“No, this is fine.” Rob perched on the edge of the bed. How funny—the man in the ER looked twenty years older than this kid, who had shaggy ringlets and a Ho Chi Minh beard. But, of course! This was Vern’s mental image of himself, perpetually young and hip—probably hipper than Vern had really been at that age. “What do you think is happening out there?”
“Oh, smoke inhalation, probably—carbon monoxide poisoning, that kind of stuff. But I’ll be okay. Take more than this to kill me.”
“That’s good to hear,” Rob said with relief. “I really appreciate your searching for me. I would’ve felt terrible if you died doing it.”
“All part of the job, man.” Vern shrugged. He took his heroism utterly for granted, which disconcerted Rob a little.
“I hope you won’t be sick long.”
“Maybe I’ll retire on medical disability,” Vern said. “Move down to Florida and go fishing every day.”
“That would be fun.” This was not how Rob wanted the conversation to go. Platitudes and small talk he could do in a bar. He didn’t have to storm Vern’s central soul to sit on a waterbed. But there didn’t seem to be any way to move out of the mundane, to explain and apologize.
Looking around the room, Rob rather thought Vern was a fairly mundane man. This was Vern’s space. He was calling the shots. Maybe any other way of interacting would make him uncomfortable. Possible comments flitted through Rob’s head: “So, you a Deadhead?”, “How long you been into fishing?”, “I went to Florida once.” Guy talk, all of it. He had not realized how paltry most male conversation was, how trivial and shallow. With the weirdness he could peer deeper now. But even then the insights were incommunicable because Rob himself was a man, trapped in that same tight-lipped Clint Eastwood mold. Women were luckier—at least in the volleys of their female chatter some feelings came through.
A deep noise, not very loud but almost subsonic, made the entire room quiver. “Damn, it’s getting bad,” Vern said. Then Rob noticed that the dorm wall was dissolving behind Vern. He pointed, and Vern whirled. Suddenly Vern wore his full fireman gear, the helmet, the rubber coat, the boots, everything. He brandished a fireman’s axe at the onrushing darkness. “No
way!” he yelled, flailing.
Rob knew there was nothing for him to do. This was the absolute last place he wanted to be, stuck in a dying man’s head. He stood up on the jelly-like surface of the waterbed as the dark washed up around it. The walls were gone. Even the bed was melting away like an ice cube in hot chocolate. Vern stood alone in the nothingness. His axe drooped. “Oh, well,” he said reluctantly. “Maybe I’ll go. I guess. I dunno.”
He didn’t look back at Rob. Rob called, “Hey, thanks again for your help!” But Vern still didn’t look back.
Haul ass before it’s too late, Rob told himself. He launched himself up and out through the icy dark, refusing to think about getting lost in here. But it wasn’t far. He blinked and found himself staring at an annoyed nurse.
His tarnhelm trick must have slipped while he was ‘away.’ “This is a restricted area, sir,” she said. She thought he was ghoulish.
“I’m sorry,” he said meekly. Something was urgently beeping behind Vern’s curtain, and a doctor was talking rapidly at somebody. The intercom was paging a Doctor Mallory, and a nurse ran by with a rattling trayful of instruments. Rob shuffled back to his side of the ER. The misery that had made him frantic five minutes ago still oppressed him. At least he had done something. Finding Vern and saying thanks was a minor achievement, better than nothing. But none of these cheer-up reflections had much impact. He went back into the cubicle and sat on his bed again. Unhappiness seemed to
press down on the back of his neck, so that the pillow looked very attractive. He lay down.
“You can’t nap here any more,” Julianne said indignantly. “They’ve just discharged you!”
The nurse put down her pen and grabbed Rob’s arm to hitch a blood-pressure cuff around it. “Do you feel bad anywhere, Mr. Lewis? Dizzy, nauseous?”
“No no, I’m fine!” Rob sat up.
Julianne felt his forehead. “You don’t feel feverish.”
“I’m fine! Let’s go!”
The nurse stared narrowly at the gauge on the blood-pressure cuff. “Well, I guess you’ll do,” she said reluctantly. She ripped the Velcro cuff free.
