Fadeaway Joe by Hugh Lessig

Author:Hugh Lessig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

CHAPTER

33

THAT NIGHT, JOE wakes up in his own bed, fully clothed, on top of the covers. His pants and shirt are unmarked, and he’s still wearing shoes. He’s slept away the entire afternoon, assuming this is still Sunday and the year still the same. His phone confirms the date, so he hasn’t woken from a five-year coma. It’s seven thirty on the dot.

At some point this afternoon, Paula left to move her car. Then Joe closed his eyes. Later, someone helped him off the deck and led him upstairs, opening the door to his bedroom. His pillow hid a snub-nosed .44 revolver, but someone snatched it away before he could grab it. Joe clenches his eyes, trying to crystallize his memory through sheer force of will, but the images remain ghostly and beyond reach. For some reason it reminds him of how Kathy clicked through channels on the TV—boom, boom, boom—Joe telling her to slow down because everything flew by so fast. That was toward the end, when everything seemed hectic and unplanned. She did his banking. Washed his clothes.

Something slams against the house.

And again.

It sounds like the sliding glass door to his office.

Joe rolls out of bed and spends a few minutes in the bathroom. He studies his face in the mirror and closely examines his clothes for signs of rips, holes, grass stains, or blood. If he had a wandering episode sometime this afternoon—screaming down Seneca Lane like a wild banshee—he managed to keep himself clean. He stomps downstairs to announce himself and finds the bathroom door closed. He taps softly and puts his ear to the crack. Incoherent mumbling comes from inside.

Help me. Help me. Please, please help me.

Joe pushes open the door and sees Paula sitting on the toilet, her jeans at mid-thigh, listening to music on tiny earphones. Her arms wave, as if conducting an orchestra. She sings along, hopelessly out of tune. Joe watches from the doorway, then peeks around the corner into the spare bedroom. Paula has stacked several boxes in the corner. He looks to his office and sees a square of cardboard duct-taped over the whole in the sliding glass door.

“What the hell. Are you perving on me? Wait, do you know where you are?”

Paula has taken out her tiny earphones and is pulling up her jeans.

“I heard you calling for help. That’s why I opened the door. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It was lyrics to a song, jackass.”

“You don’t sing very well. It sounded like moaning cattle. Also, I heard something slamming against the wall. That’s why I came downstairs in the first place. I wasn’t spying. You can have this bathroom to yourself.”

“I patched the hole in the glass door and wanted to see if it would hold up, so I slammed it shut a few times. That was after I came back from moving my car into Phoebus and dragged your dementia-ridden ass off the deck because you were snoring loud enough to scare the squirrels. If I hadn’t done that, you would gone head over tin cups on the deck.

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