“She rude to you when she let you in?”
“Nice as pie. I even got the impression she was kinda flirting with me.”
“That’s Maestra. An Aphrodite type right down to the finish line.”
“She took to me. It’s
“Well, she’ll have to stand in line with the rest. Come on. Follow me.”
“I’m right behind you, son. But what did she mean when she called you Mr. Worker Ant?”
“Never mind that.” He all but blushed. “It’s a pet name. Family thing.”
“Oh. Like when my uncles and aunts used to call me ‘little asshole.’ “
Demonstrating his growing expertise with the chair, Switters wheeled down the dim foyer, past the living room—pausing briefly to ascertain that the Matisse was still there—and through a formal dining room permanently lacquered with the unsophisticated fumes from takeout food. From the dining room, French doors led out onto a spacious deck with a sweeping view of the cold and busy sound named for Peter Puget. Next to a potted evergreen there was a Styrofoam chest, which he circled three times rapidly before coming to a halt beside it, facing the water.
“You’ve taken to that chair like a worm to tequila,” Bobby marveled. “How long’s it been your mode of transport?”
Switters patted the blue Naugahyde upholstered arms of the lightweight, foldable Invacare 9000 XT, pride of Elyria, Ohio. He patted its plastic-coated, chrome-plated hand rims (used to manually propel it), kicked with the side of his foot its pneumatic “flat-free” tires, squirmed his rump about on the “contour plus” cushion that topped the “drop hook solid folding” seat. How such a brand-new deluxe-model wheelchair had ended up in the Boquichicos infirmary, he didn’t know. Part of a foreign-aid package, presumably. He did know that he had failed to send it back with Inti as promised, and he felt a prickle of guilt over that omission, even though he’d wired the clinic a thousand dollars his second day back in the States.
“It’s flame resistant.”
“That’s handy.”
“And bacteria resistant.”
“Smart. Furniture on wheels, you don’t know where it’s been.”
“Oh, I keep a watchful eye.”
“And lock it up at night, I hope. Person can’t be too aseptic in this day and age.” In a characteristic gesture, Bobby tossed a pompadourlike tussock of inky hair out of his eyes while simultaneously patting down the cowlick that coiled like a busted bedspring farther back on his head. Switters had recently turned thirty-six (his birthday had passed unheralded—except by the migraine-makers—on a flight from Paris to New York), which meant that Bobby must have been at least approaching his thirty-third year, but he seemed, if anything, to have grown more boyish —Huck Finnish in stance, Tiger Woodsish in build—since Switters had seen him last, and also more foredoomed. Small wonder Maestra or any other woman would find him worth a flutter. “Fine piece of engineering, but you’d think they’d figure out a way to plumb the damn things.”
“To accommodate a wet bar or . . .”
“Naw,” Bobby went on, shaking his raven mane as if rejecting his previous thought, “that’d never work. But I’ll tell you, son, what’d throw my happy heart to the wolves if I was to have to park a bony Texas butt in one of these suckers every day is the trial and tribulation of just taking a whiz. I mean, don’t you have to off-load yourself onto a customized throne and wee-wee sitting down like you was queen of the May?”
“Such unlucky gentlemen do exist,” said Switters, “but behold the masculine ease with which I can perform the rite of the void.” In demonstration, he bolted boldly upright and stood on the footplate as if before a public urinal. “Of course, you have to make sure the brake is set, and balance your weight, or you could pitch face-first into the fixture.”
Bobby looked like a buffaloed rubbernecker at the Lazarus show. “You can stand?!”
Grinning, Switters hopped backward up onto the seat, where he then began to jog in place, raising his knees almost as high as the scarlet T-shirt he wore under his double-breasted navy pinstriped suit. The wheelchair shook. It teetered precariously. For an instant, he seemed to panic. He throttled the trot.
“What the? . . .” Bobby’s face was changing expressions faster than Clark Kent changed underwear. He went swiftly from astonishment to relief to annoyance to amusement to imagined comprehension. “Okay. Alrighty. I get it. Even a maniac like yourself wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to mock the afflicted or play a cruel joke on your ol’ podner. So’s I reckon you’re fixing to go deep cover, and you’ll be trying to convince some alleged bad guys somewhere that you’ve been crippled by the forces of imperialism. The CIA and Actors Studio: telling them apart has never been simple. Did you know Mata Hari’s real name was Gertrude? But hey! Anyway. I’m gladder than shit you’re not actually stoved in ‘cause I was hoping we could hit a dance club or two this evening.”
Switters reseated himself. “It’s not like that, Bobby,” he said quietly. “It’s not a cover. I really am confined to this contraption. Indefinitely, if not permanently.”
“Then what the? . . . You were bouncing around like a poot in a microwave.”
“Why don’t you take your bandanna, if you don’t mind, and dry off one of those patio chairs.” Switters lifted the lid of the Styrofoam cooler. There was a rattle of ice shards as he removed a pair of glistening bottles. Sing Ha. “For old times’ sake,” he said. “Only four of these in stock, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. But there’s a Thai restaurant a mile from here, and they deliver. Good. Have a seat. You’re not chilly, are you?”
“I live in Nome,” Bobby said. “Nome,
The sun had muscled through the oyster frappe for the first time in weeks, but a light breeze was blowing off the water, and it was raw around its edges. “The state I’m in, I’m impervious to climate. So make yourself comfortable. I’ve got a story to relate . . .”
“I should hope.”
“. . . and you’re going to find it harder to swallow than a cat fur omelet. It’s hard for me, too, so be patient, if patience is among your virtues . . .”
“You could fit all my virtues in Minnie Mouse’s belly button and still have room for Mickey’s tongue and their prenuptial agreement.”
“. . . because it’s going to take me some time, even to get started. Maybe while I’m gathering my wits, as the maitre d’ used to say at the Algonquin Hotel, you could fill me in on what you’ve been up to.”
Noticing Switters’s untypical solemnity, Bobby said, “Sure. Take it slow if you need to. But you’ve got to tell me one thing up front. The question that’s burning a hole in my tortilla is . . . well, is or is not the affliction that’s landed you in this senior-citizen dune buggy the result of a sexually transmitted disease? I mean, I hate to be blunt, but if you’ve been bit by something of that nature two years after Bangkok, there’s a chance that I might . . .”
Switters had to laugh.
“Well, we were plowing the same fields, you know. Extracting ore from neighboring shafts. So to speak.”
The word
The sun, as if wanting to listen in, as if there might be something new under it, after all, fought off the curdling stratocumulus and moved in closer. By the time Switters finished his hour-long account, the deck was awash in afternoon sunlight; mild, respectful, autumnal rays, bright enough but lacking any sear in their beam. The sea breeze persisted throughout, but so restrained, finally, it could give the impression that it, too, had been mesmerized by the tale.
If the sun was enticed and the breeze engrossed, Bobby Case was those things and more. The former Air Force officer was literally transfixed—whether with amazement, awe, disbelief, sympathy, or scorn, it was impossible to ascertain. Many minutes passed, however, during which he could not raise his beer to his lips. When at last he spoke, his voice was taut from the strain of trying to sound normal and unimpressed. “So, that ol’ boy? That limey? He really bought the farm?”
