Quicksand Pt. 05

Part 5

I was roused by the clench of a blood pressure cuff. I took a silent inventory of my various pains. My head throbbed. A dull ache radiated below my neck and my entire body felt battered and bruised. I attempted to swallow some saliva and winced at the searing throes of my raw throat. The nurse noticed I was awake.

"Hello there," she chirped and flashed a penlight into my eyes. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Evan?"

"No, that's not it. Can you remember your name?."

"Evan?" I croaked. "How is he?"

"Oh, you're asking about the other man who was attacked. He's fine. He's tried to see you several times. Now can you tell me your name?"

"Alan... Eberson."

"And can you tell me where you are, Alan?"

My voice was a gravely rasp. "It feels like hell."

The nurse laughed at that. "I bet it does. You're in Hillcrest Hospital, Alan. You've been here three days but you're going to be fine. Your poor body has been through a lot. Do you remember how you got here?"

I didn't at first. It took me a moment to recall. "That psycho broke in. He slashed Evan with a knife."

"That's right, Alan. And do you remember what happened next?"

I didn't. Not at first. My mind tried to recall, but the events it sought were deep in an inky black place. I sensed them. I could feel them in the darkness, just out of view, lurking. A foreboding made my breathing quiver, my pulse pound.

I felt myself hurtling, swooping toward my prey. Then I was jolted in a flash of memory, of crashing onto him, my naked body enveloping him like talons, the force shattering my bones. Then tumbling and crashing again. My brain colliding with the interior of my skull.

A distant voice was crying in alarm: "You're safe now, Alan. Relax. Just relax. You're in the hospital and safe."

Then the memory of choking, of grappling with death for one gulp of sweet air. Terror. The swirling descent of demise. Quaking in horror, I saw my life's last moment loom.

A soothing voice, "You're safe, Alan." A panicked holler, "I need help in here now! Stat!"

I saw my hand. A blade. A beastly form. I saw gore, the evisceration of flesh and bone and heart. I saw myself as the dreaded angel of death. I felt the searing power of annihilation, of destroying a mortal soul. I shook so hard all my hurting places shattered anew.

Then a needle prick and I was engulfed by numbness and sleep.

The surgeons redid the work of splinting my collarbone with screws and rods. The doctors kept me sedated. The nurses tended to my needs. The therapists revived me patiently without a repeat of my panic. It takes a village. I emerged into a dull, sterile world of beeping monitors and IV tubes.

The nurses had been thoughtful enough to save the newspapers. The reports told the kind of story that sold failing papers and the local media milked it for every blotch of lurid ink. The narrative they spun began with the gangland slaying of Lucas in front of a seedy strip joint. The plot was propelled by extortion, harbored quarry, muscled threats, torched vehicles. It ended with the bloody deaths of two dangerous and demented criminals. Evan was portrayed as the hapless victim of sexual abuse and blackmail. The cops were painted as bumbling and inept. I came off as the valiant hero that slayed the villain with his own sword. Barehanded, so to speak.

The final part was blessedly obscure. The fact that I was butt naked during the assault had escaped the media's attention. There was not the slightest suggestion that I was anything but chaste and heroic in the harboring of Evan. I knew I had Hardesty to thank for that omission. I owed him for that.

Regardless, the newspaper accounts filled in the gaps of my understanding. It seems the cops had brought in the Feds and were building a narcotics case against the two thugs. A couple of rookie DEA agents had been tasked with surveillance and were tailing the SUV when the sociopath spotted them in his rearview mirror. In a characteristic display of stupidity, he floored the gas pedal. The agent made a rookie mistake and followed in hot pursuit.

The high-speed chase careened into a residential area. When the sociopath took a shortcut across a stately manicured lawn, the psycho bailed out and did a tuck and roll for cover. Unseen by the lagging pursuit, he escaped on foot.

By then, half the cop cars in town had joined the chase, racing down thoroughfares and weaving through startled traffic. The sociopath ran a red light and crashed into a pick-up truck, sending two blameless bystanders to the hospital. The collision allowed the cops to surround the thug's smashed SUV. A stand-off in a major intersection ensued. It ended the only way it could. The sociopath came out guns a-blazing and was cut down in a pool of blood that the media portrayed as a fitting bookend to the assassination of Lucas.

