Eastern Standard Tribe – Day 36 of 64

15.

Vigorous sex ensued.

16.

Art rolled out of bed at dark o’clock in the morning, awakened by circadians and endorphins and bladder. He staggered to the toilet in the familiar gloom of his shabby little rooms, did his business, marveled at the tenderness of his privates, fumbled for the flush mechanism—“British” and “Plumbing” being two completely opposite notions—and staggered back to bed. The screen of his comm, nestled on the end table, washed the room in liquid-crystal light. He’d tugged the sheets off of Linda when he got up, and there she was, chest rising and falling softly, body rumpled and sprawled after their gymnastics. It had been transcendent and messy, and the sheets were coarse with dried fluids.

He knelt on the bed and fussed with the covers some, trying for an equitable—if not chivalrously so—division of blankets. He bent forward to kiss at a bite-mark he’d left on her shoulder.

His back went “pop.”

Somewhere down in the lumbar, somewhere just above his tailbone, a deep and unforgiving pop, ominous as the cocking of a revolver. He put his hand there and it felt OK, so he cautiously lay back. Three-quarters of the way down, his entire lower back seized up, needles of fire raced down his legs and through his groin, and he collapsed.

He barked with pain, an inhuman sound he hadn’t known he could make, and the rapid emptying of his lungs deepened the spasm, and he mewled. Linda opened a groggy eye and put her hand on his shoulder. “What is it, hon?”

He tried to straighten out, to find a position in which the horrible, relentless pain returned whence it came. Each motion was agony. Finally, the pain subsided, and he found himself pretzelled, knees up, body twisted to the left, head twisted to the right. He did not dare budge from this posture, terrified that the pain would return.

“It’s my back,” he gasped.

“Whah? Your back?”

“I—I put it out. Haven’t done it in years. I need an icepack, OK? There’re some headache pills in the medicine cabinet. Three of those.”

“Seriously?”

“Look, I’d get ’em myself, but I can’t even sit up, much less walk. I gotta ice this down now before it gets too inflamed.”

“How did it happen?”

“It just happens. Tai Chi helps. Please, I need ice.”

Half an hour later, he had gingerly arranged himself with his knees up and his hips straight, and he was breathing deeply, willing the spasms to unclench. “Thanks,” he said.

“What now? Should I call a doctor?”

“He’d just give me painkillers and tell me to lose some weight. I’ll probably be like this for a week. Shit. Fede’s going to kill me. I was supposed to go to Boston next Friday, too.”

“Boston? What for? For how long?”

Art bunched the sheets in his fists. He hadn’t meant to tell her about Boston yet—he and Fede hadn’t worked out his cover story. “Meetings,” he said. “Two or three days. I was going to take some personal time and go see my family, too. Goddamnit. Pass me my comm, OK?”

“You’re going to work now?”

“I’m just going to send Fede a message and send out for some muscle-relaxants. There’s a twenty-four-hour chemist’s at Paddington Station that delivers.”

“I’ll do it, you lie flat.”

And so it began. Bad enough to be helpless, weak as a kitten and immobile, but to be at the whim of someone else, to have to provide sufficient excuse for every use of his comm, every crawl across the flat… Christ. “Just give me my comm, please. I can do it faster than I can explain how to do it.”

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. (To tell the truth I don't even really care if you give me your email or not.)