Four Kinds of Rain (16 page)

Bob squinted and looked into the camera. He gave a slight shake of his head, as if he was so modest, so kind, that the mere mention of “personal glory” was something so foreign to him that he could barely understand what she meant.

“Acknowledgment?” he said. “I look at it another way. See, I figure I get nothing
but
acknowledgment. When I help an unwed mother get over her problems and face life with a positive attitude, man, that’s acknowledgment. When I help a homeless person get that job he or she hasn’t had in twenty years and they invite me for Christmas dinner, hey, that’s serious acknowledgment, and when I help a kid on drugs get clean and make something of his life, that’s the greatest
kind
of acknowledgment. And yesterday, when I saw the looks of gratitude on those two kids faces, hey, that’s all the acknowledgment any man needs. Right?”

Lake Harper looked down at Bob and he saw the love in her face. He had done it with that speech, all right, laid waste to them all. The reporters actually were speechless for a few seconds until they gathered themselves and fired away another round of questions. This time it was Stormy Terrell, the hottest anchorwoman in town, rumored to be leaving the city to go to work at CBS in New York.

“Bob,” she said, just like they were old friends, “what will you do now?”

“I’ll just keep on trying to help people, I guess,” Bob said. “That’s what I do, after all.”

“Then there’s no truth to the rumor that you’re talking to book publishers about your life story?”

“No,” Bob said, truly shocked. “Not that I know of.”

(Oh God, he thought, let it be true. Please, let it be true.)

“Well, I heard three publishers are anxious to talk to you.”

“That’s very interesting, Stormy,” Bob said, “but I seriously doubt it. I’m just an ordinary guy doing what he loves to do.”

“More like an ordinary hero,” Stormy said.

Bob gave her his best modest smile and signaled for Jesse to move on.

“Wait, wait,” came the cries from behind Bob. “Just a few more questions, Bob. And we want to talk to Jesse, too.”

Bob looked up at Jesse, who beamed her loving smile down at him.

“Stop and talk to them,” he said.

“Jesse?” one of the faceless print reporters called. “Is it true that you and Bob are going to be married?”

“No,” she said. “Why ruin a good thing, darling?”

Huge laughter. God, she was great. A born performer.

“Jess, is he really this humble guy at home?”

“Absolutely,” Jesse said. “The only place Bob’s not humble is in bed.”

More laughter. Bob laughed, too. Fantastic. Now he would be known as a sexy saint.

“Time to go,” he said. He made a face part grimace and part smile, the kind that said he was dealing heroically with his pain.

Jesse wheeled him across the parking lot, toward their car and the waiting Dave McClane.

“Hey guy,” Dave said.

“Dave,” Bob said. He wanted to jump out of the chair and hug old Dave for the piece he’d written, but he suddenly understood that their relationship had changed. They were no longer two losers wasting the afternoon at American Joe’s tavern.

Not anymore.

Now Bob was a hero and Dave was his Boswell.

It was amazing, really. Because of Dave’s savvy in writing the piece, both of them had completely reinvented their lives.

Bob felt a huge surge of gratitude toward Dave. Thank God for old Dave’s loyalty, his faith in Bob’s greatness.

Tears sprang to Bob’s eyes.

It had finally happened. Bob was somebody in the world at large.

Thanks to his dear old pal …

It was all he could not to throw his arms around Dave, thank him profusely. But, of course, that wouldn’t do.

He was a hero now. He had to play the part of one. Modest. Kind. Understated, like the saint Dave had made him out to be.

So instead of hugging and kissing the man who had pulled him from the mulch of obscurity, Bob offered Dave a manly, understated handshake.

As the press snapped the picture and the TV cameras whirled just behind him.

“Good to see you, Dave,” Bob said. “That was a fine piece.”

“You earned it, Bob,” Dave said, smiling, his eyes shining with admiration.

Bob nodded in an old-fashioned Gary Cooper way, then let Dave and Jesse help him out of the wheelchair and into his car. And as he fell into the passenger seat (giving another little clenched-teeth grimace of pain so the cameras could catch it), Bob suddenly felt the clean rush of saintliness.

