Melt

by JJ Pike

  “We can share,” said Bill. “I don’t want to put you to any more trouble. You’ve already done too much.”

  “No trouble,” she said. “I like to feel useful.”

  As soon as she cleared the door, Midge leaned and whispered in his ear. “Who says I want your cooties?”

  Bill laughed. Did they still make cootie jokes? Incredible.

  “Jim will be right down,” said Betsy. “He was just taking a nap.”

  “I didn’t mean to intrude,” said Bill. “I should have called first.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Betsy, “we’re too much in each other’s company. We need the break.” She laughed. It was a big, hearty laugh, but Bill sensed a seam of sadness laced right in the middle of that laughter. He’d have spent every waking minute of every day with Alice if it were even a remote possibility. He couldn’t imagine either of them saying they’d be glad of a break from each other. Then again, they had only been married for 18 years and Jim and Betsy had them beat by a good 20 years. Who knew? Perhaps they’d become old and crotchety and want someone to come break up the monotony by the time they reached their diamond anniversary. He smiled to himself. That was never going to happen. They were going to grow old and grey and plump and content and revel in each other’s company just as they had always planned it.

  “Aren’t you just a sight for sore eyes?” Jim didn’t look as spry as he had just a few short months earlier. And he had a cane. Something had changed. “Don’t get up, don’t get up. I’m going to come join you by the fire.”

  Bill returned to his seat.

  Jim eased himself into his rocker. “How old is Miss Midge, now?”

  “She is seven,” said Midge. “And she politely requests that you call her Margaret from now on.”

  Jim nodded his head. “I remember what that was like, being Jimbo for all those years and making my folks call me James when I went from short pants to long trousers and worked down in the cannery.”

  Betsy stood in the doorway, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “A slice for you, Jimbo?”

  Jim laughed. “Would that we could turn the clock back, eh? We all wish our youth away but long for its return once we realize what we have lost.”

  He wasn’t wrong. “You doing okay, Jim?” Bill couldn’t bring himself to call his neighbor Jimbo.

  “Can’t complain,” said Jim.

  “I was hoping your old jalopy was still for sale.”

  Jim lit up.

  Bill had never referred to Jim’s Austin by its pet name. He knew he was signaling that he’d pay over the odds, but he wanted the car with no plastic parts more than he wanted to hold on to his money.

  “Well, there’s a turn up for the books. Bill Everlee has come to his senses. Been bitten by the Car Bug, Bill?”

  Bill smiled. “You know I’ve always loved your collection, Jim. Just couldn’t see to owning something that required that much upkeep. And you know how hard it is to find original parts.” He had no intention of keeping the vintage car up with “original” parts, just parts that had no tracking devices and no plastic. “But Alice told me she wanted to get me something extra-special for my birthday, so here we are.”

  “Coming up on the big 5-0, are we?” Jim grinned. “I remember when I was just a youngster…”

  Bill’s turn to laugh. “Nope, coming up on the big 4-0.” It was a bit of a fib. Bill was only 37, but close enough.

  Jim laughed until Betsy had to pound him on the back. “When you get to my age, you kids all look about the same age. Can’t tell a 30 year old from a 50 year old. I blame it on the cataracts.”

  Bill shrugged. Jim didn’t have cataracts, but it was neighborly to let the ruse stand.

  “You forgive me?” said Jim, rising from his chair.

  “Nothing to forgive,” said Bill. “Shall we go take a look?”

  “Boy howdy, we are going to do just that. Can’t wait to show you how she handles.”

  “And Midge can stay with me and let me curl her hair!” Betsy was brimming with smiles.

  Bill couldn’t explain to Midge that it came from a good place. A sad place but a good one. Betsy and Jim had had a little girl once. She fell asleep one night and never woke up. They had no name for SIDS back then and no explanation for it now. Wouldn’t have mattered if they did. Betsy would never get over losing her baby. She looked for her in every little girl’s face. In all the dresses she had never made, the talks they’d never had, and the curls she’d never fashioned in her hair. When she was older, Midge would understand. She would even allow herself to be futzed with. But at seven years old, it was unfair to ask her to bear the burden of Betsy’s lost baby and unending need.

  He took Midge’s hand in his. She clutched it tight and squeezed and squeezed, over and over. Dot-dot-dot-dash-dash, she signaled. SOS, don’t leave me here with the china-doll lady.

  “If it’s okay with you, Betsy, I think Margaret would like to start learning about cars.”

  Betsy frowned. “Really? A little girl wants to play with those oily old gas-guzzlers?”

  “Yes,” said Midge, too fast and too loud. “I’m interested in engines now. Tell her, Daddy.”

  Bill shrugged. “They lead and we follow…”

  It took longer than usual to get out to the garage. Bill didn’t say anything, but he could see Jim was leaning heavily on his crutch.

