Thirteen West

by Jane Toombs

  "He's dead," Sally muttered.

  "Shit, no, don't you go saying that."

  Alma, exceeding the speed limit, screeched her brakes when Sally spotted the convenience store almost too late for the turn.

  The VW negotiated all the proper turns but they drove quite a ways before the car headlights illuminated a sign saying Sierra Grove.

  "Okay, now we get creative," Alma said. "Frank's car's a Corvette, right?"

  "A red Corvette."

  "Let's hope he's got the only one. If we can find it and the carports are numbered according to the apartments we've got it made. That is—if he's home."

  Sally's heart plummeted. They had no way of knowing where Frank was, not really.

  Alma parked and jumped out. "Come on, help me look," she told Sally.

  They ran up the driveway to the carports behind the buildings and began looking, each taking a different side. "Here's a red one," Alma said. "No, damn, it's a Porsche."

  Minutes later, Sally called, "I think I've found it." Alma joined her and they stared at the red Corvette. "I'm almost positive it's Frank's 'cause I remember there was an EM on the license plate," Sally said.

  "K3's the number on the carport," Alma said. "Now let's hope he'll let us in."

  K3 turned out to be on the ground floor. The door was locked. Repeated doorbell ringing and knocking brought no response.

  "Now what?' Alma asked.

  "We've got to get in." Sally began checking the windows. All were closed except a small one, rather high up, open a crack. She pointed it out.

  "Who's going to wriggle through that little space?" Alma asked. "Always supposing we can get up that high to begin with."

  "I'm skinny enough," Sally insisted. "But I need something to climb on."

  "Think I saw a trashed chair by the garbage bins," Alma said. "I'll go get it."

  The aluminum chair was missing some of its webbing but Sally managed to stand on what was left, Alma steadying her. With the VW car keys she rammed a hole in the screen, got her fingers inside and yanked at it.

  "Can't find the catch," she muttered.

  "Shit—rip the thing out. Hurry up, we're bound to attract attention. A miracle if someone didn't call the fuzz already."

  Sally yanked at the screen and it came away, nearly toppling her off the chair. It hit the ground with a clunk. Shoving the window all the way open, she grasped the edges and tried to pull herself up.

  "Too high, I can't make it," she wailed.

  "Ssh!" Alma climbed on the chair, too, which wobbled and shifted. She caught Sally under the buttocks and shoved upwards as hard as she could, then jumped down as the chair collapsed, leaving Sally dangling from the window. Holding her breath, Alma watched her wriggle her torso inside. When Sally finally disappeared from view she let out her breath with a whoosh of relief.

  "I'll go round to the door," she called, heedless now of noise.

  Sally took so long opening the door for her that Alma began to worry that she'd gotten hurt climbing in. But finally the lock clicked and the door swung open.

  "He—he's—I told you, he's dead," Sally sobbed.

  Alma slammed the door shut and thrust past Sally, heading for where it looked like the bedroom was. There were two, one used for storage. Frank was in the other, lying naked across the bed, head dangling, face down. The rank stink of vomited whiskey tainted the air. Alma stepped over the pool of vomitus and yanked Frank's head up by his hair. "Frank!"

  "It's no use," Sally said hopelessly. "I touched him. He's cold."

  "He's naked—what do you expect? Help me get him straightened out. No, wait, don't step in that crud." Alma grabbed a shirt and threw it over the vomitus. "Come on, Sally, shove. Shit, he's a big bastard. Countdown: One, two, three, heave."

  They managed to get him onto his back and straight on the bed. Alma checked for a radial pulse, frowned and laid her head on his chest. "Damn near dead, but his heart's still ticking. Probably vomited a lot of what he swallowed and that saved him. Call an ambulance."

  Sally stared at her.

  "Snap to, damn it, girl. He's alive." Getting no response from Sally, she muttered, "Guess I get to call them myself," and hurried out to find a phone.

  Sally sat on the bed and picked up Frank's limp hand. "Don't die," she whispered. She pulled at the spread until it covered his nakedness. "I'm sorry," she told him. "I'm no good at forgiving. But I don't want you to die."

  He lay without moving. Sally put her ear to his chest as Alma had done. Thud. A pause. Thub-dub. Sally counted long seconds. Thub-dub. "Keep beating," she begged.

  Alma returned to bedroom and stood beside the bed.

  Crazy pair, she thought. Old Charlie was straight arrow compared to the kinks in Frank. Sally owned one messed-up head, too. No future she could see for the two of them, even if Frank managed to survive this.

