WHAT THE HELL IT IS
Still Friday, August 4, 2006, 11:40 a.m.
Cabel puts his arm around Janie’s shoulders, whether to show support or to keep her from bolting from the room, Janie doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. She’s too horrified to move.
“He looks like a cross between Captain Caveman and the Unabomber,” she whispers.
Cabel nods slowly. “Whoa. That’s some funky Alice Cooper frizz.” He turns to look at Janie. Says, in a soft voice, “What was the dream like?”
Janie can’t take her eyes off the thin, very hairy man in the bed. He’s surrounded by machines, but none of them are attached, none turned on. He wears no casts, no bandages. No gauze or white tape.
Just a look of incredible agony on his face.
She glances at Cabel, answers his question. “It was a strange dream,” Janie says. “I’m not even sure it was a dream. It was more like a nondream. Like . . . when you’re watching TV and the cable goes out. You get that loud, static, fuzzy noise at full blast.”
“Weird. Was it black-and-white dots, too?”
“No—colors. Like giant beams of incredibly bright colors—purple, red, yellow. Three-dimensional colored walls turning and coming at me, coming together to make a box and closing in on me, so bright I could hardly stand it. It was awful.”
“I’m glad you got out of it.”
Janie nods. “Then for a split second, the walls disappeared and there was a woman there, way at the end, but it was too late for me to see. I was already pulling out of it. It felt like I was about to glimpse a piece of a real dream, maybe.”
“Can you go back in?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried that,” she says. “Maybe if I go out of the room, shut the door, and come back in. But I don’t really think I want to, you know?”
Cabel nods. He takes a step closer to the man. Picks up the chart that dangles from the foot of the bed. Stares at it intently for a moment and flips the top page over to look at the next page. Hands it to Janie. “I don’t really understand this stuff. You want to know what’s going on?”
Janie takes the clipboard uncertainly, feeling like she’s intruding on a stranger. Still, she looks at it. Tries to decipher the terminology. But even with her experience working at Heather Home, there’s not much Janie can understand.
“Huh. Looks like they detected sporadic, mild brain activity.”
“Mild? Is that good?” Cabel sounds worried.
“I don’t think so,” Janie says. She puts the chart back.
“Can he hear us?” Cabel whispers.
Janie’s quiet for a moment. Then she whispers too. “It’s possible. At Heather Home, we always talked to the Hospice coma patients as if they could hear us, and told the families to do it too. Just in case.”
Cabel swallows hard and looks at Janie, suddenly tongue-tied. He nudges her and nods toward the bed.
Janie frowns. “Don’t rush me,” she whispers.
She peers at the man. Steps closer. A shiver overtakes her and she stops when she’s just a step away from her grizzly father. What if he’s faking and he jumps up at me? Janie shivers again.
She takes a deep breath, and for a moment, she’s Janie Hannagan, undercover. Looks more closely at Henry’s distressed expression. Under all the long, black facial hair his skin is rough. Pockmarked. Janie wonders if he’s the one she has to thank for her occasional zitbreaks. The hair on his head is patchy and thin in spots—as if great bunches of it had been pulled out. In places, she can see Henry’s scalp. It’s covered in red scratches.
She looks at his hands. His fingernails are clean but chewed down to the quick. Little scabs dot his cuticles. The hair on his chest that protrudes from his hospital gown is also patchy and decidedly grayer than the hair on his head. His complexion is grayish-white, as if he hadn’t seen much sun all summer, but his arms have a light farmer’s tan line.
“What happened to you?” She whispers it, more to herself than to him.
He doesn’t stir. Still, the look of agony on his face is more than a bit unsettling. She wonders if the static is still going on in his mind. “That must be very painful,” she murmurs.
Abruptly she looks at Cabel. “This is too weird,” she mouths. Points at the door. Cabel nods and they step out. Closing the door again. “Too weird,” Janie says aloud. It’s more than she can deal with. “Let’s go. Let’s just . . . go work out or mess around or get lunch or something. I gotta get this guy out of my head.”
12:30 p.m.
They stop at Frank’s Bar and Grille and run into half a dozen cops who are on their way out.
“Come back from vacation early just because you missed us?” Jason Baker teases.
Janie likes him. “You wish. Little family emergency brought us home early. It’s all fine now,” she says lightly.
Cabel and Janie sit up at the counter for a quick lunch. Janie gets a free milkshake for being narc girl.
It’s not all bad.
1:41 p.m.
Janie slings her smooth leg over Cabel’s hairy one.
Their toes play together quietly while they work in Cabe’s basement.
Janie searches WebMD for brain illnesses and injuries and gets nowhere—there are way too many to narrow down.
Cabel Googles “Henry Feingold.” “Well,” he says. “There’s no information on a Henry Feingold in Fieldridge, Michigan. There’s a pretty prolific author with that name, but he doesn’t appear to be the same guy. Whatever your dad does—er, did—for a living, it’s not out there on the Internet. At least not under his real name.”
Janie closes the lid of her laptop. Sighs. “This is impossible, trying to figure him out. I wonder why they’re not doing anything for him, you know?”
“Maybe he doesn’t have insurance,” Cabel says in a low voice. “Not trying to judge him by the way he looks, but he’s no corporate exec, obviously.”
