I followed her eyes as they reconnoitered, landing on the pine bookshelves that sheathed three of the walls.
A door in the right-hand corner was open, exposing a small bathroom. The other, centered between the windows, led outside. Bolted. Lucy’s gaze lingered on it, then moved on.
Books and piles of magazines and newspapers littered the floor. Atop a stack of New Yorkers was an aluminum tray laden with dirty dishes: curling bread crusts, congealed eggs, cornflakes swimming in milk that looked bluish in the mean, grainy light. An empty bedpan sat on a stack of old Paris Reviews. Packages of adult-size disposable diapers were piled high on a tottering mountain of assorted periodicals. A cardboard box next to the diapers was filled with empty whiskey bottles. A tower of Dixie cups and an old black rotary telephone, the phone’s cord snaking into the jumble and vanishing.
The shakes had moved down to Lucy’s fingers, and I felt her knuckles slap against mine. Nova was nowhere in sight, but I felt her presence—an icy current.
Lowell moaned and moved his head from side to side. His eyes had closed.
Lucy didn’t move. Then she began scanning the room again.
The filthy windows.
The door to the back.
Back to the log walls.
Repeating the circuit. Staying, this time, on the door. Wide-eyed.
This was where she’d slept the night of the party. The room she’d left, sleepwalking.
Her hand was shaking so badly I could barely hold on to it.
Lowell’s eyes opened and he flipped his face at us.
Seeing us for the first time.
He let out a deep, pitiful, angry noise and began the long, excruciating process of sitting up. No hoists above the bed. He hadn’t availed himself of conveniences—not even an electric wheelchair—and I wondered why.
Cursing, he slid and heaved and finally propped his upper body high enough to rest his back against the pillows. His chest was caved in, his shoulders knobby and narrow. The flair of the white suit and the panama hat seemed a distant joke. The last couple of days had knocked him low.
Grief?
Lucy watched him the way you watch a repulsive but fascinating insect make its way up a wall.
He laughed. She turned away and hugged herself.
“So,” he said hoarsely. Several moments of throat clearing. He gave a look of distaste, rotated his lips, and spat a wad of phlegm at the log wall. It missed and landed on the floor. Coughing and grinning, he expelled another wad.
Lucy looked ill, but she didn’t move.
Lowell watched her intently.
His fingers scratched the sheets as he continued to pull himself up. Trying to move his head in an upward arc. Pain stopped him.
“So,” he said again. His voice had cleared a bit.
“Cute,” he said. “Very cute.”
“What is?” said Lucy, straining for a light tone.
“You.” He chortled, as if she’d set him up for a punch line. He looked her up and down. None of the lasciviousness he’d shown with Nova. Cold, precise, as if taking the measure of a piece of furniture.
“Play tennis?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Those are tennis player’s legs. Even through those dungarees I can see them. Play anything?”
Another headshake.
“Of course not,” he said. “No appetite for games.”
He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms, laughing some more.
“So what can I offer you, Mary–Little Lamb?” he said. “Alcohol? Percodan? Demerol? Morphine? Endorphins? Or is alleged truth the dope you’re shooting? What kind of stories should I tell you to help you lubricate your mental deadbolt? Is this a monumental moment for you?”
Lucy remained silent.
“No stories? What then?”
Lucy looked at the rear door.
Lowell shouted wordlessly and slapped the bedsheet. “Ah, the spectacle! Here to goggle at my groanery, my little serpent’s tooth? Barge in with your brain mechanic in tow, so you can listen to the thrum-thrum and imagine my torment?”
Grinning. Laughing.
“Yes, I’m in pain, girl. Sacramental, sizzling battery-acid synaptic joy. Maybe you’ll know it too, one day, and then you’ll understand what a fucking hero I am to be sitting here, smelling like shit and looking like a Gehenna-leaseholder knowing the only fuck-damn reason you pranced your little tennis butt in here is to drink up my misery so you can say you’ve had a tall, frosty revenge cocktail at the expense of the best.”