The Last Day

NINE

For the past month or so, Ward had been able to remember his dreams only in piecemeal. While he'd been in Vegas he had dreamed, and his dreams had included a recurring nightmare, that he was lying in warm water as thick as motor oil. There was pressure on his chest like someone sitting on top of him. Above him, moving into view like a cloud, was Natasha's face, abnormally white-bleached of its normal color- and there was a bright red line on her neck behind her collarbone. Ward could feel her hands on either side of his face, and he could see that she was crying. And over her shoulder he saw Barney materializing. Barney's face was illuminated a golden hue. And his son reached over his mother's shoulder and Ward reached up and took his hand, and he felt a remarkable lightness, and was floating up, up…

Ward McCarty awoke slowly to slits of bright sunlight being fractioned across the landscape of the guest bedroom wall like the stripes of a loping zebra. He heard the dull bumping as the hardcloth vertical blinds swayed against each other, powered by the cold air rushing silently from the register below them. He closed his eyes and knew he hadn't dreamed at all.

Slowly Ward drew his strength together, sat up, moved his legs so his feet were on the hardwood floor, and yawned. The large red numbers on the alarm clock read 7:32. A white- coated Natasha was by now working her way through the hospital rooms. Or maybe she was already in a suite operating on some parents’ child, those perfect hands moving deliberately to open and remove some part gone bad, to make a repair, to heal, to fix.

After showering and dressing, on his way out, Ward stopped in the hallway outside the door to Barney's bedroom. He pressed his ear up to the door quietly, as if to not wake his son. For long seconds he stood staring at the pattern of the hardwood.

After Barney died people had related to Ward differently-his old friends standoffish or guarded in their conversations with him. Friends with their own children had stopped calling after a few weeks, and Ward and Natasha's socializing had slowed to a crawl. They stopped going to the country club, and no longer attended ser vices at the First Methodist Church in Concord. It wasn't that Ward blamed God for Barney's death; it was just that he and his wife had lost interest in participatory worship, just as they had lost interest in a lot of other things they'd done as a family. Ward hadn't lost his faith, but he didn't believe that God was paying attention, believed that His interference was as random as the flight of a discarded plastic shopping bag on the Interstate.

Something always drew him to open Barney's door. He always approached the room shrouded in the feeling that he was entering a tomb, and entering was something he did with increasing reluctance. Finally he reached down, pressed the lever, and opened the door to what could have been a museum exhibit dedicated to the beautiful boy. Barney had handled the objects on display, and his collection was open only at the whim of the curators, only visited when they felt a need to touch base. At that moment Ward knew something was off, something he was supposed to do that he couldn't put his finger on.

His eyes went immediately to the wall that held four wooden shelves, where colorful NASCAR die- cast models were lined up, angled with their grilles facing out like vehicles parked and awaiting tiny drivers to jump in and roar away. There was an open slot in the center, like a missing tooth.

Ward hurried to the kitchen, located his briefcase, placed it on the counter beside the sink, and popped it open to discover that the prototype race car was not in its padded envelope. He felt sick to his stomach.

Jerking up the phone, he was already dialing Natasha's private number when he realized that she would not have opened his briefcase, much less taken the car from it. The receptionist answered on the third ring.

“Piedmont Pediatric Surgical. How may I help you?”

“Mary Katherine, it's Ward. Is Natasha in?”

“She went into surgery an hour ago. Can I have her call you when she gets back? Do you want her voice mail?”

“No, I'll talk to her later.” He pressed the off button and, feeling hollow inside, replaced the phone in its charging base.

Ward's mind raced over the last time he'd seen the car and he remembered taking it out on the plane, but he'd definitely put it back after the girl looked it over. “God damn her!” he shouted.

After grabbing his car keys and briefcase, Ward took off for his office with his mind racing. He had told the girl to call his secretary, Leslie, for that free car he'd offered to give her for her NASCAR- fan mother. If she followed through, he would talk to her, or at the least have an address so he could find her. He felt a wave of fear and uncertainty. Accusing her of stealing would be awkward, but he had to get the prototype back. As he got out of his car in the parking lot in front of his building he wondered how many of the electronic devices in her bag were pilfered from other unsuspecting people she'd run across.

Just wait until little Miss Bad Hair finds out that lifting that little toy was grand larceny.