When She Was Bad

7

After showering, Max dried and powdered his stump. He loathed the sight of it-the way the surgeon had drawn a flap of skin underneath the femur and reattached it to the back of the thigh with a sort of tucked-in curl made it look a little like a shrimp’s head.

His newest prosthetic leg was handsome, though, with a locking knee-joint and a contoured pink calf instead of a stark titanium rod. It was held on by suction, too-no more cumbersome harness. And once he was dressed (Lyssy’s favorite outfit, comfortable chinos and a dove-gray corduroy shirt, gray socks, black sneakers) there was no way anybody could tell him apart from a two-legged man-at least as long as he was standing still.

Just after five o’clock, Wally arrived. He’d changed from his hospital whites into baggy shorts and a green bowling shirt worn unbuttoned over a ribbed wife-beater undershirt. Sandals, no socks-the Big Lebowski look. “Happy birthday, dude,” he said, producing a small gift-wrapped box from behind his back. “That’s from the whole staff-we all chipped in.”

Max tore it open greedily-it was an MP3 player, with earphones and software. “Wow,” he Lyssy’d. “Wow, thanks, this is-I don’t know what to say.”

“We thought it would come in handy in-Well, you know.”

In jail, thought Max. Yeah, I know.

Patty and Lilith were waiting for them at the arboretum gate. Patty too had changed out of her whites, into a denim shirt and wide-bottomed jeans with the seat worn shiny. Lilith was wearing the tight hip-hugger jeans she’d arrived in, and a dark-brown, V-neck, cashmere sweater that showed both her figure and her glossy brown hair to best advantage.

Patty gave Lyssy a hug and wished him happy birthday. Lilith kept her eyes trained on the ground as she wished him the same. Little-girl voice, diffident posture-but was it a disguise, or had the alter switched back to her original personality since lunch? Once again, Max realized that he had no way of knowing for sure.

“We never did work out that password, did we?” he whispered out of the side of his mouth, as he and the girl walked on ahead together, trailed at a distance of ten yards or so by their escorts.

“What password?” said the girl. “Who are you, anyway?”