Too Lucky to Live

by Annie Hogsett

  It was obvious to me that this was not Tom’s special ring for the anonymous credit-card-offer caller. Two notes, and his face shut down into careful-and-contained mode. He stopped and pulled the phone out of his pocket, but before he answered it, he turned to me.

  “Allie. I have to take this call. Can you wait for me upstairs, and then we’ll see about Rune?”

  “Sure.” I said the word as if I were. Of myself. Of him. Sure of anything in this world. I walked away, trying to make my footsteps sound confident and nonchalant at the same time.

  While waiting for the elevator I looked back down the hall and saw him standing stock-still in the middle of the lobby, his head bent to a serious conversation. A tall, handsome blind man, holding his white cane, not needing any arm of mine to help him traverse his world. A stranger I’d barely met and hardly knew, whose touch was burned deep into my skin.

  I was in big trouble now.

  The elevator binged and I walked through the open door, closed my eyes, and listened to it hush itself shut behind me.

  I was up in the room for maybe ten minutes, arranging and rearranging my state of mind before he and his phone showed up. I knew he couldn’t see my face, but I figured he’d probably be able to hear it. So I smiled and said—light as a feather, I certainly hoped—“Your phone is cool. It’s got ringtones and everything.”

  He was pale except for a patch of bright color on each of his excellently sculpted cheekbones. “Too cool for a blind man?” His tone was pinched. Even I, a sighted person, had access to his state of mind. The man was flustered. I wasn’t the only one. This settled me down. I found a small, chilly spot—like a bar-sized refrigerator—in the center of my chest and moved into it.

  “I’m sorry.” I worked on keeping my voice cool and crisp. “I didn’t mean to disrespect your phone.”

  He sighed. “You didn’t. Sorry. It—I’m a little fried, is all. It’s just a phone. Why don’t we use it to call about Rune now?”

  There was a long pause, and then he said, a harsh note in his voice, “Allie, come here.”

  My feet responded to the command in his words and my chest thawed a couple of degrees when I saw the look on his face. He was standing by our Marriott Bed, which had been tautly made up in our absence. I tried hard not to get distracted by the memory of the current of laughter that had surged through us both while he held me in his arms on that exact bed and told me I was the woman he wanted.

  I moved closer. He reached for me and found me. I leaned against him, not terribly relaxed. He laid his palms on both sides of my face and pressed his forehead to mine. I wasn’t going to fall for that ploy again.

  “Allie,” he said again, “I need you to trust me. I need to trust you. Everything’s moving too fast for us right now. Two days ago, we were…we hadn’t…It was an entirely different world for both of us. Everything’s torn up now. There’s been no time to fill in all our blanks. I need you to stick with me, until I can explain…things. And you probably have things to tell me, too?”

  I heard the question in his voice. We were rushing headlong toward the part of the relationship where it goes deeper or goes away. Away was not my game plan. I was falling for the ploy. I could feel it. I relaxed my forehead against his and let my heart out of the fridge.

  “Deal,” I said. “Why don’t you kiss me now and we’ll talk some other time? And trust each other until the blanks get filled in?”

  “Deal. Double deal.”

  I had questions. Now I realized he had questions, too. But as far as I was concerned right then we could wait and pay that piper on down the road. I wanted last night back. I wanted now.

  His lips brushed mine and there we were again. The woman and the man who couldn’t get close to a Marriott Bed without falling right back in.

  ***

  When we called Social Services, we found out that Rune had been placed with a temporary foster family in South Euclid. There was some back and forth about the rules and regs, but we were able to get in touch with Officer Bob’s wife, Marie. She cleared the way for us and got us the address and phone number.

  Then we called the hospital on McCauley Road, where the EMS ambulance had taken Renata, to see how she was doing. They told us you had to be immediate family to find out anything specific—big surprise—but at least she was alive and still there. I called Marie back and she hung up to call the hospital and do more way-clearing. After a few minutes my phone played “Bat Out of Hell” which was my standard tone for not-totally-anonymous callers. Like “Social Serv.” It was her, all right. Sounding professional and stern.

