Faithless: Tales of Transgression Page 13

  Next, on his stomach. Sweating forehead pressed against a rolled towel. Temple felt chastened anew. One thing about the therapy unit, you were all body here. Attempting “push-ups” from the head: God, how clumsy! A rod of molten-white pain in his neck. He was dizzily aware of Gina’s slender hips and thighs in the white slacks close by his elbow. She murmured words of encouragement such as one might murmur to a child being potty-trained.

  Next on his back, panting. Winded like a horse. But not wanting to lose control entirely, Temple remarked he thought he’d seen Gina a few nights before?—“Out at the Mall, at my theater?”

  “ ‘Theater’?” This attracted her attention. Like a lovely silvery fish rising to the bait.

  “The Cinemapolis, at the Mall. I own it.”

  Gina was making detailed notations on her clipboard. Temple waited for her to respond, glance at him impressed, Hey: you’re somebody of importance after all. Most people did, even those who should know better. Developers and investors like Larry Temple. Certainly, most women. As if, being a vendor of movies, as another man might be a vendor of hardware, fencing, frozen pizza by the crate, Temple was associated with Hollywood glamour? Tabloid publicity, moneymaking on a grand scale? It’s true, Temple had once been excited by the prospect of “exhibiting important films locally”—and so had Isabelle, for maybe a season. But that was a decade ago. Twelve years. Now, Temple rarely dropped by the six-screen cinema complex and more rarely still troubled to see a film. If he drove out tonight he’d see teenagers waiting in long rowdy lines to see Crimson Tide, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Congo, Batman Forever. Fewer customers for Party Girl but attendance was OK. As for the Russian film, Academy-award-winning Burnt by the Sun—Temple had dropped by to see it last Friday for the 7:10 P.M. showing and there’d been thirteen people scattered about the plush low-slung one-hundred-fifty seats.

  Gina said, with a flicker of interest, unless it was merely a young person’s politeness to an elder, “You own the Cinemapolis, Mr. Temple?”

  “You could call me ‘Larry,’ actually.”

  Gina led Temple into the next exercise. Stretching a length of oddly fire-engine-red rubber diagonally across his body, shoulder to hip. It should have been easy except each time Temple moved, a jolt of pain illuminated his neck and upper spine like an X ray. He said, panting, “I—I’ve been doing a lot of flying lately. To L.A., and back. Sometimes business, sometimes personal. My former wife remarried and moved to Santa Monica.” He heard these words with a kind of horror, as if they were issuing from an artificial voice box. “Dr. Dunbar thought—I might’ve picked up an airborne virus, in a plane. A neck muscle was infected.”

  “That can occur.” Gina spoke solemnly. Occur seemed purposefully chosen, a clinician’s word, out of a textbook. She said, “Once the muscle spasms, if the tissue has been overstretched—it can take a while to heal.”

  Casually Temple asked, “How much of a while?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to say.”

  “Weeks?”—silence. “Months?”

  “Dr. Dunbar might have an estimate.”

  Temple had a quick sense of the position of a young woman therapist, an hourly wage-earner, in the hierarchy of the Saddle Hills Neck and Back Institute. Not for Gina to overstep her authority.

  “It wouldn’t be—years? Would it?”

  Gina said, in a lowered voice, though she and Temple were alone together, “Sometimes you see a person who can’t hold or move his head normally? The pain is so severe?”

  “Yes?”

  “It might be someone who let the pain go for so long, not wanting to see a doctor—it can be too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “To do much about the pain. You have to catch it in time.”

  Catch pain in time. There was a thought!

  “This poor man who’s my patient now,” Gina said, “—he let his back pain go for twenty years! Imagine. He thought it would go away by itself, he said. Now it never will.” Gina sighed. “I feel bad, there’s so little I can do for him.”

  Absentmindedly she dabbed at Temple’s flushed face where sweat ran in oily rivulets like tears.

  There was Temple floating on his island of pain. Dazzling-white sand. And him flat upon it, fearful of moving. In the arm-flung leg-flung posture of a child making a snow-angel. The turquoise water lapped close by but Temple couldn’t get to it. There was a shape beside him, warm and nudging. One of those teases: they can touch you, but you don’t dare touch in turn. Don’t dare look.

