Chapter 11

We talked until about 2:00 a.m. but neither of us came up with much else useful that could be done. She suggested that I go see Brodine at some point, which seemed to be a good idea, but there probably wasn't going to be much he either would or could tell me that I didn't already know. And nothing else worth mentioning occurred to either of us.

So I went back to bed. I'd slept so long and hard I doubted I'd be able to do much more, but it was a good idea to get myself back on a normal waking/sleeping schedule. To my surprise I nodded off fairly soon and didn't wake until nearly 8:00.

The room had a coffee-maker, and I got it cranking while I brushed my teeth. Breakfast was next on the agenda, and I again ordered room service. While I was waiting I called the office and gave them a song and dance about a possible case of the chicken pox. OK, it was a little far-fetched, but nobody argued and it was agreed that for the rest of the week at least I'd work "at home." I told them to contact me on my cell if and as they needed. I thought to glance at the cell battery indicator and it was showing a little low; I plugged in the charger and let it suck up some juice for a while.

As soon as I'd finished eating I called the hospital again and went through the same rigmarole, with about the same uninformative results. Susan, or anyhow her body, was still "resting comfortably," which I guessed was sort of reassuring. Her condition was still listed as critical, but the fact that a day and a half had passed without any new crisis was positive. Her continued unconsciousness might have concerned me, but the doc who'd talked to me had said she'd be in an induced sleep for several days, so it wasn't worrisome.

After getting the room-service tray out in the corridor where it joined last night's—no, they still hadn't picked up—I decided to spend the rest of the morning getting some work done. I set up the laptop on the small desk the hotel provided, connected to the wi-fi, logged in at the shop and downloaded a bunch of new code that was waiting for me. It was chock-a-block with typos—Carrie, who was the primary programmer on this job, was a notoriously sloppy keypuncher—but there seemed to be no major glitches. I kept going for a solid three hours and got it cleaned up.

Susan had been mostly quiet all morning. We'd done this a few times before, since she'd been just about living with me, and she'd always found herself something else to do, usually reading, while I'd worked. I had no idea what she was doing with herself now, given that reading was kind of out of the question, but presumably the same things she did when I slept. But after three straight hours of work I was ready for a break.

"Hey, sweetheart, you're still with me, right?" I asked.

"Right here," she replied. I felt a sudden rush of affection.

"I love you, you know that, huh?" I said.

"I love you too, Larry," she told me. Wow. I'd probably told her I loved her dozens times since we got going, but she'd reciprocated only infrequently; she'd more often equivocated. To hear her say it now gave me tingles.

"Say it again, honey," I begged.

"I love you. I really do. I had trouble saying it before because, well, you know..."

"Your little secret," I said.

"Not so little," she said sourly. "Larry, I don't know how you can just wipe it out of your mind like that—"

"Then," I interrupted her, gesturing with one hand. "Now." I turned the hand over. "Now's the only thing I'm interested in, it's what I have in front of me. Then is, well, it's way over there someplace." I waved away from me. "I'll be damned if I'm going to mess up my life for what used to be back when I didn't even know you. Hell, once upon a time this computer used to be things like, oh, metal ore and oil and sand and stuff like that. Does that mean I can't use it as a computer?"

She laughed, a little. "I guess not."

"So you used to be somebody different who did things I maybe don't like so much," I went on. "But you're not that now, any more than the computer's still its raw materials. Let the past bury its dead."

"Yes, but I was awful!" she exclaimed.

I gave that a moment's thought. "Were you really?" I asked. "You know, maybe you weren't near so bad as you think. Look, it was Ariel who cared enough about those kidnaped little girls to put herself out there for them, wasn't it? Not Susan then, still Ariel."

"Larry, that's nothing special!" she said. "I mean, they were children. Anybody would—"

"Oh, yeah?" I cut her off. "Anybody would what? You haven't read about the mothers who beat their kids, even kill them now and again? Their own kids, not somebody else's. You gave up your life and went into witness protection for kids you'd never even met, kids you wouldn't know if they bumped into you and bit you in the ass. I mean sure, you're not Ariel any more, but I think somewhere in Ariel were the roots of the Susan you became. Wipe the bad from your past off the board, but don't wipe the whole past away, I don't think Ariel was ever the, the..." I floundered, searching for words.

"I think 'dumb, nasty cunt' is what you're trying to say, Larry," she told me dryly.

"Jesus, Susan! That thar spade is a fuckin' shovel again. Lighten up, girl. Anyhow," I continued briskly, "what's done is done. The moving finger has writ and moved on, nor all your tears can wash out a word of it. Now let's us move on. Let me check the weather, has it got any better?" The morning had been a steady rain, I'd seen when I got up and known it would be cold as well; fall was well upon us, and dreary days in autumn are especially downheartening.

I peered out the window; still cloudy, but the rain was down to a bare drizzle. "Well, better, anyhow," I said. "Honey, housekeeping needs to do the room"—they'd knocked once already and I'd put them off—"and I need to get back to the hospital and see you for myself. These nurses aren't very communicative over the phone. And it'd also be nice to actually eyeball some guards there."