Compound Fractures

by Stephen White

  “We had an understanding, Carl. You and I.”

  “We still do. Remember, St. Mary’s is cake. I’m always good with the saints. You take care of that little dancing girl.”

  “How’s the trip going? Are you calling from your favorite hotel?”

  “Let’s just say I have sand between my old man toes ’cause I’m walking on the beach.” He laughed until he coughed again. “Of the fucking Pacific Ocean.”

  Carl Luppo, Frank Carelli, killed the call. He was offering to kill my nemesis.

  I took off my bicycle helmet and ran my fingers through my hair. I thought, Does that little gorilla know how to cause someone to have a stroke?

  Did I do this?

  27

  THE CONVERSATION WITH CARL got me thinking about Kirsten. I would always link them. As she promised she would, she had stayed in touch with me by email after my Valentine’s Day visit to her home. She checked in a couple of times to be certain I had not heard again from Elliot. Another email concerned her ongoing efforts to locate a colleague who could assist me if and when Elliot made his next legal, or extralegal, move.

  Elliot had not yet made another move. I was beginning to allow myself the luxury of believing that my earlier anxiety about his intentions had been unwarranted.

  On the ride home to Boulder I almost persuaded myself to reach out to Kirsten again. I had not come up with a good excuse to make that call when a voicemail on my office phone line altered my plans.

  During my ride from Frederick, Amanda Bobbie had left me a message with an invitation that sounded more like a prelude to a booty call.

  WAS I SUSPICIOUS ABOUT agreeing to meet an ex-patient in a bar? Yes. That particular ex-patient? God, yes. Amanda had been Raoul’s self-described companion—she was the paid mistress of the husband of the woman who shot my wife in the back.

  If I didn’t go to meet her I would be left wondering what she wanted. And, given all that was unsettled for me, I feared that ignorance would fester and I would feel worse.

  Choosing among bad options seemed to define my current lot.

  Amanda had picked a restaurant close to my office. That was either considerate of her or provocative of her. Or irrelevant to her. I didn’t know which. For me, not knowing things about Amanda was par for the course.

  Amanda was waiting at the bar at Riffs. I hadn’t seen her since the night after Lauren was shot. I didn’t see her turn her head my way, but she must have sensed my arrival—she lifted her purse off the stool beside her as I approached. The purse looked expensive. Amanda looked expensive. The bag was not only holding a place for me but also served to caution strangers to stay away. Amanda was the type of woman—confident, composed, pretty but not gorgeous—who attracted people, welcome or unwelcome, male or female, eager to fill an empty stool beside a stranger at a bar.

  If Amanda had been sitting in profile to the door as I entered I might have been able to make a judgment from her silhouette about the state of her pregnancy. I guessed that was why she was sitting sideways on her stool.

  “I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said in greeting. “I can’t imagine you’re eager to see me.” She did not look at me as she spoke.

  I considered making an unkind reference to the booty call tenor of the summons. I refrained. I said, “Please don’t make me regret it.” Though I tried to say those words with some neutrality, I feared they came out closer to the tone of a warning.

  She tapped a few fingers on the bar as though she were on a keyboard playing a one-handed rhythm from a slow song. “Well, it’s good to see you, Alan,” she said. “You helped me. I’m grateful for that. I still think of you fondly.”

  She said it as though she meant it. But her psychotherapy had already demonstrated to me that Amanda was capable of getting me to believe things that weren’t true. That she was happy to see me in the bar of a nice restaurant on the Pearl Street Mall? Way too easy for her. Convincing vulnerable men, like me, about her intentions—whether honest intentions or bought-and-paid-for intentions—was about as much of a reach for her as polishing her nails while she watched the latest episode of Mad Men.

  Amanda was either happy to see me. Or she wasn’t. Her assertion that one option was true and the other not true was nothing I could trust.

  The fingertips of her left hand were touching a glass of water. “Something else to drink?” I asked. I was curious if she would drink alcohol. She didn’t answer me.