  Nothing, but nothing, was worth killing yourself over. And nobody. No way would she ever waste herself—even for Charlie.

  "The ambulance is on the way," she told Sally. "They'll be taking him to the ER at CommunityHospital."

  "I'll go with him," Sally said.

  "You will not. I'll drive you over. Don't interfere with the paramedics—you'll only get in the way. We'll follow the ambulance."

  Same place they took Willie, Alma thought. Nothing going to kill that sucker until they hang him. Nothing going to make him behave like other people in the world had rights, either. Willie was for Willie and nobody else. Never want him even on the fringes of my life again, that's for sure. Ever see him again, it'll be once too often. Just like Willie to have been fucking poor little Laura Jean all along, the bastard.

  Once at the hospital, Sally refused to leave the ER. Alma brought her coffee and a roll from the cafeteria and made her eat. "Look," she said at last. "It's almost eight I've got to go home and get some rest before I go back on duty this afternoon."

  "I'm staying here."

  "Okay, I'll tell the hospital neither you nor Frank will be in. Want anything?"

  Sally shook her head.

  "He's going to make it," Alma assured her.

  "Did they say so?" Sally asked.

  "No one will tell me a thing. But since he's survived so far, his chances are pretty good. Call me on the ward later."

  Sally nodded.

  "And remember—when they ask keep saying it was an accident. You called me because you were worried about him. Don't breathe a word about that stupid note."

  "I'll remember." Sally caught Alma's hand. "I couldn't have helped him without you."

  "If I hadn't been dumb enough to give you Valium the whole thing might not have happened. You'd have gone down to see Frank in his car and—"

  "I wouldn't have. I was too afraid of him then."

  "Just stay off Valium. Frank better stay off everything." Alma smiled ruefully. "Poor Sally, it's been a tough affiliation for you. Turned you off psych nursing for life, I suspect."

  "Frank's alive," Sally said. "Right now that's all I care about."

  "Look, don't you go spreading out your life for him to walk on. Guilt isn't a good base to try to build anything on. Guilt sucks."

  "He asked for help and I locked him out. It's my fault."

  "You crazy?" Alma said. "No one makes a person OD. They do it to themselves. That's what I mean about guilt. Don't keep it hanging around your neck like a damn lead pendant. You got to feel for someone before there's a relationship worth bothering about. You have to reserve the right to yell at them and get mad when the spirit moves you. Otherwise the whole damn thing is shit."

  Alma frowned at her. "You pay attention, girl. You think about what I'm saying when you sit it his room and watch him coming out of this. You remember what I tell you or else you'll be in another room someday soon looking at a dead man."

  "I only want to help him," Sally wailed.

  "Then love him or leave him alone. Pity is shit. Guilt is shit. Love or nothing."

  "Excuse me." A nurse stood beside Alma,
eyeing her white uniform curiously. "You're the people with Mr. Kent?"

  Sally sprang to her feet. "Yes."

  "I wanted to tell you we're transferring him upstairs. He'll be in 207B."

  "How is he?"

  "His condition is stable at present. The doctor will be able to tell you more."

  "Can I go to his room and wait?"

  "I don't see why not. Talk to the charge nurse when you get there."

  "Take it easy," Alma advised. "If they're sending him upstairs they're pretty sure he's going to make it. Otherwise they wouldn't bother to dirty a bed." She glanced at her watch. "I'd better get going. One last word. You can't save people like Frank. They have to save themselves."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Frank had finished scraping and painting Sarah's gazebo several days ago. He sat in it now, watching a small red-headed bird drink from the bird bath. Strange how a man who'd never had any interest in observing nature could now lose himself in bird-watching. He didn't know the names of all of them yet, but he believed he could recognize individual ones by their behavior.

  Solo was huddled under a bush, watching even more intently than he was, never realizing his twitching black tail gave his position away to every bird in the neighborhood.

  Just as he'd begun to feel at home here, it was time for him to leave. Last night he and Sarah had talked about what he thought of as the final curtain at Calafia. She'd repeated the words Alma had offered to Sally when she was waiting in the hospital to see if Frank would live or die. Love or nothing.

  No wonder she'd left without looking back.

  Sarah was no longer the Sally he'd known, just as he was no longer the Frank that Sally had known. That Frank had been obsessed by Sally, not in love with her. And Sally had never been in love with Frank. How could she have been, considering his behavior?

  He watched Sarah come out of the house with glasses on a tray. Predictably, iced tea or lemonade, no hard stuff to tempt him. He had no desire to drink or take drugs. He hoped the need would never fasten its teeth in him again, but he couldn't be sure it wouldn't happen.

