Lucky Leonardo (20 page)

If the volcano painted on the wall in the DeltaTek lobby started to erupt, spewing molten lava onto the ceiling and across the marble floor, that would approximate the general surprise when Eugene Binh rose from his wheelchair in a purple rage and lunged for his wife's neck.

She was back on script and making like she was feeding him lunch, but making a hash of it, poking the fork into his chin and dropping mayonnaise on his lap and not under any circumstances touching any part of him with any part of her. Eugene felt like the pet monkey, and it was more than he could sit through. “I don't give a shit about the money,” he muttered to her in between pokes of the fork.

“Be quiet,” she hissed like the dragon lady, and gave him another poke. “You still owe me big time.”

“Like hell I do,” he answered, and went for her neck.

It wasn't like they were hiding his ability to do jumping jacks and hand stands. They didn't forge medical records, or lie about the pain. Rather, Drunkmiller rationalized, they were just gravying over Eugene's recovery prospects for the time being, like maybe until the check cleared, in another recitation of the old jurisprudential saw that if you keep the door closed until you have to open it, you may never have to open it.

Eugene lurched, but indicative of the long way he still had to go in his recovery, and in a ghastly reminiscence of his leap through the glass at DeltaTek, but suggestive too of Marge Blitz's encounter with the bridge abutment and, if you don't mind taking a leap yourself, the collision of Mary Ellen's die with the stack of chips which ended her lucky roll, he wobbled short of his wife's neck and crashed instead head first into the big picture window with the bird's eye view of Boston Harbor.

All jaws dropped, except for his wife's which was busy spewing bitter recriminations at him from a safe distance, but there was no shattered glass this time. It bent, but didn't break. Attorneys Drunkmiller and Remington rushed to their crumpled client like football docs to a player lying still on the turf, like the player who worried Harvey and Hal last Thanksgiving Day, and hovered over him with worried faces and consoling words, and must have also sprinkled him with fairy dust because after taking a ten count he stood himself up, brushed himself off, and sat back down in his wheel chair looking like he wanted to finish his lunch.

Which got the settlement negotiations moving down the slippery slope to yes. Attorney Greene took the first step by saying he planned to amend his counterclaim against the Binhs to allege fraud and conspiracy in connection with the nature and scope of Eugene's alleged injury, and Attorney Drunkmiller met him halfway by saying that Attorney Greene was full of shit and how would he like a fist in his mouth, adding, however, that the Binhs would consider lowering their demand.

After a few frenetic caucuses, and in Leonardo's case Abigail's impassioned and successful telephone call to her connection at his malpractice carrier who conditionally agreed to cover Leonardo's proposed contribution of one hundred thousand dollars (18 percent of the total), plus his attorney's fees, leaving Leonardo not out of pocket money-wise, the parties had a deal, generating enough cash and credits to the Binhs to finance their divorce and, when added to their workers compensation recovery, pay their legal and medical bills and keep Mrs. Binh in Chanel-like suits and cigarettes for the indefinite future, and her husband in long-term residence at a recuperative center, with a few bucks left over, subject to papering, board approval, court approval, insurance company final approval, and a few other conditions which could sink it if somebody decided it needed to be sunk, but it definitely looked, smelled, and tasted like a deal. Just like that.

Just like the monster in your nightmare, who promised to never leave you, suddenly resigns and disappears.
I am no longer your monster. Good luck with the rest of your life.

“I feel good,” Leonardo sang like James Brown as he cruised north to Marge's funeral in the common-sense used Toyota sedan which he acquired with the cash part of the sale of his Corvette.

“Congratulations,” Dr. Z remarked when Leonardo phoned in the news from the road, thinking he was talking to Dr. Z's tape and driving crazy like Marge for a few dotted lines when the tape started talking back. “Sounds like a happy ending.”

“I guess sometimes, for no particular reason, and notwithstanding predictions to the contrary, there's a happy ending,” Leonardo philosophized. “You get lucky, and end up happy. Like in craps, sometimes the shooter survives long enough to make his point.”

“Fine,” Dr. Z said, “but don't stop taking your meds…”

———

Speaking of happy endings, Joan ended her hunger strike within a week of her arrival at Harriford Academy, although she wasn't about to give up on her clandestine plans for escape, in the back of the UPS truck, or by hopping a freight train on its way to Canada, or disguised as a corpse
à la
the Count of Monte Cristo, which led her to find friends in the underground Escape Society which met in the woods on Saturday afternoons and sometimes at midnight under the full moon depending on who was in detention and who was on security patrol, and swore each other to secrecy by oaths chanted to the beat of sticks on stones which they passed down from year to year. The oaths, the sticks, and the stones.

Joan invited Harvey to join. “Sounds like fun,” he said, “but I don't want to get into trouble.”

———

On the way out of Drunkmiller's office, Leonardo thanked Abigail profusely. “Just business,” she said, but was smiling and happy about it too, and gave him a congratulatory hug. On the whole, Leonardo thought, she was a disappointment. Although maybe he expected too much. As Dr. Z was fond of saying, “…if you want hugs and kisses for your booboos, you should hire a mother.”

Marge Blitz's funeral drew a decent crowd for a weekday afternoon, including Janet Casey and Mulverne who arrived after the folk singing began, despite Janet's best efforts, which were speedway quality and revived Mulverne. “I feel much better,” he whispered to her and to the back ten rows as they entered the chapel, like he had just taken a meaningful dump.

Helen gave Mulverne a discreet “shhhh” sign, and ushered him and Janet to available seats. Leonardo arrived a few minutes later, after making what he considered good time in his fuel-efficient Toyota, and was surprised to see Janet and Mulverne, whom he had shaken hands with over the table at Drunkmiller's within the hour, and coolly wished well like they were business colleagues closing a business deal, but far more surprised to see Barbara, two rows ahead on the aisle.

