Act of God (20 page)

“Be sure to notice whether it’s a boy or a girl.”

A nice smile. “Mister Originality.”

Maureen moved me headfirst into the iron lung. The first impression was being inside a coffin, and I pushed from my mind Grgo’s comment about “the earth that fed you.” Then I noticed the semicircular top and the indirect lighting and the metal buttresses. Suddenly, it was like a day when I got back from the service and a friend took me through the Callahan Tunnel in his convertible, my head lolling on the backrest, watching the roof of the tunnel as we went by underneath it. Now I had maybe eight inches of airspace between my face and the walls and roof of the machine. Above me, a white disk and then two red dots flashed, and I was aware of the whirring of a small fan somewhere. Then, over a muted public address system, I heard Maureen’s voice in my ear.

“Are you all right in there, Mr. Cuddy?”

“Fine.”

“Please stay completely still. The first imaging lasts for just three minutes.”

There was the sound of radiator pipes clanging, then an arrhythmic bongo sequence, then a constant chattering, somewhere between a sewing machine and a jackhammer. The chattering seemed to get louder as time went by, but that might just have been me.

“Okay,” in my ear, “are you still all right in there?”

“Still fine.”

“Good. Relax and let me look at this image.”

Relax.

She said, “Okay. Good one. This next will take nine minutes. Please remain completely still.”

“Right.”

Radiator, bongo, chattering. Same sense of escalation as we went through it.

“Okay, Mr. Cuddy. That was the worst of it. How are you?”

“Still no problems.”

“Good. The next one is the last. Just four minutes. Ready?”

“Ready.”

After the sequence, Maureen said, “Okay. I’ll be right in.”

I hadn’t realized she’d been out.

Maureen slid my table from the machine and unstrapped me. Returning my book and little key, she led me back to the locker room door and left me. On the bench inside, a small boy sat hunched over in a johnny suit that accentuated how thin he was. His face was too old for his body, a lopsided bandage wrapped around his head. The way Beth was for a while after they told us what was growing inside her skull. The boy didn’t look up at me.

I said, “It’s not so bad. More like going for a ride through a tunnel.”

This time he did look up, with the scorn of a veteran for a rookie. “I know.”

I shut up, changed, and left him, hunched over on his bench.

“John, good to see you.”

“Same here, El.”

“Shoulder and knee all cleared up?”

“Guess not, I’m still wearing this thing.”

He peered over the counter at my brace. “You supposed to work out already?”

“Not exactly. I just need to blow off a little tension.”

Elie frowned. “You been to the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Physical therapy?”

“No.”

His face showed he’d heard the edge I tried to keep out of my voice. “Well, just use your own judgment, then.”

I took myself down a notch. “Thanks, El. I will.”

As I did the hip and back machine in front of a mirrored wall, I noticed Elie talking with one of the other members, a real estate mogul named Norm. He was about my size and weight, but he could ride the stationary bike longer than the winner of the Tour de France. Norm lived in the high rise catercorner to my brownstone on Beacon. He seemed to have a lot of free time during the day, because I’d run into him at the club often enough when most folks would have to be working.

I skipped the leg extension machine because of my knee and moved to one of the two leg curls. Norm got on the sister machine next to it. The effect was that we were lying stomach down about a foot away from each other, like men on adjoining massage tables.

“Elie tells me you screwed up your leg.”

I did a curl. Count of two on the uplift, four on the down. “And shoulder.”

“Bastards, both. When that happened to me, I had to lay off most of the machines and all the running.”

I paused on the up, then let it down slowly. “What did you do instead?”

“Got started on the bike. Boring, but it keeps your tone and wind close to where they’d be otherwise. StairMaster helps, too.”

Two up, four down. “What about the upper body?”

“The therapist my doc recommended showed me how to use this thick elastic band. I felt a little silly, but I could do the exercises on my own, and I came back from it.”

Two, four. “From the injury, you mean?”

“Right. Takes a while, but you feel the progress, and that keeps you going.”

“Thanks, Norm.”

“Don’t mention it. You stay active at our age, these things are gonna happen to you. Trick is to come back the right way.”