“Your wife has the list of the doctor’s recommendations there. Stick to them like glue!”
“I’ll see to that,” Julianne promised. “And if he gets sick, he’s coming straight back here.”
“I won’t get sick,” Rob muttered. There was nothing wrong with him that unloading to Julianne wouldn’t cure. All this secret identity stuff seemed utterly juvenile, the power fantasies of little boys. Strength is in partnership, he thought as they left. I can tell my wife anything. And she’ll help me. Julianne’s such a sharp one, she’ll have ideas, give me guidance. The very presence of their minivan in the parking lot was testimony to Julianne’s resourcefulness. She had taken emergency medical leave from the association, phoned Miss Linda to set up the twins’ care, taken a taxi to Chasbro to get the van, and then driven to the hospital, all without knowing whether Rob was alive or dead.
It was almost midnight now, and Rob shivered in the cool sweet air. Somewhere this afternoon he had lost his sports coat. The sleeve of his shirt scraped annoyingly at the edge of the Band-Aid in the crook of his elbow, where the IV had been stuck. Suddenly exhausted, he collapsed into the passenger seat of the van. He buckled the seat belt and fell into sleep the way he would flick off a light.
CHAPTER 4
In the morning Rob woke luxuriously, stretching all the way down to his toes like a cat. A year and a half of fatherhood had taught him to sleep alertly, with one ear open for the sounds of a baby vomiting or choking or climbing out of the crib. But the twins had spent last night with Miss Linda, and somehow the knowledge had permeated his rest. Rob slept deeper and better last night than he had in months. He felt great.
Adhering to the doctor’s order sheet, Julianne had let him sleep. A Post-It
note stuck to the lampshade said, “Gone to get the kids, back by 11, XX OO.” It was only ten-thirty, plenty of time for a shower and a cup of coffee. Rob’s nose told him that Julianne—wonderful woman!—had already brewed a pot. Yawning, he padded downstairs to the kitchen to get some.
The sight of his own image in the hall mirror brought it all back. He looked like a junkyard dog. Black oily soot had been wiped, not very thoroughly, off his face. His light-brown hair was thick with it. The bedsheets must be a total loss. Rob looked down at his hands and saw how the grime stopped at the shirt-cuff line. “Priority shift,” he announced.
Turning, he went straight back up to the bathroom.
Thoroughly clean, he sat down at the sunny dining table with coffee and the paper. The headline was about Congressional legislation, but just below was a smaller column headed: FIRE IN FAIRFAX OFFICE PARK KILLS ONE. His pleasure in the morning evaporated. Quickly he turned to the comics, hoping to recapture his mood, but there was Spider-Man, pouring out some inane work problem to his wife. Rob wondered if it was an omen.
The Spider-Man family, being child-free, could indulge in confidences any time. When the Lewis household reunited there was no chance to talk for hours. Angela trotted in and pointed at him, screaming “Daddo!” in an imperious tone. “Where were you?” You disrupted my routine! she would have accused him if she could.
Rob picked her up and said, “How’s my girl, huh? Is she a baby bat?” Holding her upside down made her squeal with glee.
Davey came in at a run, tripped over his own sneaker toes, and fell.
Unhurt, he howled anyway. Still clutching Angela by the ankles, Rob could only say, “Hey, sport! C’mon, you’re not hurt! Where’s the owie, huh?” Davey thought it over and pointed at his head. “Well, c’mere then, let me kiss it.” Rob dropped a peck on the damp buttercup hair. “Holy mackerel, kid, is that food there? Jul, he�
��s got half a graham cracker welded to his scalp, did you see?”
“Damn, I thought I got it all.” Julianne came in and dumped the diaper bags down in a corner. “How do you feel, hon?”
“Never better. Here, sweetie, down you go. Time to be a wiggly snake.”
He laid Angela down on the rug and she shouted, “Hiss!” Rob seized Davey before he could join her, and began wiping cracker out of his hair.
“We have to feed them lunch,” Julianne said feverishly, and surveying the situation, Rob agreed. It was past eleven. This was the last flush of sweet temper before empty tummies and low blood sugar forced the twins into whininess. Julianne hurried into the kitchen and opened a can of Spaghetti-Os. The microwave beeped just as Angela began to scowl.
