Final Stroke by Michael Beres Read Free Book Online Page B

upside-down and inside-out and he said nothing. Instead of talking he smiled back at Betty who came around the puddle behind his chair and began her one-sided dialogue.
    “The desk said I’d find you here, Steve. I’m surprised you’d come down here. I figured a guy like you wouldn’t waste a trip to the first floor to visit the nursing home. I figured a guy like you’d be out on the grounds doing wheelies. This place is too old for you. How come you’re not glued to your TV watching one of the gumshoe videos your wife brings in?”
    When Betty pivoted his wheelchair and began circling the pud dle to take him back to his room, Steve wanted to tell her to wait. He wanted to shout it. He wanted to tell her he needed to do some thing important before he went back to his room. He wanted to tell her there was evidence to be collected before the morning cleaning crew disturbed the crime scene. But, as usual, he was unable to sort the words from the ones spewing from Betty’s mouth. So, before she could wheel him away, he gasped and slumped to one side in his chair, sticking out his left foot to put on the brakes.
    While Betty was busy putting his foot back up on the footrest so she could wheel him back to his room, she kept rattling on about the time of evening and where he should and shouldn’t be.
    Damn it, Betty, have a heart! Read my mind, will you?
    But of course, Betty could not read his mind. The only person who came close to being able to do that was Jan, and Jan wasn’t here.
    But someone else was here. Sergeant Joe Friday was here bolster ing him for the upcoming fight with Dwayne Matusak. Sergeant Fri day, who would have to stoop down to look into a boy’s eyes. Sergeant Friday looking knowingly into his eyes. And so, taking a tip from Joe Friday, who often taste-tested questionable substances, he leaned to the side, reached down, and dipped his forefinger into the retreating pud dle on the floor. And on the way down the hallway, as the breeze of being rapidly wheeled the length of the nursing home wing cooled him and threatened to dry the evidence he had so astutely collected on Mar jorie’s behalf, he thought, Oh shit, to himself, thought about Joe Friday touching his finger to his tongue in that safer black and white world, thought about germs and bacteria and viruses contained in bodily flu ids, thought about who might have pissed here on this floor, figured an octogenarian’s piss wouldn’t stand up to piss collected from a stairwell corner in the projects, hoped to hell Betty hadn’t seen him dip his fin ger in the puddle or he might end up in the loony wing, and, finally, put his finger to his mouth and took a taste of what, for some reason, he already knew would not be there. Water. Nothing but water.
    After backing him into the elevator, Betty was silent. All he could see before him was the closed elevator door and the controls to one side and the floor indicator lights above the door. Perhaps the silence was deliberate, the ride back to the third floor a time during which the psy chotic stroke victim was expected to collect his thoughts.
    Among the thoughts going up with him in the elevator was a de ranged theory that we are all born with pure intelligence and the re mainder of our lives is spent destroying it. But as the second floor light above the door blinked out and the third floor light lit and the door slid open, the theory floated out ahead of him like so much vapor. Now, even though he knew it was only water on the floor, all that re mained for his effort was self-pity.
    Poor Steve Babe, the stroke victim, the fool. Tasting a puddle on the floor to see if it’s piss. It’s come to this. It’s come to this.
    CHAPTE R

FOU R
    To celebrate the opening night of her remodeled res taurant, Ilonka Szabo invited regular customers for a lavish feast. It was a dream come true, to invite friends in her adopted country to share in her good fortune.
    Unfortunately, her most loyal customer would not