"What a racket," Blaine says. "I ought to call the cops on you guys."
"Look, pal, do you want the bike or not?" the big guy says, not too unpleasantly, just asking a question. "If not, then you go home or wherever, and we just let the process take its course. No problem here unless you keep running your mouth." He flexes his shoulders.
"I’m just saying," Blaine says, "it seems like a lot of money." He's in no shape for this crap.
"Yea or nay, up to you."
Blaine pays him, puts it on his almost maxed-out Visa, which thankfully the machine behind the counter accepts, and they walk out to the yard while Jason backs the truck up to get it. The Shadow doesn’t look that bad, some damage to the rear fender and forks, scratches and dents on the left side, but it fires right up when Blaine tries it.
They load it in the back of the truck and head to his house, which also looks none the worse for his absence. It’s just a small, wooden framed house, but it’s only a few blocks from the beach on prime Galveston real estate, and Blaine loves it. He and Jason unload the bike in the back by the garage, and he rolls it inside to safety.
Jason has to go to work, so Blaine thanks him and goes inside himself, enjoying the sudden quiet and solitude after days of not much of that, what with people poking and prodding and testing him and whatnot. He takes a deep breath, glad to be home.
He is a bit of a recluse, likes the solitary, and when the doorbell rings a few minutes later he is inclined to just ignore it. But when it goes off again, he sighs and goes to answer, thinking that it better not be more reporters, or he will go off on them. Vultures. He had surprised himself with the niceness he had shown them. Maybe it was because they were brothers and sisters of the pen, in a way, him being a writer, though not the kind they were. He wouldn’t be able to stand being out there trying to make stuff happen or dramatizing it into more than it really was, though maybe that is what he should be doing. More like cousins of the pen.
He opens the door, and it’s a good-looking younger woman standing there, early twenties or thereabouts, brown hair and hazel eyes, shorter than he is by four or five inches, maybe 5’6" or so, wearing jeans and a blue silk blouse. She’s stunning, actually. Her eyes are red, though. She looks like she might have been crying.
"Hi," she says. "How are you?"
"I’m good," he replies. "How about you?"
"Good, oh good," she says. "I’m Mandy." She puts out her hand, and he grasps it lightly in a shake, not sure what she wants. "I’m the Corolla," she says, voice shaking a bit, "I’m the one who almost killed you."
He looks at her a minute, realizes he is still holding her hand, and smiles. "Actually," he says, "from what they tell me, you did kill me."
Her face starts to collapse, and he sees she must have been under terrible strain. "Hey," he says, "Come on in, and we’ll talk about it. We need to exchange insurance info anyway." He smiles again. "No harm, no foul. Look at me. I’m good as new. Well, almost. New wasn’t that great either."
She comes on in and has a seat, and he offers some good fresh-brewed coffee he had just made, and she says okay, even though she’s not really a coffee drinker; it smells great, she’ll have some.
"I came up to the hospital," she says when he sets the cup in front of her and sits down across. "The first I heard was you had died right after you got there. Then somebody else told me you had stopped breathing for a while and come back." She sips the coffee, looks at him. "I prayed for you. I was right outside your door for a little bit then I went to the chapel and prayed." Her hands are trembling, and her face is screwed up tight, as she tries to hold the emotion in. Voice quavery. "I’m so sorry," she says. "I just didn’t see you." Tears are rolling down her face.
"No worries," he says, leaning over and resting his hand on her shoulder for a minute. "I’m fine."
After few minutes the tears start to dry up, she gives a sniffle or two, wipes her nose on a Kleenex from her purse and straightens up and drinks some more coffee.
"I don’t have insurance," she says.
Blaine stares at her. He had been wondering about that, been getting ready to broach the subject himself as soon as she had gotten herself together. "No insurance? It’s required by the state. Everybody has insurance these days."
"My credit record isn’t very good," she says. "I let it expire with the company I was with thinking I could get a better rate. I was on the way out the drive to see another company when I hit you."
Great, Blaine is thinking. Perfect ending to a beautiful week. What next? Locusts? A terminal illness hidden somewhere in his test results? How about a leaking gas line. He clears his throat thinking about it. He has uninsured motorist on his policy that should cover it. Rates don’t go up for that, do they?
