The Black Witch of Mexico (6 page)

He asked him what was wrong and the guy handed him the X-ray folder. About a year ago he had been diagnosed with bone cancer and there was a tumour pressing against a nerve in his spine. He was on his way to visit his parents in Canada and had run out of pain medication. He needed enough for about a week, maybe ten days, including the drive back to Sacramento.

It was pathetic. The dilated pupils, the sweat-smell, the twitching in his limbs; the guy was a junkie. He even had the balls to lay out what he wanted: a shot of Demerol and then a ten-day supply of Oxycontin.

The X-rays were genuine; whomever they belonged to had a serious problem with a large tumour pressing on the lumbar spine around L5 and L4. But it was impossible to know whose X-rays they were, because the patient’s ID information was missing from the top right hand corner—it had been cut away with scissors. Instead, their patient had scrawled his own name along the side in black Texta. There was no date, no identifying hospital.

Just how low would someone sink to get another fix? He called down for security. What sad lives some people led.

He told Jay about it later. “No one ever gets off,” Jay said. “When they start down that road, it’s the end of them. Worst of it happened to an anaesthesiologistI knew once, he got hooked on his own junk. A fancy car and a white coat is not protection, Adam. You just got to feel sorry for guys like that.”

Yeah, he knew all about that. One of his father’s old friends, Jack Woods, he was an anaesthetist, he got hooked on pethidine, it ruined his life. The old man played golf with him--he had heard hearing him talking about it one day with his mom when he got home from school. He’d said, “He’s going to lose everything.”

Or there was their neighbour who’d had a house next to theirs in Dover. One day the For Sale sign went up, the guy had lost everything on the tables in Las Vegas, he had told his wife he was at work conferences. Why did people lose sight of everything they had?

Even his own father; twenty five years married to his mother, then one day she found out he was having an affair with another woman, not even a
younger
woman.

It had never made sense to him. He remembered the old man coming to his school when he was eleven—Adam had messed up, pocketed candy at a candy store near the school. “Think about what you do before you do it,” his father had told him. “God gave you a brain. Use it.”

What was his dad thinking when he’d banged his best friend’s sister? She was a part-time beautician when she’d met the old man, she spent all his money then walked out one day and cleared out his bank account.

Why didn’t he use his brain? How could a man like his father risk everything on a woman? There he was, just before he died, sixty, divorced, cleaned out and blacklisted from his golf club. Adam couldn’t let that happen to him. He had to get Elena out of his head before it was too late.

Chapter 16

Adam drove out to Newton and found his sister putting out lilies at the local church. He sat in one of the pews and watched her. The two boys ran up and down the aisle chasing each other. “Now, Matt, Jake, you stop that. You do not shout and scream in the Lord’s house!”

Adam smiled. “The Lord’s house.” That was what the old man used to call it, too.

“I can see you smiling,” she said with her back to him, and carried on putting lilies in a vase. “When you have kids you’ll know what it’s like.” She finished the arrangement and turned around, doing a double take. “For goodness’ sake. You look like Dracula on speed. What’s happened to you?”

He told her about Elena he wasn’t going to, he didn’t want to, he felt like such a damned fool. He didn’t do this; he was the one who gave advice. He wasn’t the guy who went looking for help, or for sympathy, least of all from his big sister.

“All this is over a woman?” she said when he had finished.

“Go ahead and laugh. I guess I deserve it.”

“I’m not laughing. You got your heart broken. Join the human race. Maybe it’s a good thing.”

“How can losing the only woman I ever loved be a good thing, sis?”

“Well, Adam, if you don’t mind me saying, you’ve always been so ... self-contained. From where I stand, seeing you lose control is almost a relief.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it. You’ve always been so rational, just like Mitchell.” Mitchell, their father; she never called him ‘Dad,’ it was always ‘Mitchell.’ “So finally someone has got under your skin. It means there’s someone alive in there.” She patted his chest.

“It’s not funny.”

“All these women you’ve had, all this money, all this perfection. It’s not good for a body.”

“I’ll get her back.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“If you want something, you don’t give up just like that. You fight for it.”

“Yeah, that sounds good if you’re training for the world heavyweight championship or coaching the World Series. But she’s made up her mind, honey, she’s gone.”

“I can’t let her go.”

“You dropped plenty of girls in the past. How many times did you change your mind?”

“This is different.”

“It’s not different. How would you have felt if they kept running after you? A few of them did, didn’t they?”

He didn’t want to hear this; he just wanted her to agree with him that Elena was crazy and that he had to find a way to make her see sense.

“Come back to my place, I’ll make you pot roast. Are you on roster tomorrow? You can have some beers with Denny and sleep over.”

“No, I have to get back. I’ve got graveyard shift tonight.” It wasn’t true. He wasn’t back on roster until the morning. He got up to leave.

“When I go to prayer group on Wednesday night, we’ll pray for you.”

“You think God will change her mind?”

“I will pray for a happy outcome for both of you, never mind how it happens.”

“You believe all that stuff, sis?”

“Sure I do. We prayed for Walt Sangster’s sister last week, she was in the hospital with a cardiac infraction.”

“Infarction.”

“Well, whatever. She got better from it, and I believe it was us praying for her that helped.”

“You see, that’s what needles me. The patient dies, the hospital and doctor get sued. The patient lives, God gets all the credit.”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t underestimate the power of prayer.”

