4
“Tell me who the bastard is now,” Crystal demanded through clenched jaws at the sight of Fletch.
She was lying on the big bed in what had been her room on the second floor of Blythe Spirit. There were no pillowcases, sheets, blankets on the bed. There was no curtain around the bed.
She was an enormous mound of mostly useless flesh in an outsized nightgown and bathrobe.
To Fletch she looked as helpless, vulnerable as someone lying in the middle of a highway after a car wreck.
Except through a curtain the week before, Fletch had not seen Crystal in years. When he had entered the room he was physically shocked by her mammoth size.
Fletch exhaled. “Hi.”
“They’ve even taken the lamps,” Crystal said. “The reading lamps.”
“Yeah. This is a busy old place today.” There were cars, station wagons, ambulances, trucks, some of them with official insignias on their doors, crammed in Blythe Spirit’s horseshoe driveway. Files were being wheeled out of the administration offices downstairs on dollies. He cleared his throat. “Let me take you away from all this.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Crystal snapped. “You put the law on us. Your damned report on Global Cable News.”
“You know I’m right.”
“I know no such thing. These people were taking care of me.”
“These people were keeping you handicapped so they could pick your pockets.”
“Where’s Jack?”
“Virginia. I was just talking to him.”
“Is he coming?”
“No. He’s on his way to Georgia.”
“What did he say to you?”
Fletch smiled. “He told me to be careful not to let you fall on me again.”
After looking at Fletch a moment from the bed, Crystal laughed. “This time, I’d crush you to death.”
“Flatter than a manhole cover.”
“You’re both bastards. Father and son. I shouldn’t have let one of you know the other existed. Get out of here. Who needs you?”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay. What are your plans?”
On her bed, Crystal raised her arm and dropped it in an impatient gesture. Watching her, Fletch realized the woman was so fat she probably could not sit up without help. “You have no responsibility for me,” she muttered.
“I know.” Softly, Fletch said, “But I told you Sunday I’d be back.”
He continued to stand halfway between the bed and the door to the hall.
“Yeah,” Crystal said. “You sneak in here as a reporter, spy on me, spy on the people taking care of me, blow the story on Global Cable News, cause every law enforcement agency, health agency, and tin-whistle politician to lay siege to this place, get everybody from the cook to the secretary in the office indicted, get the place closed down in hours, and here I am, stranded on this bed, unable to move, with nothing to eat all morning, I might add, without even a tissue to throw at you! You came back, all right. You’re back like the second half of a hurricane on a seaside resort!”
Fletch grinned. “Haven’t lost your fight, anyway.”
“Why didn’t Jack come?”
“Oh, I suspect he’s giving us a chance to get reacquainted.”
“You don’t want to know me.”
“Maybe not.”
“I’m a mess.”
“You’re in a mess.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Who’s talking about fault?”
“You didn’t neglect me. You didn’t know I had a son by you. I purposely dropped out of your sight so I could raise him myself.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t need you then, and I don’t need you now.”
“You needed me once. A little bit. For a few minutes.”
“I don’t blame you for hating me. Doing this to me. Wrecking Blythe Spirit with a stroke of your coaxial sword. You always know how to get back at people, don’t you, Fletch?”
“I’m not getting back at you.”
“Of course you are. You found out about our son, Jack, that I had him and kept him from you and in four days I’m lying here stranded, starving, mortified beyond belief.”
“That’s okay,” he said, “as long as you’re not indulging in self-pity.”
From the bed, she shot him a glance and half a smile. She said, “I’ll bet you’ve even had breakfast.”
“On the plane to Chicago,” he said. “A coffee and muffin.”
“Coffee and muffin!” she scoffed. “What kind of a muffin?”
“Blueberry.”
“Call that breakfast?”
“Actually, no,” Fletch answered. “What I might call breakfast would be, let me see, a half a fresh, chilled grape fruit, eggs scrambled with cream cheese, a steak, medium rare, a few sticks of crisp bacon, home-fried potatoes, maybe just a slice or two of summer sausage with fresh lemon juice—”
“Shut up.”
“—buttered toast with, let’s see, strawberry preserves would be nice—”
Crystal’s eyes were full on him. “You eat all that stuff? For breakfast?”
