The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

These were true promises Andrew Newsome had chosen not to hear. It was his belief – never stated baldly, in words of one syllable, but undoubtedly one of the stars he steered by – that the sixth-richest man in the world should not have to visit the Land of Pain under any circumstances, only the Costa del Sol of Full Recovery. Blaming the doctors followed as day follows night. And of course he blamed fate. Things like this were not supposed to happen to guys like him.

Melissa came back with cookies on a tray. Newsome waved a hand – twisted and scarred in the accident – at her irritably. ‘No one’s in the mood for baked goods, ’Lissa.’

Here was another thing Kat MacDonald had discovered about those golden dollar-babies who had amassed assets beyond ordinary comprehension: they felt very confident about speaking for everyone in the room.

Melissa gave her little Mona Lisa smile, then turned (almost pirouetted) and left the room. Glided from the room. She had to be at least forty-five, but looked younger. She wasn’t sexy; nothing so vulgar. Rather there was an ice-queen glamour about her that made Kat think of Ingrid Bergman. Icy or not, Kat supposed men would wonder how that chestnut hair would look freed from its clips and all mussed up. How her coral lipstick would look smeared on her teeth and up one cheek. Kat, who considered herself dumpy, told herself at least once a day that she wasn’t jealous of that smooth, cool face. Or that tight, heart-shaped bottom.

Kat returned to the other side of the bed and prepared to lift Newsome’s left leg until he yelled at her again to stop, goddammit, did she want to kill him? If you were another patient, I’d tell you the facts of life, she thought. I’d tell you to stop looking for shortcuts, because there are none. Not even for the sixth-richest man in the world. I’d help you if you’d let me, but as long as you keep looking for a way to buy your way out of that bed, you’re on your own.

She placed the pad under his knee. Grasped the hanging bags of flesh that should have been hardening up again by now. Began to bend the leg. Waited for him to scream at her to stop. And she would. Because five thousand dollars a week added up to a cool quarter mil a year. Did he know that part of what he was buying was her complicity in his failure to improve? How could he not?

Now tell them about the doctors. Geneva, London, Madrid, Mexico City.

‘I’ve been to doctors all over the world,’ he told Rideout. The reverend still hadn’t said a word, just sat there with the red wattles of his overshaved neck hanging over his buttoned-to-the-neck country preacher shirt. He was wearing big yellow workboots. The heel of one almost touched his black lunchbox. ‘Teleconferencing would be the easier way to go, given my condition, but of course that doesn’t cut it in cases like mine. So I’ve gone in person, in spite of the pain it causes me. We’ve been everywhere, haven’t we, Kat?’

‘Indeed we have,’ she said, very slowly continuing to bend the leg. On which he would have been walking by now, if he weren’t such a child about the pain. Such a spoiled baby. On crutches, yes, but walking. And in another year, he would have been able to throw the crutches away. Only in another year he would still be here, in this two-hundred-thousand-dollar state-of-the-art hospital bed. And she would still be with him. Still taking his hush money. How much would be enough? Two million? She told herself that now, but she’d told herself not so long ago half a million would be enough, and had since moved the goalposts. Money was wretched that way.

‘We’ve seen specialists in Mexico, Geneva, London, Rome, Paris … where else, Kat?’

‘Vienna,’ she said. ‘And San Francisco, of course.’

Newsome snorted. ‘Doctor there told me I was manufacturing my own pain. Hysterical conversion, he said. To keep from doing the hard work of rehabilitation. But he was a Paki. And a queer. A queer Paki, how’s that for a combo?’ He gave a brief bark of laughter, then peered at Rideout. ‘I’m not offending you, am I, Reverend?’

Rideout moved his head side to side in a negative gesture. Twice. Very slowly.

‘Good, good. Stop, Kat, that’s enough.’

‘A little more,’ she coaxed.

‘Stop, I said. That’s all I can take.’