"Maybe we could work something out," he says.
Mandy looks at him, trying to figure out exactly what he means. "I could give you a little bit of cash every week," she says. Her eyes have dried up as she focuses on the financial situation. "I’m just so glad you’re going to be all right."
He sighs. "The damage to the bike isn’t that bad. It’s the hospital bills that will be a bundle. Do you know they can ruin your credit now if you don’t pay your hospital bills?" He sighs again. "They got the little guy coming and going. And those insurance companies are a bunch of damned crooks, excuse my French," he says looking at her, "but they are."
"I’ve heard it before," she says. "My daddy used to say he didn’t like cussing all the time, but he didn’t trust anybody who didn’t cuss every once in a while."
Blaine laughs. "You stay with your parents?"
"No, my dad passed on not too long ago and left me enough money to buy that little house down the street, but I spent just about everything I had getting in and repairing the stuff that needed fixing."
"Yeah," Blaine says, sipping more coffee and watching her, "Houses are black holes. You keep throwing money at 'em, and it just disappears." He’s starting to wonder how much of this is on the up-and-up. The tears had vanished fairly quickly, and Mandy seems to be pretty much composed again. She is stunning. What is he going to do, anyway, sue her? That’s not his style. She’s just another little guy hustling along on the edges of the big machine, trying to get by. If she’s running a bit of a sympathy game on him, well so what? He’d probably do the same if he had the equipment to make it work. She sure has the equipment. She is sitting in the chair, looking around at the house. It’s nothing fancy, but the furniture is nice. He had gotten one of those three year, no-interest finance deals the furniture companies run to get business, bought the brown leather couch and recliner, the big oak dining set, the 52 inch flat screen, and two big bookcases. He likes Picasso, has prints scattered on the walls, a few more good abstracts.
"How old are you?" he asks.
"Twenty-one."
Legal anyway, he thinks, drinking more coffee, but really too young for him to fool with, though with those looks he might consider training wheels for her. But let’s face it. If she hadn’t run over him, no way she would be sitting in his house right now. And the problem with a gal like her is there was always something big and ugly trailing along behind her, slobbering like a Saint Bernard.
As if on cue the doorbell rings again, and Blaine gets up to get it, sighing again. Grand Central. He opens it, and it’s the big guy from the impound place. How did he get my address, Blaine wonders.
"Change of heart and came to give me my money back, right?" he says.
"Uh, actually I am looking for Mandy," the big guy says, peering over his shoulder to where she is sitting.
"Hey, Doug," she says, getting up from the table, coming to the door to stand beside Blaine.
"Small world," says Blaine. "I take it that's a no on the money."
"Doug picked up the Corolla after the wreck," Mandy says. "Repaired the damage where I hit you."
"Yeah, Mandy," Doug says. "Good as new. I put it in your driveway." He tosses the ponytail, looks at Blaine. Same sleeveless jack
et.
"What do I owe you?" she asks.
"Oh, I don’t know," he says, giving Blaine the eye. "I tell you what: I’ll call you later and give you a number." He holds out a key ring to her, and she takes it.
Blaine is thinking that the car would have never left this guy’s tow truck if it had been his. It appears Mandy is working this situation like a mule at harvest time, but maybe he’s just a touch jaded. She does seem nice, and you can’t blame somebody for using the tools they’ve got. Cynicism is a problem for him sometimes.
They are all standing on the front porch now, and Blaine can see the car down in her driveway only five houses down, across the street. Her house is one of the Craftsman style, like his, but a shade of copper color with green trim. Nice house. Not a big lot, no garage in back, but a carport built into the side. Yard neatly trimmed. Paint fresh and gleaming.
"That would be great," Mandy says. "I’m home quite a bit right now, and if I’m not I’ll call you back."
"Counting on it," the big man says, and gives Blaine the stink eye again, tosses her a wave and turns and walks down the sidewalk, ponytail swinging. Mandy watches him a minute, speculatively, it seems to Blaine, then turns back to him.
