While Drowning in the Desert (16 page)
I’m sure he was happy to see his fiancée, Karen. You remember, Diary, the nice girl that Neal would not get in a family way? She came in today as usual, but she had a special gleam in her eye, if you know what I mean (blush, blush). She came in and said hello to us and kissed Neal on the cheek.
“
How are you?” she asked.
“
Better,” he said.
“
Headache?
”
“
No.
”
“
Shoulder?
”
“
Not bad.
”
She smiled and dug into her purse. Then she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and slipped it to me. “Sweetie,” she whispered, “can I treat you to a movie or something?
”
She winked at me and I winked back and then I rolled Nathan down to the cafeteria. They have slot machines there.
Karen was pulling the curtain around Neal’s bed as we left. I don’t know what went on in that room while we were gone, Diary! (Blush, blush.)
Your confidante,
Hope
Chapter 30
Men are dependable, god bless’em. You can bust them up, throw them down a mine shaft, and half drown them … they can have broken bones, a cracked head, and a body that’s one big bruise … in short, they can just hurt all over, and if that
one part
works they still want to, you know,
do it.
It’s just one of the things I love about them.
Not that I jumped right into the sack. (“Eased” is more like it, anyway. When the moment came I “eased” into the sack, Neal being in a delicate condition and all.) First we made a little small talk.
“Petkovitch is suing you?!” I asked when Neal told me.
“He’s suing you, too.”
“That’s outrageous,” I said. “Do you know a good lawyer?”
“I don’t think we’ll be needing one,” Neal answered. “He’s also suing Mickey the C.”
“That’s not real bright.”
“It’s downright dim,” Neal said. “Mickey the C’s idea of playing rough includes a little more than sarcastic remarks in his correspondence.”
“I noticed.”
“Right.”
“So how are you?” I asked.
“I hurt all over.”
“One big bruise.”
“One big bruise.”
“I gave Hope twenty bucks.”
“What for?” he asked.
“Get rid of her.”
“And Nathan?”
“And Nathan.”
“What for?”
Giving me that innocent look as if he didn’t have a clue.
“Never mind,” I said. “You’re in pain.”
“Actually, I’m starting to feel better.”
“And you need your rest.”
“In moderation,” he said. “With exercise.”
“But you can’t get out of bed.”
“Nope.”
“Nope.”
“So any exercise you’re going to get …”
“… would have to be in bed.”
“Hmmm.”
“Hmmm.”
I shut and locked the door, then got out of my clothes.
“I’m really feeling considerable improvement,” Neal said.
What can I tell you? The guy makes me laugh.
“It must be the tender, loving care,” I said.
“Is that it?”
“It’s about to be.”
Then I eased into the bed.
Epilogue
Karen was just getting out of the shower when I asked her to get me a Diet Pepsi.
“Excuse me?” she murmured.
“I’m in postcoital bliss,” I said. “And when I’m in postcoital bliss I need a Diet Pepsi.”
“Why don’t you get one?”
I shook my head.
“When a man’s in postcoital bliss it’s the woman’s job to get the Diet Pepsi,” I smiled. “Besides, I’m not supposed to get out of bed.”
“I’m in postcoital bliss, too.”
“Too bad.”
I looked at her with what I liked to think was a lascivious expression.
“Besides,” I said, “it’s your fault.”
She got dressed and went out to the little refrigerator in the hall to get me a Diet Pepsi.
The phone rang.
“Hello, son.”
“Hello, Dad.”
“What’s this I got in the mail today?” he asked.
“From me?”
“No, from Elvis,” he said. “Yes, from you.”
“It’s a Father’s Day card,” I answered.
“It isn’t Father’s Day,” Graham said.
“It should be,” I said.
There was a long silence over the phone. Then I said, “Dad, thanks for finding me.”
“Forget it,” Graham said. “So how’s Palm Springs?”
I laughed, then he nagged me about my various terrible injuries and I told him I was okay.
“Well, you take care of yourself,” he said.
“Yeah, you too.”
We would have gone on in that vein but it would have been absolutely bathetic.
Karen came back in, sat down on the bed and handed me the Diet Pepsi.
“Did we attempt to make a baby?” I asked.
I was willing. I thought I could handle it.
Talk about your long silences.
Then she shook her head.
“I still want to, though,” she said.
“I think I do, too.”
“But you don’t
know,
” she said.
“No.”
She sighed, lay down next to me in the bed, and snuggled her face into my neck.
“Not knowing’s not good enough,” she said. I’m sorry.
“Don’t be sorry. Wherever you go, there you are.”
We held each other as tightly as two people with various broken bones could.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “I think I have a lot of stuff to work out.”