  “Renata is alive and awake, but they’re telling me she’s non-responsive. I’d suspect they’re keeping her pretty drugged up. From what I could understand, she’s a wreck. Are you sure you want to take Rune there?”

  “We promised him, Marie.” I was afraid she’d mess us up with Social Services if she thought we were bad for Rune. “We’ll take him out to lunch and for a drive and let him spend a minute or two. See her. Tom will be there. He trusts Tom.”

  She was silent. “Marie,” I pleaded, “he’s a tough, smart kid. He’s seen a lot and been through a lot. From what I’ve observed, Tom is the main source of stability in his life now. Rune’s up to seeing his mother not feeling too well. I suspect this isn’t the first time. And it’ll do him good to be with people he knows. Please.”

  “All right. Be careful with him, Allie. Don’t make me sorry.”

  ***

  We were on our way, then, with our new relationship almost intact, happy to be seeing Rune, happy to reunite him with his mom.

  “Leave well enough alone” was not my strong suit. I had to ask.

  “Do you have one of those ringtones in mind for me?”

  He wrinkled his brow in a way that suggested “not threatened, merely giving this important choice serious consideration.”

  “I believe so. Do you?”

  “I do. I’ve been saving one…for…for you. As it turns out. But you go first. What’s mine?”

  “‘White Rabbit.’ Jefferson Airplane.”

  “What? Oh. The part about Alice? Geez. I do so adore that name. Anyway, that song is all about drugs. What does that say about me?”

  He took my face in both his sentient hands, paying no heed to the fact that we were standing in the hall outside our room. “You’re my drug, Alice.”

  “Your drug of choice?”

  Always fishing, girl. Keep it up and he’ll run away.

  His mouth was all mine. My body moved until it was pressed as close to his as the laws of physics would permit. I willed myself closer, trying to pierce the barrier of our clothes, our skin, into the deep, dark soul of us together.

  “My only rational choice,” he whispered. “Now, tell me mine.”

  “‘Blind Love,’ Bon Jovi. It’s not about…your being blind. That’s just a coincidence. The first winter down here, I was so wild and scared of everything—I’d open up the top of the VW and go out and drive all night. In December, exactly like the girl in the song. Mr. Jovi released it only a couple of weeks ago. I listened to it. Over and over. On my bus rides. And I promised myself that a ‘Blind Love’ guy was still coming for me, trying to find me. That I wouldn’t always be nobody and…alone—”

  My voice broke.

  He intercepted a tear with his thumb. “Shhh. Alice. Shhh”

  He kissed me again. Gently. Easing us back into our separate selves. Time to go.

  “I think we both did well with the tones.”

  “Me, too.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The house in South Euclid was an Arts & Crafts bungalow, with deep, overhanging eaves and a stacked-stone porch. Everything about it, from the well-tended front yard to the substantial wooden front door, hollered reliability.

  Rune was waiting for us on the front porch swing. He was s
till wearing the red-and-white striped shirt and jeans, but they had been laundered. He was happy to see Tom, and okay with me being along. In a hurry to go.

  The foster mother came to the door. She was exactly what you’d think. A little round, a little tired, a lot kind. She told us to be careful and Rune to be good. She watched us go down the steps to the street, buckle the boy into the backseat, and drive away. She was shielding her eyes from the sun and clutching a dish towel in her other hand, like a mom in a storybook.

  From there we headed on up to Target, where to Rune’s delight, we rode the famous shopping cart escalator and then bought some new small shirts and jeans, plain underwear “with no action figures, okay?” and “Train Your Dragon” pajamas, plus a suitcase to carry that stuff in.

  “For when you can go home with your mom,” Tom said.

  Then we went to the toy area and picked the kid up a hand-held video game player and games to go in it. Next, we loaded up on notebooks, regular books, sketch pads, and pencils to counterbalance the ill-effects of too much of the video stuff. Which, in turn, led to the purchase of a backpack to put those things in.

