Brody was wearing a white polo shirt, a black blazer, black jeans, and white sneakers.
“Have a seat,” said Lyndon, gesturing to the same sofa Brody had sat on when he had his interview with Deirdre.
“Thanks,” said Brody, sitting.
“You said over the phone you needed to ask me questions before you could sell me a life insurance policy.”
“That’s right. You got a neat spread here.”
“It’s nice to come home to. What’s your poison?” said Lyndon, on his way to the wet bar, which was cluttered with assorted liquor bottles.
“Water’s fine.”
“You don’t mind if I have a Bloody Mary?”
“Not at all.”
Lyndon brought a glass of water to Brody, returned to the bar, and fixed a Bloody Mary.
“What are these questions you wanted to ask me, Broderick?”
“We need to know about your health. Do you have any diseases we should know about?”
“No.”
“No diseases?”
“God, I hope not,” he said with a disarming laugh, and fell back on the sofa, Bloody Mary in hand.
To Brody’s surprise Lyndon didn’t spill any of his drink.
Lyndon’s sudden weight on the sofa caused the cushion on Brody’s side to rise.
Brody decided to cut to the chase. “Are you having any problems?”
“Problems? I never met a problem I couldn’t handle.”
“How about personal problems?”
“No.”
“Everything’s hunky-dory?”
“I’m doing well in life, as you can see,” said Lyndon, gesturing to his spacious, well-appointed living room and an impressive-sized swimming pool outside.
“No marital problems?”
“I’m happily married,” said Lyndon, and sipped his drink.
Brody noticed Lyndon’s foot twitching. A sign of tension? Brody wondered.
“Everything picture perfect?” he said.
Lyndon became angry.
“Are you insinuating otherwise?” he said, straightening in his seat. “What business is it of yours anyway? What’s my marriage got to do with life insurance?”
“Studies have found that married men live longer than bachelors.”
“So?”
“Unless the husband is unhappily married.”
“Like I told you, I’m happily married. Ask my wife, if you don’t believe me.”
“The cost of your life insurance depends on the length of your life span.”
Brody was making this up on the fly. He hoped Lyndon was buying it. What Brody wanted to find out was if Lyndon was cheating on Deirdre and did he suspect she knew about it.
“So how much longer do I have to live?” said Lyndon, sarcastically.
“That depends on your physical and emotional health.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Lyndon, standing up and spilling his drink in the process.
“It’s standard operating procedure for life insurance salesmen.”
“My marriage is none of your business. How would you like it if I asked you about your marriage?”
“I’m not married.”
“Then you’ll be dead soon because bachelors have short lives.”
Lyndon took a pull on his drink and walked toward the French window, taking in the oval pool that shimmered arctic blue in the sunlight. A pink inflated mattress was floating on the water.
“I’m only doing my job,” said Brody. “It’s nothing personal.”
“You traipse in here and ask me if I’m cheating on my wife and you say it’s nothing personal. Yeah, right.”
“I don’t make the rules in our business. What is your business, by the way?”
“I’m a talent manager at Pickers Talent Agency in Hollywood.”
“What kind of talent?”
“Actors, actresses, directors, models, celebrities, you name it. A little bit of everything. Anybody with any kind of talent wants a manager, and we provide our services to them.”
“You must meet a lot of beautiful women in your line of work.”
Lyndon slewed around to confront Brody with a fixed glare. “There you go again with the snide remarks.”
“You gotta admit you must be tempted with all that eye candy so close to you—”
“I think I’ve had enough of you.”
“How can you resist all those hot babes? You’re not gay, are you?”
“What’s that go to do with insurance? Do you discriminate against gays?”
Brody made up a response. “Studies find that homosexual men don’t live as long as heterosexual ones.”
“That’s a hoot. Wait till I tell some of my actor clients about this. Ha. Where do you get this stuff? Out of a Cracker Jack box?”
“The insurance business is all about life span. To determine life span we need to ask certain questions of prospective clients.”
“You need to get out of here. That’s what you need.”
Lyndon took another pull on his Bloody Mary.
“Maybe you have a meaningless fling once in a while?” said Brody.
“Did you hear what I said?” said Lyndon, steaming, his face reddening.
“Asking these questions is part of my job,” said Brody, placing his glass of water on the adjacent coffee table and getting to his feet.
Rising, he felt dizzy and collapsed, blacking out.
Chapter 8
He was lying in the middle of the road at night and heard the cacophonous beeping of an eighteen-wheeler backing up toward him. The monotonous sound grated on his nerves, disrupting his sleep. He saw the truck backing up deliberately toward him, its round white backup lights on, its massive twenty-four-inch tires behind its grimy black rubber mudguards with pink silhouettes of stacked naked women on them aiming for his head.
He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t move. The shrieking beeping became louder and more insistent. He felt like his eardrums were going to explode.
He had to get out of the way of the chugging, diesel-belching semi.
