Kem Nunn - Chance

“Forget about it,” D told him, “you get that.” He nodded toward a chair while advancing upon the desk, the largest and heaviest piece in the set and which, without waiting a reply from Chance, he tilted against his thighs, found his grip, brought the entire piece flat to his chest as though it were of no more consequence than a fold-up card table, and headed for the exit. Chance followed, watching as D wrestled the big desk down the difficult staircase, turning it first one way and then the other, at one point, in exiting the building, going so far as to heft the entire thing above his head. When he’d gotten it into the back of the truck he turned to Chance, still in possession of his chair. “You want to get this shit wrapped and strapped, I’ll get the rest.”

And that was how they did it. By the time Chance had wrapped the desk in a mover’s blanket and secured it to a wall of the truck with a canvas strap, D was back with the bookcase. By the time he was done with that, D was back with the remaining chair, no more winded and no less so than when they had begun.

At some point, while Chance was still in the truck, some guy had started honking. The traffic was always slow here and the position of the truck was making it more so, effectively squeezing what was usually a two-lane, two-way street into a single lane as motorists were forced to take turns getting around the rear corner of the truck. This was not an unusual occurrence for anyone used to the neighborhood. But horns were not so unusual either, and one guy in particular seemed intent upon taking umbrage at the situation. He was driving a gunmetal-gray BMW, one of the big ones with tinted glass, and he started honking about three car lengths back from the truck. What he hoped to gain by all of this was unclear, but there he was, honking away. The honking inspired two or three other malcontents to join in.

Chance went once to the rear of the truck, where he and the driver of the BMW, a capable-looking young man in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled above his wrists, were able to make eye contact. Chance held up his hands, palms out and up, as though to ask, “What do you expect me to do? This is what it’s like here.” It was that kind of gesture. The driver responded by flipping him off. Chance went back to wrapping furniture.

The BMW had drawn almost even with the rear of the truck, its driver now taken to punctuating his honks with the occasional shouted epithet by the time D returned with the last chair. D set the chair in the back of the truck and, as the driver’s turn had finally come and he was about to move around the truck, stepped very matter-of-factly into the street in front of him, effectively blocking the BMW’s path. The car came to an abrupt stop. The driver honked and gesticulated and worked his jaw. D just stood there staring at him. At some point the guy seemed to get the picture. A profound silence settled upon the street. The driver sat waiting as several cars in the opposing lane went on by, then tried backing up as far as the fifteen other cars behind him would allow and cranking his wheels as if a wider turn into the street would somehow effect his escape. D responded by taking one step toward the car and one to his right. The driver’s position was by now painfully and wonderfully obvious. His options were roughly three in number. He could run over the man in front of him, undoubtedly the dictate of his heart, but this was impractical as there were witnesses and really, given the traffic, no way to go very far very fast. He could of course get out of his car. Or, finally, he could sit there and shut up till it had been made manifest to any and all concerned just how thoroughly he’d been made a cunt of. Not surprisingly, he opted for door number three. After some seemingly appropriate amount of time had passed, D moved and the guy went quietly on, hands atop his wheel, eyes dead ahead.

Chance had by now finished with the furniture. He went up the stairs once more to take a last look around and locked the door. D was waiting in the passenger seat of the truck when he came back down. Chance got in behind the wheel. They drove for a block without speaking.

“That was pretty good,” Chance said finally. He was referring to what had happened in the street. The fact was, he was having some difficulty in repressing a deep sense of exhilaration.

D nodded, resting his head against the metal grate behind his seat, and closed his eyes. “Shit like that makes my day.”

In the days that followed, Big D ostensibly at work on Chance’s furniture, Carl yet in absentia for reasons still unknown, Chance went about his business. He continued his work with Doc Billy. On the Beck Depression Inventory, Billy endorsed the following items:

• I feel sad much of the time.

• I feel more discouraged about my future than I used to.

• I have failed more than I should have.

• I don’t enjoy things as much as I used to.

• I feel I may be punished.

• I cry more than I used to.

• I have lost most of my interest in other people or things.

• I don’t consider myself as worthwhile and useful as I used to.

• I sleep a lot more than usual.

• I get tired or fatigued more easily than usual.

• I am less interested in sex than I used to be.

Chance noted the Doc’s score as 13/ 63and consistent with a mild level of depression. He might have said the same for himself but he was trying not to go there. He’d been drinking more of late and this worried him. He’d been considering Lexapro but had thus far rejected the option as some form of capitulation to despair, a position he would not have shared with the many patients for whom he would no doubt continue to prescribe the drug. With regard to Doc Billy, he was in no less of a quandary. His sympathies were with the old man but professional considerations were proving difficult to ignore. His livelihood was, at this point in the game, more or less dependent upon maintaining his reputation as an expert witness in just such cases as Dr. Billy’s, and the Beck Depression Inventory was only one of the many tests he had thus far administered. Cumulative scores suggested it would be mistaken to say Dr. Fry’s problems with attention, concentration, and memory were primarily or exclusively the result of emotional issues, i.e., the intrusion into his personal life on the part of a relative he believed to be quite distant and interested only in his money. Cognitively speaking, the old boy was most definitely on a downward slope.

The other player in all of this, the caregiver and prime suspect, was Lorena Sanchez, formerly of Oaxaca, Mexico, a devout Catholic who prayed often in Billy’s presence. When asked for a description, the doc had described her as five feet tall and chunky. They were seated in the dreaded kitchenette, Dr. Chance and Dr. Billy, windows shut and shuttered, blinds drawn, stove at three-fifty for “extra heat.” The elder doc was sporting the hearing aids he described alternately as “Jap work” and “not worth shit.” The green oxygen tank was at his side, emitting a series of soft clicking sounds, as if extremely small and perhaps alien visitors were trapped inside, attempting communication with the outside world of which Chance himself was more or less a part. “The thing is,” Billy told him, “when she gets dressed up…” He shook his hand, as though shaking water from the tips of his fingers, eyebrows raised. Chance got the picture. “First time I saw her like that… we were at the Bagel House on Lombard and I told her, too, I told her how beautiful she was.”