Barbara, Barbara, Barbara. What in the world are you doing here?
He blinked to see if she would disappear. But she didn't, suggesting she was either the kind of hallucination which would require an adjustment to his pill regimen, or was actually sitting on the bench in the flesh. In the reality. This afternoon. Accompanied by her lovely neck.

When he sniffed for her scent, on the assumption that hallucinations did not emit odor, he caught a whiff of the messenger dog, the dog affiliated with higher powers who arranges coincidences, as he recalled Tom describing the dog in his Foxwoods after-dinner story about the coincidence of meeting a girl and a dog on the beach at dawn, good old Tom, although it could just be that big old golden retriever snoozing near the door. More dogs were turning up at funerals these days, come to pay their last respects, often without invitations.

By then Kurt, bandaged about his ribs and head, was explaining his view of Marge's life to the assembled. He spoke slowly because of how painful it was for him to talk, and remember. “Marge tried to dress around her bigness,” he said, “but let's face it, if you wrap a tent around a cow it's still a tent and she's still a cow…”

Helen spotted Leonardo, and asked him by use of an expressive eyebrow whether he planned to work or watch. He answered with an eyebrow of his own: “Helen,” it said, “at this point in my roller coaster day, week, month, and year, I'm here to watch you perform.”

She blew him a thank-you kiss with the slightest twist of her lip, like in the early days behind the Starbucks counter when she cupped her breast for his eyes only. He meant to ask her what the story was on the dog by the door, but she had already turned back to doing her business, with great and decorous sadness.

Kurt got less bitchy and more sentimental after he broadcast Marge's last tape, climaxing in the fireworks of her crack-up, followed by a moment of stunned silence on the tape and in the audience. Kurt wiped away a tear. “She was an imperfect person. She drank, and went crazy, and kicked me around, and smashed into a bridge abutment,” he said. “But in our good times, and most of our times were good times, she was a mother to me…”

That sentiment put some handkerchiefs in motion.

“I resent, I really resent,” Kurt went on, “the people who didn't know her, who didn't know anything about her, who attacked her character, and attacked her decency, attacked her like dogs going after a defenseless mother deer, and locked their jaws on her throat and brought her down. I hope they're happy now. I hope they're happy they got their pound of flesh, their two hundred and twenty pounds of flesh, splattered like a pizza all over the road. I hope they're happy now…”

Which is when Brockleman's widow rose from a middle bench looking haggard and thin and a short step from the grave herself and pointed a bony finger toward Kurt's eye: “Your stupid, crazy mother person killed my husband,” she said, “and you stand there telling jokes and lies? Who are you?”

The room inhaled and held its collective breath, unnerved by the confrontation and uncertain as to whom to support.

“Trouble,” Leonardo thought to himself from his place at the back. “No exit in sight.”

But Helen was completely can-do, and responded in real-time, like a seasoned professional at the top of her game who knew the rules and knew what to do when the rules didn't reach. She was at the distraught widow's side, with an arm wrapped around for support, and a handkerchief for the tears. She offered just the right touch and just the right commiseration. She led the widow from the room without a further finger being pointed. Like a bomb diffused.

When it was done, Leonardo beamed like a proud father.

A shaken Kurt picked up his nearby guitar, and in a thin but evocative voice and with minimum strumming began to sing, “Imagine,” the John Lennon classic with the easy words that everyone could join in on, and they did, over and over until there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Except for Mulverne, who joked he had tear-duct reduction surgery to keep him from ever crying in public, although the fact was he wasn't motivated to cry.

Later on, as the crowd filed out, in good spirits like their team had come back in the late innings to snatch victory from defeat, Helen found Lenny, still in his back row seat, still beaming. “Lenny,” she said.

“Helen, you were great…”

“Lenny, I have amazing news. I've been discovered.”

“What?”

“A guy here today, the deceased's uncle, is very big in New York funerals. He liked me. He offered me a gig at the best funeral parlor in Manhattan…”

“Wow.”

“With a bonus, and benefits, and a chance to run my own show…”

“When?”

“As soon as I can get there. What do you think? Should I take it?”

“Of course you should, Helen. It's your lucky break.”

“It really is.”

“What about Mary Ellen?”

“She'll come with me.”

“Fabulous.”

“Will you miss me?”

“Sweetheart, you know I'll miss you.”

Helen scurried off. There was a whole second act to be performed, graveside. As she turned the corner, Lenny heard a familiar voice behind him.

“How've you been, Lenny?” Barbara asked.

He looked back. His heart, for reasons no more clear to him now than ever before, skipped a beat, a big beat, the kind of beat that gets middle-aged men running, or at least walking with controlled quickness, to the cardiologist.

“Not bad,” he said. “What brings you here?”

“Marge and I were in the same women's support group.”

“Oh. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. She offered good support. She'll be hard to replace.”

“I bet.”

“And you? What brings you here?”

“I like funerals.”

“Oh. And the girl?” Barbara asked, with a nod in the direction of the departed Helen.

“Just a friend.”

“A friend?”

“A friend who's leaving town.”

Barbara moved closer, within arm's length, and looked directly into Lenny's eyes. “Lenny,” she said in a low voice, “I could use a friend.”

“Oh?”

“Like you.”

“Oh?”

“Do you want to try again?”

“OK.”

Jonathan Canter shares an empty nest on the outskirts of Boston with his lovely wife and their aging cocker spaniel. In between bouts with his fiction muse he practices and teaches employment law, snoops around the neighborhood with his dog, and watches the Red Sox on television. In a prior life he was an editor of
The Harvard Lampoon
, which may explain his sense of humor.