  If we were going to have an interaction of mutual distrust—initial evidence indicated we were—I did not have the energy for it. Despite any and all vigilance I could muster, the agenda, and all advantage about that agenda, would be Amanda’s.

  I considered walking back out the door onto the Mall.

  Amanda had not turned toward me since I walked in. Her gaze remained fixed straight ahead. I knew she had smiled when I pulled out the stool only because of her reflection in a mirror behind the bar. The smile I saw had been the lopsided one I knew so well from our previous time together as doctor and patient.

  That smile had tugged at me with its poignancy while I was her psychotherapist. It was a smile of honest pathos that cut through her defenses and provided an open window into her youth, a smile that illuminated the life she lived before the complications of living it had robbed her of her innocence.

  But by that night at the bar in Riffs I was allowing that the smile might have been nothing more than another one of Amanda’s manufactured illusions. I could no longer afford the luxury of trusting Amanda, so I cautioned myself to believe little. To assume less. To watch for anything. The extent of my beliefs? We were sitting at a bar and she wanted something from me. That was it. To presume that Amanda didn’t manage her allure the way a hedge fund managed its risk was a luxury I simply couldn’t afford.

  “I am so sorry,” she said, interrupting my train of thought. “About everything you have been through. Your wife? Dear Lord. And that night—on the other end of Pearl Street, in that awful condo, after that terrible day when she was … shot—was so difficult. I fear I made that day even harder for you. I am sorry. There is no excuse for my behavior. I never expressed my gratitude for your help, or my sorrow at …” Her words drifted away. The ensuing silence was filled by a dozen other conversations taking place elsewhere in the room. The strangers’ words made no sense in my brain.

  I was drifting, recalling the many days I’d spent in Riffs’ predecessor in the Pearl Street space, the long hours I’d wasted gleefully with a book inside or out of the old café.

  “Alan? Alan? Did I lose you?”

  She had not. I was hearing Amanda’s words but they hadn’t caused me to feel any imperative to respond. I had no need to reflect on my “terrible day” with her. The difficult night that Amanda alluded to had been my first opportunity to see her in the same room with Raoul. Her customer? Her lover? What did she consider him?

  During the therapy Amanda had lied to me about her feelings for the man she’d called the Buffer. The man I later learned was Raoul. I did not know where Amanda’s lies ended and where her truth began. From her, I expected continued deception.

  I felt a renewed urge to exit. I lowered one foot to the floor in preparation. I said, “If that was the reason for this invitation—your condolences—thank you, I guess. Are we done? The reality is that I shouldn’t be here at all. Professional distance, you know?”

  I placed my hands on the edge of the bar to push my stool back.

  “No,” she said with the confidence of someone who expects deference. “Do tell me about your need for professional distance.”

  I didn’t bite. I said, “How about this as an alternative? I accept your condolences. I don’t doubt your sincerity, Amanda, but—”

  “Of course you doubt my sincerity. This weirdness between us since you walked in has everything to do with questioning my sincerity. Doubting my motives. Doubting anything and everything I’ve told you since we met probably.”

  I ignored the accusation. Ign
oring it was more convenient than parsing out the things I did doubt from the things I rejected out of hand. I continued where I left off. “But condolences aren’t worth the risk we are taking. I shouldn’t be here with you. And for what it’s worth, vice versa. You shouldn’t be here with me. It’s too soon after the termination of our … work together.”

  Amanda smiled a rueful smile. She said, “I suspect you are not being kind. I may deserve that from you. But don’t leave. Not yet. I saw your daughter dance.” I paused. She looked away from me. “Your daughter? It was so precious and so sad. It tore at me. To see her loss, to see her express it like that. I envied her ability to put herself out there. To be so at peace with her feelings. I never had that kind of outlet for my grief.

  “She moved me. I saw the father you are. The woman her mother was.”

  “Don’t, Amanda. Do not talk about my wife.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend. I said what I had to say.”

  God. “YouTube,” I muttered in exasperated dismay.

