Captain Quad (25 page)

And now he had seen that light. He could be with her again. Last night had shown him that. Not physically—never physically—but in a way that only the most smitten of poets could comprehend.

He could enter her mind.

The nurse was back in the room. She set the basin on the washstand, drew the covers off Peter's body, and flipped him expertly onto his side. Behind him he could hear her dipping her hands into the soapy basin, wringing out a washcloth, and some tattered recollection from childhood made him tense mentally against the water that might be too cold. . . but of course he felt nothing. Only the gentle rock and squeak of the bed told him that his keeper had begun to scrub him. He had no way of knowing, but he thought she might have started with his feet.

He closed his eyes and ground his teeth and waited for this humiliation to end.

Still in the same room, Kelly thought when the nurse at the desk told her where she could find Peter Gardner. That somehow made it worse. There had been no change, no advancement. If they had moved him to another floor, even to another room, it might have meant he'd regained some feeling in his legs, some vestigial function in his hands, maybe even progressed to a walker of some kind. . .

But he was still in the same room: 908.

She walked down the hall toward its end, but it was less like walking than gliding, a feeling of being conveyed along a track to which her feet were firmly glued. The closer she got to his door, the faster that track seemed to propel her, until by the time she was halfway there she was almost running. The lenses of her eyes had slipped into soft focus, and her stomach felt queasy and sick.

The door was open, partially blocked by the sling contraption they used to move him around.

Still the same.

Kelly maneuvered around it.

The room was silent, the window shades drawn. A gaudy orange curtain surrounded the bed. From within came a puddling sound of water, but Kelly didn't notice.

Marshaling the last of her courage, she clasped the curtain and drew it aside.

That first moment spun out interminably. When she saw the bent, unclad body on the bed, with its transparent skin and flaccid muscles, she felt a surge of relief. Wrong room, her mind insisted. That's not Peter, no way.

Then he opened his eyes, and for a heartbeat the warmth she had known in them kindled. She felt herself beginning to respond to that warmth, the stiffness leaking out of her muscles, a smile creeping onto her lips. Then it was as if an invisible wall had popped up and she had rushed headlong into it. Peter's eyes continued to widen, the warmth Kelly imagined she'd seen in them erupting into an infernal, repellent heat. His mouth dropped open, and a horrible inarticulate groan flopped out, the sound a victim of palsy might make in a pathetic attempt at speech. Kelly's hands flew up to her face and dragged at the corners of her mouth. The nurse glanced at her and then backed up a step, her own eyes wide and questioning.

"Peter, I—"

"You!
"
he cried, his lips peeled back in fury and shame. "You!"

"Peter, please. . .”

"I told you never to come back here!" Now his eyes were a dull, clotted red. "I told you! Never! Why did you have to spoil it?" He made a disgusted scan of his body, then looked back at Kelly. "Is this what you came to see? Huh? This senseless bone bag of a body? Is it? Well, take a good look, kid, because this is what I am." There were tears in his eyes now.

"I'm sorry," Kelly said in a strangled whisper. Her hand fluttered out to touch him.

"Leave," Peter said, a sob twisting miserably through him. "Just leave."

Kelly did.

He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to punish her. He wanted to fuck her. Hate-fuck her. He hoped the stranger would be there tonight. Oh, yeah. There'd be some mean horizontal mambo tonight. Damn her! Why couldn't she have left it alone? What had made her come nosing around to see the incredible decaying man? Maybe she thought that would make her shut of him. Maybe she thought it would kill her love for him once and for all. And maybe it would.

But he wasn't going to allow that.

The next morning, fearful of another calamitous lapse on the job, Kelly called in sick. There had been no sleep last night—after leaving the hospital she'd driven about aimlessly until darkfall, then had wandered home and plunked herself in front of the TV, where she watched all-night movies on Pay—and there had been precious little sleep the night before. She filled that long day with familiar but mindless pursuits: vacuuming the immaculate rugs, mopping the spotless floors, making out her Christmas card list weeks ahead of her usual last-minute blitz. She thought of calling her mother—who would have zeroed in on her mood the way a ham radio operator zeros in on a fuzzy signal, and immediately begun prying—and left a message for Marti at work. . . but these days Marti was pretty busy. She'd met a new fella—the boys' phys ed teacher at the high school in Chelmsford where Marti taught—and for the past few months they'd been going at it fast and furious. Suddenly Marti's schedule was full—and it had never had that many holes in it.

