“You went in that house to write about it.”
“I did not.”
“Come on.”
“I told you, Bactine.”
His arms rested on the steering wheel and he twisted the Mynten wrapper, spun it between his fingers. He occupied himself this way while I sat there. “You could have been killed,” he said finally.
“Oh, please, by whom?”
“See, you don’t take anything seriously.”
“What are you talking about? You told me that alarm had been deactivated.”
“You never know what’s going down.”
What’s going down? Honestly. This was ridiculous. There was only one thing to say. “I’m sorry.” I spoke contritely. I knew what was bugging him. Suppose that woman had awakened to find us? My trespass would have cost him an account. “Who was she?”
He started the car again. “None of your business.”
“I just wondered.” This whole thing was getting upsetting, what with him so short with me. I was wounded, I had a serious dog bite, thanks to his carelessness. I tried to open the bag of lozenges. The slick paper wouldn’t tear. “This is like plastic on a new CD. A person could spend a year trying to strip that off. I always wanted to write a short story in which a woman gets murdered because she can’t get the plastic wrapping off in time.” My words hung around unanswered, McKee correctly identifying them as nervous babble. I noticed a big blue vein snaking across the back of my hand, which was lying in my lap, clutching the Mynten bag. The woman on the bed didn’t have fat bulging veins, I bet. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.
Now I was feeling unaccountably deflated.
“Cheer up.”
“What? What are you talking about?” How did he know?
“Just generally. It’s no big deal, right?” He flashed a smile.
“Right.” I could see the medical center ahead. What a relief. I would welcome a shot of novocaine. Perhaps directly into my brain.
He kept the car idling while I stuffed the Myntens in my purse. “Thanks for these.”
“Do you have someone to come and get you?”
“Yes. Don’t worry about it.”
“You should drink vinegar tonight. One teaspoon of cider vinegar with a tablespoon of honey.”
“Is that a health potion?”
“For your ankle. In case you have a boron deficiency. And take it easy.”
“I do.”
He laughed, as though it was absolutely clear that I was full of it. “If you ever need help on stories, other stories, call.
“Sure.”
“If it’s not my shift, leave a message.”
“Okay.” He must have been buttering me up so I wouldn’t betray him.
I put out my hand to shake his. Too formal for what we’d just experienced, and very awkward in the confines of the car. “Take care,” he said.
“I will. Thanks for the ride.”
THE EMERGENCY room was a fast twenty minutes. Clean, considerate, efficient. After getting a tetanus shot and a butterfly bandage, I took a cab to my car, drove to my house, and decided to stay there. Some days it is a mistake to leave home. I phoned the paper and told Peg, the receptionist, that I wouldn’t be in.
I felt peculiar, off-kilter. I had a routine for moments when I felt especially vulnerable, like the time my wallet was lifted on the crosstown bus. Close down. Eat comfort food. In the city I would have ordered takeout, wonton soup and spare ribs. Here I scavenged through the refrigerator, locating one of the many hero sandwiches I kept on standby for Sam. I did not dine at the sink, where I consumed most lunches. Instead, I cut the sandwich into small pieces and placed them on a favorite plate with a border of pansies. I lit a Duraflame log in the living room fireplace so I would feel warm and toasty, and stretched out on the couch under a quilt, with the plate and a cup of chamomile tea nearby on the coffee table.
Chewing slowly (part of the rehabilitation involved proceeding at a leisurely pace), selecting bits of marinated pepper and dropping them onto my tongue, I reviewed events at the summer house. My mind drifted to them and was very happy there, stopping first at the moment of shock when I realized the bedroom was inhabited, and by a nude woman in a state of glorious abandon. Those toenails looked like squares of paint in a watercolor box, a bit of dubious taste on a body that was otherwise exquisite. I remember sensing McKee’s stepping in behind me, his body shutting off the flow of air. The prosaic aroma of his aftershave became a fragrance of intoxicating sensuality. Our rush down the stairs. As if we’d bumbled into something ominous. My upper arm still tingled from the pressure of his grasp. I thought about him nervously spinning that Mynten wrapper—his hands, rough, with chunky fingers, incongruously twirling a strip of waxy paper, while he chided me. I was out of line, had inadvertently put both his business and his job in jeopardy.
McKee had a trash-compactor grip, that handshake when we parted was brutal—my fingers nearly welded together, then mercifully released. My gold ring, set with the single pearl, had been turned sideways, and I examined the memento of our parting, a round indentation in my pinkie where the flesh was almost punctured.
Time flew by while I was in this reverie. I liked reexperiencing events more than experiencing them, because they were safely over. I was in charge then, mulling, speculating, examining. I could embroider, imagine things that hadn’t happened, enjoy the possibility that they might have, and be relieved that they never, ever could. Say, for example, McKee and I, overcome by the unexpected peep-show thrill, retreating to his car and having passionate sex. Clothes and his weapons (as well as reserve, restraint, common sense, even lack of affinity) would be shed as easily as leaves off a tree.
In the short time since I’d moved here, my tendency toward elaborate postmortems had grown. My eyes were not trained to appreciate the outdoors, and spectacular foliage reminded me of the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles that I used to complete as a child, dense autumn treescapes and me hunched over a folding table trying to find the interlocking match for each piece. Being unfamiliar with nature, living with my taciturn son, having only the ephemeral e-mail connection to my previous city existence had put my brain in overdrive. I was on a mental treadmill, running miles every day.
At four in the afternoon, I was still on the couch, now dozing, when Jane called. “I heard you lost it in the market,” she said.
“Who told you?”
“Let’s see. I stopped at LePater’s to buy cheese, so Matt at checkout and Lionel at the counter. Ginger, at work, heard it from Coral at the café, and then I stopped at the post office to mail food packages to Simon and Carrie, so Leanne there—”
“Okay,
