Since Donna thought it would be anticlimactic for her to stay at the party after her glorious, personal victory on the dance floor, she wanted to leave, like Bill, too. Saying few words to each other about how they wished to go, they left the house and walked in silence to Donna’s car. There was no discussion of anything that had happened at the party, no excuses, no apologies, no sympathy.
When they were sitting in the car, Bill said, “You can drop me off at your place. My car is parked near your house.”
Donna didn’t look at him or react to this news in any way. She started her car, and the machine murmurs of her luxury automobile were the only sounds that were heard all the way to her home.
Chapter 33
After Donna parked her BMW in her driveway, she quickly exited the car and hurried to her front door. At first, she wasn’t going to say anything at all to Bill—she couldn’t wait to rid herself of him—but an impulse of common courtesy pinched her. Halfway to the porch, without stopping, she said over her shoulder, “Goodnight, Bill.”
He had gotten out of the car soon after her and watched her rush away. It was another odd moment in an extraordinary evening, and he didn’t know what to do. He had old-fashioned views about first dates and thought there should be at least a formal wrap-up: A cuddle, a kiss, a thank-you-for-a-wonderful-time, even if there would never be another. But the evening had been an unmitigated disaster, and he was baffled by how it should end. He couldn’t sugarcoat what had happened, which is what he normally did with his dates. His stomach hurt too much to do that, and he was rather ashamed of wasting so much good food by barfing. Maybe he should let the evening fade away without any words, he thought, and try to forget the paradise he had imagined it would be.
When she bid him goodnight, he automatically wished her the same. Then, since she had spoken to him, which he considered an open invitation, he decided to make one last effort to redeem the evening and have it end with a little bit of romance. After all, she was gorgeous, he had time, and they were both single. He took off after her. “Donna, wait,” he cried.
She didn’t. Instead, she scurried faster. It wasn’t until he jogged, as quickly as he could, onto her porch that he caught up with her. The porch lights came on automatically, and illuminated the two for anyone to clearly see.
“Let’s have a drink and finish this evening on a happy note,” Bill urged.
“No. Goodbye,” she said firmly, as she searched impatiently for the keys in her purse, not making eye contact with him.
“Forget about tonight,” he pleaded. “We can go somewhere else next time. A fancy restaurant, a movie, a nightclub.”
“There won’t be a next time.” Where are my keys, she was thinking, so I can escape this fool, who doesn’t appear to understand English or know when to leave?
“We can go swing dancing,” he rhapsodized.
She was not interested in that or any other activity with him and stopped looking in her purse to be blunt. “Look. I have a boyfriend. I only asked you to come because he worked tonight, and I wanted to go with someone. He should be here any moment, and I suggest that you leave, because he’s hotheaded and doesn’t like seeing me with other men. Thank you for coming tonight. I’m sorry about what happened. But I don’t want to see you again.”
Bill was not so easily put off by a woman, whom he considered attractive and who would talk with him. “I didn’t think the evening was that bad,” he said, twisting the truth.
When she didn’t say anything, he choked the truth to death. “It was OK.”
Unpersuaded by his lies, unable to stand talking with him anymore, she turned her head away from him, looking out into the night, and exhaled deeply. An immense frustration weighed upon her, with a force greater than gravity. She felt as if she was being pressed and pounded into the ground. Her unhappiness was even visible to a man like Bill, who preferred to disregard the emotional states of his dates, along with their verbal communication.
Without a doubt, he perceived that this would be their only date together. The window for future negotiations and rapprochement had been slammed shut and sealed forever. Yet, despite his accurate prediction of the future, he could not leave. There was one more thing he had a greedy wish for, something free. He was going to try and get it. Stretching his hands to her waist, he leaned in close for a little happy memory of the evening, a little romantic fantasy. Of course, he wanted much more than a little, but he would take what he could steal.
She pulled back in surprise, exclaiming, “What are you doing?”
“Giving you a kiss goodnight,” he replied, with as much fondness as he could feign.