“I bring people back to life every day, sis. It doesn’t make me a miracle worker, it just means the defibrillator’s working.”

“Always Mister Cynic,” she said.

“Always Mrs. Head up her Ass,” he said as a parting shot and went out, slamming the door behind them. Then he turned around and walked back in. “Sorry,” he said.

“You shouldn’t say ‘ass’ in the Lord’s house,” Lynne said. “I’m not offended, but He might be. Take it easy, little brother.”

“You too, sis,” he said and left.

* * *

He drove down to the Cape; couldn’t contemplate the idea of his own company, which meant his apartment was out of the question. He thought about calling up Jay and another of his beer buddies from Massachusetts General and heading into South End, but he didn’t want anyone to see him like this. After a couple of beers he’d start whining about Elena, he’d embarrass himself and he’d embarrass them.

He stopped off at a liquor store and bought a bottle of Templeton rye and just started driving. If he could drive far enough maybe he could get away from himself.

This didn’t make sense, he didn’t believe in Hallmark clichés. It was just that there were chemicals that went off in your body when you saw a woman, and for a while it was great, and then the charge faded and you went off to find someone else or, if you were ready and the girl ticked all the boxes, you married her.

But you didn’t lose your head like this. It was unacceptable.

Their two years was up. That was the maximum on a relationship, right? It was time to think about moving on, not obsessing like this.

He was not exactly inexperienced. As Lynne had dutifully pointed out, there had been plenty of others. She had liked Sandy, the woman he had been with before Elena, but Sandy wanted the white picket fence, the whole nine yards, so he’d ended it. He had always been honest with her about what he wanted. She was the one who had tried to change the rules.

When it was over he was not cruel, he still took all her calls, even picked up in the middle of the night when she rang him in tears.
What do you have against marriage
, she railed at him.

He told her he didn’t have anything against it. His own parents had been perfectly happy until they got divorced, but it wasn’t for him, at least not yet. Some men were not built to be monogamous, and he didn’t want to be trapped in something he didn’t want. And he couldn’t be one of those guys that plays on the side.

Hadn’t he always been honest with her?

Before her there was Angie, and Angie was the best he had ever had, she had shown him things in bed he had only dreamed about. But on the downside she wanted to be with him all the time. She started leaving her things at his apartment, and at first he didn’t mind. But soon she wanted to know where he was every hour of the day and night; she found photographs of some old girlfriends in a shoebox and tore them up. It was as if she wanted to own every little bit of him, even the past. So he ended that, too. Just walked away and never looked back.

Then there was Sophie; Sophie who had her own career and didn’t want to have kids either, didn’t want to move in with him, liked her space as much as he did. She was a medical researcher. They were perfect for each other, and for a while everything was perfect.

She was offered a major research post at UCLA in California and she asked him to go with her. He could have gone, could have found work at any of the big LA hospitals, but he’d said no, on principle. If he uprooted his life for her what would he be asked to give up next?

Come with me,
she had whispered in bed the night before she left.
Come and join me. We can’t let this thing go.

I can’t do it,
he said, and she must have thought till the last that he would change his mind, to the moment they said goodbye at the airport. They had clung to each other at the terminal gates like they were drowning.

The next day he went back to work. He didn’t talk about it with anyone, and within a month he was dating again.

Lynne said he got his emotional make-up from his father. ‘Bloodless’ was how she had once described him. He protested that he was simply honest: he had never led any woman to think he was anything other than what he was. He had never cheated on a woman in his life and he had never lied.

The irony was that Elena was the only woman who had taken him at his word. He told her he didn’t want kids and she didn’t wait around to see if he meant it. When the time came she just moved on.

This wasn’t him. He didn’t believe in The One, or in soulmates. He didn’t watch romantic comedies and he didn’t think
You’ve Got Mail
was the greatest movie ever made and he didn’t send his girlfriends Valentine’s Day cards or roses. His sister said he was the most cynical man she had ever met, and he took it as a compliment, a testament to his masculinity.

So why could he not let Elena go?

* * *

At Sagamore he changed his mind about driving all the way to Cape Cod. He turned off the Pilgrim Highway and headed down Scusset Beach Road. Fatigue hit him hard, too many long hours in the ER, too many nights without sleep, and too many calming swigs of rye on the way down. Suddenly the car was bumping over the hard track at the side of the road and into a stand of beech. He slammed on the brakes, swerved to miss a tree and the tyres lost traction in the dirt and the rear-end swung around and hit side-on and stove in the passenger side.

He sat there for a long time, listening to the water steaming out of the radiator. Finally he turned off the engine and got out. Christ, what a mess. He wouldn’t be going anywhere in that tonight.

He remembered the bottle of Templeton, found it on the floor well on the passenger side. He hurled it as far as he could into the gathering dark.

If the cops found him like this he’d end up in jail. He left the car and trudged back toward the road.

Chapter 17 

He woke to the insistent clamour of the buzzer downstairs. Adam jerked awake, found himself still on the sofa. He hadn’t even made it as far as the bed last night.

He looked at his watch. Fuck, he’d overslept.

Whoever was downstairs, they were just about leaning on the buzzer.

“Yes?”

“Is that Adam Prescott?”

“Yes.”

“Patrolman O’Brien, from the BPD. I need to have a word with you, sir, regarding your vehicle.”