  “The dance is on YouTube?” she asked.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t know. I was at the cemetery. You should have seen the look on your face when she started to dance.”

  The expression on my face when Grace started to dance wasn’t on the YouTube clip. The camera didn’t find Grace for the first ten seconds or so. If my initial expression had been recorded my Twitter hashtag would be #stunnedgravedad.

  I realized, with surprise, that I believed Amanda had been there. She had been present for almost every step of my decline. For all the anticipation. For all the complications. For all the tragedies that ensued. Why not at the funeral, too?

  Amanda Bobbie—if that was her real name—was the raven-haired patient who was the last visitor to my office before Lauren arrived the morning of the Dome Fire. Amanda was the professional companion that Raoul was paying for her time, her affection, and as she put it to me during her psychotherapy, “her accommodation.”

  Amanda knew many of the secrets I was choosing to keep to myself about Raoul and Diane and her. That she knew my secrets made her dangerous. That she was dangerous meant I had to treat her with caution. That she was dangerous also meant that I couldn’t ignore her or walk away, even if my instincts told me to do just that.

  I didn’t have to be nice. I said, “Going to the cemetery? Was it a Harold and Maude thing? Or a simple perverse need to see my wife’s body buried?”

  “Ouch, I think,” she said. I didn’t respond. She lifted her glass. Sipped some water. “You made that movie reference not to be clever, or interesting, but because you expected I wouldn’t recognize it and you wanted to feel some advantage over me. Is that why you’re here? To be petty?” I doubted she expected me to respond. “This minute? You don’t want to be with me. I get that. But I don’t run from death. You should know that about me by now. I adore Ruth Gordon. I love Harold and Maude. Someday I plan to be exactly that kind of feisty old lady.”

  Amanda looked at my reflection in the mirror. “I wish I could say that I was there to support you. To honor your gifts to me. I can’t. I was there to see Raoul.”

  “The Buffer?” I said. “You lied to me about him.”

  “I misled you.” It was apparent she considered it a venial sin. “I didn’t anticipate that you would need to know. I was wrong. Shoot me.”

  “George?” I asked. Her other client was named George. “Did you lie about him?”

  She shrugged. “I like George. I don’t love George.”

  “Present tense?”

  “I like George. Can we move on? I went to the funeral to look in Raoul’s eyes one more time. To find some hope. Or to feel some closure, something that would allow me to walk away without yearning to know if his eyes were on me.

  “I was there for selfish reasons, not compassionate ones. You deserved better from me. You did your best to help me. I remain grateful to you. I am sorry.” Her eyes were imploring me to understand something. “I am not sugarcoating any of this. I don’t want you to have to wonder about my motives for wanting to see you tonight.”

  I am still trying to discern your motives. Once I do that, I certainly intend to distrust them. “In therapy? You flipped them for me? Your feelings for Raoul were the ones you ascribed to George. And vice versa?”

  She mouthed a yes. “I didn’t want to tip my hand. Again, I didn’t think it would matter.”

  I said, “Hoping to see Raoul at the services—was that the final act of the smitten kitten?” I wanted her to recognize the reference to a touching part of her therapy. I wanted her to feel something from my intentional dig. Pain was my preference.

  “Ouch.” She winced. “Maybe I deserve that, or maybe you’re being cruel. We each have our vulnerabilities. We’ve each endured losses. Do you want to keep this up?”

  It wasn’t really a question. “Raoul wasn’t there, at the cemetery,” I said. “I checked. He wasn’t at the memorial service earlier. He never sent a card. Or flowers. He never called. Not one of the covered dishes left at our door was from him”—I went ironic with that thought—“too bad, because the man makes a remarkable cassoulet.”

  Amanda said, “I’ve had his cassoulet,” making the dish sound like a sexual act. She said, “He was your friend. I’m sorry. We share that loss.”

  “If you knew that Raoul was my friend you shouldn’t have chosen to see me for therapy.” I tried to keep the accusation out of my voice.

  “Really? You came here tonight so you could slap my hand about choosing you, and not someone else, for therapy? No. That’s not why you’re here.”

