Free Lowboy by John Wray

phrase something that your son repeated later?”
    She shook her head. “I got up to turn off the music but I could barely keep my balance. I couldn’t seem to make my eyes stay open. I’d shut them, open them just enough to see, then take a step and let them shut again. I couldn’t imagine what would happen when the music finally stopped. Richard scared me almost more than Will did, I remember: he seemed totally out of control. I had to remind myself that he was eighty-four.”
    She was surprised at how patient he was when she fell silentagain: it obviously cost him effort not to press her. Finally he coughed into his fist. “Please go on, Miss Heller.”
    “I will, Detective. If you could give me just a minute—”
    “Of course I can. Would you like a drink of water? Would you like to have a smoke?”
    She stood up from the stool as he said this, nodding reasonably, but sat down again right away. “What I’d like is to get this over with.”
    How eager I am to make the right impression, she thought, feeling her face settle into her most childish smile. He must be wondering what the hell I’m smiling at. She took a handkerchief from her coat and held it up to her mouth, for no other reason than to hide her face behind it.
    “We can take another break if you need to, Miss Heller. Do you want to take another break?”
    He talks like an anchorman, she found herself thinking. Not a trace of an accent. His parents must be educated people.
    “There’s not much more to tell, Detective. I’m okay.”
    “All right, then. Let’s get this finished, shall we?”
    She put the handkerchief away and nodded.
    “What happened when you turned the music off?”
    “The telephone started ringing in the kitchen: someone calling to complain about the noise.” The stool groaned under her as she sat forward. “Richard looked at me for the first time since I’d come into the room, opened his mouth to say something, then went out to get the phone without a word. Will was still lying curled up on the floor. I whispered to him that I knew how he was feeling, that I knew he was in pain, though of course I knew no such thing. How could I have had a clue what he was feeling? ‘We’ll get help for you, Will,’ I said. ‘We’ll get you a doctor.’ He looked at me as though I was talking in a made-up language. After a while he said, ‘What’s different, Violet?’”
    “What did you say to that?”
    “I told him the truth: that I thought he was sick. ‘Maybe, Violet,’ he said. ‘That might possibly be true.’ He was still on the floor, stillrocking himself backwards and forwards. I was overjoyed to hear him making sense. I thanked luck and chance and providence and everything else I could think of. I might even have given thanks for Richard. Then Will sat up and said, ‘You’re a piece of old bread, Violet. A piece of dead music.’”
    She watched him scrawling dutifully in his notepad. She hadn’t realized she’d stopped until he raised his eyes.
    “What then?”
    “That was too much somehow, that sudden disappointment. I took hold of him by the shirt and begged him to tell me what was happening. He bit his lip for a few seconds—I remember that clearly—and looked at me as if I was in his way. ‘Nothing’s happening, Violet,’ he said. ‘Now get the fuck out of here before I kill you.’ Then he rolled over on his side and went to sleep.”
    She sat for a time with her head tipped to one side, not looking at anything. The noises from the hallway came and went. “That’s it,” she said at last. “That’s all of it.”
    “All right.” He sat back heavily in his chair. “Thank you, Miss Heller.”
    She leaned toward him stiffly and laughed for no reason and watched him consider her story. It was a relief to watch him. Nothing she’d said had taken him aback or gratified him in secret, the way some of Will’s doctors had been gratified, or disgusted him, the way everyone else she knew had been