Meanwhile, the psycho had carjacked a vehicle that he drove to the vicinity of the golf course. He calmly traversed the fairways and furtively scaled the roof of my garage then entered my condo undetected through a second story window. That part was my bad. When my security system was installed, they recommended sensors on the second floor, but I figured no one would break in there. Penny wise, pound foolish as they say.

Evan had escaped the attack out the back door and was rescued by a foursome on the thirteenth fairway. One of them was a doctor who staunched his bleeding. Another called 911. The golfers were courteous enough to let the next foursome play through.

I finished the newspaper accounts and lay with them splayed across the hospital bed, silently quaking and staring out the window. A faint knock at my open door roused me. Evan stood there smiling. He whispered, "Hi."

A wave of joy and relief swept over me as he came to the bedside and briefly took my hand. The last I had seen him, he was fleeing the Psycho, slashed and bleeding. Now we just grinned stupidly at one another feeling strangely embarrassed and uncertain what to say. Finally, Evan scanned the open newspaper and offered, "Well, that was a lot."

I laughed with a wince of pain. "Things got gnarly pretty fast. How are you?"

"How am I?" he asked incredulously. His hands did a comic chronicling of his body, "Thirty-seven stitches to a superficial wound and I'm fine. You, on the other hand..."

Evan started counting on his fingers the insults to my being "... Shattered clavicle--which I learned is the collarbone--cracked ulna--that's your left forearm--and, finally, a worrisome fracture of your skull. They had to induce a coma to let the swelling in your brain subside and intubate your throat to prevent you from being strangled by your swollen esophagus. But me? I'm doing pretty good."

"Well, that's all that matters."

We laughed again, then Evan's eyes began to redden and well with tears. "I'm so sorry I ran. I feel so ashamed."

"Don't be. He couldn't have known you were there. He had come to kill me. If he hadn't chased after you, I wouldn't have had a chance. You did the right thing."

"But then you..."

"I went psycho on the psycho. I should have just grabbed my gun. You're not responsible for my machismo."

Evan nodded but clearly was not convinced. He pulled a chair close.

"I took some liberties during your hiatus. I had your front door repaired from where the cops broke in and had security sensors installed on all your windows."

"In retrospect, a very prudent move."

"Yes. And I had a company that does crime scene cleaning come in. They removed a lot of carpeting both upstairs and down. Believe me, it was ruined. Biohazardous waste."

"Thanks for that. Send me the bills."

"Dude, no. It's the least I can do."

"Okay," I acquiesced and paused, "but you should know I think I'm gonna sell the place."

"I'm surprised you're not burning it down."

"Arson is against the law and I wouldn't want Detective Hardesty on my ass."

Evan chuckled. "You could make a clean getaway from that dude on a Vespa with a flat tire. So, what are you going to do."

"Just stay in one of those business suite hotels till I figure things out."

"Sounds like a plan. If you'd like, I could pack up the shit you'll need."

"I'd appreciate that."

"No problem."

"And Evan..."

"Uh-oh, here it comes."

"You and I need to be careful about quicksand. We both need time."

"You're right."

We chatted a few minutes more, mostly about Lucy. As he was leaving, I stopped him at the door. "One last favor? Get rid of that empty picture frame, will you?"

The condo sold surprisingly fast and well above my asking price due its notorious panache. My colleagues and clients at the trust company welcomed me back enthusiastically. There was an edge to those relationships now, as if they were dealing with the mild-mannered alter-ego of an inscrutable superhero.

I bought a tidy little Craftsman house in the Maple Ridge district of town just two blocks from the River Park. That gave me access to thirty miles of jogging paths. Sooner than my doctor counseled, I was back to running for time.

Gradually I re-entered my old social circle. It was clumsy at first. Jenny was absent from those events, of course, and the invitations always included a plus one. It was made apparent that the invitation was for a male or female companion. I deflected speculation by saying my only current relationship was with my neighbor's cat, Lucy.

I passed Jenny several times on the jogging paths. She was always running with the same guy. We merely acknowledged each other on several occasions before she finally stopped and let her companion run ahead. Her engagement ring was shiny and new.

"When's the date?"

"Next month. He got me knocked up so it seemed the right thing to do."

She wasn't showing so I would never have guessed. Honestly, she looked great. "Wow!" I said with startled sincerity. "Congratulations on both accounts."

"Thanks. He really is the guy for me."

I thought, The right guy for you? Hah, he can't be half the... Like a zen master, I noticed my reflexive vanity and watched it vanish into the fog of my former self.

"That's great. I'm so glad for you."

"I read what happened. I was so worried about you, but I didn't know what to say."

"Well, thanks for your concern. I wouldn't have known what to say either."

We kicked dirt for a second before she pointed down the trail and said, "I better catch up."

"Sure. It's good to see you and best wishes." We parted ways running fast to outpace our feelings.

I was at work when I got a call from Evan inviting me over for dinner. So many times, I had thought of calling him. Part of me missed him intensely. Honestly, he was one of the most accessible and engaging people I had ever met. After all, he had gotten me to emerge from my cloister of penitent silence. But it was exactly that quality that made me reticent. Only with Jenny had I been truly open and willing to allow entree to my interior self. Proximity combined with mortal peril had provided Evan entry, and I was suspicious of that special dispensation. It was as if Evan traveled on a forged passport, that I knowingly admitted him precisely because of his refugee status, that I could never accept him as a native-born confidant.

On the other hand, he was disarmingly charming and genuine. I guess my years of isolation had rendered me so cynical that the best of his qualities raised my deepest concerns. That and the fear that if I ever let him in that, like he was with Lucas, I would be incapable of ushering him out.

On the other hand, I told myself flippantly, there was Lucy. I needed myself a Lucy Fur fix.

Evan saw me drive up and, when I didn't ring the doorbell, he came looking. He found me in the middle of his tiny front lawn. He had that guileless smile as he sauntered up and gave me a brief yet deep hug.

"Surveying the battlefield?" he teased.

"Exactly," I admitted blithely. I pointed to the oak tree. "That was were the sociopath was surveilling your condo. And that was where we faced off in the driveway. Dude, my heart was pounding red-hot that day. We were one wrong word from ending it right then and there."

As if sharing an inside joke, our laughter was knowingly intimate. "Dude, you were so amped when you came in," Evan recalled, "and wouldn't even tell me what happened. All you would talk about was food"

His face was familiar and comforting. My eyes dwelt on his, rediscovering the tiny flecks of gold amid the green. "It's really good to see you, Evan."I pulled him into a deeper hug. As we started inside, I asked "How are the new neighbors?"

Evan made a histrionic grimace. "I'm a curiosity to them, like some roadside attraction. DinosaurLand or the world's largest ball of twine."

We drank beer and grilled kabobs on the patio. Lucy was peevish that we were outside but she ventured forth, slightly awed by the real world and incredulous at the sight of birds without intervening glass. It was a mild October evening and the scattered oak trees flared with autumnal colors. Neither of us seemed altered by the horror we had endured though I'm sure, like me, Evan vented his trauma to his therapist every week.

The sun was setting when Evan broached, "Do you ever wonder what would have happened next?"

"If the psycho hadn't broken in when he did?"

"Yeah."

"I have. Many times." I uttered a sigh resonant with both sweetness and dread. "You are a wonderful friend and lover. I think we would have sunk blissfully into a terrible mistake."

"Are you sure it would have been a mistake?"

"Under those circumstances? Yes. Speaking for myself, I'm afraid it would always have felt counterfeit. Like it was printed on cheap paper."

He offered a wry chuckle. "You truly are the bard of money managers."

I smiled at that. "It was a beautiful moment that we both needed. But, under those circumstances, it would have ruined us to pursue or ruined us to undo."

We sat quietly in the fading daylight as the evening chill descended. Evan began gathering plates. "You're right, of course. We were knee-deep in quicksand. But I would have gladly sunk out of sight with you."

"I know."

We carried the dishes to the sink. While Evan loaded the dishwasher, I perused his music playlist. "You've got Nina Simone?"

"I don't like to cry alone."

As her voice swept the still traces of the evening, I pressed myself to Evan's back and circled his chest with my arms. We began to sway to the languorous tones.

"You made me leave my happy home,

You took my love and now you're gone,

Since I fell for you."

Throughout the song, my lips danced sensuously across his nape. When it was over, I took his hand and led him to the couch.

Later, as I pressed my loving deeper and deeper within him, seeking the depth of his soul, and as my eyes burned into his, and while our passion soared and crested, I whimpered, "I want to say it."

Evan gasped a lusty giggle. "I know. Kudos to you, too."