The East End by Jason Allen

Author:Jason Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2019-02-27T20:06:16+00:00

SEVENTEEN

“I had a rather embarrassing accident,” Leo said, gazing down at the jagged pieces of the mug and the spilled coffee steaming on the floor, painfully self-conscious that Gina had just run to his aid and now strained under his weight to steady him.

Her shoulder beneath his armpit kept him propped up long enough for the treble in his eardrums to dissipate and the vertigo to fade, though the nightmare that had plagued him all morning returned like water through a breaching dam, a torturous montage of images—Henry in the pool, his own desperate thrusts to resuscitate him, that haunting look of surprise before he’d closed his bulging eyes, then pulling him across the lawn, farther and farther from the house, deeper inside the darkness below the faraway pine boughs, and finally dropping his wrapped body in the woods, apologizing as he staggered around and blindly covered him with needles. Despite his drunkenness at the time, he remembered it all too vividly, the haunting series of hours that he knew no amount of drinking would ever allow him to forget.

Gina picked up the bag of ice and bloody cloth from the floor, looked at him for a moment and then gently pulled his head forward.

“My God,” she said, sounding horrified, “what happened?”

“I decided to make the drive out late last night,” he said, easing away from her to lean against the door jamb. “It’s almost too stupid to say out loud. I decided to have a dip in the pool, and when I stepped out I slipped on the top step and hit my head hard enough that I bled a bit. Nothing to worry about, though.”

“Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

“I’ve been icing it for a while now and the swelling seems to be going down. I’ll be all right after getting some rest.”

Gina eyed him the way his mother used to when he was a boy and he’d done something reckless or just plain dumb. That unblinking stare. The unspoken disappointment. He hadn’t showered yet, either, which only occurred to him when she brought the back of her hand to her nose. “Bend over again,” she said. “Let me get a better look at it.”

Leo complied, glad he’d thought to explain away any blood beside the pool, but feeling less confident in his cover story with each passing second. All the goddamned cocaine still so present in his bloodstream kept his pulse pumping at an uncomfortable pace. The paranoia inescapable. His jaw clenched as she placed her fingers on his scalp and inspected the wound. The buzz from the booze had mostly worn off, enough for the hangover to take hold, anyway, which included a god-awful headache that he imagined would have been there head wound or not, something akin to diamond-tipped daggers slowly puncturing his brain through the temples.

Gina let go and faced him. She placed a hand on his cheek and forced him to look at her, speaking as though she were in fact his mother and he an especially dimwitted child.

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