anger, biting my lip till I tasted blood when my left leg refused to obey me) battle my way into the tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt my mother had brought in. They knocked gently at the door and practically tiptoed into my room, all braced to stay steady and neutral in the face of almost anything—“Jesus Christ,” I said cheerfully and snarkily, “it’s not a bloody funeral. Come on in.”
Both of them relaxed. “Good to see you, man,” Dec said, breaking into a smile. He crossed fast to my bed and gave me a long, two-handed handshake. “Really good.”
“You too,” I said, matching the handshake and the grin. It really was good to see them, good but strange; it felt like it had been a long time, like I should be asking them what they were doing with themselves these days.
“Yeah, great to see you,” Sean said, shaking hands and giving me a very careful clap on the shoulder. “How’re you getting on?”
“Not bad. I was pretty sore for a few days there”—the mushy slur in my voice made me flinch, but my jaw was still bruised and puffy, surely they would blame it on that—“but it’s wearing off. Have a seat.”
Sean pulled up the visitors’ chair and Dec sat—gingerly, checking for IV lines—on the edge of my bed. “Loving the hair,” he said, pointing at my head—by this time I was showering and shaving (although both took a long time, and I sometimes had to sit down on the shower floor for a while when a dizzy flash hit), so the zombie-movie vibe had faded a bit, but I hadn’t got around to doing anything about my hair. “You could get into all the cool clubs, looking like that.”
“You should shave off one eyebrow to go with it,” Sean said. “Start a hipster fad.”
“I’m thinking of going for a”—I found the word just in time—“a Mohawk. Think Melissa would like it?”
“I think you could get away with just about anything with Melissa, right now. Go for the Mohawk.”
Dec had been absently tugging the edge of my blanket straight, and watching me. “You seem all right, man,” he said. “I mean, not all right all right, like I wouldn’t advise you to go entering the Ironman or anything. But we were scared you were, like, fucked up.”
“Jesus,” Sean said. “You’re a real sensitive guy, you know that?”
“Come on, he knows what I mean.” To me: “We couldn’t tell what shape you were in, yeah? Melissa kept saying you were basically grand”—which was nice to hear—“but I mean, Melissa; she’s always positive about everything. Which is great, don’t get me wrong, but . . . we were worried. It’s just good to see you’re OK.”
“I am OK,” I said. Which I was, right then, or as near as possible: I had carefully timed my Pavlov-button dose of painkillers, holding off for more than an hour after the beep, through the spine-grating ache building in my head, to make sure I would be at the perfect point in the cycle when they arrived. “I have to get this tooth fixed, but apart from that I basically just need to take it easy for a while.”
“Jesus,” Dec said, examining the tooth with a grimace. “Bastards.”
“Did the cops get them?” Sean asked.
“Nah. They think the guys were mainly after my car, so they’re keeping an eye out for that. But I’m not holding my breath.”
“Hope they drive it off a bridge,” Dec said.
“Fuck it,” Sean said. “You can buy another car. Just take it easy and get better. Speaking of which—” He held up a big, stuffed paper bag and passed it to me. “Here.”
Inside were a sheaf of magazines—Empire, the New Scientist, Commando—a Bill Bryson book, a sudoku book, a book of crossword puzzles, a little model-airplane kit, and half a dozen packets of fancy crisps in a variety of surrealist flavors. “Hey, thanks, guys,” I said, touched. “This is great.” I could no more have done a sudoku puzzle or built a model airplane than piloted a fighter jet, but the fact that they thought I could warmed me right through.
“No problem,” Sean said, giving the chair a baffled look as he tried to get comfortable. “Keep you occupied.”
“We figured, if you actually were all right, you’d be bored off your tits,” Dec said.
“I am bored off my tits. Any news?”
“Oh yeah, there’s news,” Sean said, forgetting about the chair. “Guess what he’s gone and done”—jerking a thumb at Dec, who was managing