“Tell Elie I got the message.”

Norm grinned. “What are you doing for the Fourth?”

“Of July?”

“Right.”

“No plans.”

“I’m having a party at my place, watch the fireworks and concert. You interested?”

About five hundred thousand people jam themselves onto the riverbank to listen to the Boston Pops play in the Hatch Shell and to see the special effects get launched from an anchored barge. “Can I bring a date?”

“Sure, but nothing else. I’ll have booze and buffet. Be fifty, sixty people there. Who knows, maybe one of them needs a private eye.”

“Networking.”

“The way the world turns.”

I did a very light circuit of the remaining machines, then twenty minutes on the bike and ten on the StairMaster. Pulling on my sweatshirt, I stopped at Elie’s front counter.

He looked up from a newspaper. “How’d the workout go?”

“About the way you thought it should.”

“Hey, John, I’m not trying—”

“You were right, El. Thanks.”

“No big thing. You coming to Norm’s party?”

“First my personal trainer, now my social secretary.”

A big smile. “Everybody needs somebody sometime.”

“How about a movie?”

“Don’t feel like sitting, Nance.”

She turned a page in the newspaper. “Video?”

“Don’t feel like sitting here, either.”

Nancy Meagher looked at me across the coffee table in her living room. We’d just cleared it of dinner dishes, Renfield in a ball on her couch, snoozing off the scraps I’d fed him.

Nancy said, “If you were a little younger, we could go to one of the rock clubs.”

“Funny.”

“No, really. Jesus Lizard is at the Paradise.”

“Sounds totally awesome.”

“How about Sexploitation at the Rat?”

“What do they do?”

“Says here ‘retro-dance.’ ”

“You know what that means?”

“No.”

“Maybe you’re too old for the clubs, too.”

“Here’s another—oh, you’ll love this one. Look.”

I set down the last of my beer and read the name of the group. Tequila Mockingbird. “I don’t get it.”

“Say it out loud.”

I did. “I get it.”

Nancy’s voice changed. “I don’t.”

I looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“I know your being banged up has been—”

“I’m a little more than banged up, Nance. Parts don’t work the way they’re supposed to anymore.”

“But you’re doing what you can about that, right?”

“I can’t do anything about it.”

“Yes, you can, and you are. You’ve been to the doctor, you had that magnetic thing.”

“Magnetic resonance imaging.”

“The doctor will read the image or whatever you call it, and prescribe what you should do.”

“What if there’s nothing I can do?”

“Oh, great. John, it’s not like you to be so … defeatist. What’s the matter?”

I told her about what Norm said at Nautilus.

“So? That sounds encouraging.”

“Encouraging.”

“Yes. If those things worked for him, there’s a good chance they’ll work for you.”

“Nance, I’m not a real estate wheel who just wants to stay in good shape. I’m a private investigator who has to be able to do things.”

“We’re back to that, are we?”

Without names or details, I told her the trouble I’d had with Larry Rivkind on the staircase at Value Furniture.

“John, he sucker-punched you.”

“And therefore?”

“And therefore it wasn’t your knee or your shoulder or your less-than-immortal masculinity that let that happen. Even if you were fine physically, you never would have blocked that punch.”

“Granted. But afterward, I was barely able to handle him without hurting him.”

“But you did.”

“He was just a college kid, Beth.”

Nancy’s fine blue eyes filled. “You’ve never done that before.”

“Done what?”

“Called me ‘Beth.’ ”

“Jesus. Did I?”

“Yes.”

“Nance—”

“Just don’t touch me for a minute, okay?”

“Okay.”

She used the edge of her forefinger to swipe at the tears. “That’s been the hardest part about being with you, John.”

I hated to ask, but I didn’t see it. “What has?”

“That. You’re with me, but you’re not with me.”

“Nancy, I just plain don’t get it.”

“Look.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “When we first met, I understood about you still being … attached to Beth. I thought it was—I was going to say ‘admirable,’ but I really mean ‘desirable.’ That faithfulness was a character trait that made me … that made me think I wanted to love you. And then your other traits started to grow on me, too. Your sense of duty, of ethics, even your sense of humor. And I realized I did love you, and I do love you, but …”

“But what?”

