Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause (21 page)

She looks at me through the harsh glare of the lamp and says in a slurred voice, “I had these made when I was twenty. What do you think?”

She looks incredible—slim hips and small but attractive breasts which appear larger because of the way she is bending toward the camera. My immediate reaction is embarrassment, not arousal. I am too recently spent for that. Why is she showing me these? I look slowly through them. Was she trying out for Playboy or what? I have a slight headache from the six pack of beer I have drunk and rub my head. I say truthfully, “They’re stunning.”

She nods, her right hand stroking my back, the other holding the pictures up for her to see in the light.

“I think they’re good, too,” she says, her voice sodden with the liquor.

Finally, I understand why she has shown me these pictures. She is almost pathetically insecure. Somehow, she considers the photographs are proof of her value. I say, “No matter what happens, you ‘ll have proof what a knockout body you have.”

She tosses the pictures onto the table instead of putting them back into their envelope. She smiles and rests her head on my chest.

“How’d you know that?” she says.

“My body works a lot better than my mind.”

I stroke her hair, noticing that Rainey was right. This close I can see her makeup.

“The old mind body problem,” I say. I am a little drunk myself.

She reaches down and peels off my condom and holds it up for us to inspect. Waving it over my head like a pennant, she says, “Wanna hear a joke?”

Fearful that she is going to spill my jism onto my head, I lean back but say quickly, “Yeah.”

She pulls the condom down and rests it on her pubis. “You know what the rubber said to the diaphragm?”

I pat her right thigh.

“Naw, what did it say?”

She turns her head and smiles crookedly at me.

“Was it good for you, too?”

I begin to laugh and find I can’t stop, shaking the bed and her body in the process. The truth of the joke has struck some nerve I can’t begin to understand about my own life. I guess the joke works because our protection against each other has become the most important element in the equation.

At some level we have become merely matchmakers for our own technology. I glance across the room, noticing again that the largest picture she has in her bedroom is a picture of herself. It is enormous, an eleven by fourteen, probably a promo by her employer. Kim Keogh, the latest and prettiest member of the Channel 11 news team. I wonder but do not have the courage to ask if she has had her name changed.

She reaches across me and casually tosses, like a worn-out sock, the swollen condom into the wicker wastepaper basket beside her bed and says sourly, “It wasn’t that funny.”

For some reason she thinks I am laughing at her. I roll her off my chest and cradle her in my arm.

“It was a good joke.”

She snuggles against my chest, “I like you,” she says, “You understand me, you know?”

So I will not have to answer, I kiss her hair, which is damp from her exertions. In three minutes she is sound asleep, snoring gently against my shoulder. For all her nude pictures, aggressive lovemaking, and vanity, the always kind and pleasant Kim Keogh who appears on TV is the dominant personality. Alcohol and a sympathetic ear have uncovered a wilder side, but before she got halfway through the bottle of Chablis, Kim moved me with her own unpublicized work as a volunteer tutor for the last two years to black girls who live in Needle Park. A nice woman, I think, sleepily, nicer than she’ll sound if I ever tell someone about the pictures….

Remembering Kim’s joke and my extreme reaction to it, for some reason I think of Amy and wonder if she had an abortion. I should call but realize I’m not anxious to be confronted by either of the choices available to her. What would I do if Kim becomes pregnant and wants to have a baby? I yawn so loudly Kim stirs beside me. Somehow, I don’t think either Sarah or Rainey would be pleased….

I awake feeling pain in my rectum and notice a growing need to defecate. I turn my head and check the luminous red dial on her clock. It is just after three. I have been asleep only an hour. Kim has turned over toward the wall, and I slide carefully out of the bed, trying to remember the location of her bathroom. After opening a closet door, I find it and sit on the commode hoping a good shit will take away the pain. Though I strain like a man who has been constipated for weeks, nothing doing. It feels like someone is going into my bowels with a corkscrew, and I break into a sweat as I stand up and look into Kim’s bathroom mirror.

“Gideon,” Kim calls through the door.

“Are you okay?”

I come into the room almost dancing with pain. She turns on the light, and I would feel embarrassed were I not hurting so much.

“Something’s wrong,” I admit and explain my symptoms as if she were a physician making a house call.

