The Reconstructionist (14 page)

They found the Toyota, and Boggs hailed a forklift to pull it from its second-level rack and set it on the ground. The forklift then went away, diesel engine gnashing. Through the stacked vehicles, more of the lifting trucks were sometimes visible, charging around like beasts with great horns. Ellis looked at the vehicles to either side of himself – a Yukon with the front end flattened as if a slab of concrete had landed on it; a Dodge Ram with the circular imprint of a wheel in the damage of its grille; a Mini with the sheet metal ripped off one side as if it had run into a big planing saw.

‘Ellis, hello?’ Boggs said. ‘Still with us? What’s going on in your noggin?’ He was unwinding a plumb bob. He had already laid four tape measures around the Toyota.

‘Just looking.’

‘And thinking?’

‘Not really.’

Boggs grinned. ‘Now that’s a talent.’ Boggs shuffled and kicked
his
feet, still grinning. ‘As for me,’ he said, ‘my dancing frightens children and makes adults nauseous.’

When they came to the scene – here, the place that Ellis now sat watching – the tyre marks had been still visible on the road, only a little faded. And as they worked at documenting them, Ellis glanced at their photos of the vehicles’ tyre treads and noticed that the police had confused the tyre marks of the pickup and the Toyota. Which was bad for their client, the defendant’s attorney, because it meant that the Toyota had braked longer than the police had assumed, and hit the pickup at a lower speed, which made the breakout of a fire seem less reasonable.

‘Of course,’ Ellis said, when he showed the error to Boggs, ‘we could pretend we didn’t notice.’

Boggs cocked his head. ‘That would be a little unscrupulous, wouldn’t it?’ He held Ellis’s gaze a second, then shrugged. ‘Anyway, when you start doing stuff like that in this business, it catches up. The other guys are smart, too, and we end up looking stupid.’

Much later, Ellis described that conversation to Heather, and the shame he’d felt. She had, slowly, smiled, and asked, ‘But you still love me more than him, don’t you?’

Watching the traffic and the golf course, sorting his moods, he passed the day. A membrane of tension that had been stretched through his mind seemed to be weakening. He’d never understood the use of idle vacations, of endless sitting under the sun, but maybe this was it.

Immediately behind this thought, however, regret flipped itself back into view, and with a sense of compulsion he called the hospital and asked for room 312. The fifth ring cut off as the phone picked up. ‘Hello?’ Mrs Dell said, tentative.

Ellis hesitated.

‘Hello?’

‘I’m Ellis Barstow. I stopped in a couple of days ago.’

‘Yes?’

‘I was wondering if there’s any change in your husband’s condition.’

‘They cut him open and did some things, to alleviate pressure,
I
think. And tests. Scans. He looks –’ She was silent. ‘Not good.’ She breathed. ‘They say wait. Wait and see. They try to be kind, but they make me feel like a child.’

‘I’m sure they’re doing their best.’

‘Sometimes when I ask a question there’s a strange look. I wonder if maybe they just don’t like to say, “I don’t know.” Sometimes I wonder if they know anything, really.’

‘They’re doing what they can,’ he said, without conviction.

‘Fifty per cent,’ she said. ‘I asked if he would live. Thirty said another. Per cent.’

‘I’m sorry.’ A pickup glided over the highway before him, pulling a camper trailer sheathed in aluminum, the sun dancing on it.

‘As if we were talking about the humidity.’

‘It is meaningless,’ he said.

‘I can’t even think about it.’ She added, in a odd tone of complaint, ‘He loves me.’

‘Of course.’

‘He loves music. He’s an excellent dancer. I doubt if he’ll be able to dance any more.’

‘I hope so.’

‘I should ask what per cent they have on dancing.’

Ellis laughed but caught himself and said again, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, no. You’re kind to listen to me.’

Some seconds passed.

‘Are you still there?’ she asked.

‘I am.’

‘I’ll let you go.’

That night he returned to the Olive Garden. He had the Buick-driving waitress again. She was heavy from the waist down, her face sagging with fatigued skin, but her smile was broad and earnest. She interpreted his return as a compliment to the food. She said the cooks here took greater care than at the Red Lobster where she used to work, and she attempted to talk him into a dessert. He said no but ordered another drink.

The restaurant emptied, he sat contemplating his beer, thinking
his
work with Boggs had made him strange. No one except Boggs saw the road and the world as he did, so that they seemed to live in a world of the same stuff as everyone else, but terribly rearranged. No wonder Boggs had become his friend. No wonder he didn’t know what to do now except to look for Boggs. His waitress brought him a piece of chocolate cherry cake, whispering, ‘Free free free!’ It would just be thrown away, she said. He began eating only to placate her, but the stuff tasted marvellous. He forked through it slowly, then worked the crumbs up one by one, thinking to himself that it might be as good as anything that he had ever eaten. This idea made him teary-eyed. The waitress stopped to pat his wrist. ‘It does that to me, too.’

Late the next morning he was sitting on the balcony again when his phone rang. He answered, and Heather said, ‘I’m here.’

‘You’re where?’

‘The guy at the desk won’t tell me which room you’re in.’

‘How can you be here?’

‘By the miracle of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. Will you tell me your room number?’

‘I’m just surprised!’ He told her the room number and sat waiting. Giddy. Anxious. She seemed to take a long time. And then yet longer, so that he began to worry that he had hallucinated her call, that he had been alone for too long with his own brain, and now some of the synapses were firing up delusional echoes and distortions.