“Lunchies,” Rob announced. “Up into your chair, that’s a big girl! What
about you, sport, you need a boost?” But Davey felt himself quite old enough today to climb into a high chair. Rob hovered in back in case he slipped.
“Chow time,” Julianne said. “Oooh, our fave!”
“You think they’ll ever learn to use a spoon?” Rob drew back from the splash as Angela dove into her bowl with both fists.
“Oh yeah, maybe by high school. Keep an eye on them, and I’ll rustle up something for us.”
Armed with a roll of paper towels, Rob kept the major spurts cleaned up.
The highchairs stood on an inadequately-sized old shower curtain that could be hosed off outside. From the kitchen came more microwave sounds—leftover pizza, Rob could foresee. The weekend-type meal was going to taste strange on a Tuesday. Ordinarily the family never ate lunch together during the week. Julianne set a small paper plate with a large limp wedge of pizza draped over it in front of him. Rob asked her, “Would you change anything in our life if you had the chance, Jul?”
Julianne sat down across from him and raked her blonde bangs with her fingers. “Potty training,” she said. “God, if they would just be dry during the day, that’s all I ask! We’d save a fortune on the Pampers alone, you know that?”
“Yeah, but that’s not what I meant.” Rob bit off the dangling point of his
pizza.
As he set the paper plate down Davey lunged for it. Pepperoni and sausage pellets went flying, but Davey had the pizza tight in both hands. “Haw, haw!” he bellowed proudly.
“Oh, look at this!” Rob dove to his knees to gather up pepperoni.
“No no, dearest!” Julianne tried to take the plate and its pizza away, but Davey had his fingers sunk in to the knuckles and the struggle was undignified. “It’s hopeless, Rob, the carpet’s shot.”
“We’ll have to shampoo it again.”
“That’s something I’d like,” Julianne said, setting the mangled pizza slice well out of reach. “In our next house, the dining area will have a washable floor—linoleum, or concrete, or something.”
“Something we can sandblast,” Rob agreed. Talking to Julianne was impossible with the kids on deck, he decided. Even connected conversation was impractical. But they took a nap right after lunch—that would be his time.
The drill for naptime when both of them were on hand was for Rob to take
Angela up to her crib first. Angela didn’t approve of rest in any form.
While she kicked up her heels in bed, singing “Twinkle twinkle!” at the top of her voice, Rob sat out in the hall, officially not present but within reach in case Angela decided to climb out. Usually he used the time to catch up on magazines, but today he took the cordless phone and the Chasbro office directory up with him. It would be really useful to know if he still had a job or not.
Rob dialed the main Chasbro number just to see what would happen. “—not in service,” the mechanical voice said. Then he phoned Danny at his home number. The answering machine, great. He left a message: “Just checking in, Danny. Hey, are we still pulling paycheck, or what?” Then he tried Lori.
“Ohmigosh, Rob, how are you?” she demanded. “You looked like hell, we were so worried—”
“I’m perfectly okay,” Rob interrupted her. “They couldn’t even fudge up an excuse to keep me in the hospital overnight.”
“Wasn’t it scary! I was terrified! I was with Maura in the copier room when the alarm rang, and we didn’t really take it seriously for a while, but then, when this smoke started filling up the hall—”
Rob let her babble on for as long as he dared. Since he’d been playing hooky yesterday morning it might be very wise to catch up on what had been going on in the office. Also with his free ear he could hear Angela winding down a little with a rendition of a Barney song. Inevitably Lori came around to asking, “But where were you? Nobody noticed you weren’t following along down the fire stairs, until Danny counted noses out on the front lawn and you were missing!”
Rob had given this some thought and was able to say, “Well, you know I never heard the alarm ringing at all? I needed the number off my health insurance card, and when I reached for my wallet I remembered I’d left it in the van. So I went out to get it, and that’s when the alarm must have gone off. I went back up to the office, and by the time I noticed what was going on—”
“How awful, you could have been killed!”
