Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

And so Jolene just blurted it out, not caring how horrible it sounded, how she was afraid when all this was over, the court case and everything, how Hank could go on and on and she’d be-a few real tears creeping out now-a nun married to breathing cadaver for the rest of her life.

And she let Allen take her briefly in his arms. “Don’t worry,” he murmured, “I can help, if it comes to that.”

“Shhh,” she placed her cool finger to his lips and felt them flutter in a faint kiss. “Not now,” she said. “Someday, but not now.”

She could see Allen conjure intimacy in the tone of her voice and in her moist eyes.

Jolene withdrew her finger from his lips and took a step back. “Details,” she said, brightening, blinking away tears. “And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

“What?” Allen asked.

“The poem you mentioned, remember? It’s anonymous. A doggerel, not really a poem, it’s part of the Real Mother Goose Rhymes . I looked it up.”

Allen was impressed.

As he drove away, he placed his right hand across his heart, like a civilian saluting the flag; except he was touching the place where Jolene had rested her head against his chest.

She had definitely reached out to him on a very delicate matter. And it wasn’t as simple as a Do-Not-Resuscitate or a Do-Not-Intubate order. Hank’s heart and lungs showed no signs of failing.

And he wasn’t hooked to a ventilator, so it wasn’t a case where the care provider could elect to end medical support and flip a switch.

Jolene could try to get a court order to withhold nutrition but that looked mercenary, and there would be a gruesome time element.

But if she did get a DNR-DNI order as a precaution against a future incident, and if he discreetly induced a respiratory arrest-that would work.

Yes, it would.

Earl came in around supper time smiling sweetly and carrying a deluxe Domino’s pizza and an armful of flowers, which he proceeded to place in makeshift vases around the kitchen. She gauged the depth of his insecurity by his needy cow eyes; he was actually watching her for signs that she might be willing to fool around with him.

“What do you have now, friends in the cops? How’d you get on the national computer?” she asked, ignoring his eyes tracking her movements around the kitchen.

“Allen must have called,” Earl said in a distracted voice, arranging flowers, sniffing them like Ferdinand the fucking bull.

“How’d you come up with a police record on Broker?” Jolene asked as she turned on the oven.

“Easy. Those ads on TV for the online background checks: ‘See if anyone you know has a criminal record,’ ” Earl mimicked a hyped broadcast voice. “Well, they’re jacked into NCIC, so, since Broker came on a little stronger than your run-of-the-mill canoe guy, I typed in his name.” Earl folded his arms and looked very concerned. “I think you have to be real cautious around this dude.”

“He likes me.” She held up her bruised wrist. “It’s assholes who molest women that he’s down on.” She put the pizza in the oven.

“Ah, I’m thinking, if he gets rough again, I may need to bring in a war elephant.”

“Who?”

“I was thinking Rodney.”

Aw, God, a name that brought back the dumb old days. While she drove, Earl and Rodney would act out their comic-book fantasies with the guns, and they picked off three desolate 7-Eleven’s in the outer-ring burbs before she and Earl went off on their own and had the bad experience in North Dakota that ended their stickup-artist phase. Jolene shook her head. “Earl, Rodney’s in jail. Remember his bright idea about stealing machine guns from the National Guard?”

“He copped a plea and gave up a bunch of redneck militia types in Alabama, so he’s on probation.”

She shook her head, then narrowed her eyes, calculating. “Rodney’s got bad genes, he’s a second-generation crook, and, for my money, I see him as way too slow to handle Broker.”

“What? Are we taking bets?”

“I’m just saying, Earl, that Rodney is a muscle-bound klutz, and I see Broker as quicker and smarter. And another thing, I don’t want him anywhere near this house. I don’t want Rodney to know where I live.”

“C’mon Jolene. He’s a friend.”

“He’ll eat everything in the refrigerator, then he’ll sleep on the couch. When he wakes up he’ll steal all the major appliances. No way.”

“I’m still going to talk to him.”

“I don’t like it,” Jolene said. But it held appeal as a test. Broker would have to prove himself in the street. She’d alert him, of course, then she’d settle back and watch. She innately understood playing people off against each other, but Hank had explained it was a popular business practice in corporate life, where they cut throats with paper memos.

They called it creative tension, and there was plenty of it to go around in this house.

“How’s that pizza doing?” Earl asked.

“In a minute,” Jolene said, her brow furrowed, thinking it through. Broker gets rid of Earl. Allen does the right thing by Hank. Then, hopefully, after a long, decent interval, Broker and Allen would both get lost in the long shadow of someone with real future potential, like maybe Milton Dane.

One floor down, Hank marshaled all his willpower to thaw his fingers. He felt sensations, little tickles, imbedded deep. Jolene was just a shadow wiping his chin, suctioning his mouth, bringing him his slosh. She flitted in and out of the room.

Hank focused all his energy. C’mon fingers.

C’mon.

Amy’s shopping bags were stacked on the mud porch and she met him at the door. Before he could open his mouth she reached out and plucked a sliver of computer screen from the folds of his jacket and held it up. Then she cautiously dusted a fine sparkle of the glass from his chest.

“Broker, stay put. You’re covered in broken glass,” she said.

J.T. came through the door, observed that Broker, in fact, was sprinkled with tiny bits of glass, and said, “Hmmm.”

Amy tilted her head. “What happened?”

Broker studied her and thought how she and Jolene were close in age but the comparisons ended there. Amy was someone you’d trust to watch your daughter and Jolene was the one you’d run off to South America with after you’d embezzled a million dollars and abandoned your family.

“There’s this predatory dude camped out in Sommer’s basement and he and I had this minor altercation,” Broker said.

“Uh-huh, and why’s he there?” J.T. asked.

“Well, he’s the wife’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Uh-huh, and he sort of slid back in the picture after Sommer became a vegetable,” J.T. speculated.

“The wife,” Amy said with a sidelong glance to J.T. “I remember her at the hospital. She was what you’d call hot.”

“She cut off her hair, she don’t look so hot now,” Broker said.

“So why did you and this guy get into it?” J.T. asked.

“Well, he sort of manhandled her. .”

“And you didn’t find her boring,” Amy said with a wry downturning of her lips, “and you came to the rescue. How gallant.” Practical, she picked up a short broom J.T. kept in the corner of the porch and thrust it into Broker’s chest. “Go outside and dust yourself off.”

As Broker tidied up on the front porch, Amy came out in her parka, walked past him, descended the stairs, crossed the yard, and proceeded to walk back and forth along the fence next to the barn. A half-dozen female ostriches floated behind her like moody gray animations.

“You really have this way with women,” J.T. said, coming up behind Broker. “She’s getting ready to bail on you.”