  Then suddenly he was walking somewhere. Approaching a door marked PAIN MANAGEMENT CENTER. Asleep yet sufficiently awake to register skepticism—there wasn’t any such center at the Institute! What did they take him for, a credulous asshole?

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  IT WASN’T TRUE that Gina had no last name. Right there on the bill her name was provided in full: Gina LaPorta.

  There were several listings for LaPorta in the telephone directory. G. LaPorta in Saddle Hills Junction. Sleepless, damned neck aching, Temple drove by night in his ghostly-glimmering white BMW past the address—a stucco-facade apartment building on Eldwood Avenue. He didn’t park but slow-cruised around the block. Deserted night streets of a part of town he’d known only as a onetime potential investor in some condominium properties. (He hadn’t invested, fortunately.) It wasn’t like Temple to behave like this, like a lovesick kid, weird behavior like his son Robbie back in prep school he’d never understood, or cared to understand—Robbie was Isabelle’s pet, let the mother deal with him. But he was curious about Gina. Just curious! Wondered if she was living with someone. The telephone directory wasn’t much help. He’d noticed a ring on her left hand, not a wedding band, nor a conventional engagement ring, turquoise-and-silver, but these days you couldn’t tell—she might be married. Might even have a kid. Physical life—what a mystery! More mysterious than money, even, Temple had lately discovered.

  First birds singing already?—only 4:40 A.M. There were cars parked at the curb on both sides of Eldwood Avenue and Temple saw, or believed he saw, Gina’s little canary-yellow Ford Escort among them—he’d found out from her, in a casual exchange, what kind of car she drove and he’d checked it out in the Institute parking lot, at the rear. Economy car, compact and cute. And Temple’s regal white BMW easing past, the motor near-soundless. Temple finished the lukewarm can of Molson’s he’d been gripping between his knees as he drove. Something melancholy about night ending before you were ready. Always a melancholy tinge to the eastern sky when you’ve been awake with your solitary thoughts all night. Cruising the block, circling just one more time.

  “HAVE YOU BEEN DOING your exercises, Mr. Temple?”

  “More or less, yes.”

  “Has the pain lessened?”

  “Definitely.”

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. If Temple didn’t move abruptly, or crane his neck forward as, in conversation with shorter people, especially attractive women, he had a natural tendency to do, he scarcely knew the pain was there. Though, like a dial tone radiating up into his head too, it was perpetually there. Too exuberantly he said, “I’m a thousand percent improved, Gina, thanks to you.”

  Gina blinked at him, startled. Her face colored in faint, uneven patches, like sunburn.

  “Well—maybe just eight hundred percent,” Temple said wryly, rubbing his neck.

  Before coming to the Clinic, Temple had wandered about the Institute building. On the mezzanine floor he’d discovered a door marked SPORTS MEDICINE CENTER and, at the end of a corridor, another door marked PAIN MANAGEMENT CENTER. So it was real! He’d invented what was merely real.

  Each time Temple stepped into the Physical Therapy Clinic its dimensions became just perceptibly smaller, friendlier. The first visit, he’d been confused by the mirrors that lined most of the walls and suggested an infinity of gleaming nightmare-machines and hapless anonymous people. But there were in fact just twenty-five machines, sleek stainless steel and black; there were six large mats on the
polished tile floor, kept spotlessly clean. There were nine tables in the open clinic—more precisely, as Gina called them, plinths. There were racks of dumbbells, plastic yellow and blue balls of varying sizes. There was the shimmering aqua pool beyond the glass partition Temple looked at with longing. But Dunbar hadn’t prescribed any sort of swimming therapy for him, yet.

  Of course, Temple was beginning to recognize certain of his fellow patients, and guessed they were beginning to recognize him. No names here at the Clinic, just faces. And symptoms. It seemed to Temple he’d been in therapy for weeks, months! In fact, it was only Monday morning of his second week.

  At the reception desk he’d glanced anxiously about, not seeing Gina at first. Then he saw her, doing paperwork at a desk; she looked up and smiled and his heart lifted. A ceramic barrette in her thick hair this morning and the turquoise ring prominent on her finger.

