Michael Collings - The Slab

She handed him a small pill and a cup of cool water. “Antihistamine. Just in case.”

He stood for a long while under the hot spray, soaping his arms and shoulders, washing his hands thoroughly, rinsing off, then soaping again. As he did, he felt knots in his muscles loosen, but even more importantly his mind-still vivid and fretful-eased as well. When he eventually emerged, he felt slightly weak, as wrinkled as a raisin, and finally, thoroughly clean. The redness along his arms was still there, but fainter. His fingers were swollen and stiff but he could almost make a fist when he tried.

He put on his heavy terry-cloth robe and wandered out into the family room.

It was empty.

“Catherine?”

“Back here.” Her voice came from the bedrooms.

He sauntered down the hall, feeling pleasantly tired and relaxed. She met him outside the door to their bedroom and shunted him inside.

“The kids are down.”

“Asleep already?”

“No, I told them they could play in the boys’ room for a while…quietly.” She reached behind her and carefully shut the door. “And they’ve been threatened with mayhem and dismemberment…all right, with spending tomorrow without any TV privileges,” she emended at the look of surprise on Willard’s face, “if they so much as step foot down the hall beyond Suze’s doorway tonight.”

She smiled, and with a couple of deft movements, slipped Willard’s robe from his shoulders.

“Now it’s your turn to be quiet.” She turned him toward the bed and gave him a little push, just enough that he toppled face forward onto the covers. “You deserve something special tonight, something to make your poor, tired muscles relax.”

She settled herself beside him and began kneading his shoulders and back, the length of his arms, then moved on to the long muscles of his thighs and legs.

From somewhere, he could smell a faint fragrance. Incense maybe. Or aromatic oils. Catherine liked both.

He sighed. He waited a long while before speaking.

“You know, Catherine, I…I think there might be something…wrong with me,” he finally said, his voice little more than a whisper.

Her hands paused, then resumed their tender ministrations.

“What do you mean, sweetie?”

“All day, at least until you guys came out this afternoon, I felt…I don’t know, angry isn’t quite the right word. It went beyond anger. Red-hot fury, at least part of the time. Sometimes it felt as if I weren’t cutting wood, as if I were tearing at flesh, or at least as if I wanted to.”

Again her hands paused. Longer this time.

“Oh, Willard,” she whispered. “I knew you were…you weren’t really yourself this morning. You’re never that short with Will, especially when he wants to give you a hand with something. When he came inside, he was…well, frightened. He said you looked really…different. Scary.”

“I felt scary. And scared. Like all I wanted to do was lash out and hurt and kill.” He shivered. Catherine began smoothing his skin again. Her hands were soft, and warm.

“Thank God those damned…sorry, those bushes were there. I could almost feel the need to hurt drain out of me as I snapped those loppers back and forth. Snap. Snap.”

Catherine leaned over and kissed him on the back of the neck. “Shhh. Are you all right now?”

He rolled over to face her. And kissed her back.

“Yes.”

“I can see,” she whispered. And smiled.

The rest of the night passed…well, not quite uneventfully, but Willard didn’t mind.

That was one of the last truly comfortable nights they spent for a long while.

The next day, the sky clouded over. The weatherman on the television predicted rain.

A lot of rain.

Rain can be a rarity in Southern California. Particularly in the Los Angeles basin, where two, three, even four years of drought conditions are seldom enough to remind the floods of immigrants from less congenial states that the land their homes and condos and apartments and mobile homes rest on is essentially desert. In spite of seemingly endless vistas of meticulously landscaped emerald green lawns dotted by the false turquoise of ceramic pools, the basin is arid.

Some rainfall during the deep months of what passes for winter in the season-less sameness of Southern California is normal. A day or two, perhaps-three at the most-of light sprinkling is considered within the bounds of normal. More than that constitutes virtually apocalyptic flooding.

It began raining somewhere after midnight the next Thursday. On Friday, fully recovered from the stiffness in his hands, with the rash completely gone, Willard drove to work as usual. The freeways were mushy and slick with built-up grease released just enough by the rain to make conditions unpredictable, hazardous. Because of the slow traffic, he arrived at work forty minutes later than usual. That set the tone for the rest of the day. He arrived home nearly two hours late.

“Are you all right?” Catherine asked the moment he stomped through the front door, water dripping in sheets from his woefully inadequate excuse for raingear.

“Sure,” he said as he shrugged out of the overcoat and shook it outside trying to remove as much moisture as possible before bringing the water-laden garment indoors.

“Let me take that,” she said. She picked the coat up with two fingers and carried it to the first bathroom and hung it on a hanger over the shower curtain.

“Is it bad?” she asked, her voice muffled by the door.

“Worse,” Willard muttered as he toed off his shoes. His socks were wet, the cuffs on his pants-his best suit pants-were wet for a foot or more up his legs. His shoulders were damp. He felt sodden, drenched inside and out.

Catherine reappeared from the bathroom carrying a vivid purple beach towel that had somehow slipped into the daily-use stack in the linen closet and was now unofficially “Daddy’s” towel.

He scrubbed his face and hair with the coarse material.

“Get out of these clothes,” Catherine said as she helped him out of his suit jacket. “You’re a mess.”

“And this is just from running from the driveway to the front door,” he said, suppressing a shiver. “The garage door wouldn’t open again. I don’t know, maybe it’s the remote. I’ll have to get it checked. Soon.”

“Honey, you’re freezing,” Catherine said as she felt his hand. “Hurry and change. I’ll make some tea. That’ll warm you up.”

“Sounds good,” he said, already halfway down the hall toward the bedroom.

The Levelor blinds were drawn, so the room was dark. Even with the furnace running, the room felt miserable, clammy and damp. He shivered again. He stripped his wet things off, dropping pants, shirt, socks, underwear in a heap on the floor.

No use hanging up the suit, he thought. It’ll have to be dry cleaned after this, no matter what.

He rummaged naked through his closet, finally pulling out his thick terry-cloth robe and slipping it on. The action stirred memories-wonderfully pleasant memories. He smiled. He shoved his feet into slippers and, for the first time all day, began to feel warm. He felt his muscles relaxing.

He turned to leave the room, and as he did so, he noticed something.

In the dim light, he almost didn’t see it. Perhaps if he had blinked at the wrong instant, he wouldn’t have seen it at all. But there it was. In the corner, just below the line where textured ceiling joined wall, there was a jagged hairline crack, no more than two or three inches long. His stomach wrenched.

That’s all I need, he thought. After this rain, after nearly getting drowned because the garage door is defective, to look up and see this.

He gritted his teeth.