"I took an apartment. The insurance company gave me some money until they sort things out. Donald set me up with one. I tried to pay but he said M & W would absorb it, since you own half of it."
"Which apartments?"
"Ivy Terrace."
"Nice. We only opened them last year."
"I didn't know you built them."
"Didn't build them, really. I got a commission on the land sale, subdivided a few lots, went in as a silent partner. M & W just collects the rent."
"I got a two-bedroom unit," she said, as relieved as he to avoid conversation. She opened a National Geographic.
Jacob let his gaze crawl back to the window. He'd trusted his partner, Donald Meekins, to take care of her until he got out. Donald had phoned his hospital room but Jacob had refused to talk to him. He was afraid of what he might say. The cash flow would be tight for a couple of months, but at least they had insurance.
He counted the houses on the hillside opposite the hospital. There were at least two good-sized tracts that were prime spots for development. With Kingsboro Hospital opening a new cancer wing and cardiac care facility, more wealthy seniors would be moving from Florida and New York to the North Carolina mountains. Those seniors needed homes, preferably close to health care services. M & W had built a country club outside of town, complete with an eighteen-hole golf course, but those homes had all been sold. New homes were needed for all the future cancer victims. Abnormal growth was a growth industry.
"It's too quiet in here," Renee said.
He heard a click and the television came on. One of those stupid morning shows, Early NBC or ABC Sunrise or whatever. He opened his eyes. At least he could focus on the screen instead of Renee. A man in a blue suit was interviewing a woman who kept pulling at the hem of her short skirt, wanting to show off her legs while still projecting wholesomeness and modesty. Cut.
"I really like this commercial," he said. On the screen, a lizard spoke in an Australian accent, trying to entice the viewer into buying a particular brand of car insurance.
"About the insurance," she said, as if the commercial had triggered an opportunity to bring up the subject. "I didn't want to do too much without you. But I needed a roof over my head."
"She was worth a lot, wasn't she?"
"You bastard. Don't start that again. We're going to have to deal with some things, and we may as well be civil about it."
"The money, you mean."
"Shut up. All I'm asking is that you sign the papers and let's get on with our lives. Whatever we can salvage, that is."
"We probably saved a ton on the cremation, since the job was half-done when you turned the body over to the aftercare vultures."
"I had to make arrangements. I couldn't wait--"
"--for me to attend my own daughter's funeral?"
Renee jabbed at the television remote and muted the sound. Jacob watched the silent interview guest fighting her hem line. The woman's knees were a little too knobby for his taste. Back when he had taste, that was. He turned his attention to the fly in the syrup.
Wasn't there a saying about the fly in the ointment? Dr. Masutu's tranquilizer worked miracles, freed his mind to explore the foolish. Jacob had stopped fighting, and the injections had been replaced with twice-daily pills. Diazepam. The quicker-picker-upper.
Or the easier-to-forgetter.
Or the don't-give-a-damner.
"Jake, we're going to have to talk about it."
"There's nothing left to talk about."
"There's plenty."
"There's nothing. It's all gone."
"No. There's still us."
"There's no more 'us.' There's just you and me. Or maybe just you."
"Don't talk like that. You've always despised failure. That's not the Wells way."
"I've had a lot of time to think. Hospitals are good for that, maybe even better than prisons." Jacob pulled the straw from his milk carton and poked it into the syrup near the fly. The fly's wings beat frantically.
"I know this is terrible. But maybe we can get through it together. Start over."
"The way we did after Christine? You saw how that one turned out."
Renee finally sat, in the oak and mauve vinyl chair near the window. The sun had grown a shade more yellow outside, rising above the fog that hazed the horizon. In the old world, the happy distant past, Jacob would be at his desk at the M & W office, talking on the phone, cutting deals, lining up subcontractors. Or else out on the job site, looking at blueprints as a bulldozer ripped brown gashes in the mountainside.
Developing.
