999

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Okay, step out of there.” She toweled him down, attempting to be gentle when the cotton plush dragged across his shoulders. When he was reasonably dry, Louisa draped the blue terry cloth robe around his shoulders and belted it at the waist. “Now he down. We’ll call the doctor.”

  The soiled sheets were no longer on the bed, but the mattress was still wet and stained. It looked as though Louisa had given it a good scrubbing. She spread a bath towel across the area, then fluffed out a cheap quilt from the linen rack. “Okay, lie down.” She efficiently flipped open an old wool blanket and drew it up to his waist. “Comfy?”

  “I guess,” he said. “Comfy as I’m gonna get.” He knew he didn’t really feel comfortable. But then who knew when his life was going to improve? Lie down while he could. He did so, gingerly flopping back against the mound of pillows Louisa had stacked.

  Only after he’d painfully settled himself, he groaned.

  “What’s the matter?” said Louisa.

  “I gotta pee.”

  “I’ll help you up,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I can make it. My back and shoulders feel like they’re going to come apart if I move.”

  “Hmm,” said Louisa. “You got a chamber pot?”

  “No.”

  “Hold on,” she said, turning and exiting the bedroom.

  “Where are you going?”

  Her voice floated back from the stairwell. “The kitchen.”

  Danny concentrated on using the muscles on the nether side of his bladder. Suddenly he couldn’t think of anything in the world he wanted more than to relieve himself.

  Louisa returned with an empty plastic two-liter diet Coke bottle and a pair of shears. His eyes widened. “What’re the scissors for?”

  She clicked them mischievously. “In case I have to whittle you down so you’ll fit the neck of this bottle.”

  “Ha ha,” he said. “How about just trimming the neck?”

  “Don’t think you’ll fit?”

  “Even today,” he said, “it looks like too tight a squeeze.”

  With a single scissors jab, she punched a hole at the base of the bottle neck, then snipped a generous hole. “Big enough?”

  “As long as I don’t sneeze. Looks sharp.” He spread his legs a little farther apart as she placed the bottle between his thighs. Louisa deftly inserted his flaccid penis into the hole. It occurred to him that the last time she’d touched him there, she hadn’t been nearly so clinical. But today he felt absolutely no excitement.

  Just relief.

  When he was done, she took the bottle away to the bathroom, then brought it back emptied and rinsed.

  “So far, so good,” she said.

  “Will you call Dr. King?” Danny said. He knew the GP’s office number by heart. Louisa held the receiver to his ear and he heard the clinic’s receptionist answer. The woman tried to put him on hold; he argued eloquently. In less than a minute, the doctor was on the line.

  Danny explained what had happened after his waking this morning from a sound sleep. Dr. King asked whether anyone was with him. “My friend Louisa.” He glanced at her. “I think she’ll drive me.” She nodded vigorously. “Okay,” he said. “One o’clock it is.” She hung up the phone.

  “Want some food?” she said.

  He shook his head. “Coffee’d be good.” The phone rang. “Weezie,” he said. “Would you get that?”

  She picked up the receiver. “Danny Royal’s home,” she said perkily. Then her expression darkened. “I don’t think this is a good time for you to talk to him.” Danny formed the word who with his lips. She shook her head. “He’s not feeling very well right now.” Pause. “No, call back another time. Or maybe not at all.” Set the phone back in its cradle.

  “Should I ask?” Danny said.

  “Your good friend Iffie,” Louisa said. Ice rimed her words. “She said she dreamed you were in trouble.”

  Danny stared back at her. “Hey, Ifetayo really is my friend. You know that. And she’s Yoruba, by way of a family sidetrack to Port au Prince. She dreams, it’s worth listening to.”

  “Let’s get something straight,” said Louisa angrily. “Friday night, I walked in and found your friend in your bed. With you, asshole.”

  “You should have called ahead,” said Danny.

  “Lame,” she replied. “I think you were playing us off against each other for God knows how long.”

