“I THINK HE HAS A CRUSH on you,” Captain Wug chuckled.
“What are they pumping you full of? LSD?” I joked. I thought he was talking about Creamo, who’d just left the hospital. He’d finally decided to check out Spanish Springs mine for himself and I wasn’t invited as he and some old fool he convinced to join him were planning to ‘pack heat’ and all I was packing was bear spray.
“No, no, no. Not the good detective. I was speaking of Professor Lopinsky. He was here earlier today, my dear, checking up on me.”
The poor nurse struggled to prepare him for discharge as we spoke. Their medical center was not equipped for long-term patients, just overnighters. The room he’d spent the night in was more like an ICU with a row of hospital beds, each nestled in monitoring equipment and surrounded by stark white shower curtains. It was neither comfortable nor private. “Hold still, Captain Grayson,” she pleaded, as she fought to get a flannel shirt over his shoulder cast.
The fact that I’d missed bumping into Professor Lopinsky left me both disappointed and relieved, the symptom of a disorder I hoped I’d outgrown. It’s a toxic thing, this brew called attraction, especially beyond a certain age. It forces longing, the need for a fix, while your mind blindly gropes for the brakes.
“A crush?” I laughed. “You know—I’m not sixteen, and I doubt Mr. Lopinsky is either.”
But the Captain wasn’t fooled. “Ah, my dear, the best of us are forever sixteen.” He paused to study my face. “However, I gather from your expression this day has been—”
“A blighter!”
Blighter! What the hell? That bold word slipped from my lips without my permission. Blighter was a term I never used. I associated it with pretentiousness and upper class annoyance. But, upon second thought, it was an oddly appropriate description of wilting frustration: a day during which nothing put in soil and watered had the remotest possibility of coming to life. And to top it all off, someone to whom I felt a strong attraction did not consider me a sideshow freak. Bugger! Blighter! Blast it all!
“I was hoping to track down Hyman’s daughter,” I whined, “before returning home with my tail between my legs. I really did like my job. The theater is a hoot.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, there’s a four o’clock bus back to Vegas. I’m not any help here really. I contacted a few people I know in high places and told them everything. Hopefully they’ll do something. But I gotta face it. I’m no detective. And as for providing any psychological help, well, I can’t analyze myself out of a paper bag.”
“Ahhh,” he sighed in sympathy. “But I got the impression from—what was that detective’s name?”
“I’m sure he’s got another name, but the only one I know is Creamo.”
“Creamo, yes. I got the feeling—perhaps wrongly—that all was not in vain, that you were in possession of a scintillating new clue. Something, I gather, having to do with Spanish Spring, and that’s why he’s driving all the way out there.”
“Let me put it this way. That man has a one-track mind. If a young lady disappears, sex must be involved. It stems from . . .” I was digressing. Did I want to blame Freud again? “Never mind where it stems from. I wish it was something he could be cured of, but last time I checked, there was no cure for being a man.”
“Ouch!”
“Present company excluded, of course. I hope he finds the girl out there, I really do, but I doubt it.”
“You should approach every day as if it will bring you exactly what you hope for. Look at me—am I dwelling on our forced landing? Au contraire—what an excellent opportunity to prove my skills! I’ve never taken off from a plateau, my dear! Never! I’m filled with youthful vigor! Alive with another prospect to escape a lingering death in diapers!”
“Oh, Lord,” the nurse sighed, as she slipped a pair of slippers onto his feet. “Captain Grayson, will you please stop wiggling? Your poor wife is going to have her hands full with you.”
“And I’ll have my hands full of her, my dear,” he sighed. “As she dresses, bathes, and feeds me. Ah, yes. My hands will be all over her many . . . ahem, assets.”
The very thought of his wife sent him into a litany of superlatives regarding her feminine virtues that bordered on X-rated. The nurse rolled her eyes as he spoke, looked at me, and shook her head. “I’m going to get the doctor. He’s got to sign the release papers. Are you sure you feel safe alone with him?”
“Sure,” I chuckled.
After she left, he tried to shift the conversation back to Professor Lopinsky. What an interesting man! Such a good sense of humor! And such a good heart! The sort of man who would be lovingly devoted!
On and on, and although I was secretly delighted, I felt like telling him he was wasting his breath. I was leaving on the four o’clock bus. That was it. Other people have romances, get married, children, the whole shebang, but not me. I lived on my own (except for my cat). I had tried to live with someone once. My husband, a giant-sized man-boy whom I mothered and, according to him, smothered. Smothered. Cripes. I bought him the car of his dreams, put him through college, and found him a job. And what was my reward? Herpes. And then after I kicked him out, I still couldn’t manage to get rid of the louse. Every failed relationship of his somehow always managed to land at my front door. Women demanding to know why my ex-husband had cheated on them. By inference, they could understand why he’d cheated on me. I was intimidating. (Intimidating was another of his favorite words, channeled back at me through his numerous bimbos.) By contrast, they were accommodating, sweet natured, and most importantly, understood the sensitive, freedom-loving, happy-go-lucky (his words again) nature of the giant man-boy. Whereas, I evidently did not.
Cripes. I’d finally had to move across country. No, never again, not for me. I was leaving on the four o’clock bus.
Captain Wug’s wife appeared on scene just as the nurses were considering mixing libido-killing drugs into his meds. I wish I could say she had a calming effect on him, but it was exactly the opposite. Lord have mercy, I thought, no wonder they had eight kids. They quickly determined that I must go to lunch with them. I didn’t argue, of course. I was sick to death of the bland coffeeshop food.
Then I had them return me to the hotel.