“Oh, all right,” she conceded, thinking how useful he had been on the dance floor in her triumph over Leo. “One kiss.”
Their lips met in a touch more sour than sweet. Yet Bill extended the kiss for as long as he could. After all, it was free.
The sound of a car pulling quickly into Donna’s driveway caused her to break off their awkward, unsatisfying embrace. She grabbed his arm and pushed him toward the steps. “Hurry,” she told him in a panic. “Run down the lawn. My boyfriend’s here. Quick, go.”
The alarm in her voice and her words had no effect on Bill. He was disappointed that the kiss was over. He didn’t understand why he should run away. They had only kissed, and it wasn’t what he would call a great one. Surely, no man could be jealous of that insipid smooch.
Donna’s boyfriend, Frank, jumped out of his car. A muscular man in his mid-thirties, who worked in law enforcement, he had a rash, judgmental nature. In both his professional duties and his private life, he was more concerned with enforcing his hasty, intolerant conclusions than respecting the law. “What’s going on here?” he yelled, running to the porch. Unlike Bill, he could really run.
Donna tried to push Bill off the porch. “Go, before it’s too late,” she warned him. “If you run down the lawn, you can escape.”
Bill still didn’t feel himself in any peril. He was not easily intimidated, and he was curious about her boyfriend. He wanted to see if the boyfriend had something he didn’t. Maybe there would be a way to go out with Donna again. Besides, if the boyfriend tried to act tough with him, he would stand up to him, just like he had to Leo. He wasn’t going to be pushed around or frightened.
“Am I interrupting something?” Frank asked angrily, as he leaped up on the porch. He stood glaring at Donna and Bill, hyperventilating.
“Frank, relax,” Donna said, with a voice of forced calmness. “Bill is going. I’m never seeing him again.”
“Aw, why not? Isn’t this your old man, who you dearly love? That was some kiss.”
When Frank called him “old,” Bill’s stomach burned even more than when Leo had punched him, but he remained silent.
“It was nothing, Frank. Don’t start imagining things.” To Bill, she said, “You can leave now. Please don’t ever call me again.”
Frank was not placated by Donna’s words, because his mind was too heated for sense to penetrate. “Hey, pops,” he attacked Bill. “Am I imagining things, or were you kissing her?”
“It’s none of your business,” Bill replied, getting as hot as Frank. “And don’t call me pops.”
“What’s the matter, pops? Don’t you like how old you look, pops?”
“I said stop it.”
“What if I don’t, grandfather?”
“I’ll show you something.”
“You’ll show me something, old man?” Frank pushed Bill hard, and they began to scuffle.
Bill was clearly at a disadvantage, as he had been earlier in the evening, but this time he wasn’t able to save himself by vomiting. With little difficulty, Frank forced Bill against the house, grabbed him by his shirt, and repeatedly threw him against the wall. Bill tried to remove Frank’s hands from his shirt, but he was too feeble to do more than hold onto Frank’s wrists.
Since his opponent was not yet subdued, Frank decided to take further action. He swung his opponent around and b
egan pushing him back toward the edge of the porch. The width of the porch was approximately twelve feet, so there was some distance to travel before they would reach the edge.
Donna had been standing aside, hoping that Frank would just shake Bill up a little and let him go, but when she saw where they were heading, she tried to intervene. She grabbed one of Frank’s arms and tried to pull it off Bill. “Stop. Stop it. That’s enough,” she begged. “Let him go.”
Her intervention had the unintended effect of making Frank think that she still had some feeling for Bill, so he summoned even more strength to punish his apparent rival. Frank released his hold on Bill’s shirt. Grabbing him by the shoulders, he shook him as a child would shake a stuffed toy. Bill put up no resistance, because he couldn’t, and Donna’s attempts to pull Frank’s arms off him were half-hearted and ineffectual. When Bill was wobbly and light-headed, Frank stopped shaking him, and for a brief moment, the lop-sided contest seemed over. Bill tried to stand straight and still, while Donna let go of Frank. To both of them, Frank seemed satisfied with his retribution, although he was still glaring at Bill. Suddenly, however, like a rattlesnake, coiled in watchful waiting, which lunges at its prey, Frank rammed his hands into Bill’s chest and launched him off the railing-less porch backwards.
