Playtime (2 page)

So they go flying down the hallway, with Jason
enjoying his role and pushing like a fiend, until Kimmy tells him to slow that
thing down. Blaine had tried to just walk, but she wasn’t having any. 

 "Rules are rules," she says. 

 "You weren’t saying that when you were
peeking down my gown," Blaine teases. 

 "Business, Blaine," she replies,
deadpan. "That's why they pay me the big bucks." She grins. 

 He snorts. She has a wicked little smirk. 

Jason turns the chair and maneuvers him into the
elevator backwards. They sink towards the lobby in fits and starts as other
folks get in and out. It is a full load by the time the light comes on, and the
bell dings for the first floor. Jason has to wait for the crowd to leave before
he can get the wheelchair angled and moving out. Blaine starts to get up, but
Kimmy puts a hand on his shoulder and says, "Stay in till we hit the door.
Please." 

 "All right, all right," Blaine says,
"but you owe me. Maybe we could talk about all this sometime, someplace
else." 

 "Maybe …" she says, looking down at him
in a not entirely unfavorable way. Blaine knows pretty women don’t mind a
little flirting, if it’s done in a nice way. "That's possible." 

 But they
are
hard to figure. 

 They wheel toward the back entrance, Jason taking
it a bit easier, but there is a group gathered around it, most of them guys in
coats and ties. Blaine hears somebody say, "That’s him," and realizes
he hasn’t beaten the crowd after all. 

 Kimmy says, "Coming through," and to
Jason: "Keep rolling." They move around the side of the group and
continue toward the entrance. They trip the sensors on the automatic door; it
whooshes open, and then they are outside on the sidewalk, the group starting to
reform in front of them as Blaine gets up out of the chair. He stretches his
legs and contemplates breaking through like a running back. Kimmy has beaten a
hasty retreat. A woman directly in front of him has a phone or microphone or
some other device in her hand. 

 "Mr. Hadrock," she says. "Judy Barker,
Daily
Sun
. I understand that you were declared clinically dead on
your arrival at the hospital and came back to life. What was that like?" 

 "I don't remember," he says. "I
was dead." He smiles. A ripple of laughter runs through the group. 

 "And now you aren't," says the woman,
smiling back. "Congratulations. The information we have says that your
heart had stopped, all vitals ceased, for about 10 minutes." 

 "Did you have a near-death type
experience?" comes from a short, stout, dark-haired fellow with
horn-rimmed glasses. 

 "I actually really don’t remember much of
anything at all, though the doctor says I may get more memory back. Or not.
These things can go either way." 

 Silence for a moment after that, and Blaine can
tell that they were hoping he’d seen God or the light at the end of the tunnel
or something. A disappointed rustle seems to move through the crowd as they
sense they are not going to get an exciting revelation. He gazes at them, and
they look like they are already moving on in their minds, thinking about the
next thing. 

 "Going to keep riding your motorcycle?"
a slender, sandy-haired guy asks. 

 "I don’t know if I’ll be riding
that
one," Blaine says. "But I’ll be riding one, yeah. Now if you folks
will excuse me, I am gonna head home." 

It is a beautiful Galveston day, much like the day
Blaine died. They walk toward the hospital lot a block away. He wonders how the
sick folks make it. The bad cases must get picked up at the front door. The sun
is shining, the sky is blue. Again. There is a feeling in the air that nothing
bad could happen on a day like this. It's the same feeling he had the day he
was hit. 

 They reach Jason’s vehicle, an old beater Dodge
truck with primer spots scattered over a cream paint job, and head off to the
Kroger drive-through to fill a prescription for pain medication, though Blaine
probably won’t take any of it. He removes the collar. He is not wearing that
thing one second longer. His neck hurts, but not that much. 

 He is funny about pain and medicine, believes
that the less intervention you can get away with, the better. He is in a bit
more pain than he let on in the hospital, but he figures if he had told them
that they would keep him there forever. 

 The law had impounded the bike, had it sent to a
storage facility, so he and Jason drive by Bilke’s Yard
to pick it up.
The guy at the window, a biker-looking type himself, tells them it will be 210
dollars. 

 "210 bucks," Blaine gripes.
"That’s robbery." 

 "That’s what it is, my brother," says
the guy, looking like he could give a rat’s ass about Blaine or his bike or
anything else, for that matter. He’s a big guy, got the blue-jean jacket with
cut-off sleeves, a pony tail going down his back and a cross stapled to one
ear. The building is just a huge shed made of corrugated metal, with a large fenced
yard full of old autos in various states of decline. 

 "What if I leave it?" 

 "Well," he says, scratching his chin,
"the charges keep mounting up, eventually we sell it for little or next to
nothing, probably, then we send you a bill for the balance." 

