I would have smiled, but I couldn’t. I pointed to Eric.
“Mr. Boyer is extremely fatigued,” Eric said.
“He looks okay to me.”
I was going to start laughing, which would really hurt.
“You need to give him another week,” Eric said. “He’s really banged up.”
“There are two hundred reporters in the parking lot. If I don’t come out with something, it’ll get real ugly. Give me something. I know: today is Saturday. Where were you one week ago? Where did you spend the night?”
Saturday night, a week ago.
“Dumpster.”
An hour later, Fred’s arrival in the lobby was announced.
“Should I leave?” Eric asked.
“No.”
“I’d be glad to.” He meant it.
“You’re my… bodyguard.” I’d have been glad to leave, too. But the confrontation would have to happen sometime. And maybe even Fred would be repelled by the devastation he was such a big part of.
Soon we heard the heavy tread. They make hospital doors wide to accommodate wheelchairs and a certain type of lawyer. Sitting was another matter. He stood and stared at me for quite a while, and then he looked for a chair. The hospital issue was one size fits all, but not all at the same time.
“Here,” Eric said, jumping up and pushing the two chairs we had together. Fortunately they had strong legs and no arms.
“Thank you.” He sat and scowled. “I don’t know what we have to say to each other.”
“I… can think… of some… things.”
“I suppose. I’ll ask one question, then. What are you going to do with the Boyer assets?”
At least he didn’t waste time faking sympathy for me, or faking any moral sense at all. I tried to think how to say what I wanted in the least painful way. That is, the least painful for my jaw.
“Isn’t… it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
No, not to him. “Look at me,” I said.
“You’re blaming your calamities on being wealthy?”
“Look at… Harry Bright.”
“You and he made decisions, and his ruin was the outcome.”
“Look… at Nathan… Kern.”
He hesitated. “He was weak.” That was the greatest crime Fred knew.
“He… killed… my wife.”
He waited a decent five seconds before answering. “I’m sorry.” It was not an apology, just a condolence.
“He killed her… to get… my money.”
“I understand.”
“You… used her… you’re guilty… as Kern… that she died.” I hadn’t meant for the dialogue to go this way, but his hard heart was infuriating me.
“I did not intend for anything to happen to her!”
“Look… at yourself.”
He was finally silenced.
He stood and left, and I was left wondering why I’d called him, because it couldn’t have gone any other way than it had. It took a long time for the atmosphere to fill the empty space he’d left. The last lingering traces of the triumph over Nathan Kern had finally been blown away.
My war with evil was over. I’d caused damage, but my own losses were much higher, and Fred and all the others like him would just rebuild. The money and evil had won.
42
I was back at the beginning. The questions were unanswered, if there were any answers. No one was pursuing me, but it was only a matter of time before I would be back at the window, looking out into the black.
And I still had the money that I wanted to be rid of. What was I supposed to do with it?
“Wow.” Eric was very relieved that Fred was gone and that his own name had not come up.
Just at that moment, I did not want to deal with Eric.
“I want you… to get… something,” I said.
Man’s best friend snapped to attention. He was needed! “What?”
“In my office… back home… in the desk.” I held up my fingers to show the size and thickness of the folding frame from Melvin’s bedroom. “A… picture frame.”
“I’ll get it.”
Pamela had been praying for me for twenty-five years. That seemed like something very valuable, even if I didn’t know what to do with it. I thought of the church where my mother was buried.
Something outside myself. That was what I wanted, even if it had been Nathan who’d said it. I knew one thing that was absolute, that there was nothing on earth that answered any of my questions. Money, power… even love, they had all failed.
Pamela thought I’d find what I was looking for. I was looking for a reason to live.
An hour later, Eric was back, and he brought me a reason, one that for a few minutes pushed aside my despair. He brought me a milkshake. A real one, made with real fast-food chemicals. Its purpose was simple and pure-to appeal to my most base instinct and appetites, with no nutritional value at all. I lost myself in it and for a moment again enjoyed living. If they’d left the IV in my arm, I would have sent that wise, brilliant, and golden- hearted young man out for a second one to pump directly into the artery.
I sat up. Transferred myself to a chair.
“I want… to walk.”
I’d been up a couple times, but now I wanted to walk… somewhere. Nurses came scurrying, somehow sensing I had moved. Eric forced them back to a discreet distance. They offered a wheelchair but I refused. I had regained a little dignity.
We rode the elevator to the ground floor, hobbled the length of a hallway, and then I was outside, walking, slowly but in the open air, with no one trying to kill me or injure me or put me in prison.
It was a garden, even. A courtyard, closed off and private. Eric and I were strolling through the end of October.
Dry, swirling leaves hurried past. Everything else was still and stiff, the last chrysanthemums, the empty branches. We had an hour or more until dusk.
Then I felt dizzy-all the muscles suggested that I sit, and I did. I just had my pajamas and robe, and a blanket over my shoulders, and the wind was gusty and chill. I pulled the blanket more tightly around me.
“I have that thing,” Eric said. He dug into the pocket of his jacket, a plaid and corduroy autumn coat Katie had picked as a start to his winter wardrobe. That was as far as they’d gotten.
A little fishing and he had the frame, and put it in my hands.
“Did you look at it?” I asked.
“Uh, no.”
There was a feeling of a holy relic about it as it rested between my fingers. The civilization that had owned it had fallen and was no more, but this object was clean and untainted and had passed unharmed through the Go tterda merung.
My left hand was very limited in its motion by the cast on my shoulder. I held the frame in that hand and opened it with my right. Two pictures-a man and a woman in one, and two little boys in the other.
“Wow,” said one of the boys.