“Are you going to get off that bed?”
“I can’t! Can’t you see?”
“I can see an enormously fat person, lying on a bed in a fraudulent medical facility rapidly being closed by the authorities, whose sheets, blankets, reading lamp and tissue box have been taken from her, who hints to me she is hungry, but who isn’t doing anything about her situation. Are you going to die there, Crystal? One thing I absolutely will not do for you is serve as your pallbearer. We’ll have to plant you with a crane.”
“I have done something about it.”
“What have you done? Send out for Chinese?”
“You’re killing me.”
“You’re killing yourself. What have you done to save yourself?”
“There’s an ambulance coming for me.”
“You sent for it?”
“No.”
“An ambulance to take you where?”
“To the public hospital.”
“Crystal, the public cannot afford you. Not you and schools and the police and fire departments, too.”
“They’ll probably put me in the psychiatric ward.” She sniffed.
Her head was turned toward the window. “I can’t afford myself.”
“I don’t need you.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t need you. I don’t need Jack. I don’t need anybody.”
Fletch sighed. “Crystal, when I left here Sunday, I said I’d be back. I’m back. If I leave here again, I won’t be back.”
“Go.”
“I’ll never enter this room again.”
“So go.”
Fletch said, “Okay.” He left.
•
“Mortimer.”
“Hi, Mister Mortimer. This is Fletch.”
“Who?”
“I. M. Fletcher.”
“Oh, no.”
“Did I call you at a bad time?”
“Yeah. I am not dead yet.”
“How have you been otherwise?” Fletch was using the phone in the handicap van. He had not left the front driveway of Blythe Spirit.
“Well enough to hang up on you.”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I might have something interesting to say.”
“You always do. That’s why I’m hanging up. I’m too old to be interested in anything you have to say.”
“Come on, now.”
“Last time I listened to you is how I got so old. I was a young man, until then, with a full head of hair, a straight back, and friends. I listened to you and my hair grayed and fell out, my gums sank, my back stooped, my skin wrinkled, I lost my way of making a living, I lost all my friends—all in the three months I listened to you. I should listen to you again?”
“This time you might find it rejuvenating.”
“Sure. This time I’ll end up wearing incontinence pads.”
“Hey, I—”
“No ‘Hey, I—’ nothing, Fletcher! You talked me into turning state’s evidence. Everybody else, all my friends in the business went to jail. I was sent to Wyoming, for my own protection, ha! I’d rather be in jail. I would have known what I was doing in jail. What am I doing in Wyoming? There would have been more people I know in jail. We would have had a lot to talk about. I don’t know anybody in Wyoming. All the people here talk about is something they call beef cattle and the twelve deadly sins.”
“Seven.”
“Seven what?”
“I think it’s considered there are only seven deadly sins.”
“In Wyoming, they got twelve.”
“It is a big state.”
“I can’t figure out whether Wyoming is big or just empty.”
“Mister Mortimer, you turned state’s evidence after your best crack at a world middleweight championship got impaled on an iron railing in Gramercy Park.”
“I did take that hard, yes. I loved that boy.”
“You can write letters to your friends you put in jail.”
“I do. A few of them. The good guys, you know? Those crooks who say, ‘No hard feelings for ruining my family and sending me to jail for the rest of my life.’ Those I trust not to send a hit man after me. With those I correspond weekly. Tell them all about my great life spent watching the mountains in Wyoming not move.”
“So what’s so bad about semiretiring to the beautiful state of Wyoming? You’re seventy two.”
“Seventy four. Thanks to you. If I never met you, I’d still be forty seven, probably.”
“Not likely. Jake Burger tells me you’re training two new contenders.”
“Beef cattle. Two legged beef cattle. That’s all they have out here: beef cattle. Four legged beef cattle, two legged beef cattle.”
“If you don’t have hope for them, you wouldn’t be training them.”
“Beef cattle marked U.S.D.A. In this case, U.S.D.A. means You Should see how Dumb they Are.”
“Maybe they’ll win at the county fair.”
“Not even in their weight class.”
“How old are they? Twenty?”
