Bestiary Read Online Free PDF Page B

stuff like that. Affirmative?
     
     
    She patted the table with a smile, as if she were urging a dog to jump up onto the sofa. “Come on and get ready. I’ll get the towels.”
     
     
    There was a changing room to one side, and he went in there, put most of his clothes and valuables in a locker, and came back out in his clean T-shirt and running shorts. He refused to wear those open gowns.
     
     
    Indira was waiting, and as soon as he levered himself up onto the table, she slipped a small pillow under the crook of his neck, another one under his knees, then gently wrapped the hot towels around his left leg. He tried not to let her see him studying her as she did all that, but he suspected that she was aware of it. The first time he’d seen her, he was so consumed with pain and rage that he’d hardly noticed her. But the next time, and the time after that, he’d been able to take a good look.
     
     
    She wasn’t like anyone he’d ever known. She was small, with dark hair and dark eyes, and her skin was a kind of copper color. Kind of like the Iraqis’. She didn’t talk a lot about herself, but over the many sessions he’d had, he’d learned a few things. She was from Bombay, which accounted for that kind of singsong way she spoke, and she was something called a Zoroastrian. It was some ancient religion (he’d looked it up on the Internet) that believed in cycles of fire, or something like that, lasting millions of years. She lived somewhere in West L.A., with her parents and a bunch of brothers and sisters. He could never figure out a way to ask her how old she was, but he was thirty and he knew that she had to be younger than that.
     
     
    “Let’s give it fifteen minutes,” she said, setting an egg timer and leaving it by his feet. “Tell me if it gets too hot.”
     
     
    The heat was used to limber up the leg, before they tried the exercises designed to increase the muscle tone and range of motion. He’d never told her how his leg had been injured, and she’d never asked; he wondered if that was part of their training. Wait till the gimp volunteered the information; don’t press him on it. He knew a lot of the guys—like Mariani in the wheelchair—didn’t want to talk about it. And in his case, he was just as happy to keep quiet. When he’d been brought into the camp’s medical tent outside Mosul, Sadowski had corroborated his story; they’d been conducting a perimeter patrol when a sniper had taken a potshot. In those days, not a lot of questions got asked; everything was up for grabs, and sniper attacks were an hourly occurrence. The army had given him his Purple Heart, his honorable discharge, and a monthly disability check that didn’t go nearly far enough.
     
     
    He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the ticking of the timer and the grunts and groans and murmured conversations of the other vets talking to their therapists and going through their agonizing drills. Still, he kind of looked forward to these sessions; the government paid, and Indira took care of him.
     
     
    When the timer went off, she came back, unwrapped the towels and tossed them into the bin, then told him to bend the knee. At first it wouldn’t go.
     
     
    “I’ll help,” she said, lifting the leg slightly. “Tell me if you need to stop.”
     
     
    Her hands were cool and smooth, and the leg felt better just from her touch. He tried to flex the knee, but sometimes it felt like the damn thing had just locked in place. Like right now.
     
     
    “Just relax,” she said, “let me bend it. Don’t you try to do anything.”
     
     
    He closed his eyes, and willed himself, or tried to, into a state of passivity. Indira gently flexed the knee, a few degrees at a time, then went through the other exercises, bringing the leg slowly to one side and then the other, to make sure he wasn’t losing lateral motion. She had him do some standing exercises, a couple of squats that were more like crouches,