 "What a racket," Blaine says. "I
ought to call the cops on you guys." 

 "Look, pal, do you want the bike or
not?" the big guy says, not too unpleasantly, just asking a question.
"If not, then you go home or wherever, and we just let the process take its
course. No problem here unless you keep running your mouth." He flexes his
shoulders. 

 "I’m just saying," Blaine says,
"it seems like a lot of money." He's in no shape for this crap. 

 "Yea or nay, up to you." 

Blaine pays him, puts it on his almost maxed-out
Visa, which thankfully the machine behind the counter accepts, and they walk
out to the yard while Jason backs the truck up to get it. The Shadow doesn’t
look that bad, some damage to the rear fender and forks, scratches and dents on
the left side, but it fires right up when Blaine tries it.   

 They load it in the back of the truck and head to
his house, which also looks none the worse for his absence. It’s just a small,
wooden framed house, but it’s only a few blocks from the beach on prime
Galveston real estate, and Blaine loves it. He and Jason unload the bike in the
back by the garage, and he rolls it inside to safety. 

 Jason has to go to work, so Blaine thanks him and
goes inside himself, enjoying the sudden quiet and solitude after days of not
much of that, what with people poking and prodding and testing him and whatnot.
He takes a deep breath, glad to be home. 

 He is a bit of a recluse, likes the solitary, and
when the doorbell rings a few minutes later he is inclined to just ignore it.
But when it goes off again, he sighs and goes to answer, thinking that it
better not be more reporters, or he will go off on them.
Vultures
. He
had surprised himself with the niceness he had shown them. Maybe it was because
they were brothers and sisters of the pen, in a way, him being a writer, though
not the kind they were. He wouldn’t be able to stand being out there trying to
make stuff happen or dramatizing it into more than it really was, though maybe
that is what he should be doing. More like cousins of the pen. 

 He opens the door, and it’s a good-looking
younger woman standing there, early twenties or thereabouts, brown hair and
hazel eyes, shorter than he is by four or five inches, maybe 5’6" or so,
wearing jeans and a blue silk blouse. She’s stunning, actually. Her eyes are
red, though. She looks like she might have been crying. 

 "Hi," she says. "How are you?" 

 "I’m good," he replies. "How about
you?" 

 "Good, oh good," she says. "I’m
Mandy." She puts out her hand, and he grasps it lightly in a shake, not
sure what she wants. "I’m the Corolla," she says, voice shaking a
bit, "I’m the one who almost killed you." 

 He looks at her a minute, realizes he is still
holding her hand, and smiles. "Actually," he says, "from what
they tell me, you
did
kill me." 

 Her face starts to collapse, and he sees she must
have been under terrible strain. "Hey," he says, "Come on in,
and we’ll talk about it. We need to exchange insurance info anyway." He
smiles again. "No harm, no foul. Look at me. I’m good as new. Well,
almost. New wasn’t that great either." 

   She comes on in and has a seat, and he offers
some good fresh-brewed coffee he had just made, and she says okay, even though
she’s not really a coffee drinker; it smells great, she’ll have some.  

 "I came up to the hospital," she says
when he sets the cup in front of her and sits down across. "The first I
heard was you had died right after you got there. Then somebody else told me
you had stopped breathing for a while and come back." She sips the coffee,
looks at him. "I prayed for you. I was right outside your door for a
little bit then I went to the chapel and prayed." Her hands are trembling,
and her face is screwed up tight, as she tries to hold the emotion in. Voice
quavery. "I’m so sorry," she says. "I just didn’t see you."
Tears are rolling down her face. 

 "No worries," he says, leaning over and
resting his hand on her shoulder for a minute. "I’m fine." 

 After few minutes the tears start to dry up, she
gives a sniffle or two, wipes her nose on a Kleenex from her purse and
straightens up and drinks some more coffee. 

 "I don’t have insurance," she says. 

 Blaine stares at her. He had been wondering about
that, been getting ready to broach the subject himself as soon as she had
gotten herself together. "No insurance? It’s required by the state.
Everybody has insurance these days." 

 "My credit record isn’t very good," she
says. "I let it expire with the company I was with thinking I could get a
better rate. I was on the way out the drive to see another company when I hit
you." 

 Great, Blaine is thinking. Perfect ending to a
beautiful week. What next? Locusts? A terminal illness hidden somewhere in his
test results? How about a leaking gas line. He clears his throat thinking about
it. He has uninsured motorist on his policy that should cover it. Rates don’t
go up for that, do they? 

 "Maybe we could work something out," he
says. 

 Mandy looks at him, trying to figure out exactly
what he means. "I could give you a little bit of cash every week,"
she says. Her eyes have dried up as she focuses on the financial situation. "I’m
just so glad you’re going to be all right." 