He was a real hero. Of course he was. Hell, as much of one as, say, Jessica Lynch, who hadn’t done a damn thing but get caught and raped, and as much of one as any football star murderer or billionaire basketball crackhead. Why beat himself up about his “authenticity”? That kind of thinking—rigorous honesty—why, that was for the old world, and the old Bob. America wasn’t about that anymore, if indeed it ever was. That kind of thinking was for losers. So was the whole guilt trip, too. Why, in this world, the real world, you were as you were perceived to be, and Bob was perceived as a hero. Only a schmuck or some kind of overearnest graduate student of Ethics 101 would question the validity of his new fame and fortune.

And besides, Bob thought, as Jesse slowly rolled out of the lot—and as Bob gave all the reporters a George S. Patton-esque thumbs-up, which would be shown that night on the
News at Eleven
—just think of all the thousands of good things he’d done over the years, helping the poor, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised. The truth was he was an artist, a special kind of artist, who didn’t use paint or words, or play music, but rather an artist who used humanity as his canvas.

He was, he thought, as they eased out into the traffic, a kindness artist. Like a metaphysical Johnny Appleseed, he moved from place to place, dropping dabs of kindness and insight.

And now, at long last, the world would be able to see his life’s work.

That happy thought brought tears to his eyes.

His miserable life had come to something after all. He was finally being recognized. And God, he was loving every minute of it. Bob Wells, American hero. At long last.

On the bright spring morning Bob arrived home his phone never stopped ringing. It was, he thought later, as if all the calls he’d been waiting for his entire life were taking place in one day.

There were calls from the
Washington Post,
calls from a paper in Richmond, Virginia, and finally, as the day ended, calls from
The New York Times
and, sure enough, a publisher called Pavilion Press in New York City.

As Bob waited for it to get dark enough to go retrieve his money, he answered them all. He told his life story over and over again, adding nifty little touches each time. For the
Post,
he said that he’d muttered a little prayer just before his fateful leap. For the Virginia paper, he mentioned his father’s name and his own jogging, “which gave me strong legs.”

But he saved the best for
The New York Times.
He mentioned that he was a “religious man … quietly and privately religious … that there were ‘certain spirits’ he communed with and these spirits aided him when the chasm looked insurmountable.” That was just the right thing for a hero. A low, steady flame, which he could turn up in time of peril. The
Times
guy loved it, and the piece practically made Bob out to be a male Mother Teresa.

The editor, Jane Bennett, from Pavilion Press, was the best of all. She said that they wanted to do a book with him and put it in their new Real Heroes line. She actually articulated the very thought Bob had wondered about so many times: “Why should jocks and movie stars be the real heroes? They don’t do anything for mankind.” Right, Bob thought, damn right. He agreed to go up to New York in the next few weeks to meet with a ghostwriter who would interview him and actually write the book.

“As long as it’s real,” Bob said, not only playing the modest hero but actually feeling that way as he spoke.

“Absolutely,” Jane said. “We don’t write a thing without your ‘input.’“

Yes, that was great, fantastic. Input. They wanted his input!

He hung up in a delirium of happiness, only to receive another call.

This one he could not believe. A producer from the
Today
show named Lori Weisman called. She sounded hysterically excited about “meeting Bob.”

“I just think what you did, why, it’s so amazing,” she said. “We live in a world now where each act of heroism gives the rest of us strength to carry on. I mean, I think your story could be a real inspiration to all of America, Bob.”

Bob heard her words and realized that this was truly it, the apogee of his success. His great dream was coming true. Television interviews! On the
Today
show! He would be part and parcel of the national colloquy. He, Bob Wells, was going to be on network TV!

“That’s fine,” he said, trying to sound cool and calm, as though this kind of thing was swell but not his real focus in life. “But I can’t spend too much time in New York, because, well, I can’t leave my patients.”

He looked at Jesse, who was walking through the room, and she gave him a complicit smile. She understood that he was playing it up, and why shouldn’t he, after so many years of being invisible.

There was a long silence on the phone then, during which Bob thought he might have overplayed his hand. Maybe she was thinking, What a phony asshole.

But when she came back on the phone she was even more breathless than before.

