Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (23 page)

“Bobby! Wow! Welcome. That was fast.”

“Naw, man. That was slower than snail
snot. Must be losing my edge. But you?! What the hell? Fall down the stairs in
a whorehouse?”

Switters checked Bobby’s black
leather jacket for signs of moisture. “It’s quit drizzling, hasn’t it? Let’s go
out on the side deck where we can talk privately—although even the deck could
be bugged.”

“Company or offshore bug?”

“Maestra bug.”

“Really? Your granny doesn’t look
like no ear artist, although she does appear to have a burr in her britches.”

“She rude to you when she let you
in?”

“Nice as pie. I even got the
impression she was kinda flirting with me.”

“That’s Maestra. An Aphrodite type
right down to the finish line.”

“She took to me. It’s
you
she
seems to have a problem with.”

“Well, she’ll have to stand in line
with the rest. Come on. Follow me.”

“I’m right behind you, son. But what
did she mean when she called you Mr. Worker Ant?”

“Never mind that.” He all but
blushed. “It’s a pet name. Family thing.”

“Oh. Like when my uncles and aunts
used to call me ‘little asshole.’ “

Demonstrating his growing expertise
with the chair, Switters wheeled down the dim foyer, past the living
room—pausing briefly to ascertain that the Matisse was still there—and through
a formal dining room permanently lacquered with the unsophisticated fumes from
takeout food. From the dining room, French doors led out onto a spacious deck
with a sweeping view of the cold and busy sound named for Peter Puget. Next to
a potted evergreen there was a Styrofoam chest, which he circled three times
rapidly before coming to a halt beside it, facing the water.

“You’ve taken to that chair like a
worm to tequila,” Bobby marveled. “How long’s it been your mode of transport?”

Switters patted the blue Naugahyde
upholstered arms of the lightweight, foldable Invacare 9000 XT, pride of
Elyria
,
Ohio
. He patted its plastic-coated, chrome-plated hand rims
(used to manually propel it), kicked with the side of his foot its pneumatic
“flat-free” tires, squirmed his rump about on the “contour plus” cushion that topped
the “drop hook solid folding” seat. How such a brand-new deluxe-model
wheelchair had ended up in the Boquichicos infirmary, he didn’t know. Part of a
foreign-aid package, presumably. He did know that he had failed to send it back
with Inti as promised, and he felt a prickle of guilt over that omission, even
though he’d wired the clinic a thousand dollars his second day back in the
States.

“It’s flame resistant.”

“That’s handy.”

“And bacteria resistant.”

“Smart. Furniture on wheels, you
don’t know where it’s been.”

“Oh, I keep a watchful eye.”

“And lock it up at night, I hope.
Person can’t be too aseptic in this day and age.” In a characteristic gesture,
Bobby tossed a pompadourlike tussock of inky hair out of his eyes while
simultaneously patting down the cowlick that coiled like a busted bedspring
farther back on his head. Switters had recently turned thirty-six (his birthday
had passed unheralded—except by the migraine-makers—on a flight from Paris to
New York), which meant that Bobby must have been at least approaching his
thirty-third year, but he seemed, if anything, to have grown more boyish—Huck
Finnish in stance, Tiger Woodsish in build—since Switters had seen him last,
and also more foredoomed. Small wonder Maestra or any other woman would find
him worth a flutter. “Fine piece of engineering, but you’d think they’d figure
out a way to plumb the damn things.”

“To accommodate a wet bar or . . .”

“Naw,” Bobby went on, shaking his
raven mane as if rejecting his previous thought, “that’d never work. But I’ll
tell you, son, what’d throw my happy heart to the wolves if I was to have to
park a bony
Texas
butt in one of these suckers every day is the trial
and tribulation of just taking a whiz. I mean, don’t you have to off-load
yourself onto a customized throne and wee-wee sitting down like you was queen
of the May?”

