Even today, I live mostly in the kitchen or on the terrace in back. That’s where I like the light and air most. Sitting outside in the night, looking up at the stars and the black lines of desert mountains calms me. I understood what Beatty meant when he said he lived in the trailer park because from the back of his trailer he had open sky. I take comfort in knowing it will all still be here long after me.
A sensor light at the porch kicked on as I limped to the front door. The limp arrives when I get tired. The lap pool helps keep it at bay. In the kitchen I pulled a bottle of rum off a cabinet shelf and tapped a baguette, bought on a whim a few days ago, against the countertop. The bread was brick hard, but I sawed through and made a sandwich before pouring a short glass of rum. I showered with the water as hot as I could take and directed it at the lower left side of my back. The shower is part of my drill.
When I returned to the kitchen, the rear patio lights were on. Their motion sensors were hair trigger. Most likely it was the coyote that had been around lately. I liked the craftiness of the coyote and how it was building on what it had learned, but it was after a neighboring cat and I was going to have to run it off soon.
Not tonight, though, nothing tonight. The rum tasted right. Now get sleep. Get back to the office. Try not to let grief take away what you need to do. I opened the slider to let air in and rummaged once more for food. When muscles in my lower back spasmed, I debated getting in the pool for fifteen minutes. Often that helped.
After returning from the hospital in Germany and when I was still learning to walk with a rhythm rather than jerking, halting steps, I’d started jogging on the track at the local high school. I ran in the cool early light or later in the dusk-to-dark hour. I ran when I was least likely to be seen, being too proud to do it any other way. Even with yoga and Pilates classes and orthopedic massage and all the rest, I pitched to the left with each stride.
That first summer it didn’t take long for a couple of bored kids to figure out that the freak sometimes showed at sunset. The boys were maybe twelve and thirteen. One would get out in front of me and the other behind, and they’d circle the track half-tipped over. The mockery didn’t really bother me, and they didn’t run many laps. It’s not easy to run and giggle when you’re bent over. I was a smart-ass kid myself once, and their unsentimental judgment was better than the somber visits I got from agent friends who felt compelled to give me career advice.
Running helped my mind as much as my body, and that first summer I worked my way up to sixteen laps, and somewhere along the way the two kids figured out it wasn’t funny anymore. I tore the same adhesions loose, day after day after day, hurt all the time, and took painkillers until they made me stupid. I stopped those, connected with the bomb techs in Washington, and started forward again.
I took another swallow of rum as my phone vibrated with a text. It read, I’m out back. I walked out and saw her.
“Jo, what are you doing here?”
“I came to see you. I’m so sorry. I was thinking about you being alone after what’s happened. I came in the garage side. I hope that’s still okay.”
“It’ll always be okay.”
“I’m—”
She paused and I put an arm around her shoulders. Our breakup didn’t need to happen, or maybe it wasn’t a breakup. Another doctor, a guy a couple of years off a divorce and close in age to her, was the catalyst. I never looked him up or learned anything more about him than what she told me. He was a brilliant surgeon, great athlete, piloted his own plane, owned a vineyard, and so forth. The surgeon was just living his life, and Jo and I had reached a place where she needed more commitment and wasn’t getting it from me.
One Friday morning I had to go to Chicago on a case, so I canceled out on our weekend plans. Jo was on her rounds. I couldn’t reach her and left a message with a promise to call back. By three o’clock that afternoon, we were closing in on a suspect. That carried on into the night, and I never got a call off to Jo. I didn’t apologize until Monday. When she answered, she was angry and said, “No problem. I went with Dr. Gravure and had a great time. We’re going out again Friday night.”
I left it there. She called and texted a number of times a few weeks later, but I didn’t return any of them. Too much pride—one of my many flaws—though I didn’t stop thinking about her. That was six months ago. Melissa said I was acting like a teenage boy and was a fool to let her go, but it was more complicated than Melissa knew. Jo was forty-three and fit. She was looking for someone to love and grow old with, and I wasn’t a good bet for that.
In Germany when I was just getting over the worst, a doctor there, who prided himself on candor, told me I’d age out sooner than normal because of internal organ damage. He told me this like I’d won a contest. His guess was I had fifteen to twenty years more. He urged me to heal and get out and make the most of it. Jo could do better than me, although tonight I was very touched that she was here, and it was great to see her. It was more than great. It was emotional just to touch each other again. She wept as I told her I was first into the Alagara and found Melissa.