in the chair by the window, his legs stuck out straight on the hassock, dressed in a Johnny and a cheap hospital bathrobe.
“As you can see, I put on my tux,” he said.
“You look fine.” She kissed his cheek and a hundred memories shuffled brightly through his mind like a doubled pack of cards. She sat in the other chair, crossed her legs, and tugged at the hem of her dress.
They looked at each other without saying anything. He saw that she was very nervous. If someone were to touch her on the shoulder, she would probably spring right out of her seat.
“I didn’t know if I should come,” she said, “but I really wanted to.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Like strangers on a bus, he thought dismally. It’s got to be more than this, doesn’t it?”
“So how’re you doing?” she asked.
He smiled. “I’ve been in the war. Want to see my battle scars?” He raised his gown over his knees, showing the S-shaped incisions that were now beginning to heal. They were still red and hashmarked with stitches.
“Oh, my Lord, what are they doing to you?”
“They’re trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” Johnny said. “All the king’s horses, all the king’s men, and all the king’s doctors. So I guess ...” And then he stopped, because she was crying.
“Don’t say it like that, Johnny,” she said. “Please don’t say it like that.”
“I’m sorry. It was just ... I was trying to joke about it.” Was that it? Had he been trying to laugh it off or had it been a way of saying, Thanks for coming to see me, they’re cutting me to pieces?
“Can you? Can you joke about it?” She had gotten a Kleenex from the clutch bag and was wiping her eyes with it.
“Not very often. I guess seeing you again ... the defenses go up, Sarah.”
“Are they going to let you out of here?”
“Eventually. It’s like running the gauntlet in the old days, did you ever read about that? If I’m still alive after every Indian in the tribe has had a swing at me with his tomahawk, I get to go free.”
“This summer?”
“No, I ... I don’t think so.”
“I’m so sorry it happened,” she said, so low he could barely hear her. “I try to figure out why ... or how things could have been changed ... and it just robs me of sleep. If I hadn’t eaten that bad hot dog ... if you had stayed instead of going back ...” She shook her head and looked at him, her eyes red. “It seems sometimes there’s no percentage.”
Johnny smiled. “Double zero. House spin. Hey, you remember that? I clobbered that Wheel, Sarah.”
“Yes. You won over five hundred dollars.”
He looked at her, still smiling, but now the smile was puzzled, wounded almost. “You want to know something funny? My doctors think maybe the reason I lived was because I had some sort of head injury when I was young. But I couldn’t remember any, and neither could my mom and dad. But it seems like every time I think of it, I flash on that Wheel of Fortune ... and a smell like burning rubber.”
“Maybe you were in a car accident ...” she began doubtfully.
“No, I don’t think that’s it. But it’s like the Wheel was my warning ... and I ignored it.”
She shifted a little and said uneasily, “Don’t, Johnny.”
He shrugged. “Or maybe it was just that I used up four years of luck in one evening. But look at this, Sarah.” Carefully, painfully, he took one leg off the hassock, bent it to a ninety-degree angle, then stretched it out on the hassock again. “Maybe they can put Humpty back together again. When I woke up, I couldn’t do that, and I couldn’t get my legs to straighten out as much as they are now, either.”
“And you can think, Johnny,” she said. “You can talk. We all thought that ... you know.”
“Yeah, Johnny the turnip.” A silence fell between them again, awkward and heavy. Johnny broke it by saying with forced brightness, “So how’s by you?”
“Well ... I’m married. I guess you knew that.”
“Dad told me.”
“He’s such a fine man,” Sarah said. And then, in a burst, “I couldn’t wait, Johnny. I’m sorry about that, too. The doctors said you’d never come out of it, and you’d get lower and lower until you just ... just slipped away. And even if I had known ...” She looked up at him with an uneasy