Perhaps sobered somewhat by what she is being forced to witness, she pulls the sheet over her breasts.

“Has this happened before?”

I would be less alarmed if the corkscrew feeling were in my stomach. Food poisoning would be bad enough, but I might live. There is no mistaking the location however. I begin to put on my clothes as fast as I can. If I am going to die, I don’t want to do it like this. I can see Sarah’s face as they tell her, “Your dad’s ass started hurting, and then drunk and naked as a jaybird he fell over dead on top of a pile of nude pictures of some TV reporter he had known only a few hours.” I catch my big toe on a belt loop and fall sideways on the bed. She scoots backward as if I were now trying to rape her.

“No,” I say, looking sideways at Kim as I slide up my pants.

“Please tell me if you do,” I beg.

“Do you have AIDS or some disease?”

Kim bursts into tears.

“No!” she shouts at me.

“How do you know you don’t?”

I try to think of the women I have slept with in the last year. There have been only three since I met Rainey, and, of course, they swore (as I did) that they were practically virgins.

I wore a rubber, but as one worried woman told me, even the best roof will eventually leak.

“I just know, damn it!”

The last five minutes, which seems like an eternity, have sobered her as no coffee could. Clinging to the sheet, she whimpers, “I’m sorry you’re hurting. I’m just terrified I’ll get AIDS from you!”

Thanks for the vote of confidence, I think. I have to get out of here. I cram my socks into my pockets and slide on my loafers. The pain, bearable, however, is constant now, coming in steady waves.

“I’ll call you,” I say politely.

She nods, apparently too afraid to move. In the Blazer, I pop the clutch as badly as Sarah used to do before she figured out it wasn’t a device to strengthen your knee. Where to go?

I noticed there was no blood. At least I’m not hemorrhaging to death, but I am even more frightened by the pain than when it first began. Desperate, I turn onto Fairfax, Rainey’s street. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to be like some animal that crawls off into the woods.

I ring her bell and pound on the door like a wild man. In just a few moments I hear her yell through the door, “Who is it?”

I scream back, “Gideon. I’m sick!”

She throws the door open, and standing there in a thin cotton robe, cries, “What’s wrong?”

I tell her and beg, “Will you take me to the St. Thomas emergency room? I’m having horrible cramps.”

Looking dazed and scared, she says, “Of course, wait just a second,” and disappears into her bedroom while I sit on her couch.

In less than a minute she appears, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Her hair is still a mess, and without makeup she appears like a ghost, but at the moment she has never looked better. In her car, she asks, “Where were you when it started hurting?”

There is not hint of snideness in her voice. She is wondering why I didn’t call first. I want to say that I just happened to be in the neighborhood but don’t feel up to it. I swallow hard and admit, “I was watching the local news.”

Rainey taps the steering wheel sharply with the palm of her right hand. She doesn’t require much explaining.

“How interesting she says, her voice taking on a characteristic drollness.

I look out the window into the darkness. There are a dozen snotty things she could say but won’t. Still, I feel like some lowlife snake running back to his wife after playing around and getting into trouble. Why do I feel this way? We’ve agreed to be just friends. For God’s sake, we’ve never seen each other naked, yet guilt begins to bubble up like boiling oil alongside the pain in my rectum. What is a friend for if you can’t tell her something without feeling guilty about it?

Maybe it is true men and women can’t be friends.

She whips into the St. Thomas emergency room parking area, and brakes to a halt at the security guard station. A black guy who looks a hundred sticks his head through the window on Rainey’s side and asks, “Is he going to need a wheelchair?”

Through the light shining through the windshield, I can see the barest hint of a smile on Rainey’s face. She says, “I think he can walk.”

Embarrassed now, I hiss, “Of course I can.”

Fortunately, it is a slow night at St. Thomas. Only a couple of people are waiting, and they look so miserable I can’t tell whether they are family or patients. I look at Rainey, who yawns and says, “I confess that there is a part of me that hopes you’re really sick.”

An hour later (the pain began to recede thirty minutes ago, but I am too embarrassed to admit it has gone away entirely) I am told I am simply middle-aged.

“Prostatitis,” says the intern who had stuck his finger halfway to China.

