Wonders Never Cease

by Tim Downs

  “That’s a waste of an opportunity,” Emmet said. “You can read the paper anytime you want. Here in the cafeteria you get a chance to meet people—to learn from somebody different than you.”

  “Smarter than you?”

  “Maybe; maybe not. I find you can learn from most anybody if you keep an open mind.”

  “So this is how janitors spend their breaks—mingling with the hoi polloi.”

  “Wrong word,” Emmet said. “‘Hoi polloi’—that’s Greek, I believe. Most people think it means ‘the high and mighty,’ but it really means ‘the common man.’ See there? You learned something new already.”

  “Did you learn that from one of the doctors?”

  Emmet smiled. “I don’t seem to learn much from doctors—truth is, I learn a lot more from the staff. The cafeteria crew, for example—very bright people. Doctors, they seem to have a kind of tunnel vision—ever notice that? They know a lot about science and medicine, but they don’t always know much about life. Take you, for instance.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve got a little girl upstairs who needs to be loved, but you’re so caught up in your own life right now that you’re lookin’ right through her. Big mistake, friend.”

  “I’m not your friend,” Kemp said, “and she’s not my daughter.”

  “Does it matter? You’re the man in her life right now. Natalie’s a good woman. She worries about her little girl the way all mothers do, and let me tell you something: The way to any mother’s heart is through her child.”

  “Did the cafeteria crew give you that little gem of wisdom?”

  “No, but they all know it’s true. Funny thing—a man who’s paid eight dollars an hour to scrape grease off a plastic tray knows something you don’t.”

  “I’ll tell you what else is funny: A man your age who doesn’t know when to mind his own business.”

  Emmet shrugged. “Well, you can’t blame a man for trying.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “One more thing,” Emmet said, “since I’m out on a limb already: She’s not real, you know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That movie star patient of yours—the one you’re spending all that time with? She’s not real, Mr. Kemp—and when she wakes up in a few days I guarantee she won’t give you the time of day. She’ll look down her nose at you the same way you’re lookin’ at me right now.”

  Now Kemp smiled. “You never know. You might be surprised.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Natalie and Leah—they’re real, and they’re right in front of you if you’ll only look. I think you need to remember that.”

  Kemp looked at his watch. “I’ll tell you what I think, Emesis. I think I’m on a fifteen-minute break and you just wasted five. It’s a big cafeteria—how about celebrating democracy somewhere else?”

  Emmet picked up his tray and left without another word.

  Kemp buried his face in his newspaper, but a moment later he heard the chair beside him slowly slide out from the table. Without looking up he said, “I thought I told you to get lost.” A much deeper voice replied, “I don’t think so—Bobby.” Kemp looked up. The man who sat down beside him was enormous, and the legs of his plastic cafeteria chair bowed slightly under his weight. He was dressed in baggy khakis and an ugly Hawaiian print shirt festooned with badly rendered beach scenes and palm trees. The shirt’s pointed collar stretched open across his barrel-like chest, and a tuft of curly black hair bushed out from underneath. His neck was wider than his ears, and his bald head narrowed to a gleaming grapefruit-sized dome; he seemed to taper from the waist up, creating a strange foreshortening effect that made him look towering even when he was sitting down. He wore a simple gold ring in one of his ears and sported no facial hair except for a coal-black soul patch under his rubbery lower lip.

  When Kemp saw the man, his face went white.

  Tino Gambatti began to take items from his tray one at a time and arrange them neatly on the table in front of him. “It is Bobby, right? Bobby Foscoe from Baltimore? Bobby Foscoe, that whiz-bang medical student from Johns Hopkins I last met in a lounge at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City?”

  Kemp almost choked. “Tino,” was all he managed to get out.

  The man slid a bowl of lime green Jell-O in front of him and picked up a plastic spoon; it looked like a toy in his chubby fingers. “I’m impressed, Bobby. It’s been a long time. But then I suppose doctors have good memories—even doctors who don’t turn out to be doctors after all.”

