Physical Therapy (19 page)

104

Z. A. Maxfield

Cooper"s image popped into my head as it often did when I was feeling emotionally off-kilter. Cooper once cared about me enough to save my life. Not from a burning building or a speeding car, but Cooper had been there for me at my worst moment, a time when I realized that I either had to keep putting one foot in front of the other or end it all. That had scared the hell out of me, and I"d had Cooper"s strong arms to hold me. I"d had his love to sustain me. I would never, ever forget that.

I wished that Ken had someone like that. Someone who could buoy him up when he was in trouble and keep him from drowning in his doubts and fears. It couldn"t be me. My very existence in his life was like an anchor dragging him down, and not because he was gay. His mother was right; I was not the man for him. Nothing could make me worthy of the trust he"d placed in me. I"d already violated that by letting him believe we had more than we could ever have together.

I wasn"t about to go after him or call him. I wasn"t about to take it back. Izzie may be certain our auras matched, and our chemistry might work for a while, but eventually, even if he didn"t want to, he"d begin to see my white trash ex-con ass for what it was. I poured myself into cleaning the bathroom, still smarting from Ken"s angry words.

Izzie broke into my thoughts. “Ken has an appointment today to get a massage.

What am I supposed to tell him?”

“I don"t think that"s a good idea.”

“You won"t even work on him? Isn"t the point that he be given the best care possible?”

“Yes it is, and when he"s in here and my hands are all over him, and he"s lying there thinking I"m punishing him, wishing he"d get lost or whatever, how is he going to feel?”

“Just because his mother said—”

“Izzie.” I put the rag and spray bottle I was using down on the long countertop and gave her my full attention. I must have looked a mess, standing there wearing rubber gloves, sweaty from scrubbing tile. “His mother has nothing to do with this. He doesn"t have the first clue what he wants. He"s not even experienced enough to ask for it. He"s coming back from a tragedy, and his body and brain are seriously messed up. I don"t want him to get swept off his feet by the first guy that comes along and offers him hot sex any more than she does.”

“You don"t believe in love at first sight?”

“Of course not. I think that"s a fairy tale that leads even intelligent people to drive-through Vegas weddings and morning-after divorces.”

“You don"t believe it happens? People say it happens. When they go on television and say, „it was love at first sight," you think they"re not telling the truth?”

“What I think is,” I said, wishing I had a free hand to rub my face because my throat hurt and it was making my nose run, “I
think
that it may happen to some people, maybe. But not to me.”

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“How do you know?” she almost whispered. “Never mind that you"re not in love; how do you know that you couldn"t be someone a guy falls in love with at first sight?

How do you know that Ken doesn"t love you?”

I didn"t address whether I was in love. Something about that didn"t bear scrutiny.

“I"m not the kind of guy you fall in love with. He knows nothing about me; he can"t possibly love me.”

“Maybe not intellectually, Jordan, but other things play a part and—”

“I don"t deserve it, Izzie,” I told her, flinging the gloves off. The moist air was starting to get to me. The bathroom was claustrophobic at the best of times, but now, when I was already agitated, it felt like there was no air to breathe. “When Ken falls in love, I hope to hell that person is a better man than I am. Look. I"m done here for now.

I"ve got to go. I need to…” I started to pile all the supplies back into the basket.

I could see Izzie was defeated. She looked at me with a kind of motherly concern that I didn"t think I could justify right then. “Take some time. You"ve been here long hours since you came. Take the day.”

“Thank you, Izzie.” I swallowed hard. “I think maybe I"ll…maybe I"ll take a drive.”

“Be careful.” Izzie took the basket from me. “We"ll be here when you get back.

Don"t give up on St. Nacho"s.”

I felt a tug on my heart as I looked at her. “I won"t. I like it here.”

“Good,” she said. “You get on now.”

I looked at my watch as I left Day-Use; it wasn"t even seven thirty a.m. yet. As I walked home, I looked over each one of the businesses on the street. I already felt like I belonged here. I saw my coffee place and the Chinese joint that stayed open late. I"d gotten soap to use at the Laundromat and eaten at the Denny"s. If I wanted to stay in town, it was going to be necessary to keep to myself. Even the tiniest bit of involvement could disrupt the delicate balance I was trying to maintain.

