The Indestructible Man (2 page)

       
When Bobby was well enough he transferred to a school in another district, with better accessibility and programs for disabled children. He did not object. He would have gone anywhere, as long as it took him far from Romulus Wayne.

3

       
Despite his mother
constantly pleading him to get some fresh air, Bobby rarely left the house except to go to school, and he never looked out the window for fear of seeing Romulus and Abigail walking hand-in-hand down the street. He still thought of them each morning as he heaved himself out of bed into his wheelchair or struggled to dress himself. Even his dreams were haunted; each night in his first moments of sleep he looked down at the eighty-foot drop, saw Abigail in Romulus’ arms. He felt his feet leave the roof, the rush of air in his face, the impact as he hit the ground like a dead fish flopped onto a cutting board. When he looked up, Romulus and Abigail were standing over him, hand- in-hand, pity in their faces.

       
For three years he had these dreams. But eventually they came less frequently, until he no longer dreaded sleep. He still heard their names on occasion; it was a small town, and there was no way of avoiding them completely. His aunt was a friend of Jackson Wayne, and occasionally gossiped with Bobby’s mother about goings-on in the neighborhood. “Such a cute couple,” she said of them, though his mother quickly shushed her and changed the subject.

       
But Bobby no longer cared. Every evening after he hoisted himself into bed he would lie still and concentrate on sliding his legs across the linen, as if his will alone could reinforce the shattered bone and make his legs move again. The pain had mostly disappeared, except on humid days, but he could still only manage a few jerky twitches. After the accident his doctors told him it might be years before he could stand upright. It seemed terribly unfair, especially having to hoist himself onto the toilet or into bed with the aid of metal rails. But his arms were strong and well-defined from propelling his wheelchair, and sometimes he distracted himself by flexing in the mirror, watching his biceps bulge to hard, sharp peaks.

       
His new school was only a minor comfort; he was far from the old junior high and all its demons, but he seldom spoke to the other children. The long commute made friendships difficult; worse, they had long since made peace with their conditions, and rarely complained. He felt strangely separate, as if he lacked the awareness necessary to fit into their circles.

       
One night
, a few weeks after high school graduation, Bobby could not sleep. It was damp outside, and a nagging ache crept up his legs and hips. He reached for the bottle of aspirin on his bedside table—his doctors had cut him off from the really good pain relievers long ago—and found only a few bleached crumbs inside. “
Dammit
,” he said, pulling himself out of bed to get the refill bottle from the bathroom. He could have called for his mother to get it, but retrieving it himself was a matter of pride.

       
On his way back to bed he saw a shadow cut across the blinds: someone running down the street, silhouetted in the orange-gold glow of the streetlight. He lifted the blinds to peek out. In the coppery light he spotted Romulus Wayne—though it had been a few years, Bobby was sure it was him—running past the house, an overstuffed duffel bag over his shoulder. As he passed, Romulus stopped and looked into his window, as if he knew Bobby was watching, and mouthed,
I’m sorry
. Bobby dropped the blinds and backed away. The silhouette disappeared, and when he lifted the blinds again Romulus was gone.

       
A few days later Aunt Mavis filled in the details: Romulus’ father intended for him to go to a big university downstate. But Abigail was headed for a women’s college in Iowa, and Romulus could not stand to be so far from her. “So romantic,” Aunt Mavis mused, and Bobby urged her to continue. That evening Romulus and his father had a long, intense fight, so loud people heard them all the way down the block, and in the morning Romulus was gone. Since then Jackson Wayne had hardly moved from his back porch, spending most of his day sitting in his cabana, staring at the
treeline
above the houses.

       
Once he was convinced Romulus was gone for good, Bobby wheeled himself down the ramp to the end of the driveway. He looked up at the cloudless sky, felt the warm sun on his chalky face, and drew in a deep, sweet breath.

4

Bobby was twenty-three
the next time Romulus Wayne intruded upon his world. He lived on his own in the Villa, a disabled-only apartment complex two blocks from the auto parts store where he set up product displays with the aid of a claw-handle grip. He did not care for the compulsory orange smock, but the place had an automatic door and the work was tolerable, as were his two managers, who on his twenty-first birthday bought him a twelve-pack of his favorite microbrew.

He spent most evenings in a bar called Roscoe’s, splitting pitchers with his friend Brooks, a thin, hairy rat of a man nearly twice his age; they had worked together in a Waffle House for a week until Bobby tired of the early-morning hours and quit. Brooks was a true paranoid, convinced the police were hunting him for blowing up his high school principal’s car twenty years earlier. He monitored the police frequencies with a portable scanner, and kept several hunting
knioves
and shotguns, including an old double barrel, in his warehouse apartment in preparation for a final stand which Bobby suspected would never come. But he seemed to understand when Bobby complained about his parents’ nagging him to go to college, or a bad day at work, or having to ride the Self-Help van everywhere. Brooks even ripped out the back seat of his old minibus, welded a half-rusted rail to the interior, and installed a castoff aluminum ramp so he could chauffeur Bobby around town. The ride was technically illegal and occasionally terrifying—he had to cling to the rail to avoid tipping over whenever the minibus made a sharp turn—but Brooks’ intentions were good.