Donna gasped.
Bill flew through the air, his arms flailing like broken wings. The porch was about two feet above the ground, but the force of Frank’s push carried Bill away much more than that. With a thud and a groan, Bill landed hard on his back on the lawn ten feet from the porch. He tried to get up, but his limbs hardly responded.
“I can’t move,” his piteous voice cried. “My back. My back is broken. Donna, help.”
Donna and Frank were still standing on the porch.
“Can’t you get up?” asked Donna wistfully, leaning forward, although she was not about to venture any closer to Bill.
“I’ll help him get up,” snarled Frank, starting to walk off the porch. “Hey, pops,” he shouted at Bill, “I’m coming to help you. Can you move yet?”
“Frank, listen to me,” she yelled, raving with emotion to convey her meaning. “Don’t touch him. If you touch him, you’ll be leaving, too. I mean it. I won’t have a dead man on my lawn.”
Her words were close enough to a declaration of love for Bill, and he slipped into unconsciousness from the searing pain in his lower back with a contented look on his face.
Chapter 34
The next day, Bill was stirred from sleep by an irritation on his toes.
“Ah, the mummy rises from the dead,” said the doctor when he saw Bill’s eyelids begin to lift. “Or would you prefer to be known as a zombie? Those creatures seem to hold more popularity nowadays, although I can’t tell you why. It might have something to do with people not knowing how to live anymore. Or being afraid of life. Or maybe the economy is so rotten for so many, that living is like an endless nightmare. I don’t know. I don’t know why the problems of today seem so much greater than those of the past, as if time is running out, and something has to be done, although no one knows what that should be. Maybe that’s how humans always need to view life, as a problem to be solved. Were you trying to solve a problem, when you had your accident, or were you just being reckless?”
There was a purpose behind Dr. Drighteers’s rambling monologue. He was a clever-looking man in his sixties, with a pitiless bedside manner, and he wanted to test Bill’s mental state for any signs of brain damage from his fall. All the while he talked, he repeatedly hit Bill’s toes with a small rubber hammer. “Can you feel any of that?” he asked.
“A little,” Bill replied groggily, coming to his senses after his traumatic injury. Gradually, he became aware that he lay in a hospital bed, nearly flat on his back, wearing a spinal brace, with his entire torso extending to the top of his neck, wrapped in a cast. He looked like a mummy, who was waiting for the rest of his body to be covered.
The doctor hit Bill’s fingers on one hand several times with the small hammer. “Can you feel that?”
“The same,” Bill responded. “A little.”
Dr. Drighteers wrote something on the chart at the foot of the bed. “You’ll be in bed at least six months,” he told Bill, “before your spine and nerves heal, and you can move normally. I’m sending you to a nursing home. Do you have any preference for one?”
“I don’t want to go to a nursing home,” Bill objected, although he was in no condition to disagree.
“Is there someone who can take care of you at home or in their home?” Really what Dr. Drighteers wanted to know is if Bill knew a saint, because someone who would take care of an almost totally incapacitated man would have to be a saint. But the doctor thought that Bill would understand his situation soon enough and accept going to a nursing home.
As Bill thought hard, his toes and fingers wiggled slightly but rapidly. “My sister will do it,” he said, more optimistic than certain. “I’ll ask her.”
“Let me know when she agrees, so I can explain what she’ll have to do. I’ll send in a nurse to help you make that call.” Confident that Bill would soon be on his way to a nursing home, Dr. Drighteers left the room.
Bill was soon connected to his sister, Marie, via his Blackberry, which a nurse held for him. Marie refused to take care of him for six months, or even one day. She didn’t even sound that sorry about his injury. She reminded him about his unwillingness to help their uncle, and she suggested that maybe he was being properly rewarded for his previous lack of charity. It was a short call.