The urge to call Will was a potent one, but Kelly stifled it. She was hurting and vulnerable, and she didn't want him to see her that way. Besides, with this sudden resurgence in her feelings for Peter, muddled and perverse as they were, she could no longer be sure of what Will truly meant to her. She couldn't be sure of anything anymore. As lonely as she was, she was determined not to use Will as a substitute. If she was going to think of Peter while being intimate with another man, then she would forgo that intimacy. It wouldn't be fair any other way.

Somehow she made it to nightfall. She took another sedative and buried herself in the covers. After a while, in a semi-drowse, she climbed out of bed and brought down the shoe box she kept on a high shelf in her closet. In the light of the bedside lamp, she rummaged through the items in the box until she found what she was after.

Then she leaned against the headboard and smiled.

They'd had these pics taken in one of those four-for-a-dollar photo booths in the downtown Zeller's. Horsing around, Kelly had hiked her T-shirt over her head in one of them, exposing her unholstered boobs, and the expression on Peter's face was one of lecherous and delighted surprise. In another Peter was doing his infamous Jack Nicholson impersonation, complete with A-frame eyebrows and leering, toothy grin. Kelly was doing what she always did when Peter pulled that face, cracking up like a loony. She recalled the feverish embarrassment she'd felt when the store detective jerked the curtain aside, an instant after her delighted squeal and a heartbeat before the next shot had flashed. Twin expressions of juvenile surprise adorned the next shot, the two of them goggling up at the detective, Kelly trying frantically to tuck in her T-shirt, Peter's eyes swallowing his face. In the last of the four they were locked in a tender embrace, as oblivious of the flash glare as they might have been of a sudden nuclear attack.

Kelly felt the tears coming.

Always the tears.

Leaving the light on, she sank under the covers and let the pill do its work. Sleep came grudgingly.

And brought dreams. . .

Peter was playing for her. She sat beside him on the piano bench, a girl of seventeen and still a virgin, so much in love it hurt (a deep, moist ache in that part of her which longed to know him), but their first episode of lovemaking was still weeks away, and she had to content herself with his nearness and the pledge that seemed inherent in his music. I love you, Kelly, the chords seemed to say. I will always love you.

Oh, what a splendid day that had been. Spring had triumphed over winter, and now there were buds unfurling, crocuses blooming, and children splashing gaily in the snowmelt. Sam and Leona were away for the weekend—Leona had tried to drag Peter along, as always twisting the screws of guilt, but Kelly had managed to talk him out of it—visiting Leona's brother in Toronto, and she and Peter were left alone.

She dreamed of that day now.

Seated beside him on the piano bench, one hand perched on the firmness of his upper thigh, she watched the knowing pass of his fingers over the keys. Spring sunlight beamed through the big bay window in whose belly the piano stood, and smoldered in the blondness of his hair. She could even smell him.

Old Spice.

Now his hands left the keys and he faced her, his breathing labored in the sudden, ominous silence. His nostrils flared and the pupils of his eyes grew wide, obliterating the irises with black. His hand covered hers and pressed it to his crotch, which bulged enormously under her touch. He grinned and his teeth were yellow.

"Peter," Kelly mumbled, both fearful and aroused. "Peter, this isn't right."

And what she meant was that this wasn't the way that day had gone, but also that the way he was touching her was wrong; he had never been forceful or rough. In the dream she tried to tell him that—but he jammed his mouth over hers, ramming his tongue down her throat like a rapist's thick penis. With his free hand he laid hold of her hair, while with the other he ground her open palm against his groin. A confounding blend of passion and revulsion gripped her now, and she half fought, half responded.

With an ease that was frightening, Peter lifted her onto the piano lid. Sliding her away, he hiked up her skirt and jerked her panties down to her ankles. Without hesitation, he drove three rigid fingers into her middle. She cried out in pain—

And awoke. Something deep inside of her tugged. . .