  “She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” Jim stroked the hood of the Austen Ten-four. “Can’t rightly tell you what gas mileage she gets, though I have got a chart around here someplace. I kept good records on all my babies.”

  Bill nodded. It wasn’t gas mileage he was concerned about. “Can we pop the hood and take a look?”

  Jim felt under the front lip of the hood and unhooked the lock. He raised the hood and propped it open with the stand. “See? Good as new. Well, good as new for a car that’s as old as me. I replaced the piston over here, but that’s an original, too. Got it from a nice fellow in England. We wrote each other for a while after he sold me the parts. Good man. Good man…” Jim was lost in a sea of memories.

  Bill pretended to look at the engine, pointing things out to Midge, who was also pretending to be interested, but for quite different reasons.

  “Shall we take her for a spin?” said Jim.

  Bill wanted to pay up and take her right back to the cabin but that would have alerted Jim to the fact that something was wrong. They weren’t that far along. Not yet. The alert was for the Everlee family only, not the Everlee family-plus. He needed to at least give the appearance of haggling.

  They took a turn around the yard. The shocks weren’t modern and the car gave them a good bone-shaking ride, but they laughed and gabbed and had a good time, nonetheless.

  “What do you want for it?” said Bill.

  “Her,” said Jim, “cars are ‘her’ because we love and cherish them and do all we can to keep them running good.”

  Bill smiled. He wasn’t going to argue with the old man. They had their ways, his generation had his.

  “Shall we call it $4,000?”

  Bill stepped back. That was an outrageously low price for a vintage car in great shape. He turned to Midge. “Honey, would you go inside and see if Mrs. Betsy has another slice of that fabulous pie for me?”

  Midge looked up at him. She was not a happy camper.

  “Please honey?”

  He thought he heard her mumbling “dollar” as she walked away, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Jim, we’ve been friends for a long time now. You’ve talked to me about this car for as long as I can remember and you’ve never offered it to me for less than $10,000. I know there isn’t another like it in the States. In England, maybe, but not over here. What’s going on?”

  “Dang it,” said Jim. “Betsy told me not to low-ball you, but I’m telling you Bill, I can’t see another way around it.”

  Bill waited. The old man would tell him in his own good time, though he had an inkling he knew what Jim was about to sa
y.

  “I fell, six weeks back, broke my hip. I told Betsy not to call the ambulance, that we could get there in the car just fine, but she was a sobbing, panicky mess and she called 911 and said she thought I was dying.” He looked towards the pasture, his eyes filling with tears. “She’s afraid of me leaving her alone and to tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know that she would do too well if I up and died, though I suppose I will someday.”

  It was a conversation he and Alice had had more than once. “No, I want to die before you; no, I want to die before you; no, I couldn’t stand to be without you; no, it’s me who wouldn’t cope…” Jim and Betsy were no different than the two of them. He’d misjudged Betsy’s comments about needing company. She needed someone to distract her from her worries. She was terrified her darling husband was going to leave her just as her baby had left her. He knew this hole-in-your-heart profile. He’d grown up with it. It was easy to see the signs.

  Jim pushed the dirt with his foot. “Anything you can afford, Bill. That’s what I’ll take. I can’t leave her with a stack of invoices. It wouldn’t be fair. We’re a team, me and her, and she has done her part. There isn’t a man in this county who has been better taken care of than me. I owe it to her to leave her with some money in the bank.”

  Bill dug in his pocket. He handed Jim the roll of cash. There was no way he could bargain, knowing what they were facing. Damn those blood-sucking insurance companies.

  Jim took the money, without meeting Bill’s gaze. “Take a look around, my friend. See if there’s anything else you might like. I’ll make you a deal.”

  Bill wanted to take all of them. Not just because it would help out his neighbors but because he wanted to replace all his cars with older models. But he couldn’t come out and say that.

  “Don’t you have insurance, Jim?”

  Jim smiled. “We do.”

  “And the VA can’t see you?”

  Jim had served, not once, not twice, but three tours in ’Nam. Brown Water Navy and proud of it.

  “There’s a waitlist, Bill, and boys who’ve been to Afghanistan and Iraq, looking to put their lives together. I’ve had a good run. I can’t take time away from them. We’ll manage.”

  “Let Petra come and help,” said Bill. “This is what she’s good at…administration. Makes me see double and want to take a three-year nap, but once she gets her teeth into a problem, let me tell you, she’s never going to stop. I bet she could help you get those bills down.”

  Jim slapped Bill on the back. It was a generational thing. They couldn’t hug. Not men Jim’s age. “I’d like that, Bill. Betsy wouldn’t say no to having a girl in the house, either.”

  Bill nodded. He could explain to Petra, leave nothing out. His eldest would be on the phone, battling with the insurance company, while a happy old woman Dippety-doo’d her hair. It could be worse. Life could be a lot worse.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fran met Alice in St. Joseph’s lobby. “We don’t have a dedicated wing, but we do have a suite.”

