Fellow Mortals Read Online Free PDF Page A

conversation.”
    He shuts his eyes and tries to picture it—a trailer on the plot—and then imagines pulling up and knocking on the door. He stands and locks his knees and feels a tingle in his thighs. Nan hugs him with a pat and Wingnut wags, intuiting a car trip entirely from Henry’s body language, and they all go inside and feel refreshed by the coolness of the kitchen.
    Joan’s sitting at the table with a thousand-piece jigsaw, a recent gift from Henry, who’s convinced that old ladies love doing puzzles. He set it up this morning right in the kitchen—another thing that irritated Ava, who uses the table more than Henry realized—and then he hovered there and cheered when Joan made her first tentative connection. She checks the picture on the box, a hedge maze with a fountain in the center, mostly shadow, leaf, and sky—a puzzle for legitimate fanatics.
    “Look,” Joan says, showing him the six-piece fountain.
    “Hey, you’re doing great! You’ll have it done in no time.”
    She smiles at his smile, says it’s “wonderfully green,” and recommits with a tremor and a small, fragile sigh.
    Henry calls Ava at the lab.
    “Lindt Diagnostics.”
    “Good morning,” Henry says, thrown as always by his wife’s professional voice. “May I please speak to Ava Cooper?”
    “What,” she says.
    “Av?”
    “It’s me. What do you need?”
    “Oh, it’s you!” he says. “Hey. How’s your morn—”
    “I can’t talk. Ruby called out and there’s a half-dozen patients in the waiting room.”
    “Nan found Sam,” Henry says. “He’s living in a trailer on Arcadia. I’m heading over now. I’ll be home before dinner. If I’m late, start without me.”
    “You’re going now?”
    “You said—”
    “I said you ought to find him. I don’t know if suddenly showing up … How do you know he’s living in the trailer? Maybe it’s construction. He’s probably rebuilding.”
    “No, he’s living there. Nan’s friend plays bingo…” and he tells her all he knows, looking up at Nan to verify the facts.
    “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
    Henry listens closely for the sound of her expression. She only gets this tone with a certain kind of face, like when he’s fiddling with an outlet or balancing a ladder.
    “What am I doing wrong?” he asks.
    “Put Nan on.”
    Henry hands her the receiver, glad of further input. Nan listens for a moment, then turns to him and says, “I forgot about the wash.”
    “I’ll put it in the dryer,” Henry says, sure thing, and then he walks downstairs on a clear, simple mission.
    “He’s gone,” Nan says.
    “Is this a mistake?” Ava asks.
    “No.”
    “It made a lot of sense last night,” Ava tells her. “But Henry doesn’t think. What if Sam snaps?”
    “Sam Bailey isn’t a violent man. It might be ugly but it won’t be dangerous.”
    “Henry doesn’t know when to quit.”
    “That’s how he got me out of the shower,” Nan reminds her.
    Joan looks up, bewildered by the talk, and looks back down, bewildered by the puzzle.
    “He’s coming upstairs,” Nan whispers. “Say a prayer.”
    Before Ava has a second to respond, Henry’s back in the kitchen. He’s forgotten to add a dryer sheet but gives Nan a big thumbs-up: mission accomplished. She hands the telephone back and walks downstairs, intuiting his oversight and heading for the dryer.
    “Don’t talk too much,” Ava tells Henry. “And don’t expect too much. He doesn’t owe you anything, remember.”
    “Geez, Av. I’m not going there for me.”
    “I wish you had a phone.”
    “It’s only fifteen min—”
    “Call me when you’re home,” she says.
    “I will.”
    “Don’t be pushy.”
    “Av…”
    “All right. I love you,” Ava says.
    He warms his ear against the phone, the softness of her breath so close he almost smells it.
    “This is good,” Henry says. “Something’s dropping into place.”

 
    5
    It had been a warm, blustery day in a spring without rain. Henry lit a