St. Nacho"s wanted to claim me, and I wanted to belong here. I didn"t want anything to mess that up.

I got in my car and took off without even going inside my motel room. I took the Pacific Coast Highway heading south and finally decided that what I really wanted was to stand on a beach all by myself. I wanted to find a high place to look at the water, to see how far I could see out to the horizon. I needed a sunset.

I wasn"t trying to figure everything out. I planned to simply sit somewhere that would remind me of how insignificant I was. Being unimportant in the vast scheme of things has its perks. One of them is the sure and certain knowledge that whatever Ken"s feelings were for me or mine for him, I would be forgotten as soon as the next guy came along.

Sure, that made me sad. It made me feel like shit. When Ken talked about feeling right? Well, I"d felt it. More than right. In that complex blend of emotions I felt when I 106

Z. A. Maxfield

was around him was what I might call
inevitable
. He gave me peace that filled me up and overflowed me until all I wanted was to be the guy standing by his side for as long as he would let me. But I knew I could find peace alone as well, and that it would be better for everyone—but especially Ken—in the long run if I did.

I climbed down a rocky path on a deserted part of the coast where I could see several shallow depressions filled with seawater and teeming with colorful organisms.

The water was icy cold, and after even a few minutes my feet began to sting a little as I groped around. Coming from Wisconsin to California, I"d learned to love the ocean. It"s a vast wilderness of which only limited parts can be seen, unveiled, as in the case of tidal pools, every so often like a special treat.

Farther out in the water, waves churned a gray-green, flushing sand and other debris around so I couldn"t see what was underneath it even as close as six feet away.

But in the pools I could find and even touch starfish, sea urchins, crabs, sea sponges, and other kinds of spiny things and crustaceans I couldn"t name.

I let the ocean breeze blow away my anxiety. I let the rippling water in the tidal pools soothe my spirit. I stayed there all day, glad I always carried sunscreen, water, and a variety of clothes in the trunk of my car. I watched the sun slip down toward the water on the horizon. At one point, it was in one part of the sky and the moon in another. That seemed so startling to me, and beautiful, that I felt it catch on something inside my heart that held it there long after the sun was gone. I made my way back to St. Nacho"s, certain of the place I held in the world and my responsibility to maintain it.

* * * * *

When I got back, I went to the motel"s cramped office to change rooms at the SeaView Motel. I wasn"t proud of it, but I was desperate to move to a room to which Ken did not possess a key. I didn"t plan to hide from him exactly; I just didn"t want to be instantly available. I found myself telling the bored night manager that I"d given my key to someone and they hadn"t given it back. He made me pay twenty-five dollars for the lost key, even though I told him I was sure to get it back. He gave me a look that said he didn"t believe me. I couldn"t tell whether he was serious.

“Perhaps,” the night clerk began, studying me in an assessing way that I found rude but not unexpected, “you should refrain from bringing strangers back to your room.”

“And suck the joy out of my carefree homosexual lifestyle?” I guess I felt like being an asshole. “Hardly.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Well, I never.” Jeez. Did people really say that?

“I have between eleven and twelve on Friday night open, if you want to,” I informed him as I left. The bells on the door gave an irritating jingle. I jerked the door again to ring them harder. “Don"t bother to dress.” Physical Therapy

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I actually heard him laugh before I shut the door behind me. Apparently he was an old curmudgeon but didn"t particularly hate me. Not enough to kick me out of his motel, anyway.

I was about to enter my room with the manager"s spare key to get my things, and I had just pushed the key into the lock when I heard footsteps come up behind me. I turned to look, frankly expecting to see Ken. What I saw instead was a black flashlight, the kind that cops carry, coming at me with such speed I couldn"t hope to dodge it. As I heard it crack into the bone on the side of my head, I thought, “Oh,
fuck
.” 108

Z. A. Maxfield

Chapter Seventeen

I remember the accident I
caused
, the one that killed Bobby Johnson, in exact detail.

I remember, first of all, that flash of disbelief when I couldn"t believe what my senses told me. I heard the onlookers shouting without understanding them, like they were monkey noises from the zoo, and from that moment forward everything came at me in slow motion. The terror of that day still hadn"t left me, and to say that my heart stopped or maybe imploded in my chest felt like a vast understatement.

