‘Doctors can work miracles, Hannah.’
‘I just wish certain hospitals wouldn’t be so close-mouthed about everything.’
‘Would you want just anybody prying into your medical history?’
‘No, but…’
‘I rest my case.’
‘One thing I don’t get,’ Paul said to me a few minutes later as he cut my portabella burger into pieces I could eat with one hand, while I tried to keep my left elbow elevated above my heart, as per doctor’s orders. ‘Why didn’t this guy, Zan, simply divorce his wife and run off with Lilith? She was single at the time, wasn’t she?’
‘As far as I know.’ I speared a wedge of mushroom and popped it into my mouth.
‘It’s nuts,’ Paul continued. ‘The two were obviously crazy about one another, and, according to the letters, the affair went on for over a decade.’ He shoveled a forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. ‘Maybe the wife was rich, and he couldn’t divorce himself from her money?’
I shook my head, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Somehow I don’t think so. In one of the letters Zan beats himself up because even during mass, when he should be thinking pure thoughts, visions of what they did, and the times and places that they did it were running like a movie through his head. I’m one hundred percent positive that Zan was Catholic. In that case, divorce would have been out of the question.
‘In any case,’ I continued, ‘Zan seems to be one of those high-principled “till death us do part” sort of chaps, although he never talks about that, or much about his personal life in any of the letters I’ve read so far. It’s like…’ I paused to wipe greasy fingers on my napkin. ‘I’m sure Lilith and Zan discussed these things when they were together, but in his letters it’s like their own private little world.’
‘Are there any letters from Lilith to Zan?’
‘Not a one, but I know she wrote him.’
‘How?’
‘Well, he’d respond specifically to something she’d written to him earlier. Curiously, he seemed to know and be accepted by her grandmother and her uncle. When Lilith’s grandmother turned eighty, for example, Zan asked Lilith to pass on his birthday wishes. There’s nothing about Lilith’s parents, though.’ I waved a French fry. ‘And before you ask, I don’t know their names either, although her parents were most likely Chaloux, too.’
‘You are a poet, and didn’t know it,’ Paul wisecracked.
‘Ha ha ha. After they’d been together,’ I went on, ‘Zan would spend half the letter reminiscing about what they did during their time together, the rest of it anticipating their next rendezvous. I suspect they spent a lot of time in hotel rooms.’ I grinned and waggled my eyebrows. ‘If it weren’t for the postmarks and the letterhead he sometimes used, I wouldn’t have a clue where he was writing from.’
‘Like where?’
‘He used hotel stationery, mostly, so I figure his job – whatever it was – kept him moving. Omaha, Chicago, Dallas, Rome, Mexico City, Paris. I’m trying to put it all together, looking for a pattern.’
I reached into the pocket of my jacket for the vial of pills, shook two out on the table, popped them into my mouth and chased them with a swallow of mojito.
Paul looked up from his shepherd’s pie and gaped. ‘Hannah! Doesn’t the label warn you not to take those things with alcohol?’
I coughed modestly. ‘Of course it does, silly, but they work much better on the pain part if you do. Besides…’ I winked. ‘I don’t have far to drive.’
After we finished our main courses, I threw caution to the wind and ordered dessert – bread pudding with Irish Mist custard sauce – and two spoons. By the time I scraped the bottom of the bowl and licked the last of the custard off my spoon, I was feeling no pain. Paul and I walked home slowly, arm in arm, stopping now and then along the way to admire the Halloween displays that were beginning to crop up in some of the shop windows.
Back home, while Paul cleaned up the dishes I’d left soaking in the kitchen sink since lunchtime, I climbed upstairs and sat on the edge of our bed to undress. I managed to remove my shoes, socks and jeans, but discovered that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wriggle out of my shirt. I was able to slide my right arm out of its sleeve and ease the shirt over my head, but the logistics of threading the cast through the left-hand sleeve had me completely stumped.
‘Come sit with me until the news comes on!’ Paul called from downstairs.
‘The hell with it,’ I muttered to myself. Leaving the shirt dangling from my shoulder, I used my good arm to squirm my butt into some drawstring pajama bottoms. Then I grabbed an XXL navy ‘Fear the Goat’ T-shirt from Paul’s bottom drawer and padded downstairs to join my husband.
When he caught sight of me in the doorway wearing nothing above the waist but my bra and a T-shirt flapping from my shoulder like a flag of surrender, he grinned. ‘Need help?’
‘Got scissors?’
Paul fell back against the sofa cushions and dissolved in gales of laughter. ‘That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen!’
I stood in the doorway and drooped. ‘I know. I managed to get into the shirt this morning, so I simply don’t understand why I can get out of it now.’
Paul unfolded his long legs, stood, and crossed the room in a couple of long strides. He drew me into his arms, resting his chin on the top of my head. ‘Poor Hannah. I’m not hurting you, am I?’
‘Oh, no. Just the opposite. I’m medicated, remember?’
He lifted my chin and kissed the tip of my nose.
I smiled into his eyes. ‘Thanks, I needed that.’
Paul’s lips found mine and I melted into him, pink fluorescent cast, uncooperative underwear and all.
‘I gather you need help,’ he whispered against my ear.
‘I do.’
Keeping one hand on my waist, his other hand crept around my back, found the hooks on my bra and flicked it open.
‘Clever boy!’ I whispered against his neck. ‘But then, you’ve always been skilled at one-handed bra removal.’
‘Practice makes perfect,’ he said. Still holding me close, he duck-walked me over to the sofa. Soon it was just Paul, me and my pink fluorescent cast. He kissed my forehead, eyes, nose and mouth, then pressed his cheek against mine. ‘God, Hannah, I was so frightened. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.’
I wrapped my good arm around his waist and drew him even closer. ‘Turn out the light,’ I ordered as I shimmied along the upholstery until I was lying down.
Paul slipped a pillow under my head and asked, ‘Sure you’re OK?’
‘I’m perfectly OK. Just elevating my arm,’ I said, holding it over my head and out of the way. ‘Doctor’s orders.’
And for several long and blissful moments, Paul swept all my pain away.
Later, as we cuddled on the sofa watching the eleven o’clock news, I found myself drawn to, yet repelled by, the images on the screen. At least they were no longer running wall-to-wall train disaster coverage.
Channel Four was reporting that the driver of the train hadn’t been at fault. He’d not been texting on his cell phone, as had been earlier speculated. Indeed, his cell phone had been found tucked away in his backpack. Metal-to-metal compression streak marks proved he’d braked, hard, before the crash.
A news anchor spent several minutes interviewing ‘experts’ who theorized that a signal failure had caused our train to plow into the back of another, even though all the circuits had been checked and replaced following a devastating crash in June of 2009. The NTSB investigation was continuing.