The night began
well enough. Brooks had to get some sleep before his early shift, and left Bobby alone in Roscoe’s. Somehow—he neither knew nor cared how—he was on his way to picking up a short blonde with purplish lipstick, in a white tank-top he could almost see through. Her name was Cindy, and for half an hour she complained to the bartender that her boyfriend was sleeping with her best friend. She downed three margaritas at the bar, and when she noticed him eavesdropping, she stumbled over to his table and slammed her half-finished glass of green slush in front of him.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Cindy, and my boyfriend’s an asshole. I’m tired of drinking alone and I don’t want to go home, so if you don’t mind I’ll just sit here and talk to you for a while. ’Kay?”

She started to repeat the story about her ex-boyfriend, and stopped suddenly, looked at Bobby, his wheelchair, then stroked his armrest with her index finger. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to ask. Can you still…be with a woman in that thing?”

His face reddened; he still recoiled whenever anyone asked about his injury. But she seemed sincere.

“I have to get out of it,” he said. “But yeah.” Though he had not yet done so, all the necessary parts worked, so it was possible.

Cindy leaned forward and raised an eyebrow. “So does the woman have to be on top? You know—to do the honors?”

Bobby nodded, smiling.

“That’s really interesting,” she said, sucking up the last of her melted margarita. “So what happened? Car accident?”

“Fell off a roof,” he said. “Long story.” She seemed to want details, but he rarely discussed the fall anymore.

“Oh,” she said. “Don’t want to talk about it?”

“Not right now, anyway.”

She shrugged. “Must’ve been pretty tough going at first.”

“Yeah.”

 
“I bet you get by okay. You don’t look like you let it bring you down. I like that.”

When Roscoe’s closed she wheeled him to his place a few blocks down. Sober, Cindy would probably never have gone home with him. But his conscience did not trouble him much; his last chance had come two years earlier, when Brooks set him up with a teenage waitress from the Waffle House. The girl made up an excuse to leave after she saw his naked, twisted legs splayed on the sheets. At worst, after Cindy sobered up, she would have a good story for her friends.

Cindy helped him into bed and peeled him from head to toe, taking extra care as she eased the jeans from his legs. He could not bring himself to look at her; any minute she was bound to grimace and leave. She examined his right leg, feeling every scar and bow and indentation, then tenderly ran her thumb and forefinger over his thigh, giggling as his upper body quivered. She undressed slowly, twirling her tank top and bra over her head before collapsing next to him with a
snorty
laugh. She draped her arm over his chest, brushing against the faint hairs. He tried to prop himself up on his elbows for a better view of her body, but accidentally pressed the power button on the TV remote. “
Dammit
,” he said. He was about to turn it off—he wanted no distractions—when he fumbled it and the remote fell to the floor, just beyond his reach.

On-screen was a late-night talk show, just going to commercial. A used-car dealership ad flashed by, replaced by a smiling young man in a black turtleneck, standing against a white backdrop. At first Bobby thought he was dreaming. For a moment he saw the grass rushing up at him, felt the crunch of ruined hip sockets and crumbled bone.

Romulus Wayne’s thin gawky face had fleshed out, his chest and arms thicker and more defined, but it was him. Romulus grinned smugly into the camera.
I just graduated from college
, he said,
and I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. But I know that could change in a heartbeat.
The camera pulled back and a lead safe dropped onto his head, squashing him like a foam-rubber dummy. One hand emerged from beneath the safe, then the other, and he slowly pushed it off. Dusting off his trousers, he continued his pitch as if nothing had happened.
That’s why it’s never too early to invest in life insurance.
Something creaked just above camera range, like a wooden beam about to crack, and a heavy oak desk descended, smashing into splintery chunks around him. After a few still seconds the top of the pile fell away and Romulus dragged himself from beneath the ruined desktop, hacking up tiny clouds of sawdust.

He cracked his neck and cleared his throat, faced the camera once more:
I checked around for a long time, and nobody beats All-American’s flexible plans and low monthly premiums.
 
A rubber tire landed a few feet from him, then a rear-view mirror; he looked up and his face lost all color.
Oh no
, he said as an Army Jeep crashed down from the ceiling, compressing his body as it landed; the windshield shattered on impact and the doors came unhinged, clanging dully on the white floor. Finally, when the dust had cleared, Romulus scratched and heaved his way out of the wreckage, smiled, and said,
Remember, you’re never too young for All-American
.

Bobby felt cold all over and his flesh began to tremble against Cindy’s warm skin. For years he’d dreamt of wheeling up to Romulus, shaking his hand, then pulling out a stick of dynamite and blowing him into tiny squirming pieces, still alive but hopelessly fragmented; or luring him into a condemned building, setting off a cave-in and burying him under tons of rubble, so deep he could never dig his way out. His hands shook violently as he recalled the possibilities. He had worked hard to exile that face from his thoughts. But there it was.

“Turn it off,” Bobby said, breathing in shallow gasps.

“Are you okay?” Cindy asked. “Are you having a seizure or something?”

“No,” he said. “Just turn it off.”

She clicked off the TV. “Have a bad experience with All-American?” When he did not answer she walked her purple fingernails through his sparse chest hair. “
Wanna
mess around now?”