That was an interesting word, with several connotations. Developers made things happen. But development was also the term for a baby's trek through the cycle, from microscopic fertilized egg to alien peanut creature to bawling, squealing reality.
"Funny, isn't it?" he said. "The kids were born in this hospital."
"That's not so funny."
"Think about it. They took their first breaths from this very same air. The same sick air." He waved the hand that held the straw and the fly finally broke free and arced across the room like a crippled bomber returning from a death run.
The door swung open. A nurse came in, a male with a sour expression and two days of stubble. He stared at Renee as if she were the patient, then wiped his palms against his hospital blues and slipped on rubber gloves. He squeezed ointment from a tube and rubbed it softly into the skin of Jacob's arms.
"You're looking good, my man," the nurse said. His ID nameplate read "Steve Poccora" and his picture beneath it was clean-shaven and smiling. The smile looked as if it had been computer-generated in a photo manipulation program.
"The doctor says I'm getting better every minute," Jacob said.
"Aren't we all?" Poccora said. Then, to Renee, "We'll have him home to you in no time."
"No hurry," Renee said.
Poccora started to grin at the joke, sensed the coldness in the room for the first time, then rubbed the ointment faster. Jacob barely felt the contact. The skin had roughened and much of the damaged layer had sloughed off. He was new in a way, pink as a baby, slick as a snake after molting.
If only he could shed his soul as easily. He'd read that the body completely remade itself every seven years as cells died and were replaced. That meant he'd been a different man when Mattie was born. A better man.
Less like Joshua.
"How's the appetite?" the nurse asked.
"Crazy," Jacob said. "Renee smuggled me in two buckets of the Colonel's finest."
"That's why you didn't like the cafeteria grub." Steve Poccora moved the rolling table with the food tray to the corner of the room. "You didn't touch it. Figured you'd be used to it by now."
"Mez compliments au chef," Jacob said in mutilated French.
The nurse took his blood pressure and pulse, wrote numbers on a chart. "Your diastolic's a little high, but nothing to be worried about."
"Do I look like I'm worried?" Jacob asked.
"He's not the worrying type," Renee said. "I do that for both of us."
Poccora looked from one to the other, as if deciding not to be the birdie in their badminton game. "Yell if you need anything."
"'Scream' is more likely." On the television, the talk show host had a parrot perched on his shoulder. The bird's trainer stood nearby, holding up a snack food. The host looked nervous, as if he feared an embarrassing episode involving droppings. The bird gave a soundless squawk, warming up for a ribald wisecrack.
Poccora picked up the food tray. "I hate parrots," he said, looking at the television. "They always get to cut you down, but you can't make a snappy comeback. They're too dumb to get it. Like talking to a ventriloquist's dummy."
"The worst ones are the dummies who look just like the ventriloquist," Jacob said. "They let their evil side out."
"Hey, you try being nice when some guy has his hand shoved up your rectum," Poccora said.
"They call that a 'prostate exam.'"
Th
e nurse started to laugh, then gave up. He walked between them with the food tray, paused at the door. "You sure you don't want any of these pancakes?"
Jacob looked around the room for the fly. "No, Steve. They're all yours."
Steve dipped a finger into the syrup and pretended to lick it. "Hate to see good food go to waste. But this is no good. I know the infections that go through this place."
He left, and the forced humor shifted back to unbearable tension.
"Where do we start?" Renee asked after twenty seconds of silence.
"Please. You're starting to sound like my old shrinks." He fumbled for the remote, wanting to punch up the volume.
"Let's start at the beginning, then."
"The beginning. My first big mistake."
"Jake, don't do this."
"You're the one who wants it to be over. Isn't that what you've wanted all along? It's just pathetic that you needed this kind of excuse to get your nerve up." The tears were hot in his eyes, burning with the memory of the fire and all the rest of it.
His thumb pressed the volume button. Renee moved forward with angry speed and slapped the remote from his hand. He stared at the silent television as its colors blurred in his watery vision.
"Talk to me, you bastard," she said.
His throat was tight, rasped raw from the ventilator tube that had been stuffed into his lungs. He tried to convince himself that the fire had damaged him, taken the soft words from his tongue, leaving a handful of ash in the cavity where his heart used to beat. Part of him wished he had died in the fire. Part of him had died in the fire. But not the right part, the half that needed killing.
Renee's breath was on his cheek, but he was miles away, in the dark, searching for that cool grotto that the drugs carved in the stony recesses of his skull.
"You can't keep your eyes closed forever."
"Long enough."
"That won't make it go away. We've got to deal with it. You can't crawl into your shell and pretend it never happened."
"Take the money. It doesn't matter."
"Donald called me. He wanted to know when you'll be ready to go back to work." "I'm through." And he was. M & W Ventures, Inc., had built ten apartment complexes, a half-dozen subdivisions, three shopping centers, the country club, and a pair of chain motels. That qualified as a life's work, didn't it? Even for the son of Warren Wells. Maybe Donald Meekins could take the oversize prop scissors they used for ceremonial ribbon cuttings and snip the W off the corporation's name.
Jacob had made his mark on the world. A reputation you could take to the bank. Something you could use for collateral.
He could lose everything, his kids, his wife, his soul, but still those buildings would stand, a testament to willpower and vision. Asphalt to pave his way to a better future. Steel bones, concrete flesh, and a blueprint for his soul. Material evidence for Judgment Day, a devil's bargain.
"You're not through," Renee said. "I won't let you be through."
He wondered how much of it had been for her. Where did spousal support cross the line into need, what separated encouragement from the shrewish demand for perfection and achievement? Was it his own insecurity that drove him, or was her relentless desire for his success the whip that kept him in a lather? Was she the ventriloquist whose hand had guided him through his lockstep sleepwalk of greed?
No. She didn't deserve that much credit. Where he'd been, where he was going, were decisions shaped in the forge of his guts. He could blame other people, and that was fast becoming his latest survival tactic, but the justifications always rang hollow.
In the end, it comes down to you and the stranger in the mirror.
"Leave me," he said.
"It's not going away, even if I do."
Jacob smiled. The movement was painful to his chapped lips. "It's already gone." He felt the thump on his chest from the weight of the remote control she had tossed there.
"You and your fucking martyr act," she said. "As if you're the only one who has to suffer."
"I'll give you the damned divorce. Anything you want. The money, the cars, the house..."
The house. Which was nothing but a heap of charcoal in one of Kingsboro's squarest subdivisions.
"And the kids," he said, his voice taking on a shrill giddiness. "You can have the kids. No arguments from me. I don't even want visitation rights."
"Jakie."
He clenched the sheet with both hands, tried to squeeze juice from it, pressed his teeth together until his temples ached.
"Calm down. You're scaring me." She moved to the head of the bed, reaching for the button that would signal the nurse's desk.
"You should be scared."
"Do you think this is any easier for me?"
Jacob looked at her, the green eyes made large by her lenses. He was supposed to love this woman. He knew it, something strong tugged the inside of his chest, a deep memory turned over in the grave of his sleeping heart. How could something so sure and real have turned into this? How could an eternal bond dissolve like mist exposed to the bright glare of morning?
"I'm sorry," he said. That stupid, useless word crawled out of his dry mouth. He couldn't stop it. The response was automatic. He'd said that word so often in the past ten months.
"This is impossible," she said. She pulled her purse to her lap, opened it, took out a pair of clip-on sunglasses, and flipped the dark lenses over her eyes. Jacob was glad her eyes were gone. Now he could look at her fully.
"There's something else," she said. She brought a crumpled envelope from the purse. "I guess you wanted to get in one last little twist of the knife."
"What are you talking about?"
Renee fished a note from the envelope and read it. "'Hope you liked the housewarming present. Yours always, J.'"
Jacob's stomach became a great claw clutching at his other abdominal organs. "Where did you get that?"
