Somewhere down in the lumbar, somewhere just above his tailbone, a deep and
unforgiving *pop*, ominous as the cocking of a revolver. He put his hand there
and it felt OK, so he cautiously lay back. Three-quarters of the way down, his
entire lower back seized up, needles of fire raced down his legs and through his
groin, and he collapsed.
He *barked* with pain, an inhuman sound he hadn't known he could make, and the
rapid emptying of his lungs deepened the spasm, and he mewled. Linda opened a
groggy eye and put her hand on his shoulder. "What is it, hon?"
He tried to straighten out, to find a position in which the horrible, relentless
pain returned whence it came. Each motion was agony. Finally, the pain subsided,
and he found himself pretzelled, knees up, body twisted to the left, head
twisted to the right. He did not dare budge from this posture, terrified that
the pain would return.
"It's my back," he gasped.
"Whah? Your back?"
"I -- I put it out. Haven't done it in years. I need an icepack, OK? There're
some headache pills in the medicine cabinet. Three of those."
"Seriously?"
"Look, I'd get 'em myself, but I can't even sit up, much less walk. I gotta ice
this down now before it gets too inflamed."
"How did it happen?"
"It just happens. Tai Chi helps. Please, I need ice."
Half an hour later, he had gingerly arranged himself with his knees up and his
hips straight, and he was breathing deeply, willing the spasms to unclench.
"Thanks," he said.
"What now? Should I call a doctor?"
"He'd just give me painkillers and tell me to lose some weight. I'll probably be
like this for a week. Shit. Fede's going to kill me. I was supposed to go to
Boston next Friday, too."
"Boston? What for? For how long?"
Art bunched the sheets in his fists. He hadn't meant to tell her about Boston
yet -- he and Fede hadn't worked out his cover story. "Meetings," he said. "Two
or three days. I was going to take some personal time and go see my family, too.
Goddamnit. Pass me my comm, OK?"
"You're going to *work* now?"
"I'm just going to send Fede a message and send out for some muscle-relaxants.
There's a twenty-four-hour chemist's at Paddington Station that delivers."
"I'll do it, you lie flat."
And so it began. Bad enough to be helpless, weak as a kitten and immobile, but
to be at the whim of someone else, to have to provide sufficient excuse for
every use of his comm, every crawl across the flat... Christ. "Just give me my
comm, please. I can do it faster than I can explain how to do it."
In thirty-six hours, he was ready to tear the throat out of anyone who tried to
communicate with him. He'd harangued Linda out of the flat and crawled to the
kitchen floor, painstakingly assembling a nest of pillows and sofa cushions,
close to the icemaker and the painkillers and toilet. His landlady, an
unfriendly Chinese lady who had apparently been wealthy beyond words in Hong
Kong and clearly resented her reduced station, agreed to sign for the supply
drops he commed to various retailers around London.
He was giving himself a serious crick in his neck and shoulder from working
supine, comm held over his head. The painkillers weighted his arms and churned
his guts, and at least twice an hour, he'd grog his way into a better position,
forgetting the tenderness in his back, and bark afresh as his nerves shrieked
and sizzled.
Two days later and he was almost unrecognizable, a gamey, unshaven lump in the
tiny kitchen, his nest gray with sweat and stiff with spilled take-away curry.
He suspected that he was overmedicating, forgetting whether he'd taken his
tablets and taking more. In one of his more lucid moments, he realized that
there was a feedback cycle at play here -- the more pills he took, the less
equipped he was to judge whether he'd taken his pills, so the more pills he
took. His mind meandered through a solution to this, a timer-equipped pillcase
that reset when you took the lid off and chimed if you took the lid off again
before the set interval had elapsed. He reached for his comm to make some notes,
found it wedged under one of his hocks, greasy with sweat, batteries dead. He
hadn't let his comm run down in a decade, at least.
His landlady let Linda in on the fourth day, as he was sleeping fitfully with a
pillow over his face to shut out the light from the window. He'd tried to draw
the curtains a day -- two days? -- before, but had given up when he tried to
pull himself upright on the sill only to collapse in a fresh gout of writhing.
Linda crouched by his head and stroked his greasy hair softly until he flipped
the pillow off his face with a movement of his neck. He squinted up at her,
impossibly fresh and put together and incongruous in his world of reduced
circumstances.
"Art. Art. Art. Art! You're a mess, Art! Jesus. Why aren't you in bed?"
"Too far," he mumbled.
"What would your grandmother say? Dear-oh-dearie. Come on, let's get you up and
into bed, and then I'm going to have a doctor and a massage therapist sent in.
You need a nice, hot bath, too. It'll be good for you and hygienic besides."
