man. “I just have one question. Nobody told me about the weekend orgies.”
“You’ll only find them in your dreams,” Shahla said.
CHAPTER 22
Tony was feeling a little better by Tuesday evening. Some of the stiffness had left his body. His wounds were beginning to heal. He felt good enough to whip himself up a mess of spaghetti for his dinner. His Italian mother had taught him how to do it. Of course, she made her own tomato sauce, whereas Tony got his out of a bottle. He also used store-bought hamburger and spaghetti, but he added basil, oregano, and garlic, just as his mother had showed him.
As he sipped a beer and spun the spaghetti worms (as they had seemed to him in his youth) on his fork, he remembered that he had been going to check Josh’s drawers for women’s underwear. Except that no opportunity had presented itself. Until now. This morning, Josh had said he would be home late tonight. He had some function he was going to attend, related to his job.
Tony decided he had enough time to eat his dinner before he conducted a search. His body still complained when he tried to rush into anything. He ate all the spaghetti he could manage, saved the rest, and rinsed his dishes. Then he went upstairs to Josh’s bedroom. He opened the door and turned on the light. He remembered that if Josh came home while the light was on, he would see it as he drove into the carport, but Josh wouldn’t be home for a while. Searching with a flashlight was difficult and time consuming. Tony wanted to get this over with.
Where should he start, amid this mess that constituted Josh’s possessions? The dresser drawers presented an obvious location to check. He would search the easy places first; he might get lucky. He quickly went through the drawers. He found socks, T-shirts, handkerchiefs, boxer shorts (one difference between him and Josh-he wore briefs), a bathing suit, a jockstrap, baggy shorts for outerwear, but nothing that a girl would consider wearing. Well, he remembered when girls had worn boxer shorts for a season, but not this size.
The closet was next. Sweaters and sweatshirts were stacked on two shelves at the top. He checked between them and underneath them. Nothing. Dress shirts, sport shirts, sport coats were hung on hangers. Nothing unusual here. Josh had a lot of clothes. More than Tony did. And yet he always looked as if he wasn’t quite put together.
A pile of dirty clothes lay on the floor. Tony went through this pile, one piece at a time, carefully, restacking the pile in another spot in reverse sequence. When he was through, he flipped the pile over and reset it in the original location-just in case Josh was more observant than he gave him credit for.
The bending over and kneeling hurt his knees. He wasn’t going to be able to do this much longer. What was left? A two-drawer filing cabinet. Tony pulled open each drawer, in turn, being sure to look in the open space in the back of the drawers. He found nothing unusual. All that was left to search was a bunch of brown, cardboard boxes- boxes that Josh had carted around with him for years, containing all his other possessions. Keepsakes, mementoes, souvenirs, books, whatever it was that Josh saved.
Tony didn’t relish the idea of going through the boxes in his present condition, especially since they were heavy and stacked three high. He looked at his watch. It was after nine. He didn’t know when Josh would be home. He’d better wrap this up soon. He could look inside the boxes on top while standing up. He decided to do that and then quit for the evening.
The first box contained books. Tony lifted several out to see what was underneath. More books. He gave a pass to that box and went on to the next. This one contained papers, tickets, programs. It was definitely a souvenir box. He had to lift each item individually and that took time. Near the bottom of the box he felt something soft, something that wasn’t paper.
He pulled it out and stared in shock. A pair of white panties. This was what he was looking for, but now that he had found it, he couldn’t believe it. He had been trying to clear Josh, not convict him. How long he stood there with the wispy piece of lingerie in his hand, he didn’t know. It suddenly came to him that he should find the bra. He searched the rest of the box, feverishly, but there was no other piece of clothing.
There was no time to search the other boxes. He interleaved the flaps on the top of the box together the way he had found them, just as the sound of an engine came from the carport area. If that was Josh, he had already seen the light on in his room. Tony would have to bluff his way out of this. He stuffed the panties into his pocket, turned, and headed for the door. He never made it.
He forgot about Josh’s swivel chair; he had moved it into the middle of the room during the search. He tripped over one of its metal supports and felt flat on his face. And his bad knee.
Tony let out a yell as the pain hit him like a Freightliner truck. After a few seconds he tried to get up, but his leg collapsed, and he was back on the floor again. He was still there when Josh found him a minute later.
“Holy shit. Tony, what happened?” There was real concern in Josh’s voice.
“I was trying to check your calendar.” Tony forced the words out, between spasms of pain. “I can get tickets to the SC football game on Saturday.”
“But what happened to you?”
“My knee. I fell on my knee.”
“Can you walk?”
Josh helped, or rather lifted, Tony to his feet. If it hadn’t been for Josh’s continued support, he would have fallen again. Tony put his left arm over Josh’s shoulder and leaned against him.
“Help me get to my room.”
“I’m taking you to a room all right-the emergency room.”
“I’ll be all right. I just need to sit down for a few minutes.”
“Don’t argue with Uncle Josh. You can’t even stand up, for crissake.
Josh practically had to carry Tony down the stairs. When they reached the ground floor, Josh became his left leg as they slowly made their way out to the carport. He bundled Tony into his SUV and went around to the driver’s side.
On the way to the hospital, Tony tried again to explain why he had been in Josh’s room. Josh didn’t listen. He concentrated on his driving-accelerating and stopping slowly, easing his way around corners, as if Tony were Humpty Dumpty. Tony wanted to tell him to drive normally, but he didn’t. He felt protected, just as he had when he first met Josh in college, and Josh had taken him under his wing.
“I don’t think there’s any permanent damage,” the young-looking emergency-room physician, whose name Tony had never caught, said, surveying the X-rays mounted on the wall. But you’ve got a helluva bruise and some lacerations to boot. I’ll bet you didn’t get those falling down in your house.”
“No,” Tony agreed. “I got those falling down a hill.” A paraphrase of the old nursery rhyme kept singing in his head: “Jack and Jill went up the hill, to see two siblings playing. Jack fell free and broke his knee…”
“I’m going to give you a pair of crutches,” the doctor continued, “and a flexible knee brace. But I don’t want you putting much weight on that knee for a couple of weeks.”
“Will I be able to use that leg to shift gears in my Porsche?”
“I don’t want you even bending your knee as much as it takes to get into a Porsche. You need to be driving something big and roomy, with automatic transmission, that will allow you to keep your leg straight. And you’re lucky this isn’t your right knee or you wouldn’t be able to drive at all.”
Lucky? How was he going to work? How was he going to do anything?
“I know what we’ll do,” Josh said. “We’ll swap cars. You can drive my Highlander and I’ll drive the Porsche.”
“If he hadn’t volunteered to trade you, I would have,” the doctor said smiling. “It’s always been my dream to own a Porsche, but with a wife and two kids…”
Tony had never let anybody drive his Porsche, and he would have rated Josh near the bottom of his list of possibles. But Josh had taken care of him tonight; he had not only driven him here, but stayed with him for hours while the paperwork ground slowly, and sicker and more seriously injured patients gained priority over him.