  I saw how Rune stood close to Tom, leaning in toward him, whenever he had the chance. How Tom would squat down and run his sensitive hands over things like games and sneakers, touching buttons and Velcro fasteners, asking serious, interested questions in his calm, quiet, reassuring Tom way. How Rune looked at Tom. How Tom loved Rune. How I was learning to love them both. I thought about how lucky Rune was to have Tom in his life.

  Me, too, I thought. I’m lucky, too.

  It was three o’clock before we stopped shopping and dropped into a Wendy’s for burgers and fries.

  I could tell Rune was dying to ask Tom a lot of questions about the Mondo, but he knew it might be a sore subject. Finally, the need to know overpowered his fear of another lecture about the evils of gambling.

  “I guess we picked good numbers,” he ventured.

  Tom smiled. I gave him credit for that. “We picked very good numbers. Lots of people are wishing they had our numbers.” I heard the irony, but it was well-cloaked.

  The boy hesitated and then plunged ahead, “How much did you win?”

  Tom’s face clouded at the question, but he bore up bravely, and his answer was systematic and Tom-like. “Well, the jackpot was supposed to be five hundred million. But, apparently, people tend to buy more tickets when the pot is that large.”

  I suppressed a grin. Apparentleee! For a second, I remembered my very-small-dollars-an-hour part-time librarian job and decided to call in rich, at least for a couple of weeks. On the basis of the at least ten million I had coming to me since Tom had taken rather liberal advantage of my BOGO coupon offer.

  Tom continued. “So when the drawing closed, the final amount was 550 million. And there was only one winning number. The one you and I picked. Now, most people take their winnings in what is called a ‘lump sum’ and that’s usually a little more than half of the jackpot. For this one, the lump sum is around two hundred-ninety million. And then taxes take a good bit to pay for things people need like schools. Let’s say our part would be one hundred-ninety million.”

  “Wow,” Rune’s skinny shoulders slumped. “That’s not so much.”

  “Rune,” Tom’s expression was serious. I could see that he didn’t want to oversell the size of the winnings, since that was the exact opposite of his original plan. “Rune, that’s plenty of money. It’s enough money that, if your mother thinks it’s a good idea, you and she might be able to move to a house like Mrs. Robbins’. It’s enough that you can go to college when the time comes. No problem.”

  I knew that, for Tom, this was shaky ground. I was beginning to comprehend what troubled him so much. Setting aside our recent experiences with violence, money in huge quantities is still a trouble magnet if you’re not prepared to handle it. For Rune’s mother it could be a snare that would bind her to unscrupulous men. For Rune it might be a spiral into a too-easy, wasted life. I was getting to be a small cautionary tale myself. I’d already decided to at least temporarily ditch my library career. My life had not yet gotten easy enough to be seriously dissolute. But I had to admit there were issues.

  Tom forged on. “You helped pick the numbers. You’re entitled to at least that much. Your mother can help you decide.”

  Rune looked downcast and I knew Tom, even with his spidey sense, might miss this one. “Rune,” I asked, “is something bothering you?”

  He bobbed his head, glancing away from me and up to Tom who appeared baffled by my question. “Yeah. My number. The one I picked. The Mondo Ball. It wasn’t a true number.”

  Tom shook his head, “‘Not a true number?’ What do you mean?”

  The boy hung his head low over the table and, with one small brown finger, drew a furrow through a dollop of ketchup that had splashed down in front of him. “It’s not my true age. Eight. I wanted it to be eight. But I’m only seven. And a quarter.”

  Holy cow. I don’t know much about luck or odds, but after all the talk about this number and that number, that one piece of information blew me away. Tom’s Mondo really was an act of God. The hairs on the back of my neck stood right up.

  But the kid looked like he was about to bawl.

  “Rune,” I jumped in, “eight is the best number you could possibly have chosen. And it’s okay to pretend to be older than you are sometimes. I know lots of ladies who pretend to be younger than they are.”

