Ride the lightning

XXV

When he got back to his apartment, Nudger stretched out on the sofa with the light out and worked at feeling sorry for himself.

It was even less difficult than he'd anticipated. Things had been piling up lately, bearing down on him. He thought about calling Candy Ann at the Ramada Inn, but Siberling might be there. A phone call was a bad idea, anyway, he decided. He knew he was in no condition to cheer up anyone. Right now, he was probably the last person who should talk to Candy Ann.

He lay thinking of how he might have handled Archway if only he'd thought to tackle the man and drag him down, wrestle with him, maybe even put some of those TV wrestling holds on him, the Bavarian Claw, or the Neutron Spinal Twist, not give him a chance to do his dancing act where the finale was Nudger soaring through the air. But he knew, really, that the younger and more powerful Archway would probably have subdued him in a wrestling match easily, and maybe even more painfully. The wholesome bastard probably ran ten miles a day. Probably lifted weights. Probably ate weights. Claudia could really pick them.

Claudia… He veered his mind away from Claudia, away from that kind of agony. He tried to think about Curtis Colt, a man with troubles that made Nudger's seem trivial. But that wasn't much help. He, Nudger, was Nudger, and Colt was Colt and so not of as much concern. Suffering was a solitary exercise. That was how wars and executions worked.

Around midnight, Nudger's side and back stopped throbbing. He rolled onto his left side, managed to work his body into a reasonably comfortable position, and finally fell asleep. In the morning, he limped into the bathroom and showered. The steam and the stinging hot water relieved him of some of his stiffness. Gradually increasing the temperature of the water, he stayed in the stifling shower stall until he could barely breathe and had to get out. The outer bathroom, which was probably over ninety degrees, felt refreshingly cool in contrast as Nudger stepped over the edge of the tub.

He toweled dry slowly, and was walking okay by the time he'd finished dressing.

It was eight-thirty, half an hour away from Curtis Colt's execution. Nudger got Mr. Coffee going, then went into the living room and called Candy Ann at the Ramada Inn. He thought about what Harold Benedict had said about the apartment phone possibly being tapped, but he didn't give a damn. Not at the moment.

Siberling answered the phone in Room 220. Nudger couldn't help wondering if the Napoleonic little lawyer had spent the night there, found himself a Josephine. He mentally kicked himself for thinking that way, blaming it on his painful experience of last night at Claudia's.

"Where's Candy Ann?" he asked.

"She's working at the Right Steer," Siberling said. "The media aren't covering the place now, or her trailer. They figure she's in hiding, and they know the story, as far as she's concerned, is going to end very soon. There'll be plenty of time to aggravate her later for in-depth interviews, if anybody's still interested."

"Is the story going to end?" Nudger asked.

"Scalla has half an hour to change his mind," Siberling said, "but he isn't going to. He's an eye-for-an-eye kind of fella. Curtis is as good as gone."

"Did you tell Candy Ann that?"

"No, I advised her to treat today as she would any other, to have faith that it was just another stage in the climb to Curtis Colt's eventual retrial. She's better off thinking that way and working, keeping busy, instead of sitting around suffering like Curtis."

"She'll learn about his death while she's waiting tables," Nudger said. The mundaneness of that bothered him. Sweet rolls, cream for the coffee, and Death.

"She'll learn," Siberling said, "then she'll probably take a cab home and weep. She'll get over it, Nudger. She's young, and stronger than you think. She'll recover, and we did everything we could. Life will keep dealing people shitty cards, the world will keep turning. Case closed. Or it will be in… twenty-five minutes now."

Siberling had finally lost interest and enthusiasm. Already he was thinking about his next case on his road to wherever his career might take him. Maybe he was being hard, maybe just sensible. Nudger wished he could be like that.

After hanging up on Siberling, he walked around the apartment, staring out the windows at nothing. It occurred to him that he'd never washed the outside storm windows. No one had. Whose responsibility were they? What was in the lease about that? He'd never thought about it before, and he wondered why it was worrying him now. He went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. Might as well get really jittery.

He tried to take Siberling's advice to Candy Ann and treat this like any other morning.

Not looking at the clock, he began preparing breakfast.

He heated the frying pan, sprayed it with Pam, and broke two eggs into it. Then he slid two pieces of bread in the toaster and pushed down on the handle.

Orange juice. He told himself he wanted some orange juice.

On the way to the refrigerator, he switched on the radio on the counter. It was tuned to one of those twenty-four- hour all-talk stations. He tried not to think about what they'd soon have to talk about. Right now an astrologer was explaining how the stars could affect our ability to make love.

Nudger poured a glass of juice and returned to stand over the sizzling eggs. He noticed he'd broken one of the yolks and it had run in a pattern that resembled the state of Missouri. What the hell could that mean? Was it some kind of omen? Maybe he ought to call the astrologer at the station and find out about this. But then that wasn't her specialty; she read stars, not eggs.

He stood slouching in front of the stove and worried the eggs with a wood-handled spatula. The morning had started badly and wasn't getting better.

At ten minutes after nine, a newscaster somberly announced that Curtis Colt had been put to death in the electric chair. It had taken three minutes and several surges of electricity to kill him. He'd offered no last words before two thousand volts had turned him from something into nothing.

Immediately after the announcement, a Jefferson City interview with Governor Scalla was played. The governor assured the voters that the electric chair could be made to do its work faster and more humanely, and that now that this unpleasant but necessary task had been done, potential murderers would realize the seriousness of what they might be considering and society could sleep easier in its collective bed. Justice had been served, Scalla said. Only by taking life could we emphasize the value of life.

Nudger switched off the radio.

He went ahead and ate his eggs, but he skipped the toast.