After Bill had been jilted by his sister, he had the nurse call his friend Stan, and within the hour Stan was sitting next to him. He didn’t expect Stan and his wife to volunteer to care for him, although if Stan offered to do that, he wouldn’t refuse. Instead, he wanted to see if Stan had any suggestions for finding free home healthcare. Bill knew that his insurance wouldn’t cover the expense for a home attendant, and the thought of paying for such services out of pocket was more terrifying to him than going to a nursing home, which is saying a lot, because the latter pressed on his mind with the dread of a grave gaping at his feet. Stan, however, was no help at all, and he magnified Bill’s misery by making light of his desperate plight.
“Just think,” Stan said cheerfully, giving Bill’s cast a friendly smack, “the women won’t be able to get away. They’ll be lining up and down the corridor, whenever you pass. Women always outnumber men in nursing homes. They’ll be fighting over you. You’ll have to recover quickly. Otherwise they’ll take advantage of your situation. Men can be raped too, you know.”
“They’re all old,” Bill remarked with a low, sullen voice.
“Maybe it’s time you raised your standards,” answered Stan, remaining upbeat, trying to help Bill accept the inevitable.
“I’m not old,” Bill replied glumly, trying to look away from Stan, as much as his condition allowed.
Stan let Bill sulk. Stan expected this behavior, because it was the first time that Bill’s delusion of eternal youth was deeply damaged, if not altogether destroyed. Stan hoped that a period of adjustment would follow and Bill’s interests in women would mature. To plant the seed that in the future Bill would look for someone compatible and compassionate, rather than another stark, indifferent contrast, no matter how attractive and young-appearing she may be, he said, “If you had gone after Helen, as I told you to, this wouldn’t have happened. And if something bad had happened to you, while you were seeing her, she’d probably help you out. After all, she lives right in your building. But you blew that chance.”
Bill was silent. He wasn’t glad to hear that name again, but a tiny, tiny thought began to whisper very softly in his head, although it took a while to enter his consciousness.
Stan proceeded to deliver more opinions that Bill had no pleasure in receiving, and the longer Stan offered such pestering advice, the more visibly morose Bill became. Flashes of anger started showing in his eyes. Eventually, Stan decided that he had administer
ed enough good medicine for the day, and it was time to go. He told Bill he would come to visit him, as soon as he moved to the nursing home. “I’ll bring a box of candy,” he said, “which you can share with all of your new friends-to-be.”
After Stan left his room, Bill asked the nurse to call his sister again. He had a wild, frantic delusion that she had relented or could be softened up with a second plea. Surely, she wouldn’t let her nearest blood relation in the whole world whither away in one of those places, with the decrepit and the dying. He wasn’t like them. Although he could barely move at the moment, he felt as if he was still in his twenties. There were decades of life before him. He would soon be what he was before. He only needed her help for a while. Then he would be on his own feet again, free to live as he pleased.
Marie and their uncle Joe were chain-smoking in her kitchen, when the nurse reached them the second time. Uncle Joe was a short, thin, animated man, who didn’t seem much affected by his stroke. There was the slightest stiffness in his right arm and leg.
“No. I will say it again, no. That is your answer, your final answer,” said Marie. She was not softened in the least from the previous conversation with her brother. “Don’t bother asking anymore. Your uncle Joe has something to say to you.”
She handed the receiver to uncle Joe.
“Billy boy,” uncle Joe’s lively voice crackled into the phone. “I heard you had a little accident. You should be more careful. You’re not so young anymore. An old stallion like you doesn’t belong on a racetrack with the fillies.”
That call, which ended soon after his uncle’s unwanted pearl of wisdom, was a crushing blow to Bill and left him literally flat on his back. When he was alone in the hospital room again, as much as he could, which wasn’t very much at all, he tossed and turned in his cast, trying to think of a way out of a six-month stay at a nursing home. He didn’t belong there. He didn’t want to go there. He wouldn’t go there.
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