“I get the feeling sometimes, not often but too often, that I’m some kind of … stand-in, that I’m not really the one in your life yet.”

“Nancy, there hasn’t been anybody else, not even close.”

“You don’t understand. I’m not saying there’s somebody else. Or I guess I am.” Another swipe with the finger. “You’re still tied to Beth, like you haven’t really taken hold of me as the person in your real life.”

“Nance, I spend all my ‘real’ life with you.”

“But that’s just the point, John. You give me the impression you want to spend time with me, but not your life with me.”

“How? How do I do that?”

“The auction.”

“The auction?”

“Yes. I wanted to go down there with you, not just to have a ‘stevedore,’ but to have somebody help me pick out a piece of furniture that we’d kind of buy together, a start on nice things that we’d own together and use together and look at over the years together, watch last together.”

I let out a breath. “And all I did was take potshots at it.”

“At the auction, at the furniture, at me. It was all just a … lark, the boy indulging the girl in what she wanted to do and being a wiseass about even that.”

“Nance, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I started to, in the car on the way back. But then you seemed to come around, the way you do, and I thought you’d gotten the idea. Then after you hurt … got hurt, I couldn’t very well be mad at you for your attitude when the thing I bought was the reason you were hurt.”

“Nancy, the reason I hurt myself was because I was too stubborn about thinking I was man enough to move that bureau without more help.”

She stared at me. “You’re doing it again, John.”

“Doing what again?”

“Making it seem like you got it, like you’re a sensitive man who can be objective about himself. So now we’ll start joking and move off the subject and into the bedroom for some tender, soothing sex.”

Nancy was right. It was hard for me to see it, much less admit it, but she was right.

I took her left hand, the one she didn’t use on the tears, in mine. “I’m not sure this is going to help, but let me explain something to you. Beth was the only woman I ever knew, and not just biblically. She was half of me, Nance, the half that didn’t have to be the ex-MP or the insurance investigator. I could relax with her, confide in her, not worry about myself around her. Then she got taken, slowly, and that half of me went with her. It just wasn’t there anymore when I woke up in the morning or went to bed at night. In the time we’ve been together, I’ve felt some of that half coming back to me, back into me, but it’s not all there yet. I do know that from the moment I first saw you in that courtroom, I felt a ‘ping’ inside me, something I hadn’t felt since I’d lost her. You started me back up, Nance.”

“Ping and start up. I feel like an ignition key.”

“Now who’s joking us off the subject?”

“Sorry.”

“So I’m back on track, kid, and it’s thanks to you. But I’m not to where I was with Beth, and I’m not sure I ever will be. Or can be.”

Her stare got a little hollow. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard you say, John Cuddy.”

“It’s the truth. If you’d rather I lied to you, I’d rather leave.”

“Don’t.”

“Which?”

“Either.” She wet her lips. “I know … I don’t really know what it was like for you to lose Beth, John. I lost my dad when I was too young to understand it and my mom when I was in law school, but those were parents, people I’d taken as given. I don’t know what it’s like to lose the one person you’ve sought out, the one you expect to spend the rest of your life with, but I do know this.”

“What?”

“I’d know what that was like if I ever lost you.”

She put her face in the crook of my good shoulder and started to cry.

I gave her a while. Then, “Nance?”

A muffled sound.

“When I called you ‘Beth’ before, there was a reason.”

Her head lifted enough so she could speak clearly. “What was it?”

I spoke softly into her ear. “When I was having the MRI thing today, the machine is like being slid into a coffin.”

“Oh, John, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s okay. It’s okay, it’s not even really that. It’s more … when I was finished, and felt kind of, I don’t know, relieved that I was through it, there was this kid in the locker room.”

“The locker room?”

“Where they have you get ready for the machine. He couldn’t have been more than ten, maybe not even, but his face was so … weary, and he was wearing one of those head bandages, like a turban.”

Nancy pushed back some more, so that she was looking me square in the face, her hands resting on my collarbone. “Go on.”