Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

Two customers were waiting at the register, another was heating something in the microwave, and one of them asked Mark if he knew where the clerk was.

“In back,” he said. “She’ll be out in a minute.”

Back at the Radisson, the concierge greeted him by name as he got off the elevator. Well, that was part of what you paid extra for, that sort of personal touch.

He showered again and put on a robe. He sat at the desk for half an hour, going over his schedule for the next day, checking through the real estate listings. He caught the eleven o’clock news and the first few minutes of the Tonight show, turning it off at the end of Carson’s monologue.

In bed, he went over the day’s events as if they were on videotape. He pushed the mental fast-forward button during the dull spots, then moved to slow-motion from the point where he walked into the 7-Eleven. He did a freeze-frame on her face at the end, the knowledge and raw fear coming into her eyes, then the light going out of them.

He clung to that image and slid off to sleep with it.

Sara Duskin dozed off in the taxi. She wasn’t tired, really, but she had things on her mind and her thoughts just wound inward and inward, curling on themselves until they had led her far away from consciousness. When the taxi stopped in front of her house she awoke instantly, and her eyes were open by the time the driver turned to tell her they had arrived.

She turned her head to look at the meter, turned her head again to look down at her purse. She paid him, tipped him, and walked up the driveway to the door.

She heard Thom dribbling a basketball, then looked and saw him arcing a shot at the basket mounted on the garage. She was fitting her key in the lock when he caught sight of her and ran to her.

“I thought you were home,” he said accusingly. “I saw the car and I thought you were home.”

“Didn’t I tell you I was going to the doctor?”

“Yeah, but I thought you came back ’cause the car was in the garage. And then the door was locked, and I rang and rang and you didn’t open it.”

“Wasn’t the key on the hook? In the garage?”

“Yeah, but I thought you were home, see, so why would I bother with the key? And then I figured you were asleep, so I got the key and went in, and you weren’t home, and it was spooky.”

“Were you scared?”

“I didn’t say I was scared, just that it was spooky.” He followed her into the house, and while she heated water for tea he poured himself a glass of milk and helped himself to a handful of Oreos.

“I won’t spoil my dinner,” he said.

“I don’t care if you do.”

“You don’t? What’d you get from the doctor, drugs?”

“You guessed it, sport. A little coke, a little smack—”

“What’s smack?”

“Heroin. Gosh, don’t they teach you anything in that school of yours?”

“I could buy heroin, Mom. You want me to buy some without leaving the school building?”

“In Fort Wayne?”

“Right here in beautiful downtown Fort Wayne. You want me to buy some what-did-you-call-it? Smack?”

“Don’t do me any favors. The doctor gives me a good price.”

“I’ll bet.” He looked down at his glass of milk. “How come you didn’t take the car?”

“I got a ride.”

“I thought you took a cab.”

“I did. That’s what I got a ride in.”

“How come?”

“Oh, I thought I might be tired, and it might be easier to let somebody else drive.”

“Is that the truth, Mom?”

He had such an earnest gaze, and he was such a fine looking boy. Thirteen years old, tall for his age, and blond, and with such clean-cut chiseled features. It was such a joy to see him; it was so good to be able to see him—

“Mom?”

“It’s the truth,” she said, “but it’s not the whole truth.”

“What’s the whole truth?”

“I don’t think I can drive anymore, Thom.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“He didn’t say anything good.”

“What do you mean?”

She took the teabag from the cup, set it in the saucer. She reached for his glass of milk and added a little to her tea.

“There’s crumbs in it,” he said. “From the cookies, I dunked them and there’s crumbs.”

“So?”

“So now you’ve got cookie crumbs in your tea.”

“So?”

“So nothing. What did the doctor say?”

“He says I definitely don’t have glaucoma.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“Not in this case, because they can arrest glaucoma. There are drops they give you, and if you take them regularly your vision doesn’t get any worse.”

“He gave you drops last week.”

“Right.”

“Even though he didn’t think it was glaucoma.”

“Right. Because the eyeball pressure wasn’t elevated, but he thought the drops might arrest the symptoms just as if the pressure were elevated as in true glaucoma.”

“But it didn’t?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“What does that mean exactly? Your eyes are worse than they were last week?”

“That’s right.”

“And you knew that already because that’s why you took the cab instead of driving.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mom?”

“What?”

Are you gonna go blind, Mom? She could hear his question as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud. But he was not yet ready to speak it. Instead he said, “What can you see, exactly? I mean, how bad is it?”

She thought for a moment. “You see that roll of paper towels?”

“Sure I see it. Why? Can’t you see it?”

“Of course I can see it, dummy. Didn’t I just point it out to you?”

“Huh?”

“Bring me the roll of paper towels, sport. Thanks. Now what we want here is the cardboard tube, so let’s take all the paper towels off. If we fold them — that’s right — we’ll be able to use them again. Sweetie, you look utterly mystified.”

“Well, you’ve got to admit you’re acting pretty weird, Mom. First a cab, then unrolling the paper towels. Didn’t I do something like this with toilet paper when I was a little kid?”

“You can’t possibly remember that.”

“I remember you talking about it. Did I get in trouble?”

“No, but you got laughed at. Okay, we now have a cardboard tube. Now, voila! We tear it in half and we have two cardboard tubes.”

“And if we put them together we have a whole one again. And if—”

“Hold ’em to your eyes, Thommy. Like binoculars, but right up against your eyes.”

“Like this?”

“Like that. Pointing straight out, that’s right. Now you see what I see.”

“Oh, wow,” he said. “That’s as much as you can see?”

“Gimme. No, as a matter of fact I can do a little better than this.” She shortened both tubes until they were about four inches long. “Here,” she said. “Now try it.”

“You can’t see very much.”

“No.”

“Just straight ahead? So if a car was coming from the side—”

“That’s why I took a taxi.”

“Wow,” he said. He was still holding the cardboard tubes to his eyes, looking experimentally around the room. He said, “Was it this bad last week, Mom?”

“No. He said there’s been further deterioration and vision loss since last week.”

And he hadn’t had to say that; she’d already known. Her field of vision was shrinking, and it sometimes seemed to her that she could feel it drawing in. He’d tested her: Now keep your eyes straight forward, Mrs. Duskin. Now I want you to watch the red dot. Without moving your eyes, just be aware of the red dot. Tell me when it disappears .

The red dot (and the yellow dot, and the blue dot) had disappeared sooner this week than last. Each time it passed from her field of vision she said “There” or “Now” or “Oooops,” and the ophthalmologist made a pencil mark on the sheet of graph paper. When he had finished, he connected the dots to form a pair of irregular circles. While she studied them, he handed her without comment her test from the preceding week. The circles then had been larger.