He tried and tried, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move. The tires inched toward him, grinding gravel underneath their tread, and were going to crush his head in a matter of seconds. Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
The constant beeping was driving him crazy. He couldn’t stand it anymore.
Brody snapped open his eyes, waking up finding himself lying on a hospital bed. He squinted in the sunrays that percolated through the miniblinds on his left skewering the hospital room and painting the floor with a grid of golden bars, highlighting swirling dust motes in their wake.
A machine that was monitoring his blood pressure and his heartbeat was beeping on a console near his bed. A green blip bounced up and down on the machine’s computer screen, which flashed numbers in tune with the blips registering his systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings.
A redheaded thirtysomething nurse was hovering over him.
“Where am I?” said Brody.
“St. John’s Hospital,” she said.
“How did I get here?”
“Don’t you remember?”
Brody searched his memory. He recalled he had paid a visit to the Fox house and was interviewing Lyndon Fox. Brody drew blanks about what had happened after.
“No,” he said.
“EMTs found you unconscious in the house of someone you were visiting.”
“How did they know I was there?”
“The owners of the house called 911 and summoned an ambulance.”
Wearing horn-rimmed bifocals, a clean-cut middle-aged doctor with a spare tire in a white smock entered Brody’s room clasping a metal clipboard in one hand with pudgy pink fingers.
“I see our patient is awake,” he said. “I’m glad you alerted me,” he told the nurse.
“What happened to me?” Brody asked the doctor.
“I’m Dr. Jurgenson,” he said. “The EMTs found you unconscious
and convulsing. They transported you here.”
“Oh.”
“They thought you might have been poisoned.”
“I see.”
“Did you eat or drink something out of the ordinary?”
“I had a glass of water.”
“Did it taste funny?”
“There’s no reason for the person I was visiting to poison me.”
“Was it tap water?”
“Beats me.”
Brody figured he knew what had happened to him. He figured it wasn’t poisoning. Why would Lyndon Fox try to poison him at their first meeting? Why would Fox suspect an insurance agent was trying to get dirt on him for his wife? It made no sense.
“We’re trying to determine what caused you to pass out,” said Jurgenson. “Do you have a history of fainting?”
Brody didn’t know if he should tell Jurgenson the truth. It could mean the government would yank his PI license. He wasn’t sure if the doctor was required to report it to the authorities if Brody told him his condition.
“This is private between you and me?” he asked Jurgenson.
“Of course. Doctor-client privilege applies here. We’re trying to determine why you passed out, so any information you could provide us would help. If we know the cause, we can come up with the cure.”
“I know doctors are required to report bullet wounds to the cops.”
“Were you shot?” said Jurgenson, hiking his beetling brows.
“No. I don’t think so, anyway.”
Brody didn’t feel any soreness in his body. He figured he had had one of his spells.
“Then why would I have to report anything to the cops?” said Jurgenson.
“This is between you and me.”
“Right.”
“I have epilepsy.”
Jurgenson let Brody’s statement sink in. “We didn’t see any medallions around your neck indicating your condition.”
“I don’t wear one.”
“Most epileptics do.”
“I know, but I don’t want to advertise it. It wouldn’t be good in my line of work to let anyone know my condition.”
“What is your line of work?”
Brody leveled with him. “I’m a PI.”
“I don’t see why that precludes you from wearing a medallion stating your condition.”
“I wouldn’t want a client to know. They might refrain from hiring me if they knew.”
“It might save your life, if you had an attack and the paramedics knew what was wrong with you on the spot. Epileptics can choke to death on their tongues when they have grand mal seizures.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“You’ve had seizures before?”
“Yeah.”
“Often?”
“No.”
“Do you take medication?”
“No.”
“Your doctor might be able to help you by prescribing medication for you.”
“It’s not a problem most of the time. I feel fine,” he said, sitting up in bed.
“Do you normally become unconscious for over five minutes when you have these seizures?”
“No. Where are my clothes?” he said, remembering he was wearing a johnny as he stuck his legs out over the bed and prepared to stand up.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. I need to get back to work.”
“Do you ever have trouble driving? Did you ever pass out at the wheel?”
“No.”
“You might hurt somebody if you did—including yourself.”
“It’s not gonna happen. I need to drive for my job.”
“Do you ever cough up blood?” said Jurgenson, his eyes boring through his spectacles into Brody’s eyes.
“Never. Where are my clothes?” said Brody, cutting his eyes around the room in search of them.
“They’re in the closet.”
Brody leapt onto his bare feet, reached the closet in two strides, and flung open the door. He yanked his clothes off the hangers. He felt cool air on his ass. Why did they make you wear these things in the hospital? he wondered, experiencing the urge to close the johnny behind him.
“Could I have some privacy?” he asked Jurgenson, feeling like he was half naked already.
Jurgenson and the nurse retreated out of the room.
Brody wondered what had triggered his epileptic episode—if anything. He never could figure out the cause after he had had an attack. Maybe there was no cause. Maybe it was some chemical imbalance in his body that had triggered his convulsions. He didn’t think it was anything Lyndon Fox had said to him.
