Free Touch (1987) by Elmore Leonard Page A

want me to ask you, how he did it?"
    "No, it was fake," Lynn said. "At least I think most of it was. I'm not sure."
    It was a nice expression--not amused, but almost a smile--interested and open, glad to be talking to her. Could that be?
    "Bobby might've healed some of them. You think it's possible?"
    "Why not?" Juvenal said.
    "Do you heal people?"
    "I guess so."
    "How do you do it?"
    "I don't know. I mean it's not something I can explain."
    "Wow," Lynn said, "this is weird, you know it? You're actually telling me--like if I had something wrong with me, a disease or something, you could cure it? Or do you say heal it?"
    Juvenal hesitated, though he continued to stare at her--nice brown eyes and those long lashes--
    "Is there something you're worried about?"
    "Well, I'm not sure," Lynn said. "I guess I'm worried, yes; but I don't know if I should be or not."
    He reached across the corner of the desk, brushed her right shoulder, the scooped neck of the loose-fitting Bob Marley shirt, and put his hand on her breast.
    She couldn't believe it, feeling his hand on her, the gentle pressure of his fingers, through the bleached cotton, as they stared at each other. She thought of pulling back, with some kind of horrified expression, but realized the time to do that instinctively had already passed.
    Juvenal said, "You were going to tell me you have a lump, maybe a tumor, and if it's malignant would I do something." His hand came away. "Was it to test me or shock me?"
    Lynn hesitated. "I don't know. Maybe both."
    "If you're worried," Juvenal said, "take my word, your breasts are okay."
    Now, instinctively, she almost said, Just okay? But in her mind it sounded dumb instead of funny; typing herself with a smartass comeback; or he might even think she was on the make. She wasn't at all, and knew he wasn't. And yet the touch hadn't been clinical either. He wasn't a doctor, he wasn't a lover--what was he?
    "I don't know," Lynn said. "This's a new one I'll have to figure out."
    "Figure what out?" Juvenal said.
    "I plan something, it looks simple, to see if you're real or not. Then I get more confused than I was before."
    "Don't try so hard," Juvenal said. He got up from the desk--striped shirt and faded jeans, white sneakers, the drunk counselor. "I'll be back."
    "Where're you going?"
    "I think it's Arnold. He's been having a bad time." Juvenal left.
    To get away from her? Lynn hadn't heard a sound. She remembered Arnold, though, a man with a nose like a walnut, broken blood vessels in his face, his eyes barely open--she remembered him this morning groping his way into the lab, moving stiffly in sagging wet pajama pants, and the nurse calling out, "Somebody take care of Arnold!"
    Lynn looked at the phone on the desk. Earlier in the evening, searching for Juvenal, she had tried the different counselors' offices, found them all locked. Now a phone was sitting within reach. Make a quick call---
    She heard the sound then from down the hall, a scream, or someone calling out, and thought of Juvenal again, curious, wondering about him, then anxious.
    Lynn stepped out of the office and followed the sound down the dimly lighted hall, a man's voice wailing in agony, or fright. There was a worn-out easy chair in the hall where, they had told her, residents sat in shifts throughout the night on "heavy duty," to help anyone in detox who might begin hallucinating. But tonight Juvenal had been alone on the floor . . .
    Juvenal standing next to Arnold's bed now--she could see him through the open doorway, light from the hall across the chenille cover--Arnold sitting up, his back pressed against the headboard, screaming, holding himself, trying to hide inside himself.
    Juvenal moved. Past Juvenal's arm she saw Arnold's face, the man's eyes stretched open, his chin glistening with saliva. He was saying something, though she wasn't sure, that sounded like, "Don't don't don't--don't let it don't let it--" Sobbing, convulsing, as he cried out . . . then stopped