“How old are you?” “Forty-four,” I say, wishing his pants were a little cleaner.

Dr. Wacker, according to his nameplate (for all I know he may be an orderly pressed into service because the regular doc is off sniffing glue with one of the nurses), looks about Sarah’s age but not as responsible.

“Does this mean I’m going to lose my prostate gland?” I ask. Hell, maybe it would be a relief if I couldn’t get it up anymore. All it’s done since Rosa died is cause me trouble.

“Shouldn’t,” the baby doc says casually.

“You’ve got a little infection, but an antibiotic should take care of it.”

With a twenty-five-dollar prescription for a bottle of pills (Septra) I walk into the waiting area feeling relieved but a little foolish. Rainey’s face looks frozen in worry. She stands, holding her hands together as if she is about to pray. I had told her the pain was better, but I didn’t tell her how much before I went in.

“Prostatitis,” I mumble to Rainey as I come out into the waiting area.

“Just an infection. I’ve got a prescription for it.”

I head for the door. Do I just imagine it or are the nurses smiling? Rainey walks beside me and says loudly, “You got me out of bed at three in the morning for prostatitis? Women have infections all the damn time.”

Outside, it is humid and sticky as we walk to her car. I feel like an idiot. I had given the hospital my group insurance card from Mays & Burton, but I have little hope I’m covered.

“It hurt like hell,” I say, realizing I am whining.

“I thought I was dying.”

Rainey unlocks her door. In the brightly lit parking lot, she looks as exhausted as I feel. She stares at me over the roof of her car.

“You’re such a baby!”

We ride in silence to her house. How did I have the nerve to put her through this? I wouldn’t wish me on my worst enemy. Still, I can’t suppress the feeling entirely that I’ve dodged a bullet. I turn my head toward the window and smile. I’m okay. After a moment, I say sincerely, “I panicked I’m really sorry I put you through this.”

Rainey’s voice is harsh as she pulls up in front of her house.

“Damn you, Gideon, you had me worried to death!”

I stare straight ahead. I have already apologized once, and I’m getting a little tired of being cussed out. Sure, I overreacted; most people would if they thought the plug was about to be pulled on them. I’m sorry I ruined her beauty sleep, but supposedly that’s what friends are for.

“I’ll call you to morrow,” I say and open the door to get out.

She shakes her head angrily and turns off the lights and motor.

“I can’t wait,” she says as she gets out of the car and stalks into her house.

I drive home, whistling, thrilled I don’t face surgery to morrow. What is her problem? She is the one who wanted to be friends. I turn onto my street. What am I supposed to do wait until I’m seventy for her to decide I’m good enough for her? I yawn until I can’t see. I wonder if she thinks that I am playing games with her. I have committed a lot of sins in the sexual wars. But that is not one of them. Not consciously anyway.

on direct examination Mrs. Gentry proves to be a real trouper. If we could stop the trial right now (not likely, since she is the first witness and hasn’t even been crossexamined), I am convinced Judge Fogarty, the probate judge hearing her case, would let her leave the nursing home. For an eighty-four-year-old woman still weakened by the trauma of a serious infection and gall-bladder surgery, Mrs. Gentry seems to have made a decent impression on Judge Fogarty. It is control over her property that is going to be the problem.

She has become confused about what she owns and how much income is being generated, but, as I will argue at the end of the trial, why shouldn’t she? Her son has completely cut her off from her money for the last six months. Fogarty, one of the smarter judges in Blackwell County, also has lived up to his reputation of treating everyone with respect. When she began to grow upset because of the difficulty of her memory, he told Mrs. Gentry to take her time and allowed me to lead her when it became obvious she was having problems.

As I turn to leave the podium to allow Ferd (“Nerd” of course, behind his back) Machen, the opposing attorney, to crossexamine Mrs. Gentry, I hear a sound like the buzzing of a power line. I have seen her twice and have never heard her hum this loud, but she is going at “Shine On, Harvest Moon” as if she were making her debut at Carnegie Hall. I know it will stop as soon as Ferd begins to crossexamine her, but he is going to stay glued to his seat until Fogarty makes him get up. I had reminded her for the second time right before the trial began not to hum, but, to my horror, she is becoming a one-woman band right in front of our eyes.