"No tub," he said petulantly.
"I know, I know. Don't worry about it. I'll sort it out."
And she did, easing him to his feet and helping him into bed. She took his house
keys and disappeared for some unknowable time, then reappeared with fresh linen
in store wrappers, which she lay on the bed carefully, making tight hospital
corners and rolling him over, nurse-style, to do the other side. He heard her
clattering in the kitchen, running the faucets, moving furniture. He reminded
himself to ask her to drop his comm in its charger, then forgot.
"Come on, time to get up again," she said, gently peeling the sheets back.
"It's OK," he said, waving weakly at her.
"Yes, it is. Let's get up." She took his ankles and gradually turned him on the
bed so that his feet were on the floor, then grabbed him by his stinking armpits
and helped him to his feet. He stumbled with her into his crowded living room,
dimly aware of the furniture stacked on itself around him. She left him hanging
on the door lintel and then began removing his clothes. She actually used a
scissors to cut away his stained tee shirt and boxer shorts. "All right," she
said, "into the tub."
"No tub," he said.
"Look down, Art," she said.
He did. An inflatable wading pool sat in the middle of his living room, flanked
by an upended coffee table and his sofa, standing on its ear. The pool was full
of steaming, cloudy water. "There's a bunch of eucalyptus oil and Epsom salts in
there. You're gonna love it."
That night, Art actually tottered into the kitchen and got himself a glass of
water, one hand pressed on his lower back. The cool air of the apartment fanned
the mentholated liniment on his back and puckered goose pimples all over his
body. After days of leaden limbs, he felt light and clean, his senses singing as
though he was emerging from a fever. He drank the water, and retrieved his comm
from its cradle.
He propped several pillows up on his headboard and fired up his comm.
Immediately, it began to buzz and hum and chatter and blink, throwing up alerts
about urgent messages, pages and calls pending. The lightness he'd felt fled
him, and he began the rotten business of triaging his in-box.
One strong impression emerged almost immediately: Fede wanted him in Boston.
The Jersey clients were interested in the teasers that Fede had forwarded to
them. The Jersey clients were obsessed with the teasers that Fede had forwarded
to them. The Jersey clients were howling for more after the teasers that Fede
had forwarded to them. Fede had negotiated some big bucks on approval if only
Art would go and talk to the Jersey clients. The Jersey clients had arranged a
meeting with some of the MassPike decision-makers for the following week, and
now they were panicking because they didn't have anything *except* the teasers
Fede had forwarded to them.
You should really try to go to Boston, Art. We need you in Boston, Art. You have
to go to Boston, Art. Art, go to Boston. Boston, Art. Boston.
Linda rolled over in bed and peered up at him. "You're *not* working again, are
you?"
"Shhh," Art said. "It's less stressful if I get stuff done than if I let it pile
up."
"Then why is your forehead all wrinkled up?"
"I have to go to Boston," he said. "Day after tomorrow, I think."
"Jesus, are you insane? Trying to cripple yourself?"
"I can recover in a hotel room just as well as I can recover here. It's just
rest from here on in, anyway. And a hotel will probably have a tub."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this. You're not going to *recover* in Boston.
You'll be at meetings and stuff. Christ!"
"I've got to do this," Art said. "I just need to figure out how. I'll go
business class, take along a lumbar pillow, and spend every moment that I'm not
in a meeting in a tub or getting a massage. I could use a change of scenery
about now, anyway."
"You're a goddamned idiot, you know that?"
Art knew it. He also knew that here was an opportunity to get back to EST, to
make a good impression on the Jersey clients, to make his name in the Tribe and
to make a bundle of cash. His back be damned, he was sick of lying around
anyway. "I've got to go, Linda."
"It's your life," she said, and tossed aside the covers. "But I don't have to
sit around watching you ruin it." She disappeared into the hallway, then
reemerged, dressed and with her coat on. "I'm out of here."
"Linda," Art said.
"No," she said. "Shut up. Why the fuck should I care if you don't, huh? I'm
going. See you around."
"Come on, let's talk about this."
East-Coast pizza. Flat Boston twangs. The coeds rushing through Harvard Square
and oh, maybe a side trip to New York, maybe another up to Toronto and a roti at
one of the halal Guyanese places on Queen Street. He levered himself painfully
out of bed and hobbled to the living room, where Linda was arguing with a taxi
dispatcher over her comm, trying to get them to send out a cab at two in the
morning.
"Come on," Art said. "Hang that up. Let's talk about this."
She shot him a dirty look and turned her back, kept on ranting down the comm at
the dispatcher.
"Linda, don't do this. Come on."