  Temple’s therapy began with the usual stretching and massage. Temple lay flat on the padded table—plinth—which he found almost comfortable now. He said, “The secret of happiness I think is to simplify your life, you know? My life has become simplified in recent years. When you’re married and things are off-kilter life can be—well, complex.” A pause. It was as if Temple’s voice issued from his throat of its own capricious volition. “You’re engaged, Gina?”

  “Engaged? No.”

  “That ring.”

  “It isn’t an engagement ring. Just a ring.” Gina laughed sharply as if Temple had pushed too far. She retreated to the other side of the plinth. “Now sit up, Mr. Temple, please. We’ll do neck rotation, three sets of ten.” Neck rotation! When Temple flinched at the pain, Gina said, reprovingly, “This time rotate in the direction of the pain. Into the pain. It should centralize, or decrease. Try.” He tried. He didn’t want to disappoint her. His face was flushed like a tomato about to burst. He said, suddenly, “You’ve helped me so much, Gina. You’ve given me hope.”

  Gina murmured, embarrassed, “Well.”

  Again, on his back. On his stomach, forehead pressed against a rolled towel. Through a haze of pain he heard himself say, unexpectedly, “My ex-wife is ex. I mean literally. She has died.” How strange that sounded, like an awkward translation: She has died. Temple amended, “I mean—she’s dead. Isabelle is dead now.”

  There was a blank, systolic moment. “I’m sorry,” Gina murmured.

  Temple said, “Thank you.” He was going to say I miss her but instead he said, as if it were a subtle, comic refutation of Gina’s solicitude, “The alimony payments ended years ago”—an awkward joke, if it was a joke. It fell upon Gina’s somber silence.

  The therapy continued: again, Temple was sitting up. It was crucial for him to maintain perfect posture yet, oddly, the pain seemed to be pushing him out of alignment. He repeated, tasting the words, “My wife is dead. I could have gone to the funeral but—I wouldn’t have felt welcome. Ex-wife, I mean. In fact, it’s a double-ex. Gone first, and then dead. Pancreatic cancer. It’s hard to believe—a woman like that—you’d have had to know her—I couldn’t believe when I first heard—next, she was in the hospital. I mean, by the time I heard, she was already in. I flew out to see her, but—” What the hell was he saying? Why? His manner was affable, sane, matter-of-fact as if he were discussing a business deal; crucial for the other party to know that things were under control. It was the first time he’d uttered the remarkable words My wife is dead.

  He was saying, with an air not of complaint but wonder, “My twenty-year-old son is a dropout from Stanford and he’s in a drug rehabilitation center in La Jolla—I think. He hasn’t spoken to me for five years except to ask for money.” Temple laughed, to show he wasn’t at all hurt, nor even much surprised.

  Again Gina murmured, “I’m sorry.” Not knowing what else to say, frowning and looking away from Temple, picking at a reddened bump on the underside of her chin.

  “I’m sorry,” Temple said. “But I don’t let it affect my outlook on life.”

  Next was the hot-pack collar. Tight around his neck as he could bear. The eerie sensation of floating: feeling pain drain from his neck and skull like needles being extracted from flesh. Temple began to speak expansively, like a levitating man. A crisis had been met, and overcome. “Gina, suppose a man was to come into the Clinic here, as your patient? And he came three times a week as his doctor prescribed, and he’s desperate to get well, and you got to like him—not just feel sorry for him, I mean, but like him—and he liked you; and he asked was it possible you might see him sometime, outside the Clinic? Where he wasn’t a patient, and you weren’t his therapist? What then?”

  Gina didn’t reply at first. She’d moved out of Temple’s line of vision and he had only a vague blurry sense of her. “Is this a made-up story, or what?” She laughed sharply.

  Temple said, “I’ll continue. This man, your hypothetical patient, actually he’d seen you, without knowing your name of course, before he became your patient. Once at the Mall, possibly, or downtown—and at a property in the Junction, on Eldwood Avenue—he’d been looking into, as an investment. Isolated, accidental times. He wasn’t looking for you, just happened to see you. And a few weeks or months later he develops a mysterious neck pain, and his doctor prescribes physical therapy, and he walks into the Clinic and sees you—just by chance. And he’s excited, and anxious. He wonders is a patient allowed to request a therapist, not knowing her name?—or is that against regulations, would it be perceived as unprofessional? So he doesn’t say anything; but he’s assigned to you, anyway! And he thinks—oh, God, he thinks—if—if only—” Temple paused, breathing quickly. He was concerned that too much adrenaline might be flooding his veins.