When a knock sounded at the door, he flung it open. Heather stood there – small in the dim hallway, wearing a snug black T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops, hair pulled back, eyes red, tired, intent on him.

‘Please –’ he said, reaching. They clung to each other and soon were talking energetically, nonsensically. Suddenly Ellis lifted her and dropped her on the bed.

They made love with the clumsiness of delirium, then lay cupped together until Ellis stood and dressed. They talked and joked about her drive, about the weather. She talked to the ceiling and Ellis
drifted
around the room. He came to the balcony door – now, although it was a Saturday, the traffic had begun again thickening and slowing in the westbound lanes. He hoped that Boggs hadn’t come and gone.

‘I was a little afraid you’d send me away,’ Heather said. She laughed. Without leaving the bed she was pulling on clothes.

‘That’s why you didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ he asked. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

‘Everyone loves a surprise?’ she said.

He laughed. ‘I don’t care.’

She went into the bathroom, and he heard the water running. He opened the balcony door and stepped out. A couple of crows hopped in the grass between the highway and the motel. He heard her emerge from the bathroom. ‘Is John out there?’ she called.

‘Nope.’

A few seconds passed. ‘Hey,’ she said.

He turned from the highway to look at her. She sat on the foot of the bed, and she seemed to be looking at the highway behind him. He glanced over to see if something were happening there.

She said, ‘I’ll go if you want.’

‘No, no.’ He hesitated, then moved into the room to stand in front of her. He knew enough to wait for her to go on.

‘What are we doing?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’ It had been a mistake, apparently, to go onto the balcony. But she knew why he was here. ‘We’re in a motel room, talking.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

Her gaze collapsed to the floor. ‘Could you possibly stop calculating what you say to the decimal place?’ She gripped the edge of the bed with her hands, then straightened and stood and moved and touched the bed, the wallpaper, the TV.

He said, ‘I’m sorry –’

‘Don’t,’ she said. Her face blushed, splotching white in the scars. ‘I just sometimes keep wondering,’ she said, ‘if there’s anything more between us than shared disasters. What are we
doing?
What kind of fucked-up catastrophe of circumstance are we?’ She laughed, not happily.

His breath shook. ‘We’re just two people in a room.’

‘You’re the brother of my dead boyfriend. You work for my husband, and you’re his friend, and he’s gone insane. It’s not a good situation. It’s a very complicated, very awkward and very bad situation.’

By now a liquid and opaque dread had filled him. His glance strayed between the tension in her neck, the highway, the sword-fish. ‘You drove out here to break up with me?’

‘We’re just bonded by trauma,’ she said.

‘I didn’t even like Christopher,’ he said. ‘If you think that’s all I have invested in this –’

A diesel went by with jake brakes thundering. He glanced toward it, and she said, ‘OK, go. Go. Go look for your buddy.’

‘I’m here to watch for Boggs.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Go ahead.’

He went onto the balcony and sat. He locked his gaze onto the roadway.

Some minutes passed.

In the room, something crashed.

He went back in as she pulled over the two bedside tables, then the desk. She pushed over a desk chair and then yanked the bedclothes to the floor. She turned and stood before him, gasping, her face strained.

‘Calm down,’ he said.

‘Stop that! I haven’t slept in days. I don’t know what’s happened to my life. I can’t stop crying. I don’t know what anyone wants. And you say calm down.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Don’t say that.’

Then he didn’t know what to say.

In the silence, she reached up with curious gentleness, as if grasping at a butterfly. He braced for her to strike him. But she brought her hand to her own face, gripped her cheek, and pulled down, clawing, nails trailing blood.

In surprise he shouted and lunged, and they fell together onto the bed. ‘I hate you,’ she said, while he fumbled to restrain her arms. A small woman, but strong. Finally he pinned her, and she said, ‘I hate everything.’

He panted. Blood trickled from her face. ‘Stop this,’ he said. ‘Stop this.’ She only stared at him, and he cried, ‘Stop this! I didn’t ask you to come here.’

‘No, you didn’t.’ But the resistance had gone from her arms.

He discovered he was squeezing her harder than he needed. He rolled away, stood flexing his hands. She lay unmoving except to breathe irregularly, staring at the ceiling, eyes streaming. His body shook, bright and hot. He sat on the floor. ‘You’re OK?’

She said nothing, went into the bathroom. When she came out, holding a washcloth to her face, his adrenalin had drained off, leaving him sagging. She sat beside him.

His heartbeat slowed.

She touched his hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Let’s not use that word.’

She giggled a little, weakly, or nervously. He shook his head. Then, in a loss of control, he, too, laughed.

‘Go watch for John,’ she said. ‘I’ll join you in a minute.’ He sat moving his fingers experimentally before he stood and went onto the balcony. Time passed, and when he looked back into the room, all the furniture had been set upright again, and she was gone.

To find a clear thought was difficult. He’d never seen her do anything like this before, and he couldn’t guess what she might do now.

He sat, then stood again, and tried to analyse, to review the variables of the problem. Now, particularly, when everything and everyone had turned strange, it seemed important to be exact. Heather had been his half-brother’s girlfriend. She had liked his half-brother. Ellis, however, had not liked his half-brother. This difference had been shrouded behind the fact of his half-brother’s death. Then, she had led Ellis to his job, and thus to his boss and friend Boggs. He liked Boggs. Heather, who was married to Boggs,
did
not like Boggs; or, at least, she did not love him. Not any more. And now, having learned of the affair between his subordinate and his wife, Boggs threatened suicide. The shape of the relationships was not a triangle but a square bisected along a diagonal: