The Ram (5 page)

Riley smirks and pushes himself up in bed. He sets aside the tray of bland whitefish he’s been forcing himself to eat. “Tell me you brought me a cheeseburger. Anything that once had a pulse and didn’t swim the English Channel.”

His best friend, his former coworker, puts his bag down on the floor and grabs the sheet from Riley’s legs and gives a pull. The light blue blanket comes away with the thin, scratchy sheets and Walker gapes at his friend’s foot.

“At least they didn’t cut the entire thing off from the ankle, Rye. Your ass got lucky this time.”

“What do you mean
this time
? Have I ever had a body part amputated before? Yeah,” Riley says, “I’m a veritable four-leaf clover.”

Walker puts both hands near Riley’s wound, where the five toes of his left foot used to come together with his foot. He doesn’t touch the bandage but he moves his hands around like he’s trying to conjure up images in a crystal ball.

“Shit, you’re fine. You’re using words like
veritable,
” he says as he waves about his hands.

“I once was a lawyer, just like you, Walker. I got myself an education,” and Riley laughs, thinks of his time in contract law. He’s hard pressed to decide what was worse: his sixty hour work weeks manipulating legal jargon to help one party screw over another party or losing his toes. The verdict is still out.

“What the hell are you doing down there? Manipulating energy?”

“Nah, no hippie crap healing. I’m trying to feel how it is to get your toes smashed by an anvil and keep on living life as such a dumb shit.”

Riley laughs and can’t think of the last time he let himself become unburdened by his own personal struggles. He adores Walker, though he’d never tell his friend this, preferring to let the typical silence of heterosexual male friendship convey what he feels. He’s happy to have a familiar face visit him in the hospital, having put in a call to Walker’s mobile after his morphine drip had kicked in. Besides Double Al, no one in his life knows what’s happened to him. And for now, he’s fine with that fact.

“How’s the firm? Working on anything good?”

Walker takes his hands away and bends down, rummages around in his leather bag. “I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about your traumatic experience then?”

“I’d rather take a break from it.”

Walker keeps at his digging and produces a tube of lip balm he smears on thick before continuing his search. “Nah, nothing to give me a boner. I’ve got a client who wants to create a legal contract with his thirteen-year-old daughter. If she has sex before being admitted into college, she has to pay her own tuition. Can you believe that crap?”

A nurse pokes her head in the room and Riley smiles and waves her away. She turns and he notices the curves under her navy scrubs. He’s feeling better already.

“I can believe it. Hey, think you can pick me up on Friday? I’ll be good to go home by then.”

“Sure,” Walker says and holds up an index finger before pulling something flat from his satchel. He stands and Riley sees a card in his grasp. “But you’ll only have been in here five days. Is that enough time to heal? Granted, they won’t grow back. But still.”

His foot twitches and a line of pain zips from his amputation to his kneecap. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Plus, I haven’t been working for Double Al long enough to have health insurance. This is all on me. Or what’s left of my trust fund.”

“Screw that,” Walker says and tosses the card on Riley’s chest. “Worker’s comp, Rye. I’ll be damned if you have to pay a dime on this tab.”

The envelope is mustard yellow, bigger than a usual envelope, square and textured. “This get-well-soon card from you?” he asks Walker.

“No. I stopped by your house before coming over to check on the mail. It was the only thing not a flyer or a bill. Thought it might be something capable of cheering you up about your gnarly foot. Like a check for a billion bucks or the best porn in the whole world. Whatever that would look like.”

Riley picks it up. It feels like there’s cardstock inside. He tucks it under the plate of sodden broccoli and under-seasoned cod. “I’ll read it later. Tell me more about work.”

Walker plops down on the hospital bed. Riley grimaces at the motion on his foot but keeps smiling.

“There’s a new intern,” begins Walker, “and I plan on bagging her in two, maybe three months. She has the smallest teeth I’ve ever seen. Things are like white Tic Tacs but the rest of her is all right.”

“I sometimes miss Johnses, Mikelson and Rhodes,” Riley says as he ventures another bite of fish. It’s worse than before. But like an idiot, he keeps trying.

12 Peach

“What is it you expect to get out of this counseling session, Peach?”

Camille Swenson sits with her legs crossed and tucked under her bottom on an overstuffed chair. The fabric is patterned alternating blue and yellow stripes and it accents the woman’s curly ginger hair and tan pantsuit. She’s just plugged in an electric warmer for melting scented wax. The room smells like an oatmeal cookie within moments. The licensed clinical social worker looks over Peach, her eyes coming to rest on Peach’s feet.

“Great kitten heel on those shoes, by the way,” Camille says as she visually caresses the leather with her gaze. “I love something with just a little bit of lift.”

Peach twists her ankles to look over the scarlet shoes on her feet. She put them on to feel more confident, sexier, but so far it wasn’t working. The high she felt after her night out two days ago had settled into a miasma of self-doubt. She cringes a bit thinking of the number of times she heaved into her kitchen sink after arriving back home. Five times. The red spots of color weren’t the only muck befouling her hoodie and her kitchen that night.

Still, Peach was a believer in actions influencing personality. If she wanted more sexual energy, wanted others to think of her as someone with a strong sexual identity, she’d have to fake it until it became real. Of course, this is only one attribute Peach aims to change about herself. Once again, she thinks of fantasy turning into reality.

“Thanks.” She pulls her feet back and does her best to look Camille in the eye. If she doesn’t, she’ll be reminded to do so. “I guess I just need some encouragement today. I need to believe in myself.”

“And that’s traditionally something you’ve been unable to do. Why is that?”

Peach can’t think of a singular example for her meek approach to life, not at the moment, so she settles for general feelings. She’s well aware there are many instances which kept her fearful of self-actualization. “It might be because I’ve never done anything with my life that makes me think I’m powerful, dynamic. I’ve only done things that reinforce my use as a doormat.”

Camille shifts on her seat and pulls at one of her dangling earrings. Citrine stones set in silver jangle under her earlobe. “And you’re done with getting the dirt and crap of the world wiped across your life. Across your ego.”

“In a sense,” Peach says and breaks eye contact. She looks down at her lap, at her hands. The skin is dry, her right thumbnail broken down to the quick. A dried line of Super Glue keeps the nail together. She scratches off a bit of red pigment from her cuticle.

“That’s not the strong answer a confident person would give. You’re allowing yourself to fall back into habitual patterns of noncommittal language.”

“Okay.”

“No,” Camille says and reaches out for Peach’s hands. She gives them to the woman but rolls her eyes. “Now you’re simply agreeing with me. What is it that you want, Peach?”

There’s a clock in the corner of the room. A squat, golden thing with a pendulum for keeping time. It ticks steadily, loudly. Peach narrows her eyes at it.

“I want to break that sorry excuse for a clock. It looks like it was a retirement gift when you left the real estate business in 1983.”

A snort comes from Camille, then she’s giggling, dropping Peach’s hands and pinching her fingers tightly around her waist. Her body pitches slightly backward each time her chest heaves with mirth.

“Grabbing your hands was a bit much, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Peach says, a smile on her lips. “It could come off genuine to someone who doesn’t know about your OCD issues with hand washing.”

“And I was never in real estate. And I was five in 1983.”

Standing up, Peach smoothes back her wig. “I had to say something to break the tension.”

Camille wags a finger at Peach. “Because I was getting too close to something. I get it. You don’t have to divulge all your secrets today. Our five minutes was about up, anyway.”

The clock holds Peach’s interest for a moment longer. For an instant, she thinks the object mocks her. Its ticking tells her she does not have the time, the collection of minutes and days, to see to a sufficient change in her personality. She goes to it, lays it flat on its face. The sound is muted.

“Now get out,” Camille says, “I’ve got to get ready for a real client.”

Peach opens the door that leads from Camille’s office into a hallway of other doors. A man rushes by her, a mess of folders tucked under one arm. A phone rings incessantly from behind one of the closed doors. The waiting room is to the right of Peach. Individuals wait with problems greater than her own, ready to be saved via therapeutic reflection.