“Such unlucky gentlemen do exist,”
said Switters, “but behold the masculine ease with which I can perform the rite
of the void.” In demonstration, he bolted boldly upright and stood on the
footplate as if before a public urinal. “Of course, you have to make sure the
brake is set, and balance your weight, or you could pitch face-first into the
fixture.”

Bobby looked like a buffaloed
rubbernecker at the Lazarus show. “You can stand?!”

Grinning, Switters hopped backward up
onto the seat, where he then began to jog in place, raising his knees almost as
high as the scarlet T-shirt he wore under his double-breasted navy pinstriped
suit. The wheelchair shook. It teetered precariously. For an instant, he seemed
to panic. He throttled the trot.

“What the? . . .” Bobby’s face was
changing expressions faster than
Clark
Kent
changed underwear. He went swiftly from astonishment
to relief to annoyance to amusement to imagined comprehension. “Okay. Alrighty.
I get it. Even a maniac like yourself wouldn’t go to all this trouble just to
mock the afflicted or play a cruel joke on your ol’ podner. So’s I reckon
you’re fixing to go deep cover, and you’ll be trying to convince some alleged
bad guys somewhere that you’ve been crippled by the forces of imperialism. The
CIA and Actors Studio: telling them apart has never been simple. Did you know
Mata Hari’s real name was Gertrude? But hey! Anyway. I’m gladder than shit
you’re not actually stoved in ‘cause I was hoping we could hit a dance club or
two this evening.”

Switters reseated himself. “It’s not
like that, Bobby,” he said quietly. “It’s not a cover. I really am confined to
this contraption. Indefinitely, if not permanently.”

“Then what the? . . . You were
bouncing around like a poot in a microwave.”

“Why don’t you take your bandanna, if
you don’t mind, and dry off one of those patio chairs.” Switters lifted the lid
of the Styrofoam cooler. There was a rattle of ice shards as he removed a pair
of glistening bottles. Sing Ha. “For old times’ sake,” he said. “Only four of
these in stock, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. But there’s a Thai restaurant a
mile from here, and they deliver. Good. Have a seat. You’re not chilly, are you?”

“I live in
Nome
,” Bobby said. “
Nome
,
Alaska
. And in case your Langley-trained powers of
observation have completely deserted you, I happen to be wearing my leathers.
You’re the one liable to get cold.”

The sun had muscled through the
oyster frappé for the first time in weeks, but a light breeze was blowing off
the water, and it was raw around its edges. “The state I’m in, I’m impervious
to climate. So make yourself comfortable. I’ve got a story to relate . . .”

“I should hope.”

“. . . and you’re going to find it
harder to swallow than a cat fur omelet. It’s hard for me, too, so be patient,
if patience is among your virtues . . .”

“You could fit all my virtues in
Minnie Mouse’s belly button and still have room for Mickey’s tongue and their
prenuptial agreement.”

“. . . because it’s going to take me
some time, even to get started. Maybe while I’m gathering my wits, as the
maître d’ used to say at the Algonquin Hotel, you could fill me in on what
you’ve been up to.”

Noticing Switters’s untypical solemnity,
Bobby said, “Sure. Take it slow if you need to. But you’ve got to tell me one
thing up front. The question that’s burning a hole in my tortilla is . . .
well, is or is not the affliction that’s landed you in this senior-citizen dune
buggy the result of a sexually transmitted disease? I mean, I hate to be blunt,
but if you’ve been bit by something of that nature two years after Bangkok,
there’s a chance that I might . . .”

Switters had to laugh.

“Well, we were plowing the same
fields, you know. Extracting ore from neighboring shafts. So to speak.”

The word
relax
was on the tip
of Switters’s tongue when the memory of Sailor intervened. Instead, he said,
“Not it at all. Nothing remotely in that category, I promise.” He removed a
cell phone from the side pocket of the wheelchair and ordered a dozen Sing Has
from the Green Papaya Café. Then, without waiting for Bobby to file his Alaska
report, he began—first haltingly, bumblingly, then, gaining silver and fizz,
dramatically, almost with heedless relish—to recount the events of the weeks
just past.

