The Summer House Read Online Free Page B

all as imprisoned in this hotel as he was in his chair.
    Then again, Danny reasoned as he wheeled to the window and looked out across the skyline of copper and black glass and silver-fronted Atlantic City casinos, he hated most things these days.
    He sighed. It was almost six o’clock. He’d already spent three hours online chatting the chat, and he did not want to join his brother and sister for a predictable what if session about the election outcome: What if they won’tlet us have our friends come to the White House? What if we want to have dates? Will the Secret Service come, too? Danny wanted to ask, What if by some miracle he suddenly was healed? Would they have to hide him until after the election because they’d lose too many sympathy votes? He supposed it was a tacky question. He did not want to be accused of feeling sorry for himself.
    Besides, he had been taught that as the eldest child of Michael and Elizabeth (aka Ken and Barbie) Barton, he had to set an example. Doing that these days was tough, especially when he no longer gave a shit about much of anything, had not given a shit in the last three years, not since he’d looked at the world—and everyone in it—below the waist, no longer eye to eye, but eye to crotch. Danny recognized that few people were comfortable looking him square in the eye, anyway. Instead, they shifted from one foot to the other, trying not to drop their gaze to his dead legs, obviously relieved when they were able to move on.
    From the other side of the wall came the sounds of his sister Mags’s high-pitched, girlish laughter. Danny smiled. He had always wanted to be more like Magsie, more carefree and clever, more like Aunt BeBe. Instead, Danny guessed he was more like his mother, Liz, which was maybe why he got so upset when he saw her trying so hard to make everyone’s life perfect, especially Gramps’s.
    The door burst open. “Hey, mon,” said Clay, Danny’s never-too-far-away nurse, “time to come out and play.”
    “A knock would have been nice.” Danny spun his wheelchair around. “What if I was entertaining a young lady?”
    Clay twirled a dreadlock around one finger. “If you was entertaining a young lady, I would have stood and applauded. But seeing you’re not, how about if we work on some handstand push-ups?”
    As part of his indefatigable quest to keep Danny in shape, or at least the top half of Danny in shape, Clay had developed a way to flip him upside down, lean him against a wall, and actually have him do push-ups as if he were in training for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team. Danny had accused him of watching too much ESPN. Clay had ignored him, and in the end, Danny learned how.
    “Not today, Clay. I’m tired.”
    “Tired my ass,” the long-legged man called out as he loped across the room. “You’re lazy, that’s what. How do you expect to get to the White House if you’re lazy?”
    “I expect to be driven there in a big limousine by someone who’s paid by the federal government.”
    “Oy!” Clay bellowed. “Remind me not to vote for you.”
    “Remind me not to run,” Danny replied, then added, “No, never mind. You won’t have to remind me.” He looked around the room. “Three more days in this place?”
    “It’s what the mon said. You have to wait here until the last night, until your father is nominated. Your grandfather said no one can see the family until then.”
    “Jesus, you’d think we were getting married. The blushing bride not allowed to see the groom.”
    “Yeah, well, it’s been a long time since you blushed, Danny boy. Now come on, let’s get against the wall and give me ten.”
    “No, man …”
    But Clay’s hands were on the back of the wheelchair and he was steering it toward the wall. “I can’t hear you,” the nurse cried in singsonging jest.
    Then, in what seemed like only an instant, Clay stopped the chair, tugged down Danny’s shoulders, and flipped him against the wall. The blood flooded