  “Ifetayo was really uncomfortable with this,” he said placatingly. “Like I told you, she bowed out of the whole thing. I think she was pretty angry.”

  “Just like me?” Louisa’s voice dripped venom briefly. “I meant it when I told you I was going to come by today to pick up my stuff—the cards, the sweaters, everything I ever gave you, every bit of myself.”

  His voice stayed calm. “So why didn’t you?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. When I called you, and when I came over and saw you … You’re a mess, Danny. You’re in trouble. I think you’re really sick. I want to take care of you.” She set one cool hand gently on his forehead. “I love you. God knows why, but I do.” Her voice ran down like a clock spring unwinding and she stopped.

  “Did she say anything else?” Danny said. “Ifetayo?”

  “You jerk,” said Louisa. He felt her fingers tighten on his head, the nails beginning to dig into the skin. She took a deep breath. “She said you’d regret everything that’s happened.”

  “A threat?” he said.

  She shrugged. “How do I know? She’s not my kind of people.”

  They stared at each other until Danny finally lowered his eyes. “I don’t know how many times I can say it, Weezie. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “You can say it lots,” she answered. “Maybe eventually I’ll believe it.” After a time she said, “Danny, you really are a double-dyed prick bastard.”

  He tried to lighten things. He said, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, sweetie. Words won’t hurt me.”

  “You ever hear about the river?” she said. “I’m guessing you have.”

  He looked bewildered. “What river?”

  “The river Styx, dummy. Like the group. You know it was the river of hate? Burning hate? It circled hell nine times. That’s a lot of anger, Danny.”

  He shook his head. “You’ve been reading up on all this?”

  “I read more than you give me credit for, baby. I’m not just a stupid little costume girl.” Then the anger left her voice again. She bent down and kissed him gently on the lips. “I’ll make some coffee now.” Louisa turned toward the door, then said over her shoulder, “I really will take care of you. You know that, don’t you?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer.

  Alone now, he lay there on the bed and tried to figure out what had happened. No, he thought, Louisa was by no means a stupid costume girl. True, he had never been knocked out by her intellect, but he’d realized a long time before that she was hardly unintelligent. It’s just that he’d been doing his own thinking with definitely the wrong head when he’d met Louisa on the Papa Legba shoot. He’d been directing the musical video script he’d written for the distasteful speed metal group; she’d been paid by their manager some incredible pittance to keep their mutant Caribbean neo-Goth costumes stitched together. Also she was taking care of the quintet’s hair and makeup.

  Danny thought she was cute. And she responded. At the time, he didn’t think it was wise to tell her about his on-again, off-again affair with Ifetayo. On that day, at that moment, it was off again, but he’d known the climate could change at any time. And it had.

  So for the next two months he had tried with increasing desperation to balance the two women in his life, until the horrific Friday night when Louisa’s unexpected visit had caught Danny in a highly compromising situation with Ifetayo. It had been like mixing oil and gasoline—and Danny’s very presence, it seemed, was the match.

  Screaming, crying, threatening, and the silence that was always more heartbreaking. The
two women had left his house at different times, in different directions, and he’d guessed it unlikely that he would see either one again.

  Until Sunday morning. Today.

  Louisa entered the bedroom with a tray. She smiled. “Cream and sugar, sweetie, just like you always want it.”

  Did she know that about him? he thought. Well, obviously she did. “Thank you,” he said.

  She extended the cup of scalding coffee toward him—he held his breath—and she didn’t spill a drop.

  Dr. King was a brusque blond woman in her fifties who acknowledged Louisa’s presence with a handshake and then proceeded to poke and prod Danny’s body, hmm-ing and ah-ing when he winced at her fingers probing his arms and shoulders.

  “We’ll do a blood workup,” she finally said. “But I suspect the verdict will be myositis.”

  “So what is that?” said Danny.

  “Essentially a severe inflammation of the muscle tissue,” she said, brow furrowing. “Sometimes virally triggered. It can be painful. You should recover.”

