“How’s the appetite?” the nurse asked.
“Crazy,” Jacob said. “Renee smuggled me in two buckets of the Colonel’s finest.”
“That’s why you didn’t like the cafeteria grub.” Steve Poccora moved the rolling table with the food tray to the corner of the room. “You didn’t touch it. Figured you’d be used to it by now.”
“Mez compliments au chef,” Jacob said in mutilated French.
The nurse took his blood pressure and pulse, wrote numbers on a chart. “Your diastolic’s a little high, but nothing to be worried about.”
“Do I look like I’m worried?” Jacob asked.
“He’s not the worrying type,” Renee said. “I do that for both of us.”
Poccora looked from one to the other, as if deciding not to be the birdie in their badminton game. “Yell if you need anything.”
“‘Scream’ is more likely.” On the television, the talk show host had a parrot perched on his shoulder. The bird’s trainer stood nearby, holding up a snack food. The host looked nervous, as if he feared an embarrassing episode involving droppings. The bird gave a soundless squawk, warming up for a ribald wisecrack.
Poccora picked up the food tray. “I hate parrots,” he said, looking at the television. “They always get to cut you down, but you can’t make a snappy comeback. They’re too dumb to get it. Like talking to a ventriloquist’s dummy.”
“The worst ones are the dummies who look just like the ventriloquist,” Jacob said. “They let their evil side out.”
“Hey, you try being nice when some guy has his hand shoved up your rectum,” Poccora said.
“They call that a ‘prostate exam.’”
The nurse started to laugh, then gave up. He walked between them with the food tray, paused at the door. “You sure you don’t want any of these pancakes?”
Jacob looked around the room for the fly. “No, Steve. They’re all yours.”
Steve dipped a finger into the syrup and pretended to lick it. “Hate to see good food go to waste. But this is no good. I know the infections that go through this place.”
He left, and the forced humor shifted back to unbearable tension.
“Where do we start?” Renee asked after twenty seconds of silence.
“Please. You’re starting to sound like my old shrinks.” He fumbled for the remote, wanting to punch up the volume.
“Let’s start at the beginning, then.”
“The beginning. My first big mistake.”
“Jake, don’t do this.”
“You’re the one who wants it to be over. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along? It’s just pathetic that you needed this kind of excuse to get your nerve up.” The tears were hot in his eyes, burning with the memory of the fire and all the rest of it.
His thumb pressed the volume button. Renee moved forward with angry speed and slapped the remote from his hand. He stared at the silent television as its colors blurred in his watery vision.
“Talk to me, you bastard,” she said.
His throat was tight, rasped raw from the ventilator tube that had been stuffed into his lungs. He tried to convince himself that the fire had damaged him, taken the soft words from his tongue, leaving a handful of ash in the cavity where his heart used to beat. Part of him wished he had died in the fire. Part of him had died in the fire. But not the right part, the half that needed killing.
Renee’s breath was on his cheek, but he was miles away, in the dark, searching for that cool grotto that the drugs carved in the stony recesses of his skull.
“You can’t keep your eyes closed forever.”
“Long enough.”
“That won’t make it go away. We’ve got to deal with it. You can’t crawl into your shell and pretend it never happened.”
“Take the money. It doesn’t matter.”
“Donald called me. He wanted to know when you’ll be ready to go back to work.”
“I’m through.” And he was. M & W Ventures, Inc., had built ten apartment complexes, a half-dozen subdivisions, three shopping centers, the country club, and a pair of chain motels. That qualified as a life’s work, didn’t it? Even for the son of Warren Wells. Maybe Donald Meekins could take the oversize prop scissors they used for ceremonial ribbon cuttings and snip the W off the corporation’s name.
Jacob had made his mark on the world. A reputation you could take to the bank. Something you could use for collateral.
He could lose everything, his kids, his wife, his soul, but still those buildings would stand, a testament to willpower and vision. Asphalt to pave his way to a better future. Steel bones, concrete flesh, and a blueprint for his soul. Material evidence for Judgment Day, a devil’s bargain.
“You’re not through,” Renee said. “I won’t let you be through.”
He wondered how much of it had been for her. Where did spousal support cross the line into need, what separated encouragement from the shrewish demand for perfection and achievement? Was it his own insecurity that drove him, or was her relentless desire for his success the whip that kept him in a lather? Was she the ventriloquist whose hand had guided him through his lockstep sleepwalk of greed?
No. She didn’t deserve that much credit. Where he’d been, where he was going, were decisions shaped in the forge of his guts. He could blame other people, and that was fast becoming his latest survival tactic, but the justifications always rang hollow.
In the end, it comes down to you and the stranger in the mirror.
“Leave me,” he said.
“It’s not going away, even if I do.”
Jacob smiled. The movement was painful to his chapped lips. “It’s already gone.” He felt the thump on his chest from the weight of the remote control she had tossed there.
“You and your fucking martyr act,” she said. “As if you’re the only one who has to suffer.”
“I’ll give you the damned divorce. Anything you want. The money, the cars, the house . . .”
The house. Which was nothing but a heap of charcoal in one of Kingsboro’s squarest subdivisions.
“And the kids,” he said, his voice taking on a shrill giddiness. “You can have the kids. No arguments from me. I don’t even want visitation rights.”
“Jakie.”
He clenched the sheet with both hands, tried to squeeze juice from it, pressed his teeth together until his temples ached.
“Calm down. You’re scaring me.” She moved to the head of the bed, reaching for the button that would signal the nurse’s desk.
“You should be scared.”
“Do you think this is any easier for me?”
Jacob looked at her, the green eyes made large by her lenses. He was supposed to love this woman. He knew it, something strong tugged the inside of his chest, a deep memory turned over in the grave of his sleeping heart. How could something so sure and real have turned into this? How could an eternal bond dissolve like mist exposed to the bright glare of morning?
“I’m sorry,” he said. That stupid, useless word crawled out of his dry mouth. He couldn’t stop it. The response was automatic. He’d said that word so often in the past ten months.
“This is impossible,” she said. She pulled her purse to her lap, opened it, took out a pair of clip-on sunglasses, and flipped the dark lenses over her eyes. Jacob was glad her eyes were gone. Now he could look at her fully.
“There’s something else,” she said. She brought a crumpled envelope from the purse. “I guess you wanted to get in one last little twist of the knife.”
“What are you talking about?”
Renee fished a note from the envelope and read it. “‘Hope you liked the housewarming present. Yours always, J.’”
Jacob’s stomach became a great claw clutching at his other abdominal organs. “Where did you get that?”
“I found it in my car. I guess you figured it wouldn’t burn since I was parked on the street that night.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s your handwriting, Jake. Don’t play any more games. Please.” A solitary tear slid from beneath the black curve of one plastic lens.