Dream Girl(7)

Gerry’s injuries are severe, but his hope for a fullish recovery is reasonable. He is in good health, although he was shocked to discover that X-rays revealed his bone density had already been compromised. He thought that was a female thing. But his primary injury is a bilateral quad tear in his right leg. He needs to remain flat on his back for eight to twelve weeks in this hulking beast of a hospital bed. His injured leg is braced to keep it immobilized and a “trapeze” hangs over him—he has to grab that if he wants to change his position in his bed or use what Aileen calls the “commode”—the correct word, yet one that irritates him to no end.

He has been told repeatedly how lucky he is—lucky that he didn’t hit his head, lucky that he was on the floor for “only” twelve hours, lucky that he can pay for a nursing aide at home, otherwise he would have to be in a rehab facility. Aileen arrives at seven o’clock every evening, in time to lead Gerry through a round of exercises, serve him dinner, and then sit through the night as he succumbs to the jumbled slumber of medicated sleep. She departs at seven in the morning, leaving him alone for only two hours before Victoria arrives for her shift, which spans nine to five. And what is “alone” really? The front desk is a mere twenty-five floors and one phone call away, although it is unmanned—unwomanned—until Phylloh arrives at eight Monday through Friday.

Because the apartment’s top floor has a full bathroom with a walk-in shower, it has been decided to keep him here, although it will be weeks before he visits the bathroom on his own. The walker at his bedside is, he supposes, an aspirational object. And because of the apartment’s layout, the best spot for the bed is in the center of the great room, facing the very stairs that tried to kill him, perpendicular to the wall with the TV. The bed is a bad smell, an insult, an indignity, a reminder of what waits for everyone. Even Victoria, as young and incurious as she is, seems nervous around the rented bed. The rolling tray used for meals also allows Gerry access to his laptop, but he cannot work on a laptop. He needs his full-size screen, he needs the darkness of his office; who can write in all this light? Gerry would have been well-suited to serve on a submarine in his youth, not that men his age had to worry about serving anywhere.

His coccyx was badly bruised in the fall as well, another excuse not to try to write because even if he could struggle to a sitting position, he couldn’t hold it long. The word registers in his mind—excuse. He had been looking for an excuse not to write and here it is. Those lacy spots in his bones will respond, presumably, to the calcium supplement, which Aileen provides every other day with his nightly dose of pain and sleep meds. His bones will be fine. It’s the lacy spots in his brain that he’s worried about.

“The day I fell,” he says to Victoria when she enters with his lunch, “the day I fell—I was going for some mail I left in the office.”

“Yes, you tried to talk to me about it when I, um, found you.” Victoria seemed terribly embarrassed by discovering him, probably because he had been forced to relieve himself. And yet—she has insisted on helping him in his recovery, saying she will learn to do whatever is necessary so he will require only one nursing shift, not 24/7 care. Which, frankly, he does not want. The idea of other people being under his roof constantly is the worst nightmare he can imagine. During the last year, the annus horribilis when Margot basically squatted in his New York apartment, he learned he can no longer bear living with anyone. Maybe he never could, which is as good an explanation as any for three failed marriages.

But Victoria quickly learned how to be here without making her presence known. He hopes she can teach Aileen the same trick.

“Any mail?” he asks.

“Nothing real.” Mail itself is barely real to Victoria, who conducts her life via her phone, even depositing her paycheck by app. But Gerry insists on paper bills, paper checks, paper records.

“The night I fell—there was one letter in particular—a local one, in a—” He almost says woman’s hand, but quickly corrects course. “In an old-fashioned cursive handwriting. Did you find that?”

“You asked me that already,” she says.

“I know,” he says crossly. “I just wanted to check again. I’m quite sure there was a personal letter among the things Thiru brought me.”

“No,” Victoria says. “There was nothing like that.”

She is a wispy girl, with big glasses and a messy updo, given to enormous sweaters, long skirts, and ankle boots. In an old-fashioned movie, she would take off her glasses, shake out her hair, cinch the sweater, and be revealed as a beauty. Even in a modern film, she might be transformed, although it would probably be in a makeover montage supervised by friendly gays, who, in movies, seem overly preoccupied with helping heterosexual women find romance.

Inappropriate. All of these thoughts are inappropriate. If he says these things aloud, even to Victoria, who knows what might happen? Words, words, words—ha, that’s a lyric from the ultimate makeover musical, My Fair Lady, which, strangely, is one of the few concrete memories he has of enjoying time with his father and mother.

“Well, if you see it around—it had a return address on Fait Avenue, here in Baltimore. That’s what I remember.”

“Why would someone from Baltimore write you in care of your agent when you’re right here in Baltimore?”

“I don’t think it’s widely known I’m here.”