Bear is Broken by Lachlan Smith

Author:Lachlan Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2013-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

We went to a bar on El Camino Real called Antonio’s, where you can eat all the peanuts you want and throw the shells on the floor. We talked about Teddy, and Christine cried a little. I didn’t, but I found myself telling her about the DA’s investigation of him.

I thought it would make me feel better to tell someone. But it only made me feel worse.

I kept saying it was time for me to drive her home, and she kept ordering more rum and cokes. She was a big girl in every sense of the word; if I didn’t try to stop her, I didn’t try to keep up with her, either. I thought she was probably working around to saying what she really wanted to say; I kept waiting for her to come clean and tell me the real story about the videos, her professor, and Teddy.

Around midnight she went to the ladies’ room, and when she came out the hair at her brow was damp. She announced she was ready to go, and I drove her home. As I let her off in front of her dorm she leaned across the seat and kissed me sloppily. A kiss was okay. I didn’t object to a kiss.

I wrote down her number and drove back to the city, circled for half an hour until I found a parking place for the Rabbit, and climbed glue-eyed up to my apartment, where I fell gratefully onto my mattress without getting undressed.

I wish I could say that I slept like a baby until noon. I can’t. Almost as soon as I closed my eyes I was dreaming of Christine bare-chested in my arms, the clean smell of her in my nose, the warm touch of skin on skin. I kept waking and finding myself alone, twisted up sweating in the covers, my face deep in the pillow. I would fight to stay awake, trying to claw my way back to reality, but again and again I slipped back under the surface, and each time she was there waiting for me, ready to pick up where we’d left off.

In the morning I rose as cottony and frustrated as if I’d really spent all night failing to make love.

I drank a cup of coffee and showered, then found the Rabbit and drove to the hospital. Jeanie was gone, thankfully, but the room was filled with signs of her presence: an old cup of coffee, a cardigan sweater, a fat paperback spread facedown on the floor.

As I came in, my phone rang in my pocket: one of my biking buddies, a law school classmate, no doubt calling to see if I wanted to ride with him. I switched off the phone and pocketed it.

The bandages still covered the upper half of Teddy’s face. I found myself longing for a sight of his eyes, fighting an urge to peel back the tape. Still his chest rose and fell, rose and fell with the sighing of the machine.

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