“Fuck!” he shouted. He suddenly hurt in more places than he could count. Butt, thigh, foot, arm.
Pride.
Upstairs, Charlotte shouted. “Paul! Paul!”
Wincing, he yelled back, “Down here!” He grabbed his right elbow, ran his hand over it delicately. “Jesus!”
He heard running on the upper floor, then thumping down the stairs. “Where are you?”
Charlotte sounded panicked.
“Down here,” he said, struggling to his feet. His boxers had slid halfway down his ass, and he gave them a tug up, hoping to preserve what little dignity he had left. She arrived in the kitchen, her white nightgown swirling around her like a heroine in a romance novel.
“What’s happened? Did you fall? Are you okay? What’s going on?”
Instead of telling her, Paul wondered whether there was something worse than nightmares and memory loss.
Going batshit crazy.
Fifteen
The sun wasn’t even up, and her dad was at it already.
Anna White, dressed in an oversize T-shirt that hung to her knees, was awakened not by her alarm but by the sound of the rowing machine. She tossed back the covers and padded down the hall to her father’s room. She gently pushed open the door. Frank, in his pajamas, was stroking away on the machine, watching the cartoon channel.
“Dad,” she said softly, “it’s five-thirty.”
Anna believed the cartoons put her father into a kind of trance, keeping him from any awareness of how long he had been on the machine. She was convinced he was going to have a heart attack at this rate.
He either didn’t hear her, or had chosen to ignore her. He laughed as Daffy Duck took a shotgun blast to the face, spinning his bill to the other side of his head.
“Dad,” Anna said, stepping forward, putting a hand on his upper arm. She was amazed at how hard it felt. Her father’s head jerked in her direction.
“What?”
“You should go back to bed. It’s too early to be up. It’s sure too early to be up doing this.”
“This one’s not over.”
The remote was on the floor. She knelt down to reach it, hit the POWER button. The screen went black.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Dad, please. Go back to bed.”
“Not tired. Gotta take a whiz,” he said, getting off the machine and walking down the hall. Anna sat on the edge of his bed, waiting for him to return. He wandered back in after a couple of minutes, a dark coaster-size stain on the crotch of his pajama pants.
Always hard to get that last drop, Anna thought.
She stood, allowing her father to get into the bed. Then she plopped herself back down on the edge once he had his head on the pillow.
“You going to read me a story?” he asked.
She felt a twinge of fear. Was he joking, or did he think he was five years old?
“Something raunchy’d be nice,” he said, grinning.
Okay, a joke.
“No, I am not going to read you a story,” she said. He hadn’t called her Joanie, so maybe this was one of his moments of clarity. She hoped so.
“I’m not going to get back to sleep, you know,” he said. “I’m usually up by six, anyways.”
“Yeah. Who am I kidding.”
Frank rubbed Anna’s arm affectionately. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“Don’t worry about it, Dad.” It struck her that he seemed very much with it at this moment. “Since we’re both wide awake, let me ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“You were always my go-to guy when I was wondering what to do with my life.”
Frank waited.
“I wonder if I’m in a rut,” Anna said. She then added quickly, “And not because of you. This has nothing to do with you. I’m talking about my work. It’s interesting, and I like it, but there are times when I need to get out of my comfort zone.”
Frank nodded.
“I’ve got this one patient, doesn’t matter who, but he wants to set up a meeting, in prison, with the man who tried to kill him. And he wants me to go with him.”
Frank looked intrigued. “Wow.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure he’s in the right frame of mind for an encounter like that, but he seems pretty determined, so it might be better if I were with him.”
“I think you should go,” her father said. “Sounds damn interesting.”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I shouldn’t always just play it safe, staying in the office.”
Her father blinked at her several times. She wondered whether she was losing him.
“Isn’t that why you asked me to move in? To feel safer?”
She gave his hand a squeeze. “It was one of the reasons. A good one, too.”
“It made me feel safer, too.” He smiled in a way that seemed almost childlike. “I like that feeling. It’s a warm feeling.”
Anna patted his hand. “I’m gonna have a shower, and then I’ll start the coffee.”
Her father’s brow wrinkled slightly, as though he was considering something.
“What is it?” Anna asked.
“Just wondering if I need to pee again.”
She grinned. “I think only you know for sure.”
He thought one more second, then said, “No, I’m good.”
She looked back at him as she was stepping into the hall, and his eyes had shut. In two seconds he appeared to have fallen back asleep.
The shower could wait, Anna thought.
She returned to her bedroom and crawled back under the covers. It didn’t take her much longer to nod off than it had taken her father.
So she was out cold when the police stormed the house five minutes later.
Sixteen
“So what’d you tell her?” Bill asked, sitting on the locker-room bench, lacing up his shoes. “What’d you tell Charlotte?”
Paul shrugged, twirling the squash racket in his hand, waiting for Bill to get ready. “I told her I thought I’d heard someone knocking.”
Bill chortled. “What, like Girl Scouts going door-to-door selling cookies in the middle of the night?”
“Like someone trying to get in.”
Bill shook his head. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“I want to get back to doing the things I used to do.”
“Yeah, but this?” Bill held up his own racket. “Doctor gave you the okay?”
“Didn’t ask,” Paul said. “I want to hit the ball, move around. I’m not going to do anything heroic. The ball lands in the corner, I’m not going in after it.”
“So I’ll take it easy on you,” Bill said. “Like always.”
“Fuck you.”
They walked out of the locker room and into the West Haven College athletic facility. They strolled past exercise machines and an indoor track before they got to the squash courts. There were five, all backed with glass walls for the benefit of spectators.
“Does Charlotte know you’re doing this?” Bill asked.
“No.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“I’m telling you, I’m fine.”
Two women were playing in the court they had booked. Bill glanced up at a wall clock. “They’ve still got two minutes. Okay, so Charlotte finds you on your ass on the stairs and you say you heard someone at the door, but there was no one at the door.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?” Bill asked, his eyes on the two women in the court.