Louie was blinking away tears of laughter as he walked in. Apparently he found my little struggle humorous as he watched me secretly by the door. Not only was he laughing at me, but he’d been spying on me too.
I threw my shirt to the floor in an attempt to look angry, but I looked sullen instead. My little escapade wore me out. I sat down on the bed and waited for Louie to calm down.
Louie grabbed a mirror from the nightstand and tried to make me look into it. I knew what I would see, so I just covered my face with my hands and closed my eyes.
“It’s okay, I’ll buy you a nice hat.” With those words I buried my face further into my hands. “Well, it’s not THAT bad! But you’d be better off just to cut it all off.”
For a second there, I almost forgot that I was deaf. Because I had my face buried into my hands, I couldn’t have seen his lips move. I flopped back so that I was lying down and removed my hands from my eyes.
“Did you hear what I said?” With Louie towering over me like that, it was sort of intimidating. I realized what he was trying to do and caught myself before I answered verbally. He was checking if I was really deaf. For some reason, he must’ve still not trusted me.
“Well, all’s I said was I’ll buy ya a hat. Anyway, that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came here to ask if you are ready for an assignment. I had scheduled it for this week, but I can move it to next week if you don’t feel up to it.”
I scrambled to find my notebook and saw it lying on the floor. I picked it up and wrote, “I can do it” just so that I wouldn’t piss him off.
By the broad grin on his face and the twinkle in his eye, I could tell that I made his day. Then he decided to change the topic.
“Aren’t you curious about the incident in the park?” He asked, looking me squarely in the eye. I nodded my head yes slowly, because I wasn’t sure there was much to explain, besides where Nancy went and who rescued me.
He started to pace around the room, then stopped right in front of me. “I was so sure you’d be ready for work, but my advisors did their job and told me to “test” you, so to speak. We told Nancy to take you to the park and leave you there, hoping that you would come back. When you didn’t, we sent people to the park to spy on you. They were the smokers you probably saw.
Unfortunately, we discovered that there are more complications to your health. There’s the fact that you had a minor heart attack…” he paused when he saw the expression on my face, “it was only minor, something to do with imbalances in your essentials causing irregular heart beat. Ask Charlie, he knows all the big words. Anyway, that can be fixed with certain foods and Nancy will take care of that.
Also, your hip was completely swerved out of place. If you touch your hip, you can probably feel the cast.” I touched my hip gently and felt the hard cast. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t notice before! It felt like a giant diaper.
“I think I’ll leave you alone for now. I’ll come back in about two weeks to hand you your assignment. I figure that my people know I mean business if I handle it in person. Before I leave, do you have any entertainment requests?”
At that question I nodded my head eagerly. I had been waiting for him to ask that. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him smile. There was something odd about it and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I wouldn’t have remembered if it was a normal smile, so I took a mental note of this.
I ignored the smile and scribbled “NINETENDO” in large letters and circled it twice. When I handed him the paper, his absurd smile returned. I didn’t compute it because I thought it was his normal smile and because I tend to ignore things that are remotely off-base.
Two days after words I started receiving small gifts from Louie. One was a fishing hat. That was the second best present I received because I didn’t have to worry about people laughing at my bald head. I’d finally lost my remaining strands of hair to the chemotherapy. When I looked in the mirror, I wasn’t too devastated. I looked like AJ would in thirty years. He was already complaining about his receding hairline and he was only twenty-two.
Besides, losing the hair wasn’t so bad. Now no one had a chance in hell to recognize me. I was also starting to notice how my crinkled up when I smiled, just like Brian’s did. The lack of hair accented the bruises on my face, but other than that it was a plus. Being so optimistic suppressed my depression.
It took me two days to remember that I had been in possession of a basketball. When I remembered about it, I was too afraid to ask because they might decide to take away my stuff for being ignorant.
On the third day I received a Nintendo set and a surprise visit from Nancy. She was being nice to me again and even offered to play a game or two. That was when I decided to pop the question.
I took out a pen and my notebook and wrote, “Did I do something wrong?” and then waited for the reaction.
She took the paper and read it slowly. Then she twirled it around in her hands and started folding it. “I knew this would come. But don’t worry Nick, you’ll find out in time. Just enjoy this while you can. The stakes are just so high for everything we do.”
I didn’t understand then, of course, so I just bowed my head and pressed the buttons on the controller absently. I felt Nancy tap my shoulder and that was the only time I looked up.
“I love you, Nick, but sometimes I have a hard time expressing it. Some day I’ll tell you why. Just try to avoid me when I’m a bitch, okay?”
I nodded my head and smiled. It would be hard to tell when she was moody and when not. As hard as I tried, I could not phase my curiosity. How could some one come off so nice some days, then for most days act totally bitchy? I had no clue what was coming, but I would find out in time.