  “And how many patients have come down with burns?”

  Fran checked her phone. “Seventeen.”

  Alice stopped in her tracks. “Seventeen people tended to Angelina?”

  Fran shook her head. “Ten of those people had direct contact with Angelina.”

  “How did the rest get burns?”

  “Stephen is graphing who went where, did what, with whom, so we can track its progress.”

  “Stephen?”

  “Dr. McKan. He kitted us out with ancient medical equipment—all of it with zero plastic—and asked how he could help. I figured we should get to work on tracking how MELT had been passed from human to human, so I accepted his offer. Was I wrong to do that?”

  “Not at all,” said Alice.

  Fran had set up a whiteboard in the family waiting room and Stephen McKan was there doing exactly what she said he’d be doing, reading through histories and working out who had been where and how they might have come by their burns.

  Alice watched him for a second from the door, overwhelmed with gratitude. He didn’t owe her a thing, but he would always come running. She’d leveraged that and she’d do it again, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t thankful. “You didn’t need to do that, you know. We have people.”

  “Alice!” he turned, arms open, inviting her for a hug.

  Part of her wanted that warm embrace, but she knew it would send the wrong signal. She went in with the sideways hug she’d learned at Sunday School: fast, with virtually no body contact. It had to be fast. Not so fast that you looked weird, but there was no “hugging” where she came from. For her generation and older, it was side hugs. It hadn’t been like that in Guatemala, but once they’d moved to the States, they’d had to learn a whole new code of acceptable behavior. It could have been a lot worse. For the younger members of the church, air kissing had become popular. She was glad at least she was spared that embarrassment.

  Stephen got the message. No touching. He stepped back. “We have a problem.”

  “I certainly have a problem, though you don’t need to make it yours.”

  “Scientists live for this kind of puzzle, Alice. You know that. And I’ve been in admin far too long. The money is good but flexing my chemistry-trained brain feels even better.”

  “All I wanted were some supplies, Stephen, but now that you’re here…I can’t turn down help. That would be stupid.”

  “Do we have time for a briefing?”

  “Bring it on. What do you need to know?”

  “Over a coffee perhaps?”

  She didn’t fault him for trying. He wanted to be in her company. She needed his big brain. If she sent all the right signals, no harm could come of hanging out with him in a quasi-social setting for half an hour.

  “Have you eaten?”

  Alice looked at her watch.

  Stephen laughed. “That won’t tell you if you’re hungry. You need to consult a more basic organ.”

  “I am just waiting on some news. They’re going to fill the hole in my building with concrete and cap it off with a sarcophagus.” As she said it, a tsunami of emotion rose up from her solar plexus, threatening to overwhelm her. She’d done it. She’d actually convinced the powers that be that they needed to put a cap on the abyss, just as soon as the search and rescue dogs made absolutely sure there were no survivors down there.

  Stephen nodded, frowning. “It’s not every day someone is happy about a hole being filled, but congratulations, I guess.”

  Alice burst into tears. Stephen hesitated for a second, then wrapped his arms around her and let her cry for two minutes solid.

  “Sorry,” she said. He handed her a handkerchief. Who had real handkerchiefs anymore? “Sorry. It’s just such a relief. The last 24 hours have been a nightmare. And it’s over…” A fresh set of tears threatened to undo her. “Ugh, I look a mess, I know.” She blew her nose. “Does one give the hankie back these days? Or does one take it home and launder and iron it and return it at another date?”

  Stephen smiled. He had that goofy look on his face; the one that said he could listen to her for hours.

  Alice blew her nose again. “Before we go I need to stop in and see Angelina. She is patient zero.”

  Stephen nodded. He’d read the files and knew who Angelina was. “Lead the way.”

  The ward where they were keeping her had been designed and set up by none other than K&P’s Jan van Karpel. Alice was glad of it. He was meticulous. If he had instructions that no plastic was to be allowed into the room or near the patient, that’s what would happen.

  Fran stood at the doors, waiting for her boss. She looked like she always did, ready to tackle the next problem. She wasn’t just ready, she was willing and able. Alice smiled. She’d chosen well. Her assistant was top notch. “Good job, Fran. That was excellent thinking, getting us the suite.”

  Fran smiled. “If it’s okay by you I’m going to head back to the pit.”

  “Are you s
ure?” Alice looked at her watch again. “You’ve been up as long as I have.”

  “We’re going to see this through then sleep the sleep of the just.” She jogged down the corridor towards the elevators.

  “Fran?” Alice shouted. “Do you have Stephen’s phone number?”

  Fran nodded.

  “Call him as soon as you get word that they’re going to pour the concrete. I have to be there for that. I can’t miss it. It might count as the highlight of my career.”

  Stephen laughed. “I’ve been following your career, my dear, and I can assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.”