“That’s so great,” Lori Weisman said. “That’s the spirit we want to catch, and I don’t think you can do that, catch the real you, in the studio. No, I think I need to come down there. Bring the camera crew and film you as you minister to your people.”

For a second Bob couldn’t get his breath. They were going to come to him? Like he was some celebrity.

“You mean, come to my house and hang out?” he said, realizing he sounded lame, but too stunned to care.

“Absolutely,” Lori said. “Listen, Bob, when I read Dave McClane’s pieces about you, I knew this was a huge story. It’s the kind of thing people need now. In a world of Enron phonies and fucking perv priests and greed and suicide bombers, we all want to hear about a good guy who puts other people first, you know?”

Bob could hardly speak. At last, at long last they finally understood him and the world would hear his story. It was so wonderful … he could barely breathe.

“So can we come down, Bob?” Lori said.

“You bet,” he said. “But as far as filming my patients, well, we’d have to ask their permission. I mean, I can’t compromise their treatment.”

“Of course not,” Lori said. “We’d get them all to sign releases. How’s the day after tomorrow sound?”

“Fine,” Bob said. “Great.”

“We’ve heard from Dave McClane that you and your girlfriend play in a rock band. Any chance you could play that night?”

“I guess so,” Bob said. “I mean, you’d have to call Link, the guy who runs the Lodge, but I think he might be able to work it out.”

“Great,” Lori said. “Bob, I think this is going to be really terrific. I can’t wait to meet you.”

“Same here,” Bob said. “Thanks for calling.”

“No,” Lori said, her voice suddenly bulging with emotion, “thank
you,
Bob. It’s easy to get cynical in this world and I think our viewers are really ready for a real hero.”

“Gee, thanks,” Bob said, and hung up the phone.

“Bob, you ought to get up to bed,” Jesse called from the kitchen. “You’ll wear yourself out.”

“I’m okay,” Bob said. “Just a little headache.”

He reached into his pocket and took out the bottle of Vicodin.

Suddenly, he was struck with a terrible fear. What if while Lori was here, the cops told her that there was some question regarding Bob’s involvement with a mass murder on the fifth floor?

Neither Garrett or Geiger had mentioned his name in the article about the bombing, but they were lying in wait. It could happen at any moment. Why, instead of a piece glorifying him, the whole thing could come out as an exposé.

Bob fell back on the couch. It was getting dark. Maybe, if these well-meaning reporters dug into his past, they’d find out that he hung out with Ray Wade. Maybe they could even connect him to the crime. What if they talked to the bartender at Elmer’s? Had anyone seen him in there? And what of Cas and Tony’s relatives? Did they know about him? Would they come forward and tell the cops the truth? And where was Emile Bardan? Would he come back and kill Bob in his bed?

Then he took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was okay. So far no one had anything on him. What he had to do was take things one step at a time. Isn’t that what he always told his patients?

One step at a time. And the first step, the step he had to do right now, was to go get the money.

He lay there on the couch until Jesse came out of the kitchen.

“Bob,” she said, “you really should get your rest.”

“I know, Jess,” he said. “I’m just fine here. I need to think through a few things, that’s all. You go up. This has all been hard on you, too, baby. You need your sleep.”

“Okay,” she said.

Then she looked at him in a curiously cold way.

“Bob,” she said. “You know they found these bodies upstairs from where you saved the kids. And one of them was Ray Wade. I have to ask you this …”

Bob looked up at her with the most earnest of his shrink faces.

“You want to know if I had anything to do with those guys?”

“Yes, I do,” Jesse said. “I have to know.”

“No,” Bob said. “That’s the answer. I saw Ray as a friend, but you don’t really think that I would have had anything to do with his business dealings, do you?”

“I hope not,” Jesse said. “I sincerely hope not.”

“Don’t you believe me, Jess?” Bob said.

“I want to,” she said. “But you told me you were attending a seminar up at Hopkins that night. So how’d you end up taking a walk by the American Brewery? At one o’clock in the morning.”

“I came home and couldn’t sleep,” Bob said. “You know how I am, tossing and turning all night. I lay there for an hour, then said ‘to hell with it,’ and got up to take a walk. Usually, after a walk, I sleep just fine.”