Loving Time

seventy

Bobbie liked the basement apartment even though the heat from the hot-water pipes was so intense, no one else could stand it. He said it reminded him of Louisiana. Sometimes in winter the pipes were so hot a splash of water could turn the place into a steam bath. Bobbie said where he came from there had always been a lot of steam rising off the bayous, where his father and brothers went out fishing almost every day before the war in ‘Nam changed everything.

Bobbie said he never did have the patience for fishing himself, and even now the smell of fish made him sick. He told Gunn how his father used to tease him about his chickens. The men in his family fished and never did anything else since time in Louisiana began. Gunn imagined Bobbie as a good boy. He always gave his mother the money he made from those eggs.

Bobbie, Bobbie, Bobbie. Gunn’s head was full of him, his stories of the oyster pies and tickling the crayfish holes in the hard ground with a stick to tease them out, and the heat, and the father who wasted away for years before he finally died coughing up streams of bloody phlegm. And his brother who went to prison for killing a man Bobbie knew for sure his brother never even got close enough to touch. And Bobbie’s humiliation in Vietnam, where everybody saw things through the haze of drugs and Bobbie was the only one sane enough to see what was going on. He was too good. Gunn reviewed the events of the last year in the light of the questions the Chinese cop had asked.

Gunn remembered Bobbie’s gentle way with the patients on his ward, how soft and kind he had been no matter how crazy and vicious and off the wall the patients had been. He had picked them up and put them down, wrapped them and unwrapped them like precious dolls, never, never hurt anyone. She knew he’d been hurt over and over, but he had never hurt anyone else.

For hours Gunn lay rigid on her bed in her pull-on pants and several layers of tee shirts. She had not wanted to go to bed in case Bobbie called, even though she knew Bobbie would not call. He was mad at her for not destroying his file a long time ago, for keeping it there in the wall of files for somebody to find someday and use to put him out of the Centre. He’d been afraid of dying, homeless, on the street. No matter what she said to assure him such a thing would never happen, he had refused to believe her. He didn’t understand that the files were sacred. Gunn knew other people tampered with them, lost them, destroyed them, but she never would. That’s why she’d had to get Bobbie’s file from Dickey’s office and put it back. The whole point was to keep Bobbie out of it.

In the flickering light of the TV, Gunn shivered, even though the woman cop had pointed out it was warm in the building. Very warm. She turned off the TV and lay back on her bed, shivering in the dark. She worried about the toilet flushing in an apartment where no one was home and wondered if she was just a crazy old fool.

Her eyelids began to feel heavy, and she drifted off into a familiar nightmare. She dreamed her cozy little apartment—with all its overstuffed furniture, floral fabrics, pillows, and lace—burst into a wild, raging fire that forced her up against the leaded window, which she could not open. With the fire at her back, Gunn tried and tried, but the window would not budge. It was rusted shut.

She could hear the crackling flames eat up her couch, her rocking chair and the lace shawl hanging over the back, feel the heat press her against the frozen, leaded glass. Then a burst of cold air hit her face as the window opened. She whimpered with terror as the dream changed shape and she tried to wake up.

As she struggled in her dream, she heard a voice in her ear. “Gunn, wake up.” Two powerful hands took her shoulders and shook her roughly.

She opened her eyes. “Bobbie?”

“Get up,” he ordered.

Gunn started crying. “Bobbie, please don’t be mad at me. I’ve been so worried.”

“I said, get up.”

“All right, all right.” She got up, pulled her tee shirts down over her hips, and scrubbed at the tears on her face.

“Go in there.” He marched her into the living room and sat her on her pretty couch. “What did you tell them?” he demanded.

Gunn’s mouth opened. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

“That’s not what they said.”

“Bobbie, I—did something bad.”

“You stupid bitch.” He kicked the couch.

She cringed at his anger. “Don’t be mad at me. I was afraid. I’m … still afraid.”

Bobbie’s eyes were cold. “That FBI guy you were so friendly with said you fingered me.”

Gunn’s eyes widened with shock. “I told them how good you were with the patients, how much they all liked you. That’s all I told them. Bobbie, that’s not how I was bad.”

“Oh, yeah, Gunn, how were you bad?”

Bobbie looked so mad. Gunn wrung her little hands, unsure how to say it. “I only wanted to help you. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I just did it—to help.”

She had no time to scream. He grabbed her and squeezed her neck until the roar of asphyxiation filled her ears. Her lungs screamed for air. She reached for Bobbie with both hands, couldn’t reach him, ended up clawing at the pillows and peeing in her pants. The next thing she knew, Bobbie was sprinkling her all over with water from the antique brass watering can that she never used for anything but decoration.

Gunn gasped, coughed, couldn’t catch her breath. She was aware of being wet all over and stinking, tried to vomit. Nothing came up. Bobbie stood over her, his broad, freckled face and huge, bulky body a mountain. He held the watering can above her so that it continued to dribble all over her. His face was bloated, swollen with rage. She’d never seen anything like it. She looked around wildly for the cops. The cops had to be watching him, watching the building. She probed the throbbing bruises on her neck. She was terrified. Bobbie had described killing chickens like that, then cutting their heads off after they were dead. It occurred to her for the first time that he was crazy.

“Bobbie, don’t hurt me.… ” Her voice was a croak.

“I don’t hurt people.” His strange blue eyes pulsed with the death-rays of the voodoo people. He once told her people with eyes like that could kill.

“You don’t hurt people?” she whimpered.

He banged the watering can against the sofa arm.

“I’m a good person, loyal to a fault. I don’t hurt people.” He stuck his fingers in her face. “Do you hear me? I don’t hurt people.”

She wanted to throw up.

“I told you I don’t hurt people,” he insisted.

“You hurt me,” Gunn said softly. “You almost killed me, Bobbie.” Gunn hung her head.

“You hurt me, Gunn. Say you’re sorry.”

“You know I’m sorry.”

“Nobody says they’re sorry. They fuck you over. And then when they’re wrong they don’t say they’re sorry—You bitch! You set me up.”

“No, Bobbie, I was trying to save you.” Gunn started to cough and cry again.

“You set me up.”

“No.” He was wrong about that. She shook her head. She’d helped him. Tried so hard to help him. Her eyes jumped around, looking for something to save her from this.

“Loyal to a fault,” he spat at her. “I took care of you.”

The wrongness of this made Gunn shake her head. Bobbie was all mixed up. The truth was she, Gunn, had taken care of him, got him a job, brought his old mother up north, found her a place to stay, took care of her while she was sick. She’d given Bobbie money and seen that the old lady got buried right. It had been expensive, but she had done it for him. “Bobbie—” He was all wrong. She wanted this to stop now.

“Admit you set me up,” he said, his wrath erupting again.

“I’m sorry, Bobbie.… I feel real bad. I didn’t mean to kill Dr. Dickey. I just wanted him to get a little confused and forget about you. Please believe me, I didn’t know it would kill him.”

“You killed him?” Bobbie screamed. “You?”

“I was trying to help you, Bobbie—”

“You … bitch. You didn’t help me. You finished me!” He shook the watering can in her face. The water was all gone. Furiously, he slammed it down on the side of her face, splintering her nose and cheekbone. He hit her with it again, bashing her skull in with almost no effort. Then he dropped the watering can and without a backward glance returned to the bedroom, where Gunn never locked the leaded window because she was afraid of fire. He went down the fire escape and out through the garden.