  His face wrinkled in disbelief. “Why would anyone want to do that? What good would that do?”

  Tom laughed out loud. He found his cane and rose to his feet. “Good question. Enough about money. There’s plenty to go around. Let’s go visit your mom.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I don’t know what it was about that week in August, but after the big storm in the early morning hours of Wednesday—the memory of which I shall always treasure—there was a storm every afternoon for five straight days. I was driving into the Thursday one.

  The McCauley Road Hospital was an ancient building, big and gray, its stone façade darkened by decades of industrial grime. It would have been intimidating under the sunniest of circumstances. Now, overhung by the approaching storm, it looked like a prison or a haunted fortress. I peeked into the rearview mirror and saw that Rune’s eyes were wide. Clearly he didn’t want to go in there. And he certainly didn’t want his mother to be in there.

  “Rune…” I made my voice as calm and cheery as I could and hoped he couldn’t hear the dread I myself was feeling about this grim place. “Have you ever been inside a hospital?”

  He shook his head. Mute.

  “This one doesn’t look so good. We’re having a spooky storm and it makes things…maybe a little scary. But hospitals are full of wonderful doctors and nurses. They’re very smart and very nice.”

  Usually, I amended to myself, remembering some very cranky-pants doctors and nurses I had encountered from time to time.

  “If you’re sick or injured, a hospital is the best, safest place in the world to be.” I mentally crossed my fingers. Rune didn’t need to hear about inevitable exceptions and deadly infections. “It makes me feel better to know that all the people in this hospital want your mom to get better.”

  That last may have been a little over the top, but Rune seemed mollified. At least he nodded like he believed me and the fear on his face receded ever so slightly.

  The woman behind the information desk, Ms. Ivy Martin, by her name tag, had obviously been hired for her ability to look friendly and act authoritarian. She smiled at us with her mouth but her eye corners didn’t crinkle at all. Her smooth brown face was unmarred by empathy or human concern. Her general demeanor was wary as hell.

  Of course, she’d have noticed that the three of us weren’t exactly a matched set. We told her who we were here to see and explained it was Runako’s mom. She s
oftened somewhat. I didn’t think she could miss how frightened his eyes were and how he had latched on to Tom’s hand like it was the last lifeboat off the Titanic.

  “Well,” she said, consulting her computer screen. “Well. Let me call up to the nurses’ station on her floor and check on how she’s doing and whether or not now would be a good time.”

  I gritted my teeth. Come on, lady. I cast my attention right on down to the tips of my Nikes so she couldn’t read my mind. So I’d appear meek and highly cooperative. I didn’t want my bad attitude to hurt Rune’s chances.

  She picked up a phone and there was a brief conversation. Then she said, “Oh.” In a way that made me jerk my head up again. Her expression was grave for an instant and then she composed herself, as if she’d realized all three of us were showing her the same worried face.

  She had a grip on herself. I’ll give her that. She said, “Thank you very much” quite calmly to the person on the other end of the line and turned to me. “It’s going to be a moment, Miss—?”

  I filled in the blank.

  “Ms. Harper, why don’t you have your friend and Runako wait in the chairs over there? I’d like a word with you.”

  She propelled me into an anteroom with a door and pulled the door closed behind us. The room was gray and dim, but she didn’t switch on the light. Outside, the wind was raving, the lightning and thunder almost continuous. Rain blasted the windows. She faced me, and her pleasant mouth was a thin line. This was going to be bad.

  “Ms. Harper, I’m sorry to inform you that Renata Davis passed away about an hour ago. The floor nurse said she had been doing better, had eaten most of her lunch, was fairly responsive, and then, when the aide went in to take away Ms. Davis’ tray, she was gone. They called a code blue, but nothing could be done.”

  “Oh. No.” Sorrow rolled over me with anger right on its heels. Natural causes again. This time the blame would be on the beaters, and the beaters would be too dead to be prosecuted. This time, however, I had my act together. “Had she had any visitors today?”