"So, what was it like to be dead?" she says seriously.
"I really don’t remember," Blaine says. He has a feeling he is going to get asked this question a lot. And it’s only natural. It is the biggest mystery of them all, isn’t it? And nobody comes back to tell the tale. Except Blaine and a few lucky others. Maybe when Mandy goes and he gets back inside, he’ll get on the computer and find some near-death experiences. Or he could just make something up. Something wild and fabulous. Why not? It’s not like he’s lying. Hell, he died, it’s a documented fact. Maybe he’ll even remember something else. The doc had said it was possible, that some people get memory back. He should be kneeling on the ground kissing it, is really what he should be doing. Back from the dead. Sure beats the alternative.
Chapter 5
So Mandy promises again to do something on the bills, even if it’s just a bit every week, and they make their farewells, which is good with Blaine. His head is throbbing some. He heads to the bedroom for a nap.
When he wakes up everything is dark, and squinting at the radio clock near the end of the bed he sees it is almost midnight. He has slept 10 hours and now is wide awake in the middle of the night. That’s okay with Blaine, though. He likes this time of night. It’s quiet and peaceful, and the stores are never crowded. Kroger stays open 24 hours, and he shops late at night occasionally. The only bad thing is that’s when the stockers stock, and they always have stuff strewn all over, blocking the aisles where you want to go.
He is a writer, but he can’t always make a living at that, so three or four times every year, or whenever funds start getting low, he goes to work shutdowns at one of the many plants in his area or down the coast. Wherever the work is: though he likes to stay close to home if he can.
He has pipefitter and boilermaker skills and good relationships with several companies that work the shutdowns. They are always looking for help.
This is how it goes: These companies are all making stuff that brings them in a fortune as long as they are running. So they fix only what they absolutely have to during the year, then shut down the entire shooting match for 30 to 60 days every 12, 18 months and fix the rest of the stuff they can’t get while operating. They open up vessels and do inspections, put new equipment in. Things like that.
To minimize the time they are down, they run crews 24 hours a day until finished. That’s where Blaine comes in.
The operators at these plants are specialists in operations, not boilermaking or pipefitting. Most are good jacklegs; they can do some of those things, but the plants hire outside companies to come in and do the heavy stuff. The companies can’t carry enough guys year-round to work shutdowns, so whenever they have one going they need extra help.
The upside is he can make great money in short periods of time. During the shutdowns the men work 12 hour shifts, six days a week. Used to be every day until it was over, but OSHA had finally stepped in and stopped that. Too many accidents and near misses due to fatigue. It still is a tough schedule to work.
The downside is that he is never entirely sure when these things are going to happen. The companies have so many interdependencies among themselves and suppliers and the market that they are like chess players winnowing through the variations to pick the best times. Blaine would get word on one date then they’d change it. Also, he never knows whether he will be working day or night. But it really doesn’t matter much. He can do either one.
Some guys go around the country working outages. You can make enough money in five or six months to last the year, even though you don’t have the benefits.
The company can be a bit rough, the work hard and demanding and physical, and there is a very real element of danger. The vessels and reactors they get into are receptacles for some very dangerous chemicals: cyanide, ammonia, various acids and such, and if they are not decontaminated correctly that stuff can still be inside, or in the connecting pipes. Also, the situation being what it is, there are always guys working who are new at what they do, or just not very good at it. And the workers at the plants tend to treat the contract workers as second-class citizens. The contractors usually handle the dangerous stuff. Not always real pleasant, but it is a way for Blaine to get some money when he needs some, and has saved him many times from financial woes. He isn’t complaining. He can make 10 grand from one of these deals then rathole it. It gives him a measure of control over his destiny without taking too much bull from an outsider, and some freedom to write, which is what he considers his real calling, though he hasn’t made much money at it yet.
Middle of the night, but he can’t sleep, so he makes himself some coffee and heads over to the book shelves to find something on brain function to look at.