"I am on the phone!" she said to him, covering the mouthpiece. "Shut the fuck
up, will you?" She uncovered the mouthpiece. "Hello? Hello?" The dispatcher had
hung up. She snapped the comm shut and slammed it into her purse. She whirled to
face Art, snorting angry breaths through her nostrils. Her face was such a mask
of rage that Art recoiled, and his back twinged. He clasped at it and carefully
lowered himself onto the sofa.
"Don't do this, OK?" he said. "I need support, not haranguing."
"What's there to say? Your mind's already made up. You're going to go off and be
a fucking idiot and cripple yourself. Go ahead, you don't need my permission."
"Sit down, please, Linda, and talk to me. Let me explain my plan and my reasons,
OK? Then I'll listen to you. Maybe we can sort this out and actually, you know,
come to understand each other's point of view."
"Fine," she said, and slammed herself into the sofa. Art bounced and he seized
his back reflexively, waiting for the pain, but beyond a low-grade throbbing, he
was OK.
"I have a very large opportunity in Boston right now. One that could really
change my life. Money, sure, but prestige and profile, too. A dream of an
opportunity. I need to attend one or two meetings, and then I can take a couple
days off. I'll get Fede to OK a first-class flight -- we get chits we can use to
upgrade to Virgin Upper; they've got hot tubs and massage therapists now. I'll
check into a spa -- they've got a bunch on Route 128 -- and get a massage every
morning and have a physiotherapist up to the room every night. I can't afford
that stuff here, but Fede'll spring for it if I go to Boston, let me expense it.
I'll be a good lad, I promise."
"I still think you're being an idiot. Why can't Fede go?"
"Because it's my deal."
"Why can't whoever you're meeting with come here?"
"That's complicated."
"Bullshit. I thought you wanted to talk about this?"
"I do. I just can't talk about that part."
"Why not? Are you afraid I'll blab? Christ, Art. Give me some credit. Who the
hell would I blab *to*, anyway?"
"Look, Linda, the deal itself is confidential -- a secret. A secret's only a
secret if you don't tell it to anyone, all right? So I'm not going to tell you.
It's not relevant to the discussion, anyway."
"Art. Art. Art. Art, you make it all sound so reasonable, and you can dress it
up with whatever words you want, but at the end of the day, we both know you're
full of shit on this. There's no *way* that doing this is better for you than
staying here in bed. If Fede's the problem, let me talk to him."
"Jesus, no!"
"Why not?"
"It's not appropriate, Linda. This is a work-related issue. It wouldn't be
professional. OK, I'll concede that flying and going to meeting is more
stressful than not flying and not going to meetings, but let's take it as a
given that I *really* need to go to Boston. Can't we agree on that, and then
discuss the ways that we can mitigate the risks associated with the trip?"
"Jesus, you're an idiot," she said, but she seemed to be on the verge of
smiling.
"But I'm *your* idiot, right?" Art said, hopefully.
"Sure, sure you are." She *did* smile then, and cuddle up to him on the sofa.
"They don't have fucking *hot tubs* in Virgin Upper, do they?"
"Yeah," Art said, kissing her earlobe. "They really do."
17.
Once the blood coursing from my shins slows and clots, I take an opportunity to
inspect the damage more closely. The cuts are relatively shallow, certainly less
serious than they were in my runamuck imagination, which had vivid slashes of
white bone visible through the divided skin. I cautiously pick out the larger
grit and gravel and turn my attention spinewards.
I have done a number on my back, that much is certain. My old friends, the
sacroiliac joints, feel as tight as drumheads, and they creak ominously when I
shift to a sitting position with my back propped up on the chimney's upended
butt, the aluminum skirting cool as a kiss on my skin. They're only just
starting to twinge, a hint of the agonies to come.
My jaw, though, is pretty bad. My whole face feels swollen, and if I open my
mouth the blood starts anew.
You know, on sober reflection, I believe that coming up to the roof was a really
bad idea.
I use the chimney to lever myself upright again, and circle it to see exactly
what kind of damage I've done. There's a neat circular hole in the roof where
the chimney used to be, gusting warm air into my face as I peer into its depths.
The hole is the mouth of a piece of shiny metal conduit about the circumference
of a basketball hoop. When I put my head into it, I hear the white noise of a
fan, somewhere below in the building's attic. I toss some gravel down the
conduit and listen to the report as it *ping*s off the fan blades down below.
That's a good, loud sound, and one that is certain to echo through the building.
I rain gravel down the exhaust tube by the handful, getting into a mindless,
shuffling rhythm, wearing the sides of my hands raw and red as I scrape the
pebbles up into handy piles. Soon I am shuffling afield of the fallen chimney,
one hand on my lumbar, crouched over like a chimp, knees splayed in an effort to
shift stress away from my grooved calves.