  I said, “Maybe I came because I was curious what was so important that you would risk being seen with me. You barely made it away that night.” I had urged Amanda out the door of the dreadful condo before the ambulance arrived to take Diane to the hospital. Long before the first cops showed up.

  Amanda shrugged an old-history shrug. “The police know I was there, Alan. I’ve been interviewed. They didn’t seem to know I’d had a session with you that morning. I didn’t tell them.” She tilted her head. “I bet you didn’t, either. I didn’t commit any crimes. Well, not that day, and none that they’re interested in prosecuting me for.”

  “Are you pregnant?” I asked.

  She reached over and took my hand off the bar as though she was anticipating the question. She held my hand in hers for a moment longer than was necessary before she guided it to her abdomen. Her belly was as flat as my singing voice. If I were inclined, I could have felt the definition of her muscles with my fingertips. She placed my hand back where it had been on the bar. She left hers on mine a moment longer than was necessary.

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a business card. She slid it until it partially disappeared beneath my palm. “I wanted to see you because I know that, face-to-face, I am a difficult person to refuse.” She waited until I blinked before she smiled kindly. “Give me ten minutes. Have a drink. Try the meatballs. Oh, you probably don’t eat meat. It’s a short walk to the address on the back of the card. We do need to talk. There are things that I must say that we shouldn’t discuss in a public lounge.”

  She swiveled away from me and slid off the stool. She turned in profile as she exited. No baby bump. Not even a little.

  Had the pregnancy been a lie? Had it been intended as a provocation to Diane all along? Or perhaps as some leverage with Raoul? If it had been real, had it ended with a miscarriage, or with an abortion?

  Did Raoul get a vote? Would he have wanted one? Did he give a damn?

  “Cocktail?” the bartender said.

  “I think I will pass.” I put twenty bucks on the bar before I stepped out onto the Pearl Street sidewalk. Amanda was approaching Broadway. Every time I’d tried to accommodate her in the past it had turned out to be the wrong decision for me. I couldn’t convince myself this time would be any different. I turned toward my office, away from her, away from the address on the card. I told myself that it was
not only the wise thing to do, but it was also the ethical choice for me.

  For most of my professional career I had been making decisions based on underlying ethics. Was my current choice rationalization? Self-deceit? Naïveté?

  I chose naïveté. I also chose the route back to my office via the pedestrian alley that runs between Pearl and Walnut. I was just opposite the dining room of Ten Ten when I heard the tip-tip-tip-tip of high heels clicking on the concrete behind me. One of Boulder’s legions of lithe spiked-heeled twentysomethings was on her way somewhere for something that felt worthy of a quick step.

  I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I didn’t need to turn to be certain who it was; I could detect Amanda’s scent. I held my breath. In a low voice, she said, “I know things I would want to know were I in your shoes, Alan. This isn’t about me. This is about you.”

  I rotated to reply—I hadn’t formulated the reply; I was hoping something would come to me—but Amanda was retracing her steps in the direction of Pearl Street. She turned her head, “Please? Go to the address. We need to talk.”

  I didn’t know why I was looking for a fight. Let alone one with Amanda, but I found it absurd, even insulting, that Amanda thought that she had some affinity for my current life. I said, “What shoes are those, Amanda? That you think I’m in?”

  Amanda stopped but she didn’t turn back my way. With a dancer’s grace, she extended an arm for balance as she bent her left leg at the knee. She lifted her foot until her knee was at ninety degrees and the sole of her fashionable high heel was perpendicular to the ground.

  The sole was red. A shade of red I recognized as clearly as the violet hue of my wife’s eyes. Those are just like Diane’s red soles. The Christian Louboutins.

  Amanda was reminding me that she had been there the night after Lauren was shot, the night that Diane was clutching the stylish heels to her chest as though the shoes were a favorite stuffed animal. But why was she reminding me?

  Damn. She wanted me to meet her at the address on the card. And she had just given me a reason to do so.

  28