roared away.
Whatever story Bobby had fed Maestra, it proved effective. As Switters wheeled about her spacious house at top speed, slaloming through an obstacle course of furniture, skidding around corners—practicing, honing his skills —she smiled knowingly, approvingly, almost with a wink. If only Capt. Nut Case had given Suzy a similar briefing!
Alas, as Bobby had hinted it might, the wheelchair had a dampening effect on Suzy’s presumed and anticipated passions. When she came home from school (rather late, he thought) on Monday afternoon to find him chair-bound in his mother’s parlor, she emitted a sharp cry of dismay and approached him tentatively, with grave concern. “Had a minor mishap in South America,” he quipped, and she brightened. But when he, foolishly perhaps, confessed that his confinement might be long-term, if not permanent, her horrified frown reappeared.
Not that she was unsympathetic.
There was something else. When on Tuesday, Suzy again was late from school, Switters inquired of his mother, Eunice, of her possible whereabouts. “Oh,” said Eunice, “she’s probably hanging out with Brian.”
“Who’s Brian?”
His mother smiled. “I think our little Suzy has a boyfriend.”
It took every Asian breathing technique he’d ever learned, and one or two he improvised for the occasion, to rescue his brain from the Tabasco-filled birdbath into whose crimson waters it had suddenly fallen. When the searing and flopping finally abated, he felt a measure of relief at the way things were turning out. Almost concurrently, he felt a disappointment so profound he thought he might weep. It was similar to the mixture of relief and disappointment a moth must feel at the extinguishing of a candle.
If he thought he was free of the exquisite torture of obsession, however, if he believed fate had dictated he lay that shining burden down, he was mistaken. When, at about six o’clock, she came down the hall to his room with a can of Pepsi and a plate of brownies, came in her school uniform (pleated blue skirt and loose white blouse), came with her tiny gold crucifix twinkling like an eastern star above the twin mosques of her breasts (my, how they’d grown! that old training bra couldn’t begin to corral them now), came with her round rump ticking like two casseroles in an oven, came with her smart smile and guileless gaze, he could sense the want spreading throughout his organism like a cotton-candy cancer, and his mania once more had the wind to its back.
Suzy kissed him on the mouth, but without tongue or duration. “Don’t eat all these brownies now, and spoil your dinner.”
“Did you bake them?” In his mind he licked the spoon, her fingers, knuckles, wrists, forearms. . . .
“Yeah, but, like, not from scratch.” She sat down on a hassock. “If you’re going to hang in your room like this, you ought, you know, to be in the bed.”
“No, I oughtn’t. But I’d be delighted to jump into bed if you’d jump in with me.”
She blushed, though only lightly. “Oh, Switters! You’re so-oo
“That isn’t bad, that’s good. Don’t they teach you anything at your penguin academy?”
“Next year, I’m transferring to public school. Catholic school . . . I mean, I love the religious training and stuff, but a lot of the rules are just so
“Let’s put it this way: my mother’s on a first-name basis with the staff at several honeymoon hotels. I believe she may get a discount. Now, speaking of honeymoons, darling, don’t you think it’s time we started practicing for ours?” He inched the wheelchair closer to her hassock.
Giggling nervously, she shook her head. She had cut her hair and wore it now in a bob that, while better shaped and slightly longer, was not unlike a blonde version of the Amazon coif. The effect was somewhat childish, somewhat boyish. “You shouldn’t even talk like that. You being injured and stuff.”
“Nothing wrong with me that your pretty little sushi roll wouldn’t improve.”
“Switters! That’s not what your grandmother says.”
He blinked. “My grandmother? What did she say? When?”
“Last night. Remember when we were eating dinner and the phone rang? I ran to get it ‘cause I thought it might be Bri . . . like, this friend of mine, you know. Well, it was your grandma up in Seattle. She told me how delicate your condition is and that, like, if I should ever be tempted to, like, let you do anything romantic or nasty, I should bear in mind that it could kill you. ‘It’d probably be the death of him,’ she said. So, you see.”
Suzy stood. “She’s just trying to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection. I’m sturdy as a Budweiser draft horse.”
“You are, are you? In that wheelchair? Hello?” She moved toward the door. “You behave yourself. I’ll come get you when dinner’s ready. We’re both just trying to take care of you, you know. I think your grandmother’s way cool.” Suzy blew him a quick kiss and left the room.
“She cheats at Monopoly!” he called after her. It was all he could think to say.
Bracing the heels of his hands on the chair’s Naugahyde arms, Switters lifted himself off its seat, extending and bending, simultaneously, his right leg until the tip of his black sneaker was a mere centimeter or less above the oval rag rug, one of many such carpets that contributed to the Early American decor of the rambling suburban ranch house.
He wiggled his toes until he could almost feel the molecular interaction of foot with floor. Yet he didn’t quite make contact.
Although he pressed down harder on the chair arms, however, although he raised his buttocks higher and waggled his toes faster, he remained a quarter centimeter from actual contact with the floor. Chickpeas of sweat popped out on his brow, arteries popped out in his eyeballs. His Adam’s apple turned into an Adam’s grapefruit, and the ringing in his ears sounded uncomfortably like the whine Potney Smithe emitted immediately before keeling over.
His biceps started to quiver—perhaps he had misjudged the extent to which they’d recently firmed up—and his right leg quivered, too. Yet, like a model threatened with loss of employment, he held the pose.
