Deal to Die For by Les Standiford Read Free Book Online Page A

thought,
still
…
    He turned back, uncomfortable with his own presumptions. Barbara had saved his life, Janice’s, too. She wanted him to walk on water, he’d walk. Never mind the way she looked at him. “So how’s your mother?” he said as the waitress brought them coffee. “How’s she doing?”
    She glanced down at the table, shook her head slowly. “It’s not good, Deal.” She took a deep breath. “That’s why I got here so soon. I stopped at the hospital, but they wouldn’t let me in to see her.” She paused, trying to gather herself. “The doctors were doing some kind of tests…trying to find out whether her brain was still functioning…”
    She swallowed, her voice starting to clutch. “…and I thought, my God, what if they walk out and tell me my mother is a vegetable and do I want to pull the plug…”
    She stopped, tears spilling from her eyes now. She wiped them away with a napkin, fought to get her breathing under control. “I just couldn’t handle that, Deal. Not by myself. I just couldn’t. Do you know what I mean?”
    He nodded, squeezed her hand, tried to think of something to say. The waitress was back suddenly—
too soon
, he was thinking, she’d just brought their coffee and why didn’t she buzz off…
    “Chicken soup,” the waitress said, putting a steaming bowl down in front of Barbara, along with a thick wad of napkins.
    “I didn’t order soup…,” Barbara began, but the waitress put a hand on her shoulder, shushing her.
    “On the house,” she said, giving her a little smile. And then she was gone, whisking back into the kitchen.
    Barbara picked up a fistful of napkins, blotted her cheeks. “That was nice,” she said, trying for a smile. She paused, glanced about the room. “I must look like a wreck.”
    Deal shook his head. “You look great.”
    “Such bullshit,” she said, patting his hand. She checked her reflection in the window, swiped at a smear of mascara. She turned, crumpled the soggy napkins away, tossed her hair. Giving it her best to conjure up the old, carefree Barbara, he thought.
    “I knew I’d be happy to see you, Deal,” she said. She gave him her brightest, perkiest look. “I’ll get through this.” If it hadn’t been for the red circles around her eyes, the fieriness at the tip of her nose, he might have bought it.
    “Now how about you?” she continued. “How’s things in big-time contracting?”
    “You’d have to ask a big-time contractor,” he said.
    “Okay, I walked into that,” she said. She regarded him for a moment. “Tell me, does Janice ever get tired of gay repartee, push you to open up?”
    He felt a twinge, felt himself nodding. “All the time.”
    “And do you?”
    Like a book
, he was about to say, but somehow he couldn’t get the glib phrase out. His mind had emptied suddenly. There was a flash of bright light, like the moment before a projector cranks in the film, and then he was seeing Janice again, that day hardly a week ago, running from him down the steps of the Shark Valley observation tower, flailing at him, crying, stumbling, pounding the rough concrete with her fists and her face before he could get to her, her wails rending the wilderness with the essence of human misery.
    “Hey…are you all right?”
    Deal blinked. Barbara had reached across to take his hand.
    “You just blanked out there. Did I say something?”
    Deal looked about the room. He had the impression that he had screamed himself, but if he had, no one seemed to have noticed. People eating, drinking, chatting. One fellow pulling a thick book down from a shelf of the library.
    “Janice is in the hospital,” he said.
    “What?” She shook her head. “Another operation?” Her face filled with distress. “And I dragged you out to hold my hand…?”
    “Not that kind of hospital,” he said. “She’s…” He wiped his face with his hands, massaging feeling back into the flesh there. When he looked, Barbara was still staring at him,