  “Should recover?” he said, realizing his voice was rising a little. “I’ve only got another week.”

  The doctor looked at him, expression puzzled. “You’re not going to die from this, Daniel.”

  “No,” he said. “What I mean is, my Guild health insurance expires in another week.”

  “Can’t you renew it?”

  “Not without a work contract,” he said. “I had some hopes for a job, but I’m not gonna be able to work with my arms like this.”

  Louisa cleared her throat. Both Danny and Dr. King swiveled their heads to stare at her. “I can take dictation,” she said. “I can help out.”

  “On the medical side of this,” said Dr. King to Danny, “I could hospitalize you.” She grimaced. “For a week. I don’t think the myositis will be gone by then.”

  “I can take care of you at home,” said Louisa. “You saw what I accomplished just this morning. I can keep you fed and clean, and medicated, if it comes to that.”

  Silence pooled in the examination room. Finally Dr. King shrugged. “I’ve got no problem with home care.”

  Danny opened his mouth to speak.

  “Great!” said Louisa forcefully. “It’s settled.”

  That afternoon, Danny and Louisa worked out some coping mechanisms. Much as he hated the indignity, she brushed his teeth, being exquisitely careful not to lacerate his gums. Then she worked out a system to skootch behind the pillows on the bed, and, lacing her fingers together into a double fist, to push against the small of his back so that he could more easily sit upright and get to his feet. At Danny’s suggestion, she brought the cordless phone up from the office. He told her to fasten it securely to an eighteen-inch length of wooden lath with masking tape. He learned to dial it at arm’s length, then to hold it to his head using the lath extension. As for the two-liter bottle with the widened hole, nothing improved on that.

  When Danny got tired, Louisa left him to go shop for groceries. He slipped into an exhausted sleep. And dreamed.

  Outlined by the moonlight shining through the east window, Ifetayo stood at the foot of his bed. His eyes flickered open and he admired the woman’s supple musculature. There had been a time when he’d verbally compared her to a great jungle cat. That was just after he had hired her to work on a contract basis for him as an Internet researcher. She had laughed and asked him if he thought the image was at all racist. He wasn’t sure, so kept that image to himself from then on.

  “Hi, gorgeous,” he said, mouth dry. “I’d get up—”

  “—but you can’t,” she finished. “I know that very well.” She brushed her long dark hair back from the one eye it had covered. “I wanted to see you before …” She hesitated.

  “Before what?” Danny didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Before whatever may happen happens,” Ifetayo finished.

  “Don’t give me any alt.philosophy,” Danny said. “What’s happening to me?”

  Her generous lips curved in a smile half hidden by the darkness. “I don’t like you much, lover.”

  Danny discovered he could barely force words from his own lips. “You mean you hate me?”

  She seemed to ignore the question. “You’ll get a gift,” she said. Ifetayo sighed, sounding more sad than angry. Then she showed her teeth when she spoke. “You deserve anything you get.”

  “Iffie—” he said, unaccountably panicked.

  The look was hard to read. “When you he down with bitches—” she started to say.

  And vanished. The moonlight evaporated. The bedroom flooded with austere late-afternoon sun. Danny blinked and drew in a ragged breath.

  Louisa stood in the doorway. “Miss me?” she said.

  Danny was never able to remember what he had for supper that night. He did recall that Louisa had fed him like a child, one bite at a time via fork or spoon. Going to sleep was akin to passing out.

  In the morning, the phone rang and Louisa answered. It was Dr. King. Louisa handed the lath-handled portable over to Danny.

  “I’ve got some test results back,” said the doctor. “As I suspected, your CPK is elevated, which supports the myositis scenario. But I’m wondering if perhaps the inflammation is secondary.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I happened to run into my favorite bone man this morning. He reminded me that secondary myositis can be the immune system’s natural reaction to bone fragments in the tissue after a fracture.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Can your friend—uh, Louisa?—bring you in this afternoon? I’m scheduling you for an MRI.”