“But what I really want to know now is, what’s the damage? What’s the status of the project?”
“The mainframes are insured, that I know,” Lori said uncertainly. “But the disks are trashed, I bet anything you like.”
“Something can be salvaged.”
“Only if the head office decides it’s worth while.”
“There is that,” Rob admitted. “Listen, Lori, I have to run. You’ll keep me up to date, huh?”
So that was taken care of—although it was a startling thought, that Chasbro’s parent corporation might cut their losses and fold. Granted, Chasbro hadn’t run in the black last year, but surely the powers that be wouldn’t throw them all to the wolves?
Julianne came softly up the narrow stair, Davey nodding on her shoulder. With a visible effort Davey raised his flaxen head and grinned sleepily at Rob, who couldn’t help smiling back. Julianne sidled into the now silent bedroom and, after a long suspenseful pause, came out on tiptoe. “Let’s beat it!” she whispered, and they sneaked downstairs again like burglars.
“Another triumph of nap management,” she congratulated him in the kitchen.
“It’s all in my dull personality,” Rob boasted. “Bore any kid to sleep, guaranteed.” He cracked open a large bottle of cola and took two glasses out.
“Aren’t you a sweetie,” Julianne said, sipping. She took her glass into the toy-strewn living room and lay down on the sagging sofa. “It’s so great to have a surprise day off. I wouldn’t mind a nap myself.” She winked at him, wickedly.
“Could we talk first?” Rob sat down in a shabby green armchair, a relic of grad school days.
“Sure—what is it, Chasbro? Are they going to reopen the office, or what?”
“Who knows? When they decide they’ll tell me about it. But that’s not what I wanted to say.”
“Okay, what?”
Now that the time had come, Rob couldn’t find a good way to begin. To mention Spider-Man would surely be madness, but he couldn’t think of any other comparable person. He stared at Julianne, whose eyes were closed. She held the cold glass to her forehead and said, “I warn you, Rob, if you’re thinking divorce, you get the kids. I am not taking them.”
That made him laugh a little. Julianne knew him so well… “You remember what you were saying last week in the car, Jul? About how I had changed?”
She opened her eyes. “You’ve discovered you’re gay.”
“Cut it out, Jul, I’m serious! Something’s happened to me. Not from the fire, but from before. I can do stuff now. Things that nobody can do.”
Julianne’s raised eyebrows made him stop. “I’m waiting for the punch line,” she said. “God’s gift to comedy you’re not, hon. Okay, I’ll bite—what kind of things?”
She was humoring him. Rob felt his face getting red with annoyance. “Well, mind reading, for instance.”
“Read my mind, then.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Of course not. C’mon, Rob, let me in on the gag. April Fool’s Day was last month. Or—good god! Your head doesn’t ache, does it? Do you see spots, or feel numb or anything?” She sat up, staring at him with narrowed hazel eyes and setting down her drink.
“No, no!” Rob exclaimed in dismay. “I feel fine, never better!”
“But it’s not like you to talk like this.” Julianne advanced purposefully on him. Brushing his protesting hand aside she clapped a chilly hand to his forehead. “I don’t know. Let me get the thermometer.”
“Look, you want to know what else I can do?” Rob demanded, a little desperately.
“That does it. I’m calling the doctor.”
“Julianne, listen to me. I can change your mind. Make you believe me.
Okay?”
“Anything you say, hon. I have the name of that emergency room doctor written down right here.”
She had seized the cordless phone and was already punching out the number. “This is ridiculous,” Rob said. “All right. It shall be as I say. Julianne, you do believe me. Everything I said to you is a plain fact.”
He watched with relief and a little guilt, as she clicked the cordless phone off and pushed the little antenna back in again. “How—how did it happen, Rob? Did you, like, do radiation treatments as a kid? Get exposed to kryptonite or something?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Rob admitted. “And I can’t think of any way to find out.”
“What have you done with it?”
“Nothing much. It’s been, gosh, only about a week—I can hardly believe it.
I think I might’ve made your bus driver sick that day. I guess I should find out about him.” Rob winced at the thought of another Vernon Shultz.
How Like A God Page 4
