David Morrell - Assumed Identity

Buchanan glanced at his watch, surprised that it showed half-past noon, that what had felt like a fifteen-minute nap had lasted almost two hours. The doctor had warned him about sleeping more than usual. Past noon? He frowned. Lunch should be ready by now, and he wondered why Cindy or Jack hadn’t roused him. He stretched his arms, testing the stiffness in his shoulder where his wound had been restitched, then put on his shoes and stood from the bed.

He heard a soft rap on the door.

“Vic?” Cindy whispered.

“It’s all right. I’m up.” Buchanan opened the door.

“Lunch is ready.” She smiled engagingly.

Buchanan noticed that she’d removed her flour-dusted apron but still wore the red-and-black-checkered handkerchief on her head. Her hair must need fixing and she didn’t have time, he thought as he followed her along the sunny hallway into the kitchen.

“The pie’s for supper. We don’t eat big meals at lunch,” she explained. “Jack’s a fanatic about his cholesterol. I hope you like simple food.”

A steaming bowl of vegetable soup had been set at each place, along with a tuna sandwich flanked by a plate of sliced celery, carrots, cauliflower, and tomatoes.

“The bread’s whole wheat,” she added, “but I can give you white if you. .”

“No, whole wheat’s fine,” Buchanan said, and noticed that Doyle, who was already sitting at the table, seemed preoccupied by the tip of his fork.

“Did you have a good nap?” Cindy asked.

“Fine,” Buchanan said, and took a chair only after she did, waiting until she dipped her spoon into the soup before he started to eat. “Delicious.”

“Try the raw cauliflower.” Cindy pointed. “It’s supposed to help purify your system.”

“Well, mine could definitely stand some purifying,” Buchanan joked, and wondered why Doyle hadn’t spoken or eaten yet. Obviously, something was bothering him. Buchanan decided to prompt him. “I bet I’d still be asleep if I hadn’t heard the phone.”

“Oh, I was afraid that might have happened,” Cindy said.

“Yeah.” Doyle finally spoke. “You know how I’ve got the office phone rigged so if someone calls there and we’re out, the call is relayed to here?”

Buchanan nodded, as if that information was obvious to him, trying to maintain the fiction in front of Cindy that he’d worked for her husband these past three months.

“Well, that was someone calling the office to talk to you,” Doyle said. “A man. I told him you wouldn’t be available for a while. He said he’d call back.”

Buchanan tried hard not to show his concern. “It was probably someone I did a job for. Maybe he’s got questions about a piece of equipment I installed. Did he leave his name?”

Doyle somberly shook his head.

“Then it mustn’t have been very important.” Buchanan tried to sound casual.

“That’s what I thought,” Doyle said. “By the way, after lunch I ought to go down to the office. I need to check on a couple of things. If you’re feeling all right, you want to keep me company?”

“Jack, he’s supposed to be resting, not working,” Cindy said.

Buchanan chewed and swallowed. “Not to worry. Sure. My nap did a world of good. I’ll drive along with you.”

“Great.” Doyle finally started to eat, then paused, frowning toward Cindy. “You’ll be all right while we’re gone?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Cindy’s smile was forced.

“The soup’s excellent,” Doyle said.

“So glad you like it.” Cindy’s smile became even more forced.

“Something’s wrong,” Buchanan said.

Doyle didn’t respond, just stared straight ahead and pretended to concentrate on traffic.

Buchanan decided to push it. “Your wife’s so good-natured, I get the sense she’s working at it. Working hard. She doesn’t ask questions, but she picks up overtones-about that phone call, for example. If her smile got any harder, her face would have cracked. She doesn’t believe for a minute that you and I are friends. Oh, she tries to pretend, but the truth is, I make her nervous, and at lunch she finally wasn’t able to hide it anymore. If she gets any more nervous, I might have to leave.”

Doyle kept staring ahead, driving over bridges that spanned canals along which pleasure boats were moored next to palm trees and expensive homes. The sunlight was fierce. Doyle seemed to squint less from the sun and more from the topic, however, as he put on dark glasses.

Buchanan let him alone then, eased the pressure, allowing Doyle to respond at his own pace. Even so, Doyle took so long to reply that Buchanan began to think that he never would unless Buchanan prompted him again.

That wasn’t necessary.

“You’re not the problem,” Doyle said, his voice tight. “How I wish life could be that simple. Cindy’s glad to have you at the house. Really. She wants you to stay as long as necessary. When it comes to the favors I do, her nerves are incredible. I remember once. . I was stationed at Coronado, California. . Cindy and I lived off base. I said good-bye to her in the morning, drove to work, and suddenly my team was put on alert. No communications to anyone off base. So naturally I couldn’t tell her I was being airlifted out. I could imagine what she’d be feeling when I didn’t come home that night. The confusion. The worry. No emotional preparation for what might be the last time we saw each other.” Doyle’s voice hardened. He glanced toward Buchanan. “I was away for six months.” Buchanan noted that Doyle didn’t say where he’d been sent, and Buchanan would never have asked. He let Doyle continue.

“I found out later that a reporter had managed to discover that I was a SEAL and Cindy was my wife,” Doyle said. “The reporter showed up at our apartment and wanted her to tell him where I’d been sent. Well, at that point, Cindy still didn’t know I was gone, let alone to where, which of course-the where part-she never would have known anyhow. But someone not as strong as Cindy couldn’t have helped being surprised to find a reporter blurting questions at her and telling her I’d been sent on a mission. The natural response would have been for her to show her surprise, admit I was a SEAL, and ask him how much danger I was in. Not Cindy, though. She stonewalled him and claimed she didn’t know what he was talking about. Other reporters showed up, and she stonewalled them as well. Her answer was always the same: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Amazing. She never phoned the base, wanting to know what was happening to me. She just acted as if everything was normal, and Monday through Friday she went to her job as a receptionist for an insurance company, and when I finally got back, she gave me a long, deep kiss and said she’d missed me. Not ‘Where were you?’ just that she’d missed me. I left on plenty of missions, and I never for a second doubted that she was faithful to me, either.”

Buchanan nodded, but he couldn’t help wondering, If Cindy wasn’t nervous because of his presence, what was the source of the tension he sensed?

“Cindy has cancer,” Doyle said.

Buchanan stared.

“Leukemia.” Doyle’s voice became more strained. “That’s why she wears that kerchief on her head. To hide her scalp. The chemotherapy has made her bald.”

Buchanan’s chest felt numb. He understood now why Cindy’s cheeks seemed to glow, why her skin seemed translucent. The chemicals she was taking-combined with the attrition caused by the disease-gave her skin a noncorporeal, ethereal quality.

“She just got out of the hospital yesterday after one of her three-day treatments,” Doyle said. “All that fuss about the food at lunch today. Hell, it was all she could do to eat it. And the pie she was making. . The chemotherapy does something to her sense of taste. She can’t bear sweets. While you were napping, she threw up.”