Baby Talk

“Hey, pal,” somebody said, tapping on his window.

It was a heavyset black man with a mustache. A security guard.

Neal rolled down the window.

“You’re gonna have to move. This is a fire zone. No parking or standing.”

“I have to make a delivery.” Neal realized that the man was staring at his foot, which he had propped up on the lower part of the dashboard. He quickly moved it down to the gas pedal.

“What happened?” the guard asked.

“Nothing,” Neal said. “Just sprained my foot a little bit yesterday. Playing tennis.”

“Looks pretty bad.”

Neal just shrugged. He hoped the guy would just leave him alone.

“If you’re gonna make a delivery,” the guard said, “then get on with it. The police will give you a ticket if they see you parked here.”

Neal nodded.

The guard eyed Neal for another couple of seconds, then walked off.

Neal watched him, wondering how the truth—or what he perceived to be the truth—would have sounded.

What happened to your foot?

Oh, my five-month old daughter set a trap for me and screwed me up pretty good.

A trap? What the hell are you talking about?

Well, she’s pissed off because I almost made my wife abort her, and now she’s trying to get even. She’s pretty advanced, too, for a five-month old kid. She can already talk, move things around the room. And she’s shrewd as hell. Left a broken tennis trophy of mine out in the middle of the floor, so I’d step on it when I got up to go to the bathroom. Smeared her own feces all over it, too, just to make sure an infection would develop.

Uh-huh, the guard would say, glancing around, wondering if a real policeman was around to take this nut away and lock him up somewhere, in some nice, quiet place with soft, padded walls...

Neal closed his eyes and let out a ragged sigh. Maybe this infection (if he indeed had an infection) was a good thing—it would keep his mind occupied and off the unpleasant subject of how it had come about. The rational part of himself simply could not accept the thoughts he was having about Natasha—they were obviously the thoughts of a lunatic. Hell, maybe Annie was right. Maybe it was just some kind of out-of-control guilt complex that had taken over. Maybe he had completely imagined that Natasha had spoken to him, and the telephone message (he sure wished he hadn’t thrown the message slip away). And maybe he had sleepwalked and put the trophy out in the middle of the floor himself. Who could say? There were probably lots of other rational explanations he hadn’t considered.

The guard was standing in front of the building’s entrance, eyeing him again.

Neal quickly put his sneaker back on, leaving the laces untied as he had before (not that he could tie them even if he wanted too—his foot was just too swollen), and got out of the van. He stepped onto the pavement with the utmost care, but a twinge of pain shot through his left foot and lurched all the way up his leg to his testicles. Grimacing, he limped his way around to the back of the van. As he opened the double doors, a wave of nausea rolled over him that was so debilitating he thought he might pass out right there in the parking lot. But after a few long seconds, it subsided.

He finally got the box of roses out of the van and headed into the building. Luckily, the office where the flowers were to be delivered was located on the lobby level, only a short distance from the front door.

When he came back out to the parking lot, the guard approached him.

“This is none of my business, pal, but you don’t look so good.”