And then the tears came, hot and bitter, squeezed free on sobs that shook her to the core.

Two weeks later, on the sixteenth, Marti dragged Kelly out for some shopping. It was the first day of the Christmas break, and Marti was almost delirious with the Yuletide spirit. Her relationship with her male counterpart at Chelmsford Secondary was progressing famously, and she thought he might pop the question on the Eve. It was for these reasons that Marti was running on high octane on this snowy afternoon and failed to notice Kelly's sullen, distracted state. They were sitting at a table on the busy New Sudbury Shopping Center concourse, sipping pop and nibbling french fries, when suddenly Kelly burst into tears.

"My God, Kelly, what is it?"

But Kelly could only shake her head. Ignoring the inquisitive stares of passersby, Marti positioned her chair next to Kelly's and hugged her until the worst of the deluge had passed. Then she led her out to the car. Snow sifted down from a white sky in merry little flakes, and the air was pleasantly mild. While her aging Firebird warmed up, Marti turned to Kelly and tried again.

"What's up, Kel? You and Will have a run-in?'

Kelly released a short, acid chuckle. "You're way behind on the news," she said, sniffling tike a child. "I haven't seen Will in weeks. . . and no, he didn't dump me, if that's what you're thinking." It was. "I dumped him."

"And now you're sorry," Marti ventured.

Kelly sighed and faced the windshield, cold in spite of the already toasty heater. Though Marti was her dearest friend, it was Christmastime and Marti was a Christmas freak; she loved every tinsel-flecked minute of it, from these mad shopping sprees to dressing the tree to loitering beneath the nearest sprig of mistletoe. Moreover, she was in love and contemplating wedlock, a circumstance that to Kelly had always seemed about as likely as global nuclear disarmament. Marti was vibrant, happy, and alive. And in the face of all that, wouldn't it be dreadfully unfair of Kelly to unload all of this crap onto her?

Kelly decided that it would. Besides, over the past few months she and Marti had been. . . drifting apart. If there was any blame to be laid for this regrettable situation, it belonged as much to Kelly as it did to Marti.

But it was a blameless situation, and Kelly knew it. People changed. Times changed.

Come on, Wheeler, tell the truth, to yourself if nobody else. Nothing has changed between you and Marti. She still loves you madly and you still love her. You just don't want to admit that your life is turning to mud. You don't want her to think that you're losing your mind. . . and aren't you?

The answer was an unqualified yes. How else could she explain the turmoil of the past two weeks? How would any half-competent psychiatrist explain it? At first glance, it all seemed remarkably straightforward, even in the apparent absence of a precipitating cause. All these years of suppressed emotion were finally leaking to the surface, eroding the structure of a life which, in reality, was more fabrication than real. You didn't have to be a student of Freud to figure that much out.

But wasn't "leaking" too mild a word? Because all of that poison or suppressed emotion or whatever you wanted to call it was exploding to the surface, geysering out in a pillar of molten pain. And it was no catharsis. There was nothing healthy in any of this. With each passing night her mind threw up some new and twisted mutation, some new distortion of the past. It had reached the point where she either spent her nights trying to stay awake or drugged herself so heavily that in the morning her dreams were banished from memory.

In her waking life she thought of Will often. There had been maybe a hundred times over the past two weeks when in the backwash of the previous night's dreams her resolve had gone to tatters and she had picked up the phone and dialed his number. But she'd always slammed it back down again before the wire-hiss had turned to ringing. The one time she did let it ring, there had been no answer. At work, she'd thought defeatedly, and deemed it a sign from the gods. She didn't think she could have spoken to him anyway. She'd only wanted to hear his voice.

Yes, she thought of Will often. But she never dreamed of him. Peter dominated her dreams now, as he had all those years ago. She had dreamed of him when he was whole and their future still lay shiningly ahead of them. And she'd dreamed of him later, after the accident, when his image had turned a nightmarish yellow. But with time he'd withdrawn from her dreams, dropping back sporadically to leave tears on her pillow, but for the most part keeping away.