  After Sarah joined him and they both were sipping limeade—she'd surprised him—he said, "Tell me why you married your husband."

  She tipped her head to one side, a habit she had when thinking, and finally said, "I believe it was mostly to get rid of him."

  Taken aback, he said, "That seems a paradoxical reason."

  "Not really. I was more comfortable with him as a husband than as a persistent suitor. But it was a mistake. All we had in common was Linda. I was rather relieved when he found someone else and asked for a divorce."

  "You didn't love him?"

  "I'm not sure I know what love is."

  "That makes two of us. I married Doris for all Alma's wrong reasons—guilt, pity, wanting to help. Worst of all, I see now I did it to try to redeem myself. We had a boy, Daniel. He turned out okay, surprisingly, though I've lost touch with him in recent years. As you might expect."

  "You said Doris was dead," Sarah reminded him.

  "She was never happy with me. She preferred a livelier life than the one we had, so after while she went out and looked for it. She was killed when the guy she was with drove off the road, too drunk to see the tree he smashed into."

  "Shall we drink to our failures?"

  He shook his head. "That's the past."

  She turned away from him to run her hand along the gazebo railing. "You did a beautiful job with this. It looks like new."

  "You did a beautiful job with me, too. I may not look it, but I feel like new."

  Still looking away from him, she asked, "Was it Doris's death that started your downhill spiral?"

  "I was in hospital administration by then and already drinking—it just escalated. Until you rescued me. So now that I'm almost as good as new, it's time for me to go."

  Sarah started to lean toward him, drew back and said, "Must you?"

  He nodded.

  "But how will you get along?"

  "Dan took away the Corvette and, because I'd added his name to all my bank and investment accounts, he was able to take half the money I had and put it where I couldn't get it to drink up. Told me what he'd done. Said if I ever came to my senses, to find him and he'd give everything back to me. I called him all the names in the book at the time."

  "That's tough love at work."

  "Yeah, I know the lingo. Told you he was a good kid. Savvy, too. Anyway, I do have money out there somewhere. You don't have to worry about that."

  "Money and Dan," she said.

  Frank shook his head. "He has his own life."

  She put her hand on his arm. "I'll miss you."

  He looked at her hand, white against his tan, and realized it was the first time she'd touched him since he'd begun to get better. He put his hand over hers, waiting to see if she'd draw away. She didn't.

  "I'll miss you, too," he admitted. "But I have to go." He inclined his head toward the bird just lifting away from the bird bath. "I need to try my wings alone, to see if they'll hold me up."

  She sighed. "You've changed."

  He gave her a lop-sided grin. "We'll hope it's for the better."

  "Well, you could hardly have gotten much worse," she said tartly.

  "Remember the days of ECT at Calafia? Do you realize what you've done to me was something like what I did to you all those years ago. Shock treatment. Inexcusable on my part, I admit, yet for you it yanked repressed memories of past abuse to the surface so you could learn to deal with them."

  She considered this for a long moment. "You may be right, though I certainly wouldn't recommend your method. So you believe my taking you off the street and forcing you to dry out cold turkey was a form of shock treatment?"

  "Absolutely. I don't think I'll ever understand exactly why you did it."

  She shrugged. "You spent a few truly miserable weeks drying out. Could be I was just paying you back."

  They looked at one another, something elusive passing between them that he couldn't quite grasp the meaning of, something linking him to Sally/Sarah. Her expression told him she felt it, too.

  "I may come back," he said abruptly, letting go of her hand.

  She took her hand from his arm. "If you do," she said slowly, smiling, "I may let you in."

  The End

  About The Author

  Jane Toombs, the Viking from her past and their calico grandcat, Kinko, live on the south shore of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness. Here they enjoy refreshing Springs, beautiful Summers, colorful Falls and tolerate miserable Winters. Jane is edging toward ninety with her published books and has over twenty-five novellas and short stories to her credit. She’s been published in every genre except men’s action and erotica, but paranormal is her favorite. She’s a member of a closed twelve author promo group called Jewels Of The Quill, where she’s “Dame Turquoise” at

  Also from Books We Love, Golden Chances Books 1 to 7, Hallow House, Books I and II, and Ten Past Midnight. Six stories and three poems on the dark side of paranormal. Everything from ghouls to the heart-eating Egyptian beast who decides one's fate. Even the touches of romance are definitely different. But what traveler can expect the norm when on the wrong side of midnight? Ten past midnight All's not well. Every road leads right To hell..

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