the best view of the Gulf, and the only one without a house on it. The only things on it were scrub grass, sea oats, stunted palms, and a few Australian pines.

  The nicest thing, the very nicest, about his morning rides was no phone. He was officially off the grid. Once he got back, the phone would seldom leave his hand, especially while the market was open. He was athletic; he would stride around the house using the cordless, occasionally returning to his office, where his computer would be scrolling the numbers. Sometimes he left the house to walk out to the road, and then he took his cell phone. Usually he would turn right, toward the stub end of Gulf Boulevard. Toward The Motherfucker's house. But he wouldn't go so far that Grunwald could see him; Curtis wouldn't give the man that satisfaction. He just went far enough to make sure Grunwald wasn't trying to pull a fast one with the Vinton Lot. Of course there was no way The Motherfucker could get heavy machinery past him, not even at night--Curtis slept lightly since there was no Betsy lying beside him. But he still checked, usually standing behind the last palm in a shady stretch of two dozen. Just to be sure. Because destroying empty lots, burying them under tons of concrete, was Grunwald's goddam business.

  And The Motherfucker was sly.

  So far, though, all was well. If Grunwald did try to pull a fast one, Curtis was ready to empty the holes (legally speaking). Meanwhile, Grunwald had Betsy to answer for, and answer he would. Even if Curtis had largely lost his taste for the fray (he denied this to himself, but knew it was true), he would see that Grunwald answered for her. The Motherfucker would discover that Curtis Johnson had jaws of chrome...jaws of chrome steel...and when he took hold of a thing, he did not let go.

  When he returned to his home on this particular Tuesday morning, with ten minutes still to go before the opening bell on Wall Street, Curtis checked his cell phone for messages, as he always did. Today there were two. One was from Circuit City, probably some salesman trying to sell him something under the guise of checking his satisfaction with the wall-hung flatscreen he'd purchased the month before.

  When he scrolled down to the next message, he read this: 383-0910 TMF.

  The Motherfucker. Even his Nokia knew who Grunwald was, because Curtis had taught it to remember. The question was, what did The Motherfucker want with him on a Tuesday morning in June?

  Maybe to settle, and on Curtis's terms.

  He allowed himself a laugh at this idea, then played the message. He was stunned to hear that was exactly what Grunwald did want--or appeared to want. Curtis supposed it could be some sort of ploy, but he didn't understand what Grunwald stood to gain by such a thing. And then there was the tone: heavy, deliberate, almost plodding. Maybe it wasn't sorrow, but it surely sounded like sorrow. It was the way Curtis himself sounded all too often on the phone these days, as he tried to get his head back in the game.

  "Johnson...Curtis," Grunwald said in his plodding voice. His recorded voice paused longer, as if debating the use of Curtis's given name, then moved on in the same dead and lightless way. "I can't fight a war on two fronts. Let's end this. I've lost my taste for it. If I ever had a taste for it. I'm in a very tight place, neighbor."

  He sighed.

  "I'm prepared to give up the lot, and for no financial consideration. I'll also compensate you for your...for Betsy. If you're interested, you can find me at Durkin Grove Village. I'll be there most of the day." A long pause. "I go out there a lot now. In a way I still can't believe the financing fell apart, and in a way I'm not surprised at all." Another long pause. "Maybe you know what I mean."

  Curtis thought he did. He seemed to have lost his nose for the market. More to the point, he didn't seem to care. He caught himself feeling something suspiciously like sympathy for The Motherfucker. That plodding voice.

  "We used to be friends," Grunwald went on. "Do you remember that? I do. I don't think we can be friends again--things went too far for that, I guess--but maybe we could be neighbors again. Neighbor." Another of those pauses. "If I don't see you out at Grunwald's Folly, I'll just instruct my lawyer to settle. On your terms. But..."

  Silence, except for the sound of The Motherfucker breathing. Curtis waited. He was sitting at the kitchen table now. He didn't know what he felt. In a little while he might, but for the time being, no.

  "But I'd like to shake your hand and tell you I'm sorry about your damn dog." There was a choked sound that might have been--incredible!--the sound of a sob, and then a click, followed by the phone-robot telling him there were no more messages.

  Curtis sat where he was for a moment longer, in a bright bar of Florida sun that the air conditioner couldn't quite cool out, not even at this hour. Then he went into his study. The market was open; on his computer screen, the numbers had begun their endless crawl. He realized they meant nothing to him. He left it running but wrote a brief note for Mrs. Wilson--Had to go out--before leaving the house.

  There was a motor scooter parked in the garage beside his BMW, and on the spur of the moment he decided to take it. He would have to nip across the main highway on the other side of the bridge, but it wouldn't be the first time.

  He felt a pang of hurt and grief as he took the scooter's key from
the peg and the other attachment on the ring jingled. He supposed that feeling would pass in time, but now it was almost welcome. Almost like welcoming a friend.

  The troubles between Curtis and Tim Grunwald had started with Ricky Vinton, who had once been old and rich and then progressed to old and senile. Before progressing to dead, he'd sold his undeveloped lot at the end of Turtle Island to Curtis Johnson for one-point-five million dollars, taking Curtis's personal check for a hundred and fifty thousand as earnest money and in return writing Curtis a bill of sale on the back of an advertising circular.

  Curtis felt a little like a hound for taking advantage of the old fellow, but it wasn't as if Vinton--owner of Vinton Wire and Cable--was going away to starve. And while a million-five might be considered ridiculously low for such a prime piece of Gulfside real estate, it wasn't insanely low, given current market conditions.

  Well...yes it was, but he and the old man had liked one another, and Curtis was one of those who believed all was fair in love and war, and that business was a subsidiary of the latter. The man's housekeeper--the same Mrs. Wilson who kept house for Curtis--witnessed the signatures. In retrospect Curtis realized he should have known better than that, but he was excited.

  A month or so after selling the undeveloped lot to Curtis Johnson, Vinton sold it to Tim Grunwald, alias The Motherfucker. This time the price was a more lucid five-point-six million, and this time Vinton--perhaps not such a fool after all, perhaps actually sort of a con man, even if he was dying--got half a million in earnest money.

  Grunwald's bill of sale had been witnessed by The Motherfucker's yardman (who also happened to be Vinton's yardman). Also pretty shaky, but Curtis supposed Grunwald had been as excited as he, Curtis, had been. Only Curtis's excitement proceeded from the idea that he would be able to keep the end of Turtle Island clean, pristine, and quiet. Exactly the way he liked it.