Free Another Broken Wizard by Colin Dodds Page B

Janine.
    “There are some new girls at club. There are always new people in the winter. But by summer, we usually go back down to the normal number. Some of the new girls look good,” Jeff said.
“Maybe you should trade up,” Emily said, smirking.
“They just look good on the outside,” Jeff said.
“That’s why they keep the insides on the inside. I never heard of a sexy pair of lungs,” I said.
    “Or a sexy liver. Can you imagine? ‘Barb has a real knockout pair of kidneys on her.’ And ‘I could watch her spleen all day,’” Jeff laughed, free for a moment from the discomfort and suspicion that always showed too clearly in his face. And for a moment, I had my friend back.
     
     
    16.
     
     
    I dropped off Jeff and Emily and called Dad. He said he’d meet me at the rental car place at the airport in an hour. At Logan, I dropped off the gold rental car and complained to the rental car clerk about the broken radio. She gave me a break on the price. I found Dad’s SUV and we drove back to the Fountainhead.
    Whizzing down the Mass Pike, I closed my eyes and resumed an old prayer that I’d develop some consuming obsession, learn a foreign language, become an expert on Buddhism or the War of 1812, just about anything that would fill the empty days of Dad’s convalescence. Once we got to the apartment, Dad called and put me on his auto insurance.
    “That was more painful than the surgery will probably be. If you crash this one, I’ll revise my will and give it all to charity,” he said after he put down the receiver.
    “Dad, that’s a hell of a way to talk to the guy who’s going to be in charge of your meds.”
    He laughed. I laughed. After spending most of our first two decades together somewhere between suspicion and hostility, the present situation was funny. Nothing was forgotten, some of it was forgiven, and we were in this mess together.
“Seriously though, we let you wreck two cars. You’re over your limit already.”
“I admit, one I did crash. But the engine seized on the other one. That wasn’t me.”
“Because you did some crazy shit with it and tore open the oil pan.”
    “Mom might have done that, or the oil pan might have just been faulty. I’m just saying you can’t prove that I did anything, and we will never know.”
    I knew. I ripped it open driving in the Shrewsbury gravel pits with Jeff.
    From there, the night became less fun. Dad showed me where he kept his will, his long-term-care insurance papers, his living will, his prescriptions, his PIN numbers and the keys to his storage locker. A feeling of terrible acceleration—that it was all happening too fast—churned my insides. We sat on the couch and watched the news, then got a pay-per-view movie. The movie was a slight variation on the man-who-can-beat-up-all-other-men genre. A very slight variation. But the bad guys got theirs, and got it in a satisfying way. Dad got up and tossed me the remote.
“You tired? Why are you going to bed so early?”
“It’s going to take me a while to get to sleep. I figure I’d better start early.”
“Are you scared?”
    “I mean, Jesus, people die during facelifts and tummy tucks. This is open heart surgery. I’m not exactly afraid, but I can tell that my thoughts are going to go around and around for a while.”
    “But you said this place does this surgery all the time,” I said, looking for some words to slow the acceleration.
    “I know. It’s routine. Just relax. It’ll be fine. I’m going to get some sleep.”
    Dad looked me in the eyes, nodded and went to his bedroom. I was twenty-nine and old enough to know what he was doing just then. He was being the man in the situation. I don’t know how he slept or if he slept. I only got two or three hours myself.
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Part Two—The King Philip Memorial Wing
     
     
    If Worcester folks from either 1848 or 1898—or