“I hate saying it,” she said. “But I think so, too. I just want you to
know.
I’ve been thinking about it, too. A kid deserves that, you know?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I guess you do.”
I swallowed hard and said, “So I think I’ll go see somebody.”
“You mean like a shrink?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“No, I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “I’m just surprised that you do.”
“I don’t. I just don’t know how else to go about it.”
We shared some more silence.
“I think we should postpone the wedding,” she said.
“Is that a gentle way of saying we’re not getting married?”
“No, it’s a gentle way of saying that we shouldn’t get married until we know what we want,” she said. “And I guess we need to be alone for a while.”
That scared the shit out of me. “You’ll be there when I come back?” “If it works out that way,” she said. “And I hope it works out that way. I love you.” “I love you, too.”
I left the hospital two days later. I was still sore and still hurting and had a heroic limp, but it was time to go. I said good-bye to Nathan and Hope. Karen had already left.
Saying goodbye to Nathan was harder than I thought it would be. It’s funny—first I couldn’t wait to get rid of him, and when I finally did I felt kind of sad. I just had this feeling that I had seen the last of Natty Silver and that there weren’t any more coming down the road.
I don’t want to talk about saying good-bye to Karen.
I didn’t really know where I was going so I finally got on that flight to Palm Springs. I hated to leave a trip unfinished, I wanted to find a shrink, and I figured that they probably had a few of them in California.
So I never should have got out of the hot tub, right? Sometimes you get out of the hot water just to jump right back into it.
But maybe you have to almost drown before you really learn to swim. And sometimes you find out that you’re somewhat broken and you can’t swim at all.
But you do anyway.
Drowning in the desert, you just tread water.
Don Winslow is the
New York Times
bestselling author of thirteen crime and mystery novels as well as a number of short stories and screenplays. His first novel,
A Cool Breeze on the Underground
(1991), was nominated for an Edgar Award, and
California Fire and Life
(1999) received the Shamus Award, which honors the year’s best detective novel.
Winslow was born in 1953 in New York City, and he grew up in Perryville, Rhode Island, a small coastal town. His mother was a librarian and his father a Navy officer. Both parents instilled in Winslow a love of storytelling, and the bookshelves at home were well stocked with literary classics, which Winslow was encouraged to explore. When his father stayed up late swapping sailor stories with his buddies, Winslow would hide under the dining room table to eavesdrop.
Winslow had an unusually varied career before becoming a fulltime writer, beginning with a series of jobs as a child actor. After high school, he attended the University of Nebraska and majored in African history. He then moved back to New York City where he managed movie theaters and became a private investigator. Winslow moonlighted as a PI while pursuing a master’s degree in military history. He also lived for a time in Africa, where he worked as a safari guide, and in China, where he led hiking tours. Winslow completed
A Cool Breeze on the Underground
while in China.
A Cool Breeze
draws from Winslow’s experiences tracking missing persons while in New York. Protagonist Neal Carey is a graduate student studying English literature who is drawn by past underworld connections into a career as a private investigator. Winslow went on to write four other novels with Neal Carey as the main character, often set in locales where the author had resided at some point.
The Trail to Buddha’s Mirror
(1992) has Carey chasing a scientist through China.
Way Down on the High Lonely
(1993) and
While Drowning in the Desert
(1996) are set on the west coast of the United States, where Winslow moved after marrying his wife, Jean, and publishing his first novel.
Winslow’s recent fiction is often set in Southern California, where he currently lives. The cross-border drug war, California organized crime, and surf culture are common themes in his later work. His style bears the spirit of his settings, and his prose is notable for its spare dialogue and deadpan narration, as well as the technical accuracy that comes from his many years working as a private investigator.
A number of Winslow’s novels have been adapted for film. A 2007 movie based on
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
(1997) starred Laurence Fishburne, and
The Winter of Frankie Machine
(2006) is under production and set to star Robert DeNiro. Winslow’s latest novel,
Savages
(2010), has received stellar reviews, and the author is currently adapting the novel for film with Oliver Stone.
A Winslow family photo taken in Rhode Island in the 1960s. Winslow (front left) is seen here with his father, mother, both sets of grandparents, sister (Kristine Rolofson, also a novelist), and dog.
Winslow in his 1972 high school yearbook photo.
Winslow juggling at his nephew Ben’s birthday party in Beyond Hope, Idaho, where he lived off and on in the mid-1970s. He ran cattle but also “had a very macho job driving a salad-dressing truck. There would have been no Thousand Island dressing in Libby, Montana, without men like me.” It was in a cabin in Beyond Hope that Winslow started writing
Cool Breeze on the Underground
.