I'm really beating the shit out of that poor fan, I can tell. The
shooting-gallery rattle of the gravel ricocheting off the blades is dulling now,
sometimes followed by secondary rattles as the pebbles bounce back into the
blades. Not sure what I'll do if the fan gives out before someone notices me up
here.
It's not an issue, as it turns out. The heavy fire door beyond the chimney
swings open abruptly. A hospital maintenance gal in coveralls, roly-poly and
draped with tool belts and bandoliers. She's red-faced from the trek up the
stairs, and it gives her the aspect of a fairy tale baker or candy-seller. She
reinforces this impression by putting her plump hands to her enormous bosom and
gasping when she catches sight of me.
It comes to me that I am quite a fucking sight. Bloody, sunburnt, wild-eyed,
with my simian hunch and my scabby jaw set at a crazy angle to my face and
reality both. Not to mention my near nudity, which I'm semipositive is not her
idea of light entertainment. "Hey," I say. "I, uh, I got stuck on the roof. The
door shut." Talking reopens the wound on my jaw and I feel more blood trickling
down my neck. "Unfortunately, I only get one chance to make a first impression,
huh? I'm not, you know, really *crazy,* I was just a little bored and so I went
exploring and got stuck and tried to get someone's attention, had a couple
accidents... It's a long story. Hey! My name's Art. What's yours?"
"Oh my Lord!" she said, and her hand jumps to the hammer in its bandolier
holster on her round tummy. She claws at it frantically.
"Please," I say, holding my hands in front of me. "Please. I'm hurt is all. I
came up here to get some fresh air and the door swung shut behind me. I tripped
when I knocked over the chimney to get someone's attention. I'm not dangerous.
Please. Just help me get back down to the twentieth floor -- I think I might
need a stretcher crew, my back is pretty bad."
"It's Caitlin," she says.
"I beg your pardon?"
"My name is Caitlin," she says.
"Hi, Caitlin," I said. I extend my hand, but she doesn't move the ten yards she
would have to cross in order to take it. I think about moving towards her, but
think better of it.
"You're not up here to jump, are you?"
"Jump? Christ, no! Just stuck is all. Just stuck."
Linda's goddamned boyfriend was into all this flaky Getting to Yes shit,
subliminal means of establishing rapport and so on. Linda and I once spent an
afternoon at the Children's Carousel uptown in Manhattan, making fun of all his
newage theories. The one that stood out in my mind as funniest was synching your
breathing -- "What you resist persists, so you need to turn resistance into
assistance," Linda recounted. You match breathing with your subject for fifteen
breaths and they unconsciously become receptive to your suggestions. I have a
suspicion that Caitlin might bolt, duck back through the door and pound down the
stairs on her chubby little legs and leave me stranded.
So I try it, match my breath to her heaving bosom. She's still panting from her
trek up the stairs and fifteen breaths go by in a quick pause. The silence
stretches, and I try to remember what I'm supposed to do next. Lead the subject,
that's it. I slow my breathing down gradually and, amazingly, her breath slows
down along with mine, until we're both breathing great, slow breaths. It works
-- it's flaky and goofy California shit, but it works.
"Caitlin," I say calmly, making it part of an exhalation.
"Yes," she says, still wary.
"Have you got a comm?"
"I do, yes."
"Can you please call downstairs and ask them to send up a stretcher crew? I've
hurt my back and I won't be able to handle the stairs."
"I can do that, yes."
"Thank you, Caitlin."
It feels like cheating. I didn't have to browbeat her or puncture her bad
reasoning -- all it took was a little rapport, a little putting myself in her
shoes. I can't believe it worked, but Caitlin flips a ruggedized comm off her
hip and speaks into it in a calm, efficient manner.
"Thank you, Caitlin," I say again. I start to ease myself to a sitting position,
and my back gives way, so that I crash to the rooftop, mewling, hands clutched
to my spasming lumbar. And then Caitlin's at my side, pushing my hands away from
my back, strong thumbs digging into the spasming muscles around my iliac crests,
soothing and smoothing them out, tracing the lines of fire back to the nodes of
the joints, patiently kneading the spasms out until the pain recedes to a soft
throbbing.
"My old man used to get that," she said. "All us kids had to take turns working
it out for him." I'm on my back, staring up over her curves and rolls and into
her earnest, freckled face.
"Oh, God, that feels good," I say.
"That's what the old man used to say. You're too young to have a bad back."
"I have to agree," I say.
"All right, I'm going to prop your knees up and lay your head down. I need to
have a look at that ventilator."