He laughed. 'Well, not lucky-lucky but luckier than the people who had spina bifida before I did. People like me didn't used to live very long. Not until thirty years ago.'
'What happened then?'
'Somebody was kind enough to invent the brain shunt, which drains the cerebral spinal fluid. It allowed us to be reasonably self-sufficient and to live a lot longer.'
'I'm glad they invented that, then.'
He shook his head. 'I keep thinking about Brolan.'
'You really like him, huh?'
'Yeah. He seems like a real nice guy-and he's in a lot of trouble. Somebody's really trying to make him look guilty.' He sounded as if he wanted to go on, say more, but he didn't.
She said, 'You really don't think it was him last night?'
'Who tried to kill you? No.'
'But why would somebody do that, then? Pretend to be him, I mean?'
'I'm not sure. Neither is Brolan.'
Unable to help herself, she yawned. The warmth of the place, the comfort of the recliner in which she sat, had made her tired after such a long day of tension.
He said, 'Would you like to watch a movie?'
'Right now?'
'Sure. We're waiting for Brolan to contact me. We may as well have some fun doing it. What kind of movie would you like to see?'
'You want me to choose it?'
'Why not? You're my guest, aren't you?'
'Then you're not mad at me-for being on your back porch?'
'Not anymore. I was. But not anymore.' He nodded to the tape library. 'Why don't you go pick one?'
'God, you're really nice.'
'So are you.'
She got up and went over to the tapes. You could tell by the way that he had everything alphabetized and colour coded that these movies were his life. He was a lot more than just a guy in a wheelchair. He was warm, and he was funny, and he was smart, and he was generous. Somehow, being in this place was like being in a retreat of some sort, a place where people couldn't get to you and hassle you and hustle you. And it was because of him- because of the careful, loving way he'd put this place together, layer after layer of things he loved, to protect him from a world that saw him as a freak. Having always felt like a freak herself, she knew just what he was doing.
'Hey, you've got Cat People,' she said.
'You like that?'
'Yeah. It's really spooky. I saw it on cable.'
'The man who produced it was named Val Lewton. He made some great horror pictures.'
'Could we see that, Cat People, I mean?'
'Simone Simon? You bet.'
'How come she had the same first name and last name?'
He laughed loudly at that one. 'I'm afraid that's one of those great Hollywood mysteries that we mere mortals will never know.'
She took down Cat People and handed it over to him. He flipped across the hardwood floor and put the tape in. 'They really screwed it up when they remade it,' he said. 'Lots of blood and guts. And for no good reason. Did you ever see it?'
'I wanted to. This was back when I still living at home. But my dad wouldn't let me. He thought it would be too sexy.' Greg Wagner looked at her, hitting the pause button on the VCR. 'When's the last time you saw your sister?'
Denise felt sad. Whenever she thought of her sister, all she could imagine were stark white walls and bars on the windows and long, long hypodermic needles and people in small rooms lying on beds and sobbing and sobbing.
'They took her to a mental hospital. I've only been there a couple of times.'
'How come?'
'Rochester's a long way away, I guess.'
'Would you like to see her?'
'Sure.'
'Good. Why don't we go up there next week?'
'Are you serious?'
'Sure, I've got this friend who's got spina bifida, too, except he's got this big Buick specially laid out so he can drive it. He loves to drive. He'll give us a ride. How would that be?'
'That would be great!'
'Good, consider it done.' He turned back to the VCR and punched up the tape. 'And now,' he said, 'for the mysteriously-named Simone Simon.'
Denise plopped herself down in the recliner again and prepared herself to watch one good movie.
20
The motel was out past the University, where Washington Avenue intersects with University Avenue. It was modern and brick, with more than a hundred units, and designed to resemble an apartment house. On the west side was a small bar where a sing-along piano (which told you something about the age and the inclination of the clientele) was played five nights a week by a chunky woman in a sequinned gown and at least five huge costume jewellery rings. She preferred songs of the forties (having always had a mad crush on Dick Haymes), but usually relented and played stuff from the fifties, Fats Domino ballads such as 'Blueberry Hill' being the most popular.
He knew all this because he'd been inside a few times himself.
That night, however, he was standing in the shadows beneath the overhang by the parking lot. In the blowing snow, the red neon sign over the bar's door was blood red. He had been there fifteen minutes, waiting for her, the hooker who came there on the nights when she wasn't working. The people inside didn't know she was a hooker, of course. They were too respectable even to think about things like that except in a joking way. No, they spent more time contemplating dentures and trusses and support hose than they ever did hookers.
Around nine-thirty she came out. She was tall, and she was drunk, which made for an interesting combination, because instead of just walking, she tottered, like a too-tall building that was soon going to fall over. She'd be just the kind of driver you'd want on slippery roads. She'd probably kill half a dozen people, including herself. Hell, he wasn't going to commit murder. He was going to perform a public service.
He left the shadows of the overhang and fell into step with her. 'Slippery out here, isn't it?' he said, taking her elbow.
She had tried dutifully to cover her age with makeup, but the eye pouches were getting too pouchy, and the cheeks too cheeky for that. For somebody as drunk as she was, she sure looked sad. What the hell had ever happened to happy drunks anyway, the sort who wore lampshades and kissed everybody in sight?
'Am I s'posed to know you?'
'I'm just a gentleman trying to help a lady.'
She stopped, sliding a little before coming to a complete stop in the icy parking lot. He knew which car was hers, the ten-year-old Ford over in the east corner beneath the purple glow of the sodium lamp.
'I'd like you to take your hand off me,' she said. 'Like you said, I'm a lady.'
'Oh, yes, you are. A lady. A very special lady. A lady for hire.'
'Wha's tha s'posa mean?'
From inside his coat he took the crisp new hundred-dollar bill. Even in the blowing snow-which was now beginning to freeze on both their face-she could see what it was. If you drove a car like hers, you obviously weren't