For the few days afterwards, all I did was play Nintendo with Nancy and sleep. That may sound kind of dull to you, but it wasn’t all that bad. I still went for my walks; even so I had become absolutely petrified of them. And the conversations I had with Nancy while we played Nintendo intrigued me. We were both conversationalists, and we could talk for hours about absolutely nothing. Well, I couldn’t really talk, but I wrote it all down well. I didn’t know it then, but she was becoming a big part of my life. I’m still not sure if I loved her, but if it wasn’t love it was pretty close. We never discussed that sort of thing with each other because we knew that it would destroy our “working relationship.” It didn’t really matter much in the end anyway.
One time we got to talking about music and artists. Nancy asked me how I knew so much and I just told her I’d worked in the business as a consultant. I don’t think she believed me, but she accepted it.
Then she dropped a bomb on me. It wasn’t her fault, I suppose, but I still wasn’t sure how to prepare myself.
“Do you know what happened to Nick Carter?” Her eyes blazed into mine and I felt my heart leap into my throat. Thankfully I didn’t have to say anything, because even so I can act, I can’t lie.
“He disappeared. That’s all I know,” I wrote. She read it quickly and handed me back the piece of paper. She had this thing about wasting paper, so she made me fill it as best I could.
“Yeah, but it makes you wonder. What could these people be hiding? For all we know he’s locked up somewhere and they won’t let him out unless he takes up smoking or something.” I had to hand it to her; she certainly had a vivid imagination. I WAS locked up somewhere though.
Just to intrigue her I wrote “Things I’ve seen in my days…”
“What? What did you see?” She was now frantic with excitement. I paused the game and decided to really let her have it.
“Did you know that Elvis Presley is still alive, but they figure if they can make him record a song and sell it as a rare piece they’ll make millions!” I knew that she would catch on that I was lying, but I hoped that she would play along for a bit.
I watched her read it with no emotion on her face. Then I heard this evil laughter coming from deep inside her throat. For a second there, I thought that she was playing a game with me, but she looked up at me and I could tell by her expression that something was very wrong.
Before I could get away from her, she grabbed my ankle and pulled me towards her. I tried not to scream and attempted to claw at her with my fingernails. In one swift movement, she had my arm twisted behind my back. The pain was enormous, but I refused to scream. I recognized that she was in “bitch mode” and I knew I had to try anything to get away.
She twisted my arm until I heard a snap. I began to panic and when I panic I tend to fight back (Greta didn’t know that). The only thing I could think of was to lean back quickly and sharply and send her head careening into the bed post. Needless to say, it worked.
She let go of my arm and I scrambled to the other side of the room. I wanted to go outside badly, but she twisted my right arm and my left hand wasn’t strong enough to grasp the door yet.
“Nick?” I heard someone call softly from the other side of the room. It was Nancy. “Are you okay Nick?”
At the sound of her voice, I ducked farther into the corner. She was on a rampage and I was smart enough not to listen to the lure the first time. I risked leaning far enough over to see her head emerging from the floor. At the sight of that, I decided that I could at least TRY the doorknob this time.
I tried concentrating all of my energy to my left hand but ended up beating it uselessly against the doorknob. I didn’t even have enough control to get my hand onto the doorknob, let alone turn it.
“Nick, oh Nick honey, let me help you open that.” I shook my head no vigorously and ducked back into my little corner when I saw that she had gotten up on one knee already.
“Are you okay? You look pale. I think you need to lie down for a while. Come on, I’ll make the bed for you.” She slowly made her way to the bed. First she fixed my sheets and I waited for her to lash out at me. Then she fluffed my pillows to perfection and turned to face me.
She turned so fast that I nearly jumped out of my socks. “What’s the matter Nick? Come, get some sleep now.” I took a few steps forward, as slow as I could and stopped when she didn’t move out of the way.
“What’s the matter Nicky?” she asked in a low growl. I specifically told her never to call me Nicky. But then, that was the least of my problems.
Nancy suddenly yanked the pillow she just fluffed off the bed and before I knew it, I was on the ground and was being smothered to death by a pillow. My arms and legs beat at the air furiously, but I couldn’t make contact with Nancy. She was pushing the pillow so hard down on my face that my nose was squashed against my cheek. To make matters worse, I was running out of air.
Then my savor walked into the door. The whole rescue was a fluke, but I was grateful nonetheless. Charlie walked in and, not knowing that Nancy was standing right in front of the door, he opened it with such a force that Nancy lost her grip on the pillow and went sprawling against the wall.
My hands moved slowly to remove the pillow from my face. I couldn’t tell them to go faster because of the initial shock I was in and also because of my disbelief. I’d thought that these kinds of ironic situations only occurred in cartoons and sitcoms.
Charlie stood in the door for a while trying to comprehend what just happened. I think he knew what he did to Nancy, but I didn’t think he knew that he saved my life.
To my surprise he yelled, “Get out!” to Nancy. He then hovered over me and asked me if I was all right. Besides the fact that I had to recover oxygen to my body, I was fine. Apparently he’d known what Nancy was trying to do, but I decided against asking about it. I found the fewer questions you ask, the better off you are in the long run.
Chapter 31
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