  “What are you doing here, Tino?”

  He paused to take a spoonful of Jell-O. “I’m here on business. You’ll have to excuse my appearance. It’s California, after all—I was trying to blend in.”

  “If this is about the money—”

  “Funny you should mention that. As I recall, you borrowed some money from me once. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Kemp swallowed hard.

  “How much was that again? Refresh my memory.”

  “A hundred thousand.”

  Tino nodded. “That number sounds vaguely familiar. Remind me again—I don’t have your memory—what were the terms of our agreement?”

  “Two years,” Kemp said. “Fifty percent interest.”

  “Two years,” Tino repeated. “Enough time to let you finish up at Hopkins and set up a nice little practice somewhere. Enough time to let you start putting people to sleep and raking in an easy half million a year. Two years to come up with a measly hundred and fifty grand—that should have been easy for a bright boy like you.”

  “I—I screwed up. They didn’t let me finish.”

  “Yes, I heard about that, and if I was your mother I might even care. But since I’m your business partner, I could care less. I just want my money, Bobby.”

  “Sure, Tino, no problem. But—I don’t have it right now.”

  Tino turned and looked at him for the first time. “What’s the matter, Bobby? You look a little pale. Maybe you should get out more—take a little sun.”

  Kemp didn’t answer.

  “Let me explain something to you—something you maybe didn’t understand when we made our little agreement. See, I’m a businessman; I’m in the loan business. I loan money to people like you, and people like you pay me back—with interest. That’s how I make my living. Only I’m not like a regular bank—I’m more like a convenience store. You need groceries, you go to the grocery store; you want quick and easy, you stop off at 7-Eleven—but you expect to pay more. Me, I’m the same way. You want a conventional loan, you go to Bank of America—only as I recall, you were already up to your eyeballs in debt and your old man wouldn’t cosign another loan for you. But you couldn’t wait to start living the good life, could you? You wanted that hundred thousand right away, and you didn’t want any questions asked. That’s why you came to me, and we worked out a deal. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “I wasn’t so sure. You seemed to forget all about our agreement. You left town, Bobby; you moved to California; you even changed your name. What is it now? Kemp something-or-other? You know, I went to a lot of trouble to track you down. What was I supposed to think?”

  “I needed some time, that’s all.”

  “Eight years? That’s a lot of time.”

  “I’ll get you your money, Tino. I just need a little more time.”

  “More time? Eight years is not enough?”

  “I’ll get the money, okay? I’ve got a deal I’m working on right now. I just need a couple of months. Just be patient—don’t do anything crazy, okay?”

  “What do you think I’m going to do? You insult me. I’m a businessman, remember? Dead men don’t repay their loans, and all I want is my money—with interest. That’s another thing, Bobby—the interest has compounded a little.”

  “What?”

  “Our deal was fifty percent on two years. It’s been eight years—plus my time and trouble tracking you down. I’m afraid a hundred and fifty won’t do it anymore. It�
��s half a million now.”

  Kemp’s mouth dropped open. “Are you out of your mind?

  Where am I supposed to get that kind of money?”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “You can’t just change the terms of the agreement!”

  “You did.”

  “But—it’s impossible! There’s no way.”

  “What about your old man? I hear he’s pretty well off. Maybe he’s had a change of heart.”

  “Never. He wouldn’t even consider it.”

  “Have you asked him? Sincerely, I mean. I’ll bet you haven’t.”

  “Believe me, I’ve asked.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t been properly motivated.”

  “Now wait a minute—”

  “Look, Bobby, we need to put our heads together and come up with some creative repayment options. See, at this point I’m exactly like a bank. When one of my clients defaults on a loan, I have to find a way to recover my losses. We need to review your assets, your income, your other obligations, and see what we can do. We have to work something out, Bobby, because if we can’t I’ll have to foreclose.”