If I took all the disappointment and sadness and shock of my life and added it together, it could never equal what I felt in that first sickening minute after I ran over Bobby Johnson with my truck.

Following on the heels of that, a kind of madness took over. First, I"d wanted to deny everything. I was desperate to find an excuse or a reason or a plan to escape responsibility. Then I had the almost irresistible surge of desire to flee. It still sounds trite, but if I could have switched places with Bobby I would have, if only to escape that wrenching guilt.

For the first few minutes after I was attacked at the SeaView Motel, I thought there might even have been some magical shift in time and space that had granted me my wish, because the events of that long-ago night were so similar, starting with the flashing lights.

“Jordan.” Someone seemed to be calling my name from a long way off. There was a light shining in my eyes, bouncing back and forth, irritating me, then being pulled away a moment later. “Jordan, is that your name? Jordan?” I couldn"t answer, but I heard feet moving. Something heavy banged down on the concrete next to my head. I heard wheels squeaking and the chatter of police radios.

Something teased at my memory about the police. I shifted my eyes to look for Bill, Cooper"s brother-in-law, hoping that if I was in trouble again, he could explain it to me.

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Bill was a good man, a man I"d come to respect and love like family. A face appeared in my field of vision but it wasn"t Bill"s, and what I could see was blurry.

“Jordan,” came a voice I recognized, but not Bill"s. “Jordan, it"s me, Andy.” I looked to where I thought I heard the voice.
Not Bill
. Andy. Bill was back in River Falls, and I was in St. Nacho"s. Andy. Officer Andrew, Izzie"s boyfriend. My vision was blurry and my head… What the fuck was wrong with my head?

“Jordan, if you can hear me, can you squeeze my hand?” I felt him touch my hand.

He laid his own on it, palm down. I tried to give it a squeeze, but I didn"t know if he felt it. Nothing seemed real. I felt like a ghost. I could see them, I could hear them, but I couldn"t respond. I couldn"t let them know I was there.

My eyes were watering, and I felt the tears leak down the sides of my face into my ears. The distance I felt from the scene—from the tense faces looking at me—and my inability to make myself understood combined to confuse me. Was I crying? I couldn"t tell. There was other wetness on the side of my head, on my neck, and I had to think hard what it might mean. EMTs waved bloody gloves in my field of vision as they put a neck support on me and bandaged my head. I slipped further and further away from the sight and the sound of the people around me.

I caught one last look at Andy, and what I saw there scared the crap out of me.

What must I look like if he looked at me like that? Like I was already gone. I tried again to squeeze his hand. He felt something, I think, and peered closely at me in the light given off by the headlights of the police cars.

“Jordan,” he said gently, brushing a tear from my cheek. “Don"t fret. We"ve got you.” He looked grim. I took that to mean that things were not good.

I couldn"t talk; it was useless.

“Did you see who hit you?”

I remained silent, mesmerized by everything that was going on around me.

Sometimes it seemed to speed up and sometimes it was excruciatingly painful and slow.

“You"ll be okay, son,” Andy told me as I felt myself hoisted up onto a gurney.

I wanted Cooper. I wanted to tell Cooper…something. I wished I could see Ken.

But that wasn"t right. I couldn"t see Ken. He needed… He didn"t need someone like me.

I didn"t let Andy"s hand go when he tried to pull it away, and his gaze shot back to my face. I moved my mouth, incapable of anything but the puff of breath that escaped.

“I"ll call Izzie, Jordan. She"ll know what to do.”
Not Ken!
I wanted to shout. Finally, my stomach gave a sickening lurch as the EMTs lifted the gurney and rolled it to the ambulance. I had a moment"s terror when I thought I"d vomit, and then…nothing.

* * * * *

110

Z. A. Maxfield

When I woke in the hospital, I had no idea how long I"d been there. The fact that I couldn"t tell what time it was—or even what day—was frightening. It was daytime. I could tell from the way light filtered through the vertical blinds. The room I was in wasn"t private but mine was the last bed, near the windows, and even with the curtain drawn between me and whoever was in the next bed, I knew someone was there from the steady, rattling breaths they took and the sound of a heart monitor.