“Sixteen. Eighteen. I won’t live long enough to see either of them snooze on the canvas for the count of ten.”
“I’ll bet they’re good.”
“The older one, the eighteen year old, Haja, he calls himself, thinks gettin’ mad at himself is the point of the game. He’d knock himself out, if I ever showed him how. The other one, the sixteen year old, Ricky, actually thinks his muscles are pretty, if you’d believe it.”
“Doesn’t every sixteen year old?”
“The only opponent that interests him is in the mirror. And he likes him too much to get close. Even though they’re both wearing deodorant. Can you believe that? Ever hear of a boxer who insists on wearing underarm in the ring?”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.”
“I keep saying, ‘Why do I smell petunias in here? Phew!’”
“Sparring, which one usually wins?”
“Neither of ’em. The young one keeps dancin’ like a city boy barefoot on a hot pavement so his pretty face won’t get hit. The other one keeps gettin’ so mad at himself for not connecting with the younger one that he bursts his own blood vessels. I tell you no lie.”
“I’d like to drive out to look at them.”
“No, sir! Don’t waste my time.”
“And bring a lady with me.”
“Don’t waste your time driving out here, from wherever you are. Even if you’re at my front gate. I won’t have you.”
“She’s a heavyweight.”
“No, sir! Not at my camp!”
“She needs training.”
“No, sir. I’m not ready for that. I never will be! Not in my camp! I’ve seen those magazines. Uh, uh.”
“We’ll see you in a few days.”
“You will not. You show up here, Fletch, and I’ll sic my two fighters on you, both Haja and Ricky, at the same time.”
“That’s no threat.”
“You’d better believe it is.”
“Naw,” Fletch said. “You’ve already told me their flaws.”
•
Fletch remained in the van’s driver’s seat.
The two attendants he had tipped rolled Crystal Faoni in an oversized wheelchair onto the hydraulic lift on the side of the van. He listened to the sound of the lift raising Crystal. The van tipped with her weight. In the back of the van they helped Crystal onto the large bed. The head of the bed was behind Fletch’s seat. They rolled the wheelchair back onto the lift and Fletch lowered it, and them, then raised the lift again and folded it within the van. They slid the van’s side door closed.
One of the attendants looked through the van’s open window. “Okay, buddy. Get her out of here.”
Slowly, Fletch drove the van along the driveway of Blythe Spirit. There were still many vehicles in the driveway. Entering the road, he turned right toward the highway.
He heard Crystal sniffing. She blew her nose. Somewhere she must have found a box of tissues.
On the highway he accelerated.
Crystal asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“Wyoming.”
There was a long pause. “Fletch? Is that you, Fletch?”
“You were expecting Charon maybe?”
“I thought you left.”
“I said I wouldn’t return to your room. Argue with you anymore.”
“You always leave.”
“Not if anyone really wants me. You didn’t really want me to leave, did you?”
“No.” She laughed. “What’s in Wyoming?”
“Not much, according to Mister Mortimer.”
“Who’s Mister Mortimer?”
“A cranky old man named Mortimer who has always insisted everybody call him ‘Mister.’”
“A friend of yours?”
“Yeah. He hates me. He’s sure to hate you, too.”
“Then why are we going there?”
“Best idea I’ve got. He probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s been adjusting people’s weight all his life. He’s a trainer. For boxers.”
“A boxing coach?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re taking me to a training camp for boxers?”
“Yeah. I thought we’d try it. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else. You wouldn’t mind developing your upper-cut, would you?”
“What’s an uppercut?”
“A slash over the eyebrow.”
“I don’t want any of those.”
“The head of your bed raises and lowers.”
“Oh, yeah.”
He heard the electric motor raise the head of her bed.
“You can see out the windows. Nice scenery?”
“Yeah. The back of billboards.”
“All the fronts say is KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL.”
“Jeez,” Crystal said. “He wants to turn me into a boxing champion.”
“Hey, lady,” Fletch said. “In your weight class, you’re a shoo-in.”
“Fletch? Can we stop so you can get me something to eat?”
“Sure,” Fletch said. “I’m hungry, too.”
“If I’m going to take up boxing,” Crystal said, “I’ll need to keep my strength up.”