The sun, as if wanting to listen in,
as if there might be something new under it, after all, fought off the curdling
stratocumulus and moved in closer. By the time Switters finished his hour-long
account, the deck was awash in afternoon sunlight; mild, respectful, autumnal
rays, bright enough but lacking any sear in their beam. The sea breeze
persisted throughout, but so restrained, finally, it could give the impression
that it, too, had been mesmerized by the tale.

If the sun was enticed and the breeze
engrossed, Bobby Case was those things and more. The former Air Force officer
was literally transfixed—whether with amazement, awe, disbelief, sympathy, or
scorn, it was impossible to ascertain. Many minutes passed, however, during
which he could not raise his beer to his lips. When at last he spoke, his voice
was taut from the strain of trying to sound normal and unimpressed. “So, that
ol’ boy? That limey? He really bought the farm?”

“Muy muerto.”

“Damn shame.”

“Yeah. Potney was a fine fellow. An
aristocrat, I suspect, although the kind inclined to wear black business shoes
and dress socks with Bermuda shorts.”

“Every country club in the state of
Texas has got a few of them. And you believe the Indian’s curse killed him?”

“Well . . .” Switters, too, was
making an effort to behave matter-of-factly. “I believe he chomped an apple he
couldn’t—”

Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “An apple?” he
asked archly.

“Yeah. Eve’s apple. The fruit of the
tree of knowledge.”

“Oh? Thought for a second you were
referring to the head of your—”

“Bobby! For Christ’s sake! No, no
tooth marks on
that
fruit, which, anyway, I would’ve modestly described
as a crab apple or a plum. Jesus, pal! He only jabbed it. What I’m saying is
that Potney took a bite out of the old forbidden Winesap and could neither
assimilate it nor eliminate it. A cruel dilemma. As Hesse said, ‘The magic
theater is not for everyone.’ “

“Bought a ticket to a show his rigid
background hadn’t prepared him to handle? But once seen, couldn’t forget?
Alrighty. How, exactly, did that kill him?”

Switters shook his head silently,
slowly.

“More to the damn point,
you
?
You’re a horse of a different feather.”

Switters just kept shaking his head.

Some gulls screeched by, sounding, as
usual, in a state of barely controlled hysteria. Wondering if his friend wasn’t
close to being in the same condition, Bobby decided he ought to experiment with
empathy. “If it was anybody but you, podner, I’d say you were haunting your own
house. Like that uncle of mine in Jasper who still thinks Fidel Castro’s hiding
under his rose bushes. Raggedy ass roses, too. Never prunes ’em right. But
knowing you’re telling the truth, and after the crazy shit you saw down there,
well, I’m trying to put myself in your place, and I have to say, if it was me
who went through it and saw what you saw, I reckon I’d be lying on my back with
my feet in the air like some upended June bug. At least, ‘til I figured it all
out.”

Switters lit a Havana panatela, Cuban
cigars being an occasional perk of CIA employment. On the out-puff (he never
inhaled), he said, “Figuring it out is the rub.”

“Yep, and I don’t know if I can help
you much with that end of it. For the time being, at least, I’m going to let
you wrassle with the psychological aspects. As for me . . . we’re in agreement
that you’ve got good reason to be keeping your tootsies off the pavement. You
got no choice right now but to scoot around in that wheelchair. The first order
of business is to find a way to get you out of it.”

“That would probably entail lifting
the taboo.”

“There you go.” Bobby sucked on his
beer bottle like a tot on a lollipop or a tout on a pencil. After a minute or
two, he said, “We’re both company men. Even if I am just a contractual flyboy
and you’re stuck below supergrader because of your personal proclivities. We’re
still company. So let’s approach this problem like company. How would the
geniuses back at the pickle factory deal with it?”

“Depends on the level of White House
involvement.”

“You got that straight, son.
President’s men the biggest damn cowboys on the planet, and we take the heat
for ’em. Democrats bad as Republicans.”