  Gina, out of sight, remained silent. Temple believed he could hear her quick shallow breathing.

  “Hey, it’s only a story,” he said. “You’re right, Gina—it’s made up.”

  Quietly Gina said, “Excuse me, Mr. Temple.”

  She left the room, shut the door. In a paroxysm of embarrassment, unless it was mortal shame, Temple lay motionless as a man fallen from a great height, in terror of testing whether he can in fact move. Gina had gone to get the Clinic manager! She’d gone to inform Dunbar!

  Steaming water coursed through the choking-tight collar. The hydrocollator, as it was called, $35 per session, was timed to run for fifteen minutes. Temple shut his eyes. He was doing the dead man’s float. Close about him was the dazzling-blinding white-sand island and the shimmering turquoise water and he seemed, in his misery, to be enveloped by each simultaneously. What a way to treat a man who loves you. Crazy for you and what did I ever get out of it?

  He must have slept. Didn’t hear the door open behind him, or close. There came Gina’s deft cool fingers against his neck, undoing the collar. She’d returned, as if nothing had happened? Therapy would continue, as if nothing had happened? “Forgive me?—I got a little carried away,” Temple said. Gina was helping him sit upright. He was dazed, dizzy. The heat of the collar had spread through his body. Now came neck side-bends, and more pain: retract the chin, lower head toward right shoulder slowly, hold one-two-three; relax, return, repeat to left shoulder. Three times, sets of ten. There came Gina’s steady hand on the side of his head, pressing gently downward, when Temple faltered. Zigzag bolts of pain shot upward into his skull, downward into his chest. Almost you’d expect jeering blipping sounds to accompany them, as in a kid’s video game. Gina cautioned, “Retract your chin farther, Mr. Temple. You can hurt yourself in this exercise if you don’t.”

  Temple was thinking: she’d gone away, and she’d considered his story. She was an intelligent young woman who could make the distinction between fiction and life, fable and fact. She could see that Temple was a worthy man. Obviously well-intentioned, decent. Possibly a troubled man but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. If she was a normally curious young woman she might have noted her patient’s address on the paperwork; might even have noted the BMW; made certain calculations. You wouldn’t blame a woman—inves
tments have to be worth the risk. Gina could foresee, surely, Temple’s kindness? His affection and desperation in about equal measure? She could foresee—but Temple’s vision began to blur, as in a dream rising abruptly to daylight, about to go out.

  Temple lay another time on his back, winded. Gina resumed her position behind him, massaging his neck and upper shoulder muscles that were knotty and gnarled as aged tree roots. He shivered with pain he hoped she wouldn’t notice, he didn’t want to disappoint her. Hesitantly he opened his eyes and there was Gina’s flushed face upside-down, above him. Just-perceptible strain lines at her eyes, her pursed mouth. Skin heated with emotion and she’d picked the tiny bump on the underside of her chin to bleeding. Maybe she wasn’t so young as he’d thought? Thirty? Or more? He smiled happily, and it seemed to him that Gina smiled—anyway, almost. “Be serious, Mr. Temple,” she said severely, fingers digging into his flesh. “You’re in pain.”

  GUNLOVE

  The first? That’s easy. My mom’s Bauer semiautomatic snubbie, a .25-caliber “defense weapon” good for six rounds. It was made of stainless steel with a pretty ivory grip and a barrel so short—two inches!—it looked like a toy. When we moved to Connecticut after Dad left us, she carried it in her purse sometimes when she went out after dark, but we weren’t supposed to know about this. She did have a homeowner’s handgun permit. She kept the snubbie in the drawer of her bedside table in case of intruders. “Mom is really worried Dad’s gonna break in and strangle her or something,” my brother used to say. Whether this was truthful or to make me feel bad, I can’t say. When we asked Mom who gave her the gun (we weren’t supposed to touch it but we could sometimes look at it resting in the palm of Mom’s hand) she laughed and said, “Who’d you think? Your dad.” In fact, my brother said, it was a private detective who sold it to her, or gave it to her. Those years, Mom was a woman men liked to give presents to, especially men who were new on the scene.