Mendocino and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

no?”
    “Tylenol or a nap. I've always had a lot of headaches.”
    She nodded and wrote something. “Do you sleep well?”
    “I was all-state in high school. I only wish it were an Olympic event.”
    “A wise guy,” she said, laughing. “Are you married?”
    “I—” he said. “My—” There was an answer to this question—it began “Yes, but.…”
    “I ask because sometimes people can have small seizures in their sleep without knowing it. If you were married your wife might have noticed if your sleep were disturbed at all.”
    “I'm married,” he said. “But I'm pretty sure nothing like that's been going on.”
    “OK,” she said. “Through that door and I'll take a look.”
    It was the usual neurological thing: she asked him to turn his neck in every conceivable way; she produced a small hammer and tested his reflexes; she took a set of keys from her pocket and ran them along the soles of his feet. Holding his eyelids open with her fingers, she looked into his eyes with a tiny light. Listen, Charlie wanted to say, I've been through all of this.
    “Any weakness?” she asked, pocketing the little flashlight.
    “I have a little trouble doing this.” Charlie held up his forefingerand with his other hand bent the tip forward. “Bending it at the first joint—not exactly life-threatening.”
    She held her finger up against his. “Push,” she said.
    He tried to bend his fingertip onto hers, but nothing happened. “I noticed it on my camera, about six weeks ago. I had to use my middle finger to hit the shutter.”
    “It's odd, but I don't find anything unusual otherwise. When was your last neck x-ray?”
    “About eight months ago.” They had found something called “change” in his neck, but evidently it had been a red herring.
    “EMG?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You've never had an EMG?”
    “Not to my knowledge,” Charlie said.
    “You'd know it. Let's see if we can get you in later this week. You have insurance, right?”
    “I'm covered by my wife's group policy at work.” In his jacket pocket was a claim form that Linda had messengered to him from the office—better than actually having to see him!
    Dr. Price nodded and set down her clipboard. “What does she do, your wife?”
    “She's an architect.”
    “And you stay home with the kids?”
    Charlie put a finger to his chest. “The kid,” he said.
    CHARLIE HAD MET Linda on the first day of their first year of college. They were at freshman orientation week: their college rented a camp an hour's drive from campus, and you stayed in cabins with triple level bunk beds and met during the day with upperclassmen to discuss College Life. This was in the seventies,and everyone wanted to
talk.
On the first night each freshman was given a partner to interview for ten minutes and then introduce to a group of twenty. Charlie and his partner sat at a picnic table and she launched into her background with such zeal that Charlie didn't have to ask any questions. He sat there staring at her—this blond-haired, blue-eyed girl from Minnesota, who seemed to have had the kind of childhood his parents referred to as “TV mythology”—and he hoped this initial pairing wasn't going to last the whole week. His older brother had told him that the people you hung around with during your first few weeks at college ended up being your friends whether you liked them or not. Charlie had visions of himself saddled with this girl for the next four years, and he wanted to lean across the table and say, “Neat is the opposite of messy, damn it!”
    The girl was Linda. Later that night, after the awkward introductions (she told the group, “This is Charlie from outside of Boston—he likes to read”), Charlie overheard her telling another girl that he had eyes you could drown in. He liked that, and for months, long after the word “saddled” was the last he'd have chosen to describe his feelings about her, he tried to get her to say it to him—eyes you could