"I found it in my car. I guess you figured it wouldn't burn since I was parked on the street that night."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"It's your handwriting, Jake. Don't play any more games. Please." A solitary tear slid from beneath the black curve of one plastic lens.
"I still don't know what you're talking about."
"The fire, Jake. The investigators think it might have been arson."
"I know. They talked to me about it last week. I told them I don't know why anybody would want to set fire to our house. There's nothing special about it. It's not even the best one on the block."
"But this note--" Her voice broke and all she could do was hold the beige paper in the air before her face.
"--is nothing," Jake said, his pulse like a frantic clock ticking against his eardrums, a timer for an explosion. "Throw it away."
"It's your handwriting. And the insurance--"
"Don't talk crazy, honey."
"I'm just confused. None of it makes sense. And Mattie... Oh, Jake." She squeezed the paper into a ball, stood so fast that her purse fell and scattered its contents across the antiseptic floor. She leaned over him and put her head gently on his chest.
He reached out a wounded hand and stroked her hair. "Shh. It's going to be okay. I promise."
"Please don't let it end like this," she said, her sobs making the narrow hospital bed shake.
"Everything's going to be good as new," he said, his heart jumping so much he was sure she could feel it through the thin cotton of his hospital gown. "Trust me. I'm not going to let anyone take you away from me."
Especially Joshua. No, he wouldn't let Joshua win this time. Not again. Not like always.
As he spoke soothing words and petted her with one hand, his other hand eased across her body to the paper in her fist. He tugged gently and she let go. He glanced at it, saw the cursive letters leaning to the left. Familiar handwriting. He tucked the paper underneath his sheet, secretly, and let her finish crying.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jacob Wells was released from the hospital on M
ay twenty-ninth.
Steve Poccora wheeled him from his room to the elevator on the day of his release. Jacob insisted he was fine, but Poccora said it was hospital policy to treat everybody like infirms until they reached the door.
"After that, it's your business," Poccora said. "Trip and break your leg, for all I care. But we can't have you suing us for something that happens on the inside."
Jacob couldn't tell if the nurse was joking. So he sat in the wheelchair and watched the elevator lights blink as they passed each floor down to ground level. The elevator opened and a man Jacob recognized from the Chamber of Commerce stepped on with a bouquet of pink roses, tulips, and Queen Anne's lace. Jacob couldn't recall the man's name, though he had the thick neck and jowly, red complexion of a former football player. Probably someone in masonry supplies.
"Jacob," the man said, flashing his money smile. "How's it going? You doing okay?"
"Never been better."
The smile faded. "Listen, sorry to hear about... you know."
"Don't mention it."
"I've been praying for you."
"That helps. Thanks."
The man pointed to the flowers. "For my wife. She's in maternity. We just had our third."
Jacob nodded, staring past him at the hospital lobby, the wax sheen of the industrial tiles, the patient information desk staffed by an old lady with pince-nez glasses. Poccora wheeled him out of the elevator and the doors closed with a soft hiss, cutting off the smell of the flowers.
"Dawson," Jacob said.
"Huh?" Poccora said.
"The man's name was Dawson. You ever do that, draw a blank when you're talking to somebody, then it pops right into your head later?"
"No, man. I think you've been in here too long."
They reached the glass entrance and Poccora stopped the wheelchair. Jacob sat looking at the world outside, a changed world, a lesser world.
"End of the ride," Poccora said.
"Yeah," Jacob said.
"Your wife picking you up?"
"Yeah. She's right outside. I phoned her from the room."
"Good. You two ought to work things out. Take care of each other. Maybe you can have another kid someday."
Jacob stood. Though he had been walking the halls for the last few days, his legs were cotton candy. He waved to Poccora and went through the exit, wondering how much of himself he'd left in the hospital. The outdoors was welcome after the stale, recycled indoor air, but it somehow left an aftertaste of smoke on his tongue.
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