Part 19 (1/2)
”Yes.”
”Headaches? Ringing in the ears?”
”Yes. How did you-”
”You're sure?”
”Yes. What does it mean?”
”Nothing. Nothing at all.”
”How could it mean nothing? Why ask if it means nothing?”
”Just please bear with me. This is a standard list of questions we're required to go over. What other symptoms are there?”
I listed them, and he seemed to be writing it all down. Afterward, he said, ”Not us. It wasn't anything we have. We don't work with any product that would cause anyone to go brain-dead.”
”What about the rest of the symptoms?”
”We don't work with anything that could cause brain death.”
”What do do you work with?” you work with?”
”As I said before. Our work is cla.s.sified. Lieutenant Swope, what if we were to send a couple of representatives up there?”
”Listen, if you have anything that might be causing our problems, tell me. There are people going through this right now.”
”We'll have a couple of representatives up there in three hours.”
”What? You have a company jet?”
”No. They'll be flying commercial. Good-bye, Lieutenant Swope.”
”Wait a minute. Did your company have any products in a s.h.i.+pping facility fire at a place called Southeast Travelers in Chattanooga three years ago?”
”I really couldn't tell you. As I said, our representatives will be seeing you shortly.”
We hung up and I related the conversation to Stephanie, who said, ”They've probably been sued before and have instructions not to say anything. No doubt that's why they're sending people up here, too.”
”It sounded to me like he knew what we had before I told him. I think these guys know what's going on.”
”I want to talk to my aunt. If her company helped out with the investigation in Chattanooga, maybe she knows something.”
”Apparently she doesn't know what the symptoms in Tennessee were, or she would have recognized them in Holly.”
”Canyon View is a big company. She might not know anything at all, but somebody there will.”
Stephanie picked up her cell phone and punched in a number, asked for Marge DiMaggio, and then listened for a moment and hung up. ”Went to Portland this afternoon for a meeting. Staying overnight. She's got a meeting up here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. She'll call beforehand.”
DAY FOUR.
32. THE CURVE OF HER THIGH.
With all that was happening, you'd think insomnia would have robbed me of my ability to sleep, but you'd be wrong. Once again I slept like the dead. No tossing or turning. No tottering trips to the loo in the wee hours. No memory even of having gone to bed. Just a blissful sleep that seemed to last forever. Maybe my nights were a foretaste of brain death. Maybe I was going to be happier than I'd ever been.
Thursday. By Sunday it would be over.
It occurred to me as I contemplated these things that going to sleep at night couldn't be too different from death. Suddenly a great calm descended upon me.
I began to wonder why any of us feared death.
Last night had been a stretch in heaven.
I yawned lazily and glanced over at the clock. It was eight. I hadn't slept this late in years.
Although it would be an hour before we got any direct sunlight, the rooms in our small house were slowly filling with the early morning June dawn. The house was quiet, motes of dust drifting in the dead air. I was filled with the sheer wonder of being alive.
Because we were almost directly underneath the west face of Mount Si, the morning sun didn't reach us until ten-thirty or eleven in winter and not until nine-ish on the longest day of the year, which would be next week. In our stronghold under the mountain it was always a little cooler than the rest of the towns.h.i.+p, a little dewier, and in winter a little frostier.
I had slept in a pair of rumpled sleeping drawers and an oversize North Bend Fire and Rescue T-s.h.i.+rt, was now padding around the hardwood floors of our house barefoot wondering where everybody was. It was a small house with a living room, two bedrooms, and a dayroom that served as our family room just off the open kitchen.
They were on the futon in the family room, Britney, Allyson, and Stephanie Riggs, who'd spent the remainder of the day with us. We'd taken turns calling the companies that had been involved in the Chattanooga incident from the list Charlie Drago had provided and then on the manifest from Holly's truck last February, calling until anybody who could answer a phone had gone home for the day. If Charlie Drago was to be trusted, and I wasn't sure that he could be, there were dozens of suspects in the Tennessee incident, many more than on the list he was able to give me. Judging from what they might have been carrying, there were only three logical choices in our accident: DuPont Chemical, Pacific Northwest Paint Contractors, and Jane's California Propulsion, Inc. None of the three were on Charlie's incomplete list, but that didn't mean much.
