passed, trying to remain calm nonetheless, Bobby took Frank’s right
hand, turned it palm up, and forced himself to touch the dead roach that
was now integrated with the man’s soft white flesh. The insect felt
crisp and bristly against his fingers, but he did not permit his disgust
to show.
“Does this hurt, Frank? This bug mixed up with your cells here, does it
hurt you?” Frank stared at him, finally shook his head. No.
Heartened by the establishment of even this much dialo Bobby gently put
his fingertips to Frank’s right temple, fee the lumps of precious gems
like unburst boils or cancerous soars.
“Do you hurt here, Frank? Are you in pain?”
“No,” Frank said, and Bobby’s heart pounded with excitement at the
escalation to a spoken response.
From a pocket of his jeans, Bobby removed a folded Klein and gently
blotted away the spittle that still glistened Frank’s chin.
The man blinked, and his eyes seemed to focus better.
From behind Bobby, still in the leather chair at the!” perhaps with a
glass of bourbon in his hand, almost cert with that infuriatingly smug
smile plastered on his face, garty said,
“Twelve minutes left.” Bobby ignored the physician. Maintaining eye
contact his client, his fingertips still on Frank’s temple, he said
quickly
“It’s been a hard life for you, hasn’t it? You were the no one, the
most normal one, and when you were a kid you all wanted to fit in at
school, didn’t you, the way your sisters brother never could. And it
took you a long time to remember your dream wasn’t going to happen, you
weren’t goingin, because no matter how normal you were compared to rest
of your family, you’d still come from that goddam house, out of that
cesspool, which made you forever an outsider to other people. They
might not see the stain on your heart might not know the dark memories
in you, but you saw, you remembered, and you felt yourself unworthy
because the horror that was your family. Yet you were also an outsider
at home, much too sane to fit in there, too sensitive to the nightmare
of it. So all your life, you’ve been alone.”
“All my life,” Frank said.
“And always will be.” He wasn’t going to travel now. Bobby would have
be it.
“Frank, I can’t help you. No one can. That’s a hardbut I won’t lie to
you. I’m not going to con you or threaten YOU.”
Frank said nothing, but maintained eye contact.
“Ten minutes,” Fogarty said.
“The only thing I can do for you, Frank, is show you a way to give your
life meaning at last, a way to end it with purpose and dignity, and
maybe find peace in death. I have an idea, a way that you might be able
to kill Candy and save Julie, and if you can do that, you’ll have gone
out a hero. Will you come with me, Frank, listen to me, and not let
Julie die?” Frank didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either. Bobby
decided to take heart from the lack of a negative response.
“We’ve got to get moving, Frank. But don’t try teleporting to the
house, because then you’ll just lose control again, pop off to hell and
back a hundred times. We’ll go in my car. We can be there in five
minutes.” Bobby took his client’s hand. He made a point of taking the
one with the roach embedded in it, hoping Frank would remember that he
had a fear of bugs and perceive that his willingness to overrule the
phobia was a testament to his sincerity.
They crossed the room to the door.
Rising from his chair, Fogarty said,
“You’re going to your death, you know.” Without glancing back at the
physician, Bobby said,
“Well, seems to me, you went to yours decades ago.” He and Frank walked
out into the rain and were drenched by the time they got into the car.
Behind the wheel, Bobby glanced at his watch. Less than eight minutes
to go.
He wondered why he accepted Candy’s word that the fifteen-minute
deadline would be observed, why he was so sure that the madman had not