She didn't. She merely shook her head at the sight of me.
"Hi," I said.
She actually laughed. From anyone else the reaction would've struck me as inappropriate. From Adrienne, it was comforting.
She said, "You're alive. That's good. The board outside says 'laceration, shrapnel.' Leaves an awful lot to the imagination. I thought my surgical reconstruction skills might be required."
I shuddered at the thought, then told her about the bomb outside my office.
She had a few questions. I answered them before I asked her if she'd heard from Lauren.
She hadn't.
"Will you page her for me?"
"Right now? Sure." She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and entered a long string of digits while she said, "I'm not supposed to use this in here, you know. Could be short-circuiting a heart monitor or screwing up a CAT scan or something. Anything else you want?"
"Call your nanny and have her go get Grace and Viv and take them back to your place. I don't want them in our house. Sam said he'd call, but could you double-check?"
"And the dogs," she said.
"Yes, and the dogs."
She made that call, too.
"Mi casa es su casa, and, even better for me, su nanny es mi nanny. Now, you want to tell me what's going on?"
I nodded and began to tell her about the Biggs and Ramp. Being in a peculiarly confessional mood, I proceeded to fill her in on almost everything that I'd just told Sam Purdy. I was just about to get to the part of the story where I went to Agate with Lucy when Adrienne raised her hand and extended an index finger straight up. She said, "Alan, what did the neurologist tell you?"
"What do you mean?"
"About your… mental status?"
"She said I have a minor concussion. I may have headaches for a while. Told me not to exercise for a few days. Said I was real lucky with the leg wound. The shrapnel almost hit a major vessel. But that wasn't the neurologist. That was the guy who sewed me back up. I think it was an ER guy, a new guy, somebody I don't know."
Adrienne nodded knowingly at my comments even though she didn't really know a thing about my condition. I hate it when doctors do that. My patients probably hate it when I do that.
"What?" I demanded. "Don't just nod your head like I'm some imbecile. What are you thinking?"
"This thing you just told me about Paul Bigg? And his friend-what's his name, Ramp?"
"Yes, Ramp."
"You're sure about it?"
"Yes." Suddenly, I wasn't sure.
She nodded again.
"Adrienne, what?"
"I'm afraid that there's no gentle way to put this. But Paul Bigg is dead, Alan. Very dead."
"Oh God," I said. "They found his body, too? Where was it? At their house? The Bigg house?" For some reason, I immediately suspected suicide. After he'd placed the bomb that killed his mother, he'd gone home and killed himself.
Adrienne shook her head and lowered her voice, making it so soft that her northeast accent almost evaporated. "No, hon. Paul Bigg died playing Little League baseball when he was twelve years old. He got hit in the chest by a ball and died from a heart rhythm abnormality."
I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut.
"What?"
"Paul's been dead for, like, five or six years. I told you the other night that Leo's family has had way too many tragedies, even before he went to prison. Don't you remember?"
I stared at her with my mouth in the classic O sign. It took me a few moments to form my next sentence. "That can't be right. No way. She told me he worked at Starbucks. On the Mall, down near Fifteenth Street. Naomi did." I almost argued that Naomi had said that Paul made the best mocha on the planet. I thought she'd said "on the planet." Maybe it was just that he made a "killer mocha." It bothered me that I couldn't remember exactly what she had said. She certainly hadn't said that her son was long dead and that she'd been making everything up.
"He doesn't work at Starbucks, Alan. He probably died before he ever laid eyes on a Starbucks. Paul Bigg is dead." Adrienne was being uncharacteristically gentle, as though she were speaking to somebody with severe mental instability.
Me.
"Adrienne, that can't be true. Naomi just talked with him. A few minutes before she died. I heard her tell Marin about it. She was mad at him about something. He can't be dead."
Adrienne said, "I think you're mistaken."
I protested. "He has this friend. Ramp."
"Maybe he did, Alan, back then. But not now. Paul's dead. Peter and I went to his funeral. I promise you that he's dead."
"I don't understand. I know all about him. His school, his friends. Everything. I know what psychiatrist he went to, Adrienne. What he was treated for, everything."
Adrienne began to nod again, but she caught herself. In retrospect, I'm sure she was fighting an urge to ask me if I knew my name, knew where I was right then, what day it was, who was the current President of the United States.
She didn't ask. She said, "Well, maybe you don't know quite everything that you think you know."
Duh.
CHAPTER 33
Ramp felt the flash from the bomb the same way he experienced the sun as it broke through a thick cloud cover. The light and heat washed over him and warmed him, licking at his exposed skin all at once. He raised his chin an inch or so to greet the energy as it pulsed and engulfed him. Since it was the first time he would be around to see one of his devices go off in public, he desperately wanted to keep his eyes open to record the visual landscape as it settled in the aftermath of his work, but his reflexes overwhelmed him.
The plastic box with the toggle switch in his jacket pocket was moist from the sweat on his hand. He fingered the slick plastic as impulses flooded him. The energy it consumed to control the urges thwarted his enjoyment of the consequences of the blast. He wanted to thrust his hands into the air and yell, "Yes!" He wanted to pull the transmitter from his pocket and thrust it to his lips and display it to the stunned citizens around him.
He didn't.
He monitored his excited breathing by forcing each deep breath to pass through his nose and go deep into his gut. Despite the chaos that was stirring in the aftermath of the explosion, he could hear himself snort and was afraid he sounded like a horse eager to canter.
Ramp had detonated the bomb from where he'd been standing on Walnut in front of the aging house that old-time Boulderites would probably forever consider to be the second home of Nancy's restaurant. As the echoes of the detonation stilled, Ramp heard people in front of Café Louie, the restaurant that had replaced Nancy's, screaming, "Did you hear that?" "What was that?" "Was that a car that blew up?" and "Oh no, oh my God! I think it was a bomb."
The sounds were all on separate tracks in his consciousness, laid down methodically, distinctly. They were the kinds of details that he knew he'd want to remember later.
As people ran past him toward the location of the blast, he wanted to follow them. He wanted to see for himself what havoc the explosive had wreaked. What carnage the metal splinters had wrought. Did he kill one? Or two? Or even three? But he didn't follow the throngs to the source of the damage.
He was sure he didn't want to see the bodies.
There were bodies. He knew that. The bodies meant casualties. The casualties were necessary, but he feared that each would remind him of the day he discovered his mother's body.