Mortality Bridge by Steven R. Boyett Read Free Book Online

staircase was work but he held her and waited while she caught her breath and then continued down. He imagined having an elevator installed or one of those gliding bannister chairs. Then he caught himself. What the hell was he thinking?
    Through the cavernous living room and the long main dining room, so little used in recent years. Through the french doors and onto the patio. The landscaped courtyard beyond. The whole place suddenly obscenely large.
    He sat Jem in a white adirondack patio chair and set her IV beside her and made sure she was comfortable and then went to the kitchen to get her a bottle of room temperature water. The huge spotless space, all the stainless steel. Like some underutilized restaurant.
    Going out again he stopped. Jemma ghostly in the sunlight on the wooden chair, the IV pole beside her. The simple heartbreak wrongness of it. Look at her, you son of a bitch.
    He gave her the water and dragged another chair beside her and sat on the edge of it and watched her drink most of the water in one go. He took the bottle back and asked her if she wanted more.
    “I’m good right now.”
    “You look a little better today.”
    “I feel a little better today. You don’t know where the mountaintop is till you’re past it.”
    “All downhill from there.”
    “That would be nice.”
    “You comfortable?”
    “Considering, yeah.”
    “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln.”
    She smiled a little. The new sharp contours of her face, the hard prominence of veins on her arms and on the backs of her hands. The daylight merciless.
    “It’s nice out here, isn’t it?”
    “It is. I’m not sure the sun’s good for you.”
    “It won’t kill me.”
    “Aren’t you the comedian.”
    “I’m here all week. I’d like that water now I think.”
    He picked up the bottle. “Sure.”
    “Bring your guitar back too.”
    “You got it.” A ghost bullet in the heart, but he didn’t hesitate. He went inside again and got the Goya from the study and got a pair of sunglasses from a drawer and grabbed another bottled water from the kitchen. Back outside he waited while she gulped down most of her water again and then set her chairback more upright and put the sunglasses on her face. “Ooh look, I’m a movie star. Alfonse, strike up a fandango.”
    He set the Goya on his lap and started up a fandanguillo. She had an awful coughing fit and he stopped and then realized she was laughing.
    “Aren’t you the comedian,” she said.
    “I’m here all week.”
    “Play something.”
    Niko looked at the guitar. For the first time in living memory it felt like a block of wood on his lap. What notes and chords for such a time as this? What meter counts the winding down? He looked up from the guitar and felt a sudden shock of recognition. They had been in almost exactly these positions long ago. This moment nearly reenactment. He shut his eyes and remembered and his hands moved on the wooden body, remembering as well:
     
    IN THE SILENCE after he cut the outboard they listened to the water gurgle against the hull. In the fading early morning gray the surface of Lake Arrowhead was haunted by a mist. They drifted, they bobbed, they breathed the rarefied air.
    Niko closed his eyes and felt himself cradled, endlessly rocking. Floating on a lake high in the mountains. A wonder to a flatland Florida boy.
    Between them Niko’s Martin lay within its case. On the deck a thermos rolled and rolled.
    He opened his eyes.
    She faced him with her Navajo blanket across her knees, its thunderbird wings spread toward him. She reached for the thermos and poured fresh Kona. “You look good.”
    He took the offered cup. Vapor rose to join the mist. “I feel good.” He lifted and drank and felt the coffee lighting up his veins.
    “So. New band. New album. New single. National tour. No drugs. And you look ten years younger. What’s your secret?”
    Niko handed back the thermos cup. “I signed a deal with the devil.”
    “You signed a deal with