  “I don’t own a house.”

  Tino looked at him without expression. “Who’s talking about a house?”

  Kemp’s throat went dry. “Look—I have a girlfriend. She has a daughter.”

  “Has your girlfriend got any money?”

  “No. She’s as broke as I am.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t hurt them, okay? That would devastate me. I couldn’t bear it. I’d blame myself forever.”

  Tino almost smiled. “You think I would hurt your girlfriend as a way to punish you? What kind of man do you think I am? I would never have thought of such a thing—but you did. Shame on you, Bobby—this is between you and me.”

  Tino was sitting so close that their legs were almost touching. When Kemp tried to slide his chair farther away Tino said to him, “Don’t even think about it.”

  “We’re the only ones at the table,” Kemp said. “People are looking.”

  “Get used to it. You’re into me for half a million dollars, and I’m not leaving until I get it back. No more running, Bobby. I’m going to stay so close to you that when I fart you’ll say ‘Excuse me.’”

  “But where am I going to get half a million dollars?”

  Tino shrugged. “Tell me about this deal you’re working on.”

  17

  Matt Callahan sat in the back of the classroom and pretended to listen as each of his students stepped up in front of the blackboard and shared about a favorite family member, the soccer team, or some recent experience that he or she thought the class might find unusual or interesting. Matt graded papers as he listened, throwing in a question or comment from time to time to let the class know he was still tuned in. “See & Say” wasn’t a graded activity anyway—it was just a weekly opportunity for the kids to develop their verbal skills and gain confidence speaking before a group. A little boy with sandy hair was just wrapping up his presentation.

  “So, my brother and me, we launched the rocket and the cat went way up in the air just like we planned, only the cat came down safe and sound because we put a parachute on him before we shot him off. It was cool.”

  “Thank you, Larry, that was quite a story,” Matt called from the back. “Tell me, this cat of yours—is it full grown?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “How much does it weigh?”

  “Um.”

  “If it’s full grown, it must weigh a few pounds at least. This rocket you used—did you buy it at a hobby shop? Because most of the model rockets I’ve seen, they only have a few ounces of thrust. I wonder how that rocket managed to lift that cat?”

  Larry stopped to ponder this point.

  “Tell me, Larry, did you and your brother really put a cat into orbit, or were you just entertaining us with a tall tale?”

  Larry grinned sheepishly.

  “Class, let’s thank Larry for a very imaginative story.”

  The students reluctantly applauded.

  “Only next time, Larry, let’s stick to a real event for See & Say and save the imaginary stories for Creative Writing—okay? Who’s next?”

  Leah raised her hand.

  “Leah Pelton, the floor is yours. What do you want to tell us about today?”

  Leah walked to the blackboard and turned to face the class. “I saw an angel,” she said.

  Matt put down his papers. “Leah—you already told us this story.”

  She shook her head. “That was a different angel. I saw another one.”

  Larry’s hand shot up. “How come she gets to tell about angels, but I can’t launch my cat into space?”

  Leah glared at him. “Because that’s just stupid, that’s why. You just made that up, but I really saw an angel.”

  “Liar!”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too!”

  “Everybody calm down,” Matt said, rising from his chair.

  “Now Leah, you just heard me tell Larry that See & Say is for real events. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then you’re not just making this up. Right?”

  “Right.”

  Matt paused. “Okay, then go ahead. Tell us what happened.”

  Leah looked at her classmates. “My mom is a nurse at UCLA. Right now I have to sleep there at night, ’cause Mrs. Rodriguez—that was our babysitter? She can’t stay with me at night anymore. I’m supposed to stay in the nurses’ room, but I get bored in there—so the other night I went up and down the hallway and looked in all the rooms.”

  “Did you see any dead people?” one of the boys asked.

