I start to react to that but my head hurts too much. I slump, lowering my head, and clasping my hands in my lap.
“That is better,” the man says. “You need your rest.”
“Yes,” I hear myself mumble. “I just need… a moment to…”
I’m holding Jimmy’s limp body against my chest but we’re not in the police car speeding to the hospital. We’re in some dark place, a room, maybe. I can’t tell because there isn’t anything around me but this park bench I’m sitting on, and Jimmy’s dying body nestled in my arms. He slowly turns his head toward me and looks into my face. I nearly scream when I see his lifeless, glassy eyes looking at me, looking into me.
There’s fresh blood on his purplish lips, and they’re moving.
“Not much of a shot, are you?” he says, matter-of-factly, and in a clear, healthy voice that belies the gaping hole my bullet punched through his small chest.
I open my mouth to scream—
“Heeeere’s Johnny!”
I jerk my head up, blinking several times.
“Jack Nicholson from The Shining. They shot the exteriors for that film right here in Oregon, up on your Mt. Hood.” He’s walking toward me carrying two paper cups. “I think you slept for a while. You either feel a lot worse or a heck of a lot worse.”
“You’re back,” I say without enthusiasm, sitting up straighter. The dream fades from my brain but I can still feel the unspent scream lodged in my chest.
“You never got your coffee earlier. Thought maybe it might help diminish the pain from the thrashing you took.”
He sits on the bench next to me again and extends a sixteen-ounce cup, the same size I was going to order. “You do not look like a frou-frou coffee drinker so I got you an Americano, double shot with a little cream. Green tea for me.”
I take it and nod thanks. The guy’s a pain but I need the jolt. “Why are you doing this?” I ask, removing the white plastic lid and blowing across the steaming surface.
The man crosses a leg and shrugs. “Got a soft spot for the down trodden, I guess.”
I can’t tell if these zingers are his way of being funny or if he’s trying to provoke me. If it’s the latter, it’s working. “Listen, pal, if you…”
Red converse! He’s wearing red converse shoes.
I feel my jaw drop. “It was you I saw when I was lying on the concrete? It was you who knocked that big guy to the ground. With a kick?”
“Guilty. One kick and two punches,” he says with that childish giggle before he sips his tea. “Hard to be humble.”
I lean toward him. “Why? I mean, thanks, but why?” I remembered how those red shoes seemed to disappear and reappear in a different spot—like magic. “Are you a martial artist? How old are you?”
“Because. You’re welcome. Just lucky. And what was the other question? Oh, I’m old enough, thank you very much.”
I look at him over the rim of my coffee. Eccentric dude with his red tennis shoes, long hair, the strange accent and flippant demeanor. The face shows his years, maybe even more than his birthday, but his stature and bearing is that of a Marine Corp officer. A Grandpa’s face on a warrior’s body. You don’t see that very often. Not only did he not back away like all the other people, he stood up to the big guy, knocked him down, and then stuck around to look after me.
“How is it going?” the man asks, then sips. “What is the verdict?”
“What?”
“Your conclusion?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are analyzing me. Trying to get a read on the handsome stranger. Interesting, am I not?”
That’s it. He’s gay. Tiff would love this. She always teases me about gay guys checking me out. “It’s the muscles,” she always said. “They think you’re hard all over.” Tiff. I feel a tug in my chest.
The man twists toward me, his eyes looking into mine. Oh man, here comes the hustle.
“You have a lot of dukha going on right now,” he says gently. Compassionately?
A slight chill runs up my spine. He said ‘right now.’ What does he know about me? “Dukha?” I ask with a shrug.
His eyes penetrate mine for an unsettling moment. I don’t know why his gaze is unsettling, but it is. He nods. “It means suffering. It is grasping for things that cannot be obtained. You got it up the kazoo. You will not be healed until you come to terms with it.” He looks at me again for probably no more than three or four seconds, but it seems longer.
He stands, gulps his tea and drops his cup in a trash can behind the bench. “As Hannibal Lecter says, ‘I do wish we could chat longer, but I am having an old friend for dinner.’” He makes with that giggle again. “I like that one. Get it? ‘Old friend for dinner?’ Anyway, I will be here tomorrow around noon.” He nods at me, turns and heads out across the grass. “And,” he says over his shoulder without stopping. “I am happily heterosexual. So do not get your hopes up.”
“What! How did…”
He turns his head back toward the direction he’s walking and giggles again. He lifts his hand and waves without looking back again.
I watch him walk toward the far parking lot. What the hell was all that about? I touch my tender forehead and then lightly rub my index finger on the back of my head. Man it hurts. My hip, too. I’ve been kicked harder there but that fact doesn’t make it feel any better.
Peering through an opening in the park’s trees, all looks normal over at the Coffee Bump, as if my assault never happened. There is no line of customers waiting outside and there are only a scattering of people sitting at the now orderly outside tables. What happened to Tuba Man? Did anyone call the police? How did Converse Man get me over here to this bench? I must out-weigh him by forty pounds. I look toward the parking lot.
The strange man looks back toward me for a moment, waves with both hands, and climbs into a blue Toyota.
*
“You rang the doorbell?”
“Can I come in?” Tiff asks.
“Of course,” I say flatly, pushing the door open wider and stepping aside. “You have to ask?” I’m surprised to see her so soon after last night. With all that’s been going on this morning, I’d shoved our relationship, the end of it, into a Tiff compartment and planned to think about it when my head wasn’t throbbing.
“My God, what happened to your head?”
I move over to the couch and sit down carefully, holding my sore chest. “Bumped it. You look like hell.”
“Thank you. Right back at you.”
“It was a rough morning. My celebrity caught up with me up at the Coffee Bump. Took a cross to the forehead.”
“You?”
I shrug a what-are-you-going-to-do.
“Couldn’t sleep a wink last night,” she says, folding her arms as if she doesn’t know what else to do with them. She looks down at the carpet. It’s new. Beige. Plush. She helped pick it out.
“I’m sorry—”