“Oh, Peach,” Camille shuffles the papers on her desk, finally producing a bright green paperclip. “Just so you know, you really can do anything you want in life. You’re special and you know it.”

“Okay,” she says and flinches as Camille flicks the paperclip at her in retribution for the blasé answer.

Then she leaves the woman’s office, turns left down the hallway, unlocks the door of her own office, and faces a cold room, filing cabinets, drawn blinds, and the professional promise to fix everyone but herself.

13 Riley

It’s mid-afternoon when Walker leaves to get back to work at the law firm. Riley, glad for his visit and happy for his departure, finally sinks back onto his bed, exhaustion claiming his body. He’s beginning to feel more in his foot, the nerves coming alive with sparkling sessions of hurt when his muscles randomly enter into spasmodic throes. He depresses the button on his morphine drip until it buzzes a warning and will not dope him with any more of the opiate.

He’s glad for his one true friendship with Walker. They’d started at the firm at the same time, straight out of law school. His placement had been at the behest of, and due to the social gravitas of, his father. But Walker was quick-witted when it came to career moves and secured an entry level position at the firm on his talents alone. It was no surprise to Riley that Walker was still there, climbing the ranks in power and salary while Riley had already checked out from a life so closely linked to the idea of an American success story. It was an identity he’d stopped craving once he’d distinguished his own desires from those belonging to his father.

Or so he thought. The sight of Walker with his work bag made Riley a bit jealous. Now he was a cripple and would need to weigh his work options yet again. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him to get back in the game of law. He’d only been gone for a short time. He could rejoin the proverbial rat race. He might even win it, if he applied himself. It’d be the only race he could win, now.

Riley does something stupid, decides to flex his left foot, just to see how it feels. He screams out and quickly puts a spare pillow over his face, biting into the white pillowcase. It tastes basic, smells of iodine. No nurses come to check on him after he yells. He’s glad for it, but also concerned at their lack of attention.

When the throbbing subsides, Riley pulls on the spiral cord attaching the television remote to his bed. He’s about to turn on the screen when he spies the dark yellow envelope tucked under his discarded food tray.

He grabs the paper, balances it in his palm. Definitely a card. He flips it over and sees some of the heft comes from a deep red blob of wax. The seal is just off-centered and it has been made with a tool, a press of sorts. He runs his pinkie finger around the inside of the divot. It’s rounded, but not completely smooth. Unlike the initials or crests he’s seen dipped in wax seals in movies, this is more geometric and obscure.

He rips the corner of the envelope, preserving the seal and pulls out a card. The front of the card displays a picture of a sorrowful, anthropomorphized panda holding a cluster of wilting daisies in its paws. Riley opens the card to see the printed message inside:
Beary Late Than Never. Happy Belated Birthday!

There’s more, written in handwriting that tilts a bit to the left with curly loops for serifs:

Don’t you just feel like a wolf in sheep’s clothing sometimes? At least you aren’t the black sheep of the family. Sorry I missed your birthday, but it wasn’t the right time to wish you well just yet. I’m looking forward to Lucky Number 8!

Love,

Hamal

Riley reads the card two more times, trying to make sense of its contents. He’s not sure, but he thinks he had a thought about being a wolf in sheep’s clothing before the anvil slipped to the floor to squat on his foot. He flips over the envelope. There’s no return address, but his home address is written in the same distinctive handwriting. His birthday was nearly a month ago and the only mail he’d gotten then was a simple drawing of a fenced pasture containing cows and a large, man-sized golden eagle from five-year-old Tate Marchesi. The kid with the greenish-brown eyes and raspy chuckle could be his biological child, though Riley and his ex-girlfriend Kristin have both avoided the work of deciphering his parentage for a certainty.

He doesn’t know a Hamal and has no idea what
lucky number 8
refers to. Nor does he care.

His foot twinges, pain rushing up to his stomach. He presses the nurse call button on his bed frame and tosses the card and envelope on the chair nearest to him. He needs some stronger pain killers or an override switch on his morphine drip. And as he looks at the gloppy wax on the envelope, he decides he could use some cherry Jell-O, too.