  Leah narrowed her eyes at him. “No—that’s not what happened. In one of the rooms there was an old man who looked real sick. There was this beautiful woman standing beside his bed, and she was holding her hand out over his head—like this.” She held her right hand out, palm-down.

  She smiled at the class as if her story was finished and started to return to her seat.

  “Hang on a minute, Leah,” Matt said. “I have a couple of questions for you.”

  “Me too,” Larry said.

  “Thanks, Larry, I think I can handle this. Leah, what makes you think this woman was an angel?”

  “She just was.”

  “But how do you know?”

  “I could tell.”

  “There are lots of visitors in hospitals, Leah. Did you see any visitors in the other rooms?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then what was different about this woman?”

  “She was an angel.”

  The class began to snicker and Matt gestured for them to quiet down. “Was she dressed differently?”

  “No.”

  “Was she doing anything unusual—anything that might make you think she was different from everyone else?”

  “She was holding her hand like this.” Leah repeated the palm-down gesture.

  “Maybe she was stroking the man’s hair. Maybe she was taking his temperature.”

  Leah began to frown. “She didn’t touch him. She just held her hand there.”

  “Why do you think she was doing that?”

  “I think it was making him better.”

  “Did you see him get better? Did he get up and get out of bed?”

  Leah didn’t answer.

  “Then you really don’t have a reason to think this woman was an angel, do you?”

  “She just made it up,” Larry scoffed.

  Leah gave Larry a burning stare. “I did not! There’s a nice old man who works at the hospital—he told me they get angels there all the time. He says some people can see things other people can’t. He says I have a gift.”

  Larry sneered. “I saw my cat take off, but nobody else did.”

  “It’s not the same!” Leah shouted.

  “Larry, that’s enough. Leah, please go back to your seat.” Matt looked at Larry. “Leah’s right
about something, Larry—her story is not the same as yours. You know your cat never left the ground, but Leah actually saw something and she told us what she saw. She thinks she saw an angel—I’m not so sure. But whether she’s right or wrong, she was describing a real event—and that’s what See & Say is for. Now who’s next?”

  Matt watched Leah as the next child stepped to the front of the class and began to speak. Leah sat slumped in her chair, staring at her desk and fighting back tears. Matt wondered if he had done the right thing. He couldn’t just let the story go—not after he just gave Larry a slap on the wrist for an obvious fabrication. He was hoping that a few pointed questions might cause Leah to give up her story as a hoax, but she seemed as determined as ever to defend it. One thing seemed certain: Leah clearly believed that she had seen an angel—another one.

  He took out a blank sheet of paper and began to write:

  Natalie,

  I told you in the carpool line that if I had any other concerns about Leah I would let you know. This morning she told the class she saw another angel—this time at your hospital. We need to talk, Natalie. Please call me at your earliest convenience.

  I’m on your side,

  Matt Callahan

  18

  Kemp shoved his key card into the door slot on the Century Plaza suite; when he pulled it out again a green light flashed and the lock made a clicking sound. He glanced down at the carpet beside the door and saw a room service tray littered with ketchup-smeared plates, forgotten vegetables, and translucent french fries left over from the night before. Beside that tray was a breakfast tray, apparently from just this morning—and beside that was an empty pizza box blotched with dark streaks of oil and tomato sauce.

  “Your friends have healthy appetites,” Tino said.

  Kemp shook his head. “If these guys could write half as fast as they can eat, we’d be done by now.” He looked at Tino. “Don’t say anything, okay? Let me handle it. This is going to be a little bit of a surprise.”

  Kemp opened the door and the two men stepped inside.

  The suite had been trashed. There were sheets of paper from the easel pad plastered all over the walls and crumpled wads of legal paper dotting the floor like yellow snowballs. There seemed to be more socks and shoes than there were feet, and a wrinkled blazer hung on a coat hanger from a chandelier. There were half-eaten slices of pizza abandoned on tissue-thin paper napkins, and empty cups and water bottles were scattered everywhere.