Alligator - Lisa Moore [106]
But there were blisters all over his face and the nurses said not to burst them and they said they were pretty sure there wouldn’t be any scarring where there were blisters.
You were lucky, the nurses said. A doctor asked permission to show some interns Frank’s burns and when they came into the room one of the interns fainted.
Anything you could suck from a straw. Kevin had been keeping vigil. Kevin had gone to Ches’s and got an order of fish and chips with gravy and dressing and he put everything in a blender and brought it in a jar and Frank tried it. He tried it and it tasted just like fish and chips and he asked for more salt, but it was too much work getting it through the straw.
Kevin came four days out of ten and he sat there while Frank slept and he wiggled his eyebrows behind the nurses’ backs and made lewd gestures. He leaned forward one evening and stared into Frank’s face and said there was something funny he couldn’t put his finger on. Then he realized Frank didn’t have eyelashes any more.
One evening Frank woke and he could hear Kevin asking one of the nurses to a movie, just outside his bedroom door. When he came in and sat down, Kevin was blushing and Frank said, I’m sorry I asked you for that money. Kevin took a newspaper from under his coat and the story was still front-page news. Valentin ducking the camera, his hands in cuffs; he looked wary and unrepentant.
ISOBEL
MADELEINE IS DEAD. Madeleine died and Isobel got a phone call from the production assistant. Isobel was asleep and could not believe someone was waking her.
She sat up on one elbow and listened and then she was wide awake and she put her glasses on and she kept saying it can’t be true and she saw she was holding her fist up to her mouth. She was staying in a bed and breakfast on Gower Street until the insurance from the fire was settled. She saw herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door and no matter how much she whispered it couldn’t be true she knew it was true because there was nothing dreamlike about the phone call or the square of sunlight on the hardwood floor or the weight of the cat on top of the blankets. She could smell toast burning.
She and Madeleine had gone for a hamburger in Donovan’s Industrial Park because that’s where they ended up. Madeleine drove and she talked about the film and Isobel said nothing because she had decided she would tell Madeleine about Valentin and the fire he had planned for the following weekend. She felt certain Madeleine would intervene. Whatever it took to intervene, Madeleine had it. She would reroute the inevitable, take charge. Isobel sat in the passenger seat with her hand against the dash and her foot pressed into the floor as if she had a brake of her own and she listened while Madeleine talked budget.
Anyone who has to confess is better off closing her eyes. Isobel had planned to order a hamburger and while waiting for it to arrive she would grip her fork and knife and close her eyes and tell Madeleine everything. Some part of her believed the fire would never happen.
It was hard to get a word in with Madeleine. She was obsessed with the bloody horses and believed she was being haunted by an archbishop and she had never been able to shut up for five minutes in the whole time Isobel had known her. Isobel had decided to close her eyes and say about the fire.
Madeleine told the waitress she only had a forty-five minute lunch. She said about the burger: she wanted medium-rare, she didn’t want rare, she didn’t want well-done. Did the girl know what she meant by medium-rare, Madeleine wanted to know. Do they do that here? she’d asked.
Isobel had worn her silver bracelet. She fiddled with the fork. She opened her hamburger when it came and scraped off the mayonnaise.
You don’t meet men at weddings, Madeleine had said. Everybody at a wedding has a date. I’ll tell you the place.
Isobel put salt on