  “What are you looking for?” said Danny.

  Dr. King’s reply was terse. “Fractures.”

  “He’ll be there,” said Louisa on the other phone.

  * * *

  The bone specialist at the hospital came across as a bit dubious about the need for the MRI scan. He asked Danny if the patient were sure he had simply awakened in pain. There was no trauma? he asked.

  “I didn’t even fall out of bed,” Danny answered.

  Maybe, the bone man suggested with a smile, one of Danny’s old flames had sneaked in during the night with a ballpeen hammer and got in a few good licks before making her escape.

  Danny was not amused.

  He glanced at Louisa, who silently formed an interrogative word with her lips.

  Ifetayo?

  Danny shook his head. Iffie was quite angry with him, feeling he had betrayed her. But she wasn’t malevolent. Was she? He didn’t think so. He wished he could be more sure.

  The MRI experience was painless but exhausting. The orderlies slid him off the gurney onto a ramp that in turn slipped into a claustrophobic tube that reminded Danny of a Star Trek prop. They gave him headphones and a choice of audio channels. He chose ‘80s pop.

  Once he was crammed inside the tube, the music switched on and it was hard-core country. Then the magnetic scan sequences started and a sound like bones being ground in the teeth of a T-rex drowned out Jimmie Rodgers and Ernest Tubb.

  Nearly an hour later, Danny was more than ready when the operators wheeled his ramp out of the bright white tube.

  “The radiologist will look at all this,” said the bone man. “We’ll call you.”

  When they arrived back at Danny’s house, they found a small parcel wrapped in brown butcher paper, tied with red yam, waiting on the doorstep. There was no tag.

  Inside, Louisa opened it for him. They both stared at the tiny black stone effigy. It gleamed with oil, exuding a sharp fragrance that opened Danny’s sinuses instantly.

  “The hell?” he said. He hesitated. “Voodoo?”

  “Ifetayo,” said Louisa flatly. She did not elaborate. “You want me to toss it?”

  He shook his head. “Destroying it could be a trap. Just put it in a safe place.”

  “I won’t let her do anything to you,” Louisa said. “I love you.” She kissed him, gently trailing the fingers
of her right hand down the side of his face to the level of his mouth. She touched his lips. “You’re tired. You ought to go back to bed.”

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  Ifetayo again appeared to him in his dream, though it was an experience akin to watching a blurry TV channel under siege from lightning strikes and rising static. Standing at the foot of his bed, she wore a multicolored long tribal dress. Danny realized he had never seen her clad in anything but conventional Western clothing.

  “… my name …” he heard her say, “… meaning.” She looked frustrated, then appeared to attempt to repeat herself. “… Yoruba. It means ‘love brings happiness.’ “ Some sort of cosmic interference blurred the sound. Ifetayo looked distressed. “… can mean so many things …” Her hand wove sinuously in the air between them. Danny glimpsed what might have been a cocoon of some sort, gleaming with an inner light.

  Then Iffie blinked out of existence as if another hand had thrown a power switch.

  Danny recalled no more of his dreams that night.

  First thing in the morning, the radiologist called. Yes, Danny’s bones did betray breaks. His right shoulder owned up to two long fractures just below the ball joint; his left shoulder, at least one. The bone doctor came on the line and expressed some wonderment.

  “It’s possible—” he said, and then interrupted himself. “You’re sure there was no trauma you can recall?” There wasn’t. “It’s possible,” he continued, “that you suffered convulsions in your sleep. Muscles can do that, you know. It’s uncommon, but they can fracture some major bones.”

  Danny considered that, thought about his own body betraying him in so hideous a way. “But why?” he said.

  “Hard to say at this point. A sharp drop in blood glucose level, perhaps. Maybe a reaction triggered by sleep apnea. There could be a neurological basis.” He was silent for a few moments. “I’ll talk with Dr. King. We may start some series of diagnostics.”