“That’s probably it.” Janie closes her eyes. Rests her head on Cabel’s shoulder. Thinks about the two people that are related to her. Her mother—alcoholic-thin, greasy, stringy hair, old and brittle-looking in her mid-thirties; her father some sort of weird cross between Rupert from Survivor and Hagrid. “How can you even stand to think about what I’ll look like in fifteen years when I’m all blind and gnarled, Cabe? Good f*cking grief, what a familial circus of deformity.”
“Why do you care so much about how you’ll look?” He strokes her thigh. “You’ll always be beautiful to me.” He says it casually, but Janie can hear the strain in his voice.
“Still, they’re both such freaks.”
Cabel smiles. He sets his laptop on the floor, takes Janie’s from her and does the same, and then slowly pushes against her until she’s lying on her back. She giggles. He lies on top of her, pressing against her, squeezing her just like she likes. She wraps her arms around his neck, pulling his nose to hers. “I lurve you, circus freak,” Cabel says.
It almost hurts to hear him say that.
“I lurve you, too, you big lumpy monster man,” Janie says.
That hurts even more to say.
And then they kiss.
Slowly, gently.
Because with the right person, sometimes kissing feels like healing.
Still, something edges to the front of Janie’s mind. Wonders if it’s worth it—worth going blind, when there’s another option.
Besides, what if Cabel won’t own up to his fears about being with her?
It’s f*cking scary, is what it is.
It’s like Cabe’s the one who’s blind.
The kissing slows and Cabel rests his face in crook of Janie’s neck, nibbling her flushed skin. “What are you thinking about?”
“Uh . . . besides you?”
“Clever,” Cabel says, a grin spreading, his moving lips tickling Janie’s neck. He nips at her. “Yes, besides me. If it’s possible for you to think about anything else, that is.”
“Oh,” she says. “If there were anything else, it would probably be how I need to get some cajones and go confront my mother.” Absently, she smooths his hair away from his eyes. “Try and figure out what happened with them, and with me, and what we’re supposed to do now with hermit dude.”
Cabel sits back and nods. And then he hoists himself up with a grunt. Pulls Janie to her feet too. “You want me to come with you?”
“I think it’ll be better if I do it alone. But thanks.”
“I figured. Call me, ’kay?”
Freakishly, Janie’s phone rings as he says it.
“It’s Carrie—I gotta take this.” Janie blows a kiss to Cabel as she ascends the stairs and she answers it. “Carrie!”
“Yo, bitch, my phone’s charged up again. How’s the whole family soap opera going today? You okay?”
“It’s weird, and it’s a mess, but it’s okay. Thank you again for taking care of my mother. You’re the best.”
“No problem. Somebody’s gotta clean up the neighborhood, right?”
“Ouch. Jeez, Carrie!” But Janie chuckles anyway.
“Well, you know where to find me if you need me,” Carrie says. “Hey?”
“Hey what?”
“I’m engaged.”
“What?”
“Stu asked me last night.”
“Oh Em Gee what the Ef barbecue!” Janie says. “And you said yes?”
“Obviously, since I just said I was engaged.”
“Wow, Carrie. Are you . . . are you sure? Are you happy about it?”
“Yeah. I mean yes, totally! I know Stu’s the guy I want to be with.”
“But?”
“But I wasn’t quite expecting it yet.”
Janie, having walked from Cabel’s to her own house, walks to Carrie’s instead. “Are you home?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sweet,” Carrie says, sounding relieved. “Yeah, come on in. My room, of course.”
“Okay, bye.” Janie hangs up her phone and lets herself in. She barges into Carrie’s room and flops down on the bed. Carrie sits at a little dressing table, working her hair with a straightening wand in front of the mirror.
“So,” Janie says. “You got a ring or what?”
Carrie grins and holds out her hand. “It feels weird. It’s sort of embarrassing, you know?”
“What did your mom say?”
“She said I better not be pregnant.”
Janie snorts. “What the hell is wrong with our parents, anyway? Wait—you’re not, are you?”
“Of course not! Sheesh, Janers! I may not have gotten the best grades in school, but I’m not stupid. You know I’m on the Pill. And his Jimmy doesn’t get near me without a raincoat, yadamean? Ain’t nothin’ getting through my little fortress!”
“Okay, good. Sheesh.” Janie laughs again. “So . . . but you sounded a little like you’re not sure about this.”
Carrie sets the straightening wand on her dressing table and sighs. “I want to marry Stu. I do. There’s nobody else and he’s not pressuring me or anything. But he talked about setting a date, like next summer so I can get in my year of beauty school first but I’m just . . . I don’t know. It’s such a huge thing. I don’t want to screw it up.”
Janie remains quiet and lets Carrie get it all out. It feels weird to be normal again, sitting and hanging out with Carrie.
Janie wouldn’t mind trading problems with her.
“Anyway, that’s my junk of the day. What are you up to?” Carrie smoothes her straightened hair with some gooey, shiny product.
“I gotta go home, try and figure out what the deal is with my mother and this guy Henry. I don’t have a clue what’s going on. I need to get my mother to talk to me.”
Carrie looks at Janie in the mirror shakes her head. “Good luck with that. Talking to your mom is like talking to that Godot guy.”
Janie laughs. Loves Carrie. Says, “Maybe I’ll just get drunk with her and we’ll fight it out, barroom style.”
“Heh. Call me if you do that. I’d like to watch.”
Janie grins and gives Carrie a quick hug. “Will do.”
As Janie walks home, she thinks maybe that’s not such a bad idea.