• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 483 0

me into this whole thing. I was an idiot to listen to him, but I couldn’t help it. I was at my wit’s end, and then he came out with this theory. He said my wife, Helen, she had this scheme. She hadn’t really left me. No, it was all part of this scheme she had. She was doing it all for me, to make it possible for me to get this surgery. And when the bandages came off, and I had a new face, she’d come back and it’d be all right again. That’s what Bradley said. Even when he was saying it, I knew it was bullshit, but what could I do? It was some kind of hope at least. Bradley used it, he used it, he’s like that, you know? He’s lowlife. All he thinks about is business. And about the big league. What does he care if she comes back or not?”

I stopped and she didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she said:

“Look, sweetie, listen. I hope your wife comes back. I really do. But if she doesn’t, well, you’ve just got to start getting some perspective. She might be a great person, but life’s so much bigger than just loving someone. You got to get out there, Steve. Someone like you, you don’t belong with the public. Look at me. When these bandages come off, am I really going to look the way I did twenty years ago? I don’t know. And it’s a long time since I was last between husbands. But I’m going to go out there anyway and give it a go.” She came over to me and shoved me on the shoulder. “Hey. You’re just tired. You’ll feel a lot better after some sleep. Listen. Boris is the best. He’ll have fixed it, for the both of us. You just see.”

I put my glass down on the table and stood up. “I guess you’re right. Like you say, Boris is the best. And we were a good team down there.”

“We were a great team down there.”

I reached forward, put my hands on her shoulders, then kissed each of her bandaged cheeks. “You have yourself a good sleep,” I said. “I’ll come over soon and we’ll play more chess.”

BUT AFTER THAT MORNING, we didn’t see much more of each other. When I thought about it later, it occurred to me there’d been some things said during the course of that night, things I should maybe have apologised about, or at least tried to explain. At the time, though, once we’d made it back to her room, and we’d been laughing together on the sofa, it hadn’t seemed necessary, or even right, to bring all of that up again. When we parted that morning, I thought the two of us were well beyond that stage. Even so, I’d seen how Lindy could switch. Maybe later on, she thought back and got mad at me all over again. Who knows? Anyway, though I’d expected a call from her later that day, it never came, and neither did one come the day after. Instead, I heard Tony Gardner records through the wall, playing at top volume, one after the next.

When I did eventually go round there, maybe four days later, she was welcoming, but distant. Like that first time, she talked a lot about her famous friends—though none of it about getting them to help with my career. Still, I didn’t mind that. We gave chess a try, but her phone kept ringing and she’d go into the bedroom to talk.

Then two evenings ago she knocked on my door and said she was about to check out. Boris was pleased with her and had agreed to take the bandages off in her own house. We said our goodbyes in a friendly way, but it was like our real goodbyes had been said already, that morning right after our escapade, when I’d reached forward and kissed her on both cheeks.

So that’s the story of my time as Lindy Gardner’s neighbor. I wish her well. As for me, it’s six more days till my own unveiling, and a lot longer still before I’m allowed to blow a horn. But I’m used to this life now, and I pass the hours quite contentedly. Yesterday I got a call from Helen asking how I was doing, and when I told her I’d gotten to know Lindy Gardner, she was mightily impressed.

“Hasn’t she married again?” she asked. And when I put her straight on that, she said: “Oh, right. I must have been thinking about that other one. You know. What’s-her-name.”

We talked a lot of unimportant stuff—what she’d watched on TV, how her