DuPont was being as intractable as any large corporation could be. So far I had yet to talk to a single person in authority there. At lunchtime Jane's had promised to send a couple of people up in three hours, but as of that night they still hadn't arrived. I'd called Jane's five or six times since then, but neither of the two parties I'd spoken to earlier were in and n.o.body else seemed to have heard of me or a junket to North Bend. Pacific Northwest Paint Contractors had been s.h.i.+pping, among other items, toluene, which Stephanie looked up yesterday. The pathophysiology included effects to the CNS, euphoria, dizziness, confusion, CNS depression, headache, vertigo, hallucinations, seizures, ataxia, tinnitus, stupor, and coma. It was very close to the list of symptoms from exposure to organophosphates.
The list wasn't exactly in line with what I was going through, but it was close enough. It occurred to me that the reason Joel had fallen off the roof and Jackie had crashed her car might have had to do with some of those symptoms in combination with one another. Hallucinations and dizziness. Euphoria and stupor. It was scary thinking about it. Pacific Northwest Paint had promised to check to see whether their s.h.i.+pment had been damaged and whether any of their containers had been opened.
In addition, Stephanie made a half-dozen discreet calls to physicians and personnel at Tacoma General. We discussed and a.n.a.lyzed Charlie Drago and the situation in Chattanooga, agreeing it would be good to get a second perspective from Tennessee.
Allyson and I had prepared dinner together while Stephanie and Britney played Candy Land, and then, at Allyson's insistence, we set up candles on the table for dinner. The girls continued to treat Stephanie like visiting royalty. After dinner Stephanie and I were dragooned into a game of Monopoly, which we abandoned before it officially ended, when Allyson got so far ahead of the rest of us that Britney started to cry.
It was almost eleven when we unfolded the futon in the family room, insisting, all of us, that Stephanie forgo the motel and stay here. When the girls begged to watch a late-night movie with her, The Whole Town's Talking, The Whole Town's Talking, with Edward G. Robinson and Jean Arthur, I objected, knowing Stephanie had been up late the night before, but Stephanie said a girl party would be fun, that I should go to bed and get my beauty sleep. Britney cackled, never having heard the phrase with Edward G. Robinson and Jean Arthur, I objected, knowing Stephanie had been up late the night before, but Stephanie said a girl party would be fun, that I should go to bed and get my beauty sleep. Britney cackled, never having heard the phrase beauty sleep beauty sleep before. before.
As I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the family room watching them, I felt so much love for my girls it almost hurt. Characteristically separated by half a body width, Britney slept by herself, while the other two were snuggled up together. It was ironic because during the day Britney was the clingy one and Allyson the slightly more standoffish of my daughters. When sick or asleep, they reversed roles, Allyson clutching, Britney off to one side. Britney had a whisper of perspiration on her brow, both feet sticking out from the blankets.
Mixed with Allyson's darker, heavier-looking mop, Stephanie Riggs's hair was so silky and l.u.s.trous, it seemed from another world.
Too bad Stephanie hated me. Had circ.u.mstances been different, I would have been thinking about the curve of her thigh under the sheet, the gentle jut of her jawline, her hair splayed across the futon. But Stephanie had pegged me like a lepidopterist pinning down a b.u.t.terfly: conquer and abandon. A small-time p.r.i.c.k working big-time hustles on unsuspecting females all over the valley. The supreme cad. A self-involved jerk.
That had been my unspoken, underhanded, and unacknowledged modus operandi for the past three years. Funny how knowing it was your last week on earth could open your eyes to things that should have been obvious all along.
Before the syndrome, I'd had little time for real life. I'd been chasing the perfect woman, the one who would look good on my arm, the one other men would envy me for, the woman who wouldn't leave me or get sick or go crazy or be anything but beautiful, the woman you could always count on with absolute certainty, the woman who existed nowhere on earth but in the deepest recesses of my brain.
After seducing each candidate with a sincerity that was believable primarily because I believed it myself, after earnestly convincing her of my fitness as a father, as a potential husband, as a lifelong friend, partner, and confidant, I would begin to discover minor aspects of her character that didn't suit me. Eventually these token flaws would pile up and grow in importance until, after some days or weeks of torturing myself with indecision, I would make the inevitable announcement that we were getting too close; I would tell her I needed s.p.a.ce. In other words, as several women had told me, I'd had my fun and it was time to move on.