 He sighs. "The damage to the bike isn’t that
bad. It’s the hospital bills that will be a bundle. Do you know they can ruin
your credit now if you don’t pay your hospital bills?" He sighs again. "They
got the little guy coming and going. And those insurance companies are a bunch
of damned crooks, excuse my French," he says looking at her, "but
they are." 

 "I’ve heard it before," she says. "My
daddy used to say he didn’t like cussing
all
the time, but he didn’t
trust anybody who didn’t cuss every once in a while." 

 Blaine laughs. "You stay with your parents?" 

 "No, my dad passed on not too long ago and
left me enough money to buy that little house down the street, but I spent just
about everything I had getting in and repairing the stuff that needed fixing." 

 "Yeah," Blaine says, sipping more
coffee and watching her, "Houses are black holes. You keep throwing money
at 'em, and it just disappears." He’s starting to wonder how much of this
is on the up-and-up. The tears had vanished fairly quickly, and Mandy seems to
be pretty much composed again. She
is
stunning. What is he going to do,
anyway, sue her? That’s not his style. She’s just another little guy hustling
along on the edges of the big machine, trying to get by. If she’s running a bit
of a sympathy game on him, well so what? He’d probably do the same if he had
the equipment to make it work. She sure has the equipment. She is sitting in
the chair, looking around at the house. It’s nothing fancy, but the furniture
is nice. He had gotten one of those three year, no-interest finance deals the
furniture companies run to get business, bought the brown leather couch and recliner,
the big oak dining set, the 52 inch flat screen, and two big bookcases. He
likes Picasso, has prints scattered on the walls, a few more good abstracts. 

 "How old are you?" he asks. 

 "Twenty-one." 

 Legal anyway, he thinks, drinking more coffee,
but really too young for him to fool with, though with those looks he might
consider training wheels for her. But let’s face it. If she hadn’t run over him,
no way she would be sitting in his house right now. And the problem with a gal
like her is there was always something big and ugly trailing along behind her,
slobbering like a Saint Bernard. 

 As if on cue the doorbell rings again, and Blaine
gets up to get it, sighing again.
Grand Central
. He opens it, and it’s
the big guy from the impound place. How did he get my address, Blaine wonders. 

 "Change of heart and came to give me my
money back, right?" he says. 

 "Uh, actually I am looking for Mandy,"
the big guy says, peering over his shoulder to where she is sitting. 

 "Hey, Doug," she says, getting up from
the table, coming to the door to stand beside Blaine. 

 "Small world," says Blaine. "I
take it that's a no on the money." 

 "Doug picked up the Corolla after the wreck,"
Mandy says. "Repaired the damage where I hit you."   

 "Yeah, Mandy," Doug says. "Good as
new. I put it in your driveway." He tosses the ponytail, looks at Blaine.
Same sleeveless jacket. 

 "What do I owe you?" she asks. 

 "Oh, I don’t know," he says, giving
Blaine the eye. "I tell you what: I’ll call you later and give you a number."
He holds out a key ring to her, and she takes it. 

 Blaine is thinking that the car would have never
left this guy’s tow truck if it had been his. It appears Mandy is working this
situation like a mule at harvest time, but maybe he’s just a touch jaded. She
does seem nice, and you can’t blame somebody for using the tools they’ve got.
Cynicism is a problem for him sometimes. 

 They are all standing on the front porch now, and
Blaine can see the car down in her driveway only five houses down, across the
street. Her house is one of the Craftsman style, like his, but a shade of
copper color with green trim. Nice house. Not a big lot, no garage in back, but
a carport built into the side. Yard neatly trimmed. Paint fresh and gleaming.   

 "That would be great," Mandy says. "I’m
home quite a bit right now, and if I’m not I’ll call you back." 

 "Counting on it," the big man says, and
gives Blaine the stink eye again, tosses her a wave and turns and walks down
the sidewalk, ponytail swinging. Mandy watches him a minute, speculatively, it
seems to Blaine, then turns back to him.   

 "So, what was it like to be dead?" she
says seriously. 

 "I really don’t remember," Blaine says.
He has a feeling he is going to get asked this question a lot. And it’s only
natural. It is the biggest mystery of them all, isn’t it? And nobody comes back
to tell the tale. Except Blaine and a few lucky others. Maybe when Mandy goes
and he gets back inside, he’ll get on the computer and find some near-death
experiences. Or he could just make something up. Something wild and fabulous.
Why not? It’s not like he’s lying. Hell, he died, it’s a documented fact. Maybe
he’ll even remember something else. The doc had said it was possible, that some
people get memory back. He should be kneeling on the ground kissing it, is
really what he should be doing. Back from the dead. Sure beats the alternative.