Cape Disappointment Read Online Free Page A

all he had to do was push the button, but he needed to understand the workings of his tools—one of those guys.
    “One day wasn't very long,” she said. “Although we got in about a week's worth of you-know-what.”
    “A week? By my calculations, that was two days' worth. But we'll catch up at home.”
    She laughed and it charmed me the way her laugh had charmed me from the beginning. “You're incorrigible.”
    “I'm a guy. My job is to be incorrigible. It's in the DNA. At least where that's concerned. Kathy. I see you. You're … maybe a mile out.”
    “There's something I need to tell you, Thomas—”
    The tourist was still having trouble figuring out my camera, so I stepped forward and with one hand, pointed out the button he needed to push. Out over the ocean, the plane waggled its wings. She'd promised she would have the pilot do that, and it tickled me that she had not forgotten. “Kathy? What were you going to say? Kathy? You there?”

I'M LEANING AGAINST the windowsill, peering out at the city skyline as it appears between several nearby tall buildings. I am a thoroughly confused man in a hospital gown wondering how long I've been here and whether or not my wife is alive. Even though I've seen and spoken with Kathy, I am convinced somewhere in the reptilian portion of my brain that it was all fantasy.
    I've never had so much curiosity as I have right now. I'm wondering what I was thinking the other day when I beat the hell out of my friend Elmer “Snake” Slezak, whom I mistook for his twin brother, Bert. I'd never liked Bert, but what had he done to send me over the edge? My actions had been about two miles past the last bus stop of sanity. If Kathy is around, why doesn't she visit? My bare legs are trembling. I'm close to falling. I don't remember getting out of bed and tottering over to this windowsill, but here I am.
    Outside, the wind spatters tiny raindrops against the window. I hear a familiar male voice in the hallway. He's flirting with a nurse. He's been in the room, I think, because Elmer Slezak has an unmistakable scent about him, of cologne, cigarettes, and the vague smell of leather, having been a former rodeo bull rider. There is also the odor of farts. “Snake?”
    “Yeah, man.” Elmer hustles in from the corridor, where he's waylaid the African American nurse. “Jesus, you're not supposed to be out of bed!”
    Elmer and the nurse walk me back to the bed, one on either arm. Snake wears cowboy boots, tight jeans that make his legs look like ax handles, and one of his huge, silver world championship belt buckles. “What on earth possessed you to do that?” asks the nurse. “You fall down in here and break your skull, it's going to be my fault. I don't want you out of bed again. You understand?”
    “Yes, ma'am.”
    “Jesus, Thomas,” Snake says. “You can hardly walk.”
    “Gee, you think, Elmer?” I may not have all my wits about me, but I can still shovel out sarcasm.
    “Don't call me that.” Years ago Elmer had seen some old movie,
Escape from New York,
and afterward decided to call himself Snake. Sometimes he forgets about it for weeks or months, but most of the time he insists on the nickname. When I want to get his goat, I refer to him as Elmer.
    The nurse arranges the blankets over me and I lie back, exhausted. It's uncanny how a couple of days in bed can zap your strength. When the dizziness has abated, I focus on my friend. “What happened?”
    “You can't remember?” Snake asks.
    “Just bits and pieces.”
    “You want it all?”
    “Everything you know.”
    “That's going to take a good little while, and I doubt I know it all. You were keeping your own counsel there toward the end.”
    “I've got nothing but time.”
    “Yeah, okay, but don't fall asleep on me. You've got a serious head injury, or don't you remember that?”
    “I know it but I keep forgetting,” I joke.
    He sits in a chair beside the bed and starts to lay out the story of my last ten days as