"Whisper of the Wind"
Chapter 10
"A Walk on the Wild Side"
November 2024:
He sat on his couch, feet propped stiffly on the coffee table.
He was out of sorts. He was hungry. He was tired. And his leg hurt. Like a son of a bitch. And his heart hurt worse than all of that put together. This little ugly freaking "handicap" apartment looked as though a hurricane had ripped through it. Where the hell was Wilson when you needed him?
Wilson hadn't been around for a long time.
Like sixteen years. And counting.
Yeah. Sixteen years, five months and an odd number of days. Ever since the whole world went "ka-boom" and spelled the end to something he had not even known he had treasured for the past twenty years, two months and sixteen days.
Those were numbers he could remember, because they never went any higher. Never changed. That was the total number of days he had had Wilson. But Wilson left him; went to live on another planet … in another dimension … in a parallel universe. In a galaxy far far far far far far away …
Something like that.
Leather had no wife to bitch about his slovenly habits or complain that he was never around. No spoiled brats to whine about being required to eat their vegetables.
He had no boss lady to yank his ass across the lobby to fulfill his commitment in the free clinic and get sneezed upon by every moron with a stuffy nose. He had no one to blame anymore for the things he mislaid.
And no compassionate best friend to sit beside him on this old, old couch … or wait on him when his leg hurt so badly he almost couldn't stand it.
Like now.
And here he was. Alone because of the dictates of fate. Solitary by choice. Still an island … isolated after years of habit. A majority of one in a one-man court. No hung jury here. Verdict: guilty. Guilty as hell. He was serving a life sentence.
Leather sighed. His hand went to the scar, that shriveled patch of emaciated flesh that had been with him twenty-five years, and would still be with him for the next twenty-five, if he survived that long, which he wouldn't. His leg had lost most of its flexibility. His calf had lost definition. It was skin over bone from hip to ankle, and it got tired so easily, causing his limp to worsen, the pain to accelerate. He could not work as a doctor anymore, except for consultations, and that was no challenge at all.
Which gave his tumultuous mind too much time to brood.
He'd had a kidney-lungs-liver transplant already, and it wouldn't be long before the old "insides" would be throwing up their hands in defeat again. And he was already on the second set of kidneys!
He missed Wilson.
"Whitey".
He must be careful how he referred to his friend. If he didn't, there was that chance that an unintentional "Wilson" might be spoken out loud. Questions would probably be asked and speculations raised that might reveal Whitey's whereabouts, and the fact that he was still alive. Well, sort of.
It had been a long time ago. Few people were still around anymore who remembered Dr. James Wilson and the work he did … and the work the two of them did together … and the tragedy that had blown their world apart. And the pity and the sympathy and the "Oh-My-God" stuff that had gone on and on …
And what they had once been to one another.
Leather remembered. He remembered Whitey every minute of every hour of every day since the accident. One tragedy on top of another.
The boring work he did nowadays deep in the Spider Banks … he had given the place that name, and it had stuck, just as he had renamed himself "Leather" after all the hoopla died down, and that stuck too … was barely enough to keep his restless mind occupied, and his hands from trembling, and his leg from going into permanent atrophy.
It wasn't a life at all. No one else felt sorry for him anymore, so he did it himself.
Carefully he lifted his cantankerous limb from the coffee table to place his foot on the floor. It protested as it always did when being moved from one position to another, and he hissed a breath of pain through his teeth. He grasped the stout black cane with the faded flames on the shaft, and heaved himself up.
"Whitey" had bought him this cane. Many years ago … after that damned dog had chewed the handle off his last one, and it broke and sent his ass spinning to the floor in one of the hospital corridors.
"Wadn' me! Not this time!" Wilson had wheedled, hands held defensively in front of him, barely keeping the grin off his face.
"Well no shit Sherlock! But it was your fuckin' mutt … and you're buying me a new cane!"
Leather had found this one at a Tobacconist's shop. Wilson paid damn near fifty bucks for it and considered it a bargain. They'd laughed about it privately many times over the years. And he still had it. Some of the flames were worn off the shaft … but the wood had held up.
Leather would not have parted with it under any circumstance.
He sighed and hobbled into the kitchen. Grabbed a container of cold chicken parts from the refrigerator and a cold soda. He didn't drink booze much anymore. Bad for all the new gizzard parts inside him. Maybe there would be other new ones to join them …
How lucky could ya get?
He chomped down on his chicken and wet his mouth with diet Pepsi. PepsiCo had changed the formula again, and the damned stuff tasted like carbonated prune juice. He set the can on the coffee table and swiped his sleeve across his mouth. "Blech! Jesus! When will these morons learn that 'new and improved' never is?"
Sitting on the old sofa he'd owned for thirty years, Leather heard the "Say-So" chirp in his back pocket. He'd set it for 1:00 p.m., and it was nearly time to get over to the library and ride one of the elevators down. Down to the Spider Banks and haul out more of the grungy pieces of history to be sorted and preserved and catalogued and stored in the air-tight vaults along the spider legs.
"Another day, another dollar" … wasn't that how the Colonel used to say it? Wouldn't the old man be surprised if he were still around nowadays, that the dollar and all its paper companions were doing a rapid disappearing act? So were the jet planes he used to slice the skies with … and cars that ran on overpriced gasoline and smelly bio-diesel … and all those HD television sets. And I-Pods. And, thank God, cell phones.
Wouldn't he be surprised at the tiny, versatile Zai-Zo? One tiny sand-grain-sized crystal from planet Mars powered everything from hovercraft to MRI equipment. Who knew?
Dilithium crystals had hardly been as revolutionary!
Colonel House had gone to his final reward about fifteen years ago. Heart attack. John had been born pre-tech. Pre-Zai-Zo. If Blythe had been home, his life could have been saved easily with the new technology. But Blythe had been visiting Aunt Sarah in Ohio.
The Colonel was pretty ripe by the time she finally got back …
And life went on.
Leather reached to his jacket pocket for his meds: the new and improved (there was that phrase again!) Vicodin. No opioids in 'em. New stuff called Drenivin. Sometimes he felt that the remedy was worse than the disease. They didn't cause him to want to throw up anymore, and he didn't begin to detox if he missed one. Just hurt like hell. And he never suffered from urinary retention. He also had no appetite.
The newer aftereffects had stiffened his limbs. But they managed the pain. Most of the time. Sometimes he could even sleep through the night. They also ruined his kidneys. And his liver. And they had scored his lungs. Forced him to quit smoking forever if he wanted to be able to breathe …
They were well on their way to ruining the second set of kidneys as well.
Wahoo!
He sighed. Time to leave. Gresham would probably be in the Spider Banks by the time he got to work. It wasn't often that he got there ahead of her. She was a good kid. Fast. Smart. Not pretty, for sure, but cute as hell. She had a nose like a Tellerite. Hair like a straw stack in August. Eyes like …
Stop it! This is idiotic!
He couldn't pretend he hadn't noticed her … or hadn't seen her noticing him. He didn't understand why. She was barely a third his age.
Leather stood up with effort. Paused until the ripples of pain eased away and he was able to walk without going on his ass. He went into the kitchen and dumped all the chicken bones into the garbage and set the dish on top of others already in the sink.
He must go. Get into the damned Edinburgh with the hand controls. Hit the road. He would not be late and allow that snip of a girl to get there ahead of him …
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