Майкл Коннелли - The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

Not even Holmes could have predicted this. Now, my dear Dr. Watson…

Friday lunches were boiled as a rule, and today’s was no exception. With a feeling of numb resignation, Mr. Hank Crute guided his fork around the slab of corned beef, the bed of wild rice, the clutch of blanched green beans. His hand trembled just a hair as he let the fork drop to the table and pushed the plate away.

“Not hungry anyway,” he announced, to no one in particular.

Some days, indeed, he ate so little he was amazed to find himself still alive. Some days the only reason to get out of bed was so they wouldn’t come knocking for him. One of those stern Eritrean gals reminding him he had less than half an hour of breakfast left.

“Get a move on, Mr. Hank!”

For after breakfast, they would remind him, there was Morning Chairobics and a bus trip to CVS and the weekly meeting of the Card Club. And later on the Scrabble Club and the Scrapbooking Society and, still later, the Sing Along ’n Snacks Social and the ring toss and Twilight Walk with Miss Phyllis.

“Oh, and don’t forget! Hair styling from Miss Desdemona!”

Never mind that Hank Crute had gone eighty-four years on God’s earth without requiring a hair stylist. This was the kind of place that would foist activity on you whether you wanted it or not. As he sat staring at the ruin of his lunch, Hank grew a little dizzy thinking of all the places he was supposed to be or not supposed to be—the wheels that were already in motion on his behalf, ferrying him from one part of the Morning Has Broken facility to another without taking him anywhere.

He closed his eyes. Waited for some hard intention to contract out of the darkness.

My room, he thought.

Gripping the rim of the table, he edged his chair out and rocked himself to standing, only to see that another plate had materialized alongside the plate he had just pushed away. Almost identical, right down to the forked trails in the rice and the splayed green beans.

A prickle of terror climbed the back of his neck. Surely he hadn’t actually gotten two plates for himself? Surely someone had joined him along the way. Someone whose name and face he had temporarily forgotten (as he was always doing). What other reason could there be for two plates of boiled food?

With a lurch, he took a step back and surveyed his surroundings. Among the semiambulatory and near-bedridden residents of Morning Has Broken, Hank took no small pride in being able to travel without walker or wheelchair, but that lonely eminence meant that sometimes he had to stand for upward of a minute orienting himself, and even after plunging forward, he might have no clear suspicion of where he was heading. As often as not, he would wait for something to rear up before him before concluding that this was the very thing toward which he had been tending.

In this manner, he came upon the elevator.

And concluded that yes, this was just where he’d been traveling. He was—he remembered now!—going back to his room. And once there, he would take a nap and forget all about corned beef and wild rice and lunch companions who slipped away when you weren’t looking. It was a treacherous world.

He stabbed the Up button with his index finger, listened for the rumble of the car. A light flared above him, and the elevator doors exhaled open. So intent was he on bustling inside that he very nearly collided with a woman who was equally intent on leaving. For several seconds they stood regarding each other.

“Why, it’s Mr. Hank,” she said at last. “Good morning.”

Her lips were dark and shrunken. Her walker rested on punctured tennis balls.

“It’s afternoon,” he said.

“So it is.”

She wasn’t moving.

“I’m Mrs. Sylvia,” she said.

“I know who you are.”

It was one of the curious things about this place that the residents only knew each other reliably by first name. Possibly Mrs. Sylvia had once divulged her last name, but that secret lay buried.

“You should come to the movie matinee today,” she said. “It’s a Stewart Granger movie.”

“Who?”

“Stewart…” She had a flash of panic, wondering if she’d gotten it wrong. “Stewart Granger. ”

“Little bushed,” he mumbled.

“Nothing a fifteen-minute snooze wouldn’t fix.”

“Could be.”

“Will I see you at dinner?” asked Mrs. Sylvia.

“That’s as may be.”

She was still watching him when the doors closed.

He let out a current of air and leaned back against the wood paneling. From somewhere in the not-distant past, a mocking voice (whose?) came curling back. “Man at your age, still able to walk. Why, you must be the rooster in the henhouse.” He never felt less like a rooster than in the company of Mrs. Sylvia. Or any of the other widows who tried to cajole him into Bingo Night or wine, cheese, and crossword socials. He could remember some old crone flashing her aquamarine rings at him and crooning, “It’s not right for a man to be alone. It’s all right for a woman, but not for a man.”

Well, it was all right for this man.

He must have dozed for a second, because when he next opened his eyes, the elevator doors were wide open and the gold-and-royal-green carpet of the ninth floor spread before him. Taking care to lift his sneakers clear of the shag, he traveled past the two wing chairs, past the vague seascape, turned the corner, and made his way to number 932, nearly at the end of the hall.

On the sconce alongside his door was a bud vase with a single white artificial carnation. Above the sconce an embossed nameplate: HENRY CRUTE. He had long ceased to notice it. The only nameplates he ever noticed were the ones that went away. Vanished overnight, some of them, leaving nothing but a rectangular outline on the wall.

Once inside, he stood for a moment gripping the door handle, then tottered toward his red corduroy armchair—collapsed into it with a despairing grunt. By habit his eyes swung toward his prescription-pill dispenser on his coffee table. Those seven small chambers with their soothing litany: M, T, W, TH, F, S, SU.

Pills, he thought. Had he taken his pills?

But his eyelids were already scrolling down, and in the grayness that swirled through him, not a single definite proposition could be entertained—until something that was not gray broke through, sharp and clear.

A voice.

Hank opened his eyes. A woman was standing over him.

That fact was so overladen with surprise that it very nearly mastered him. How had she gotten in? Had he left the door open? Had he been so unpardonably sloppy as that?

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Hank,” she said. “I was wondering if you had a moment.”

He made to lever himself out of his chair, but even as she said, “Don’t get up,” he was already falling back.

“How are we doing today?” she said.

She was young. On the lower side of her thirties, he would have thought (though he could no longer trust himself on this score). She wore a smart lab coat, with a nametag pinned over her coat pocket and over her shoulder a leather satchel.

“I’m Dr. Landis,” she said.

Next moment she was extending a clean, strong white hand, ringless. He held the hand briefly in his, felt the pulse of warmth beneath its lightly veined skin.

“If you say so,” he said.

“I believe we had an appointment.”

“We did?”

“I believe so.”

“No one said anything to me.”

“Um…” She slid some kind of phone contraption out of her coat pocket; her fingers gavotted across the screen. “Hank Crute… one o’clock to one fifteen… Yep, I got it right.”