Of course, now Deirdre must be wondering why she had hired a PI that had seizures. Brody wondered if she would can him if he told her the truth, which he had no intention of doing. He was too worried she would fire him if he did.
He would have to come up with an alternate explanation when she asked him what had happened to him—and he was certain she would ask. Clients weren’t in the habit of hiring professionals with medical issues. Signs of weakness didn’t sell in his business—or in any business for that matter.
Chapter 9
As soon as Brody returned to his cluttered apartment, he went online on his laptop and logged onto Elysian Fields, a support group for epileptics. It made him feel better after a seizure to chat online with members who shared his condition. Everybody in the chat room had a code name.
Brody called himself Myshkin after the prince who had epilepsy in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot. Other characters in the novel thought Myshkin was an idiot on account of his condition, but, ironically, he was more intelligent than most of them.
Brody typed into the chat box.
Myshkin: Hello. Anybody there now?
Margaux Hemingway: I’m here, Myshkin.
None of the members of the support group called themselves by their real names lest somebody overhear their chats and find out they were all suffering from epilepsy, which, Brody knew from personal experience, carried a stigma to it.
Caligula: So am I.
Teddy Roosevelt: Me, too.
Myshkin: Glad to hear it. I had a tonic-clonic seizure today.
Margaux Hemingway: Are you OK?
Myshkin: I blacked out. They took me to the hospital.
Teddy Roosevelt: It must’ve been a bad one.
Caligula: Do you take meds?
Myshkin: No meds.
Caligula: Maybe you should start. Tonic-clonic can interfere with your work.
Margaux Hemingway: You don’t want to lose your job because of something that’s not your fault, Myshkin.
Teddy Roosevelt: I agree. Maybe you should start taking meds, Myshkin.
Margaux Hemingway: I find seizures humiliating. It’s embarrassing to pass out in front of other people.
Teddy Roosevelt: You’re telling me. It’s embarrassing, but remember it’s not your fault. There was nothing you could do about it.
Margaux Hemingway: Sometimes it makes me nervous about being around people. I think of how they would react if I had a seizure in their presence.
Myshkin: I know. I feel like an idiot when it happens. And then I have to explain my condition to the ones who witnessed it.
Margaux Hemingway: People don’t understand how humiliating it is. Unless they’ve experienced it, they can’t know.
Caligula: Fuck them. It’s none of their business.
Teddy Roosevelt: Right. Fuck them. Epilepsy doesn’t happen to people who are evil or are inferior somehow. It can happen to anyone. They’ve got it in their heads that it’s a curse on us, that we somehow deserve it.
Margaux Hemingway: You’re right. Nobody wants to believe it can happen to anyone. They always think there’s something wrong with epileptics. God made them that way for a reason, or some other nonsense.
Caligula: Who cares what they think?
Teddy Roosevelt: I gotta run. See you later.
Margaux Hemingway:
Bye, Teddy.
Myshkin: Thanks for your help, Teddy.
Margaux Hemingway: Do you wear a medallion around your neck that identifies you as an epileptic, Myshkin?
Myshkin: No.
Margaux Hemingway: Why not? People who watched you faint might be able to help you, if they knew you had epilepsy.
Myshkin: It’s none of their business.
Margaux Hemingway: Not everyone looks down on epileptics. You might be surprised.
Caligula: You can’t let what people think affect you.
Margaux Hemingway: I don’t know about you two, but I’m embarrassed to even talk about my condition with anybody. That’s why I’m glad I found this support group.
Myshkin: Yeah, it helps.
Caligula: My phone’s ringing. I’m outta here.
Margaux Hemingway: Bye, Caligula. Nice talking to you.
Myshkin: Same here.
Margaux Hemingway: Sometimes I wished I knew what you three looked like so I could get to know all of you better.
Myshkin: You know we’re not allowed to use real names here, Margaux.
Margaux Hemingway: I never understood why not.
Myshkin: In case somebody hacked the chat room, I suppose. The code names protect us from being identified by hackers.
Margaux Hemingway: Masquerading under a fake name makes me feel like I’ve got something to hide, like there’s something wrong with me.
Myshkin: You don’t want to get hacked, do you? You’ll feel violated if your real name is revealed.
Margaux Hemingway: I guess.
Myshkin: People are more open about their problems to complete strangers.
Margaux Hemingway: I don’t know. I’d like to meet all of you and give you a big hug.
Myshkin: Thanks. These chats help me deal with this problem.
Margaux Hemingway: You’re not supposed to think of your condition as a problem. You know what the doctors say. You’re not inferior to anyone just because you have epilepsy.
Myshkin: I know that. It’s humiliating whenever it happens, though.
Margaux Hemingway: What meds did you say you take?
Myshkin: None.
Margaux Hemingway: I take Diazepam. Maybe you should try it.
Myshkin: I don’t like taking meds. I rarely take painkillers, either.
Bolt Page 3