He loves books, the written word. He has volumes about almost everything you can think of and a number on the brain and language and thought itself. He does a lot of corresponding by email to folks here and there about this and that, and what he has noticed is that the conversations are much more focused and on point than those you have in person. It’s hard for him to come up with the best response to a comment, many times, when he is face-to-face with someone in real time. The emails allow him to compose sentences and look at them, just like when he is writing something to publish, and revise and edit until he has said exactly what he wants to say. It is a way to hone his thinking and communication skills, and he has come to really enjoy this mode of conversation, though he hadn’t in the beginning. He had thought of it as a virtual communication, then, replacing real face-to-face, but what he has found to be true is that really isn’t the case: It is more a supplement to the personal.
So he picks out three or four volumes on the brain and takes them to the table to browse through while he sips his coffee. He has looked through them all before; the human brain has always fascinated him.
He looks at the familiar picture of the pole that shot through the brain of Phineas Gage, exploded through the frontal lobes, back in the 1800s. He had lived, miraculously enough, and even seemed undamaged for a bit. His intelligence remained intact. Memory also. But it turned out that the sober, industrious Phineas was gone. He became impulsive and moody and cursed like a sailor. He was unable to control himself or form long-range plans any longer, though some later reports indicated partial recovery. Planning and control are what the frontal lobes are all about, Blaine knows. He is thinking how lucky he had been in the accident. Maybe it’s time to put the old Shadow to rest, quit tempting fate. Not in this lifetime, he thinks.
Blaine sips coffee, flips pages, gets up and stretches, realizes it is 5 a.m., only hours from dawn, but he feels good; the stiffness in the neck had been a bit worse when he woke but has eased now. He stretches some more, decides to get down on the floor and do his routine, and go for a run. The doctor had told him n
o physical exertion for at least a week, but he doesn’t trust those guys anyway. That was one reason he hadn’t let on about knowing more about brain function.
He throws his old shorts on and runs through the session, the same that he has been doing for years. Pushups, leg lifts, sit-ups, a bunch of different stretches he had picked up from a yoga book, designed to loosen him in every direction. Just about 20 minutes of exercise, but enough.
The sky is still dark when he heads out the front door and down the street, though the east is a touch lighter. The neighborhood is full of dogs, but most of them are accustomed to him by now, and this particular morning they are quiet. If one starts up, it begins a chain reaction, and soon dogs blocks away are barking. The canine community doing their job.
Blaine has a reflective fluorescent green cap and white shorts and shirt he wears on night runs, but this time of morning there isn’t much traffic, usually. The most dangerous thing out is typically the paper guy: a young bald man who weaves from one side of the road to the other trying to throw both sides in one drive-by. Blaine has cussed him under his breath a few times but tries to leave him alone. Live and let live is his philosophy.
He runs by Mandy’s house, brightly lit and gleaming with the porch light on, but everything else dark. He never did find out how the tow guy knew his address. Maybe she had told him.
End of the street, then another block and into the rich part of the island, and he starts to find his rhythm, breath coming easier, legs starting to get loose and not feeling much pain at all from the neck or spine. His problem with doctors is that they seem oriented towards fixing you after you break, not keeping you well. And prescribe medication at the drop of a hat. Nothing to do with all those drug reps calling.
He runs through the big, southern-style houses of the prosperous: houses with pillars spaced along the front, houses that look like plantations might have looked, two or three stories with the pillars going all the way up, pools in the back, all the lots huge, many with palms spaced strategically. Nice neighborhoods, with those signs on the poles warning that the residents report all suspicious activity immediately to the police. Not usually much suspicious activity on these streets: people jogging or walking their dogs, kids bouncing on trampolines in the front yard, landscaping do-it-yourselfers. The neighborhood is on a line from the poor sections of town down by Broadway to the beach, though, and occasional stragglers do wander through who don’t appear to belong: but not often, and the police patrol it well. Blaine has a .22 mag North American mini revolver that only weighs 10 ounces loaded, and he carries it sometimes when he runs at what he considers to be the bad times of night, like 2 a.m. when the bars are closing, and people seem inclined to poor judgment and bad driving. Straps it into a fanny pack around his waist. Can hardly tell it’s there. Doesn’t bother him but he usually doesn’t pack it this time of morning, when quiet solitude is the rule.
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