"GUESSWORK"
- Chapter Seven -
"Strangers In the Night"
Somewhere around two in the morning, he was roused by sounds outside the window that grated on his senses like fingernails down a blackboard. There came the shuffling of feet and snatches of whispering. It brought him alert quickly, proving that subliminal stimulus could be even more insistent than the waking variety …
He'd been lying on his left side, his right leg resting atop the left in a defensive position he seemed to be assuming more and more lately. The sound left leg was almost straight, cradling the weaker right one, which was slightly bent at the knee and folded into the contours of the left, almost in the manner of a porcelain sculpture nested into its molded Styrofoam box. Safe from harm, even from his restless stirrings in the night.
House lay still for another moment, then shifted his weight by degrees and levered himself to a sitting position on the lumpy bed. His right leg would not straighten at first, and for the hundredth time he cursed the inadequacy of the non-narcotic medications, which were next to useless for his needs. He swung around gradually in the darkness and dropped his feet to the thin-carpeted floor. He froze in place and listened.
It was silent, except for the intermittent rumble-snorkel of big-rig traffic getting ready to hit the road just before daylight. Then the quieter shuffling sounds rose upward in his consciousness again. There were two male voices, maybe more, right outside his door and too close for his liking.
The bike was out there! The Repsol stood ten feet from the front door of his room, and it still contained much of the stuff he could not summon the strength to bring into the room with him. If he remembered correctly, one of the saddlebags still had a wad of $100 bills rolled up in it. And his junk food stash and clean underwear! It wouldn't do for all those goodies to fall prey to the hands of intruders.
Laboriously, he pulled on socks, and then struggled into blue jeans. His leg had been relaxed and in a semi-coma awhile ago, but now it was waking up with new and strident demands for medication. He bit his lip and rode the wave of sudden pain, fumbling in the dark for the three pill vials, and for the riding boots he'd kicked to the side.
House rolled the pills into his palm, then threw back his head and took them all. He was becoming almost as adept with a handful as he had formerly been with a single Vicodin. Even with this increased dexterity, however, he still wished mightily for the high dosage of hydrocodone. One day at a fucking time!
He pulled on the boots easily, and zipped them up. In one motion, he stood, taking his weight on the left side, grabbed the leather jacket and helmet off the side chair, and reached for his constant companion, the cane. He had a feeling the shit was about to hit the fan. Gregg made no noise and no sudden movements as he slid into the jacket and helmet.
He was about to pull the biggest bluff since Helen Keller went to the movies!
Limping ponderously, he moved slowly toward the front door of the room and grasped the doorknob in his left hand. The tiny slit that let in a shaft of light from the parking lot, afforded him a narrow glimpse of three curiously garbed young men standing near the Honda. Angrily, he drew himself to his full, impressive height, and drew the door inward all the way.
Gregory House stood in the open doorway of the dark motel room and glared at the men who stood too-close-for-comfort to his motorcycle. With the black helmet in place and the black leather jacket casting off a dark matte sheen in the glare of distant headlights, he appeared quite as imposing as a super-villain action figure from a child's nightmare.
Slowly, he crossed his arms across his chest, cocked the lame leg in front of the other one, and leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe. He held the cane like a war lance in the crook of one arm so that its curved handle dangled, in obvious threat, toward the ground. He tilted his head to insure that the outside lights gleamed off the helmet, and stared at the trio with a menacing expression that somehow imitated amusement.
"Something there that interests you boys?" He snarled. He let his narrowed eyes travel appraisingly up and down across their bodies, as though scouting for the most vulnerable places with which to brandish the cane.
Three heads snapped up in alarm. One of them held a screwdriver in his fist; the perfect tool for disabling the locks on the saddlebags. House's eyes moved in a straight line from the young man's fist to his face, and back.
Slowly and deliberately then, he withdrew his right arm from the strategic pose and advanced his hand toward the jacket pocket. "I'd put that away if I were you," he said smoothly. "There are no screws loose on that bike. I checked. There might be some screws loose on you though. If you'd like, I can come over there and make sure they're all tightened …"
House grinned behind the face shield of the helmet, and it was not a pretty sight.
The three froze for a moment, like deer in the headlights, their eyes centered on the large right hand that was advancing into the depths of the jacket pocket. Then one of them muttered something, and as though on cue, all three turned on their heels like the cowards they were, and fled into the darkness toward the rear of the motel.
House's spinal column suddenly felt reduced to putty, and his knees to mush. Sometimes it paid to look tall and angry and tough. He felt anything but! He pressed his back into the solid support of the metal doorframe, shaking uncontrollably with the release of adrenaline rush.
Oh fuck! Thank God they didn't catch onto the "pathetic" …He pulled off the helmet and hurled it into the room and onto the bed. His body radiated with spent tension, and his leg hurt so bad he wanted to scream. But he didn't. He lowered his chin until it rested on his chest. He tossed the cane onto the bed with the helmet and gripped his thigh with his right hand, rubbing and rubbing and rubbing …
Sometimes he would look at his hand, with its broad callus running the length of its heel, and sometimes marveling that he still had fingerprints left. His fingertips were shiny these days, just from the friction caused by massaging those useless muscles and working away the spasms and hints of spasms from the most drastically damaged area of his thigh.
He stood there, breathing heavily from the ordeal, shoring up the strength to move out of the open doorway and attempt to go back to bed. This experience would have been no biggie for a man of full strength, who could back up the threats he'd made. But when faced with bodily harm, he knew he would always come out on the short end of the stick. His balance was precarious at best, his pain threshold lowering every day, and his fear of impending pain a constant threat to his sanity.
He eyed the bike and knew he wouldn't rest anymore that night with it standing out there and vulnerable to every asshole with a thought to fucking around with something that didn't belong to him. He felt a peal of ironic laughter welling up from deep in his throat. He let it happen and rode with it, standing there grinning like some simpleton over the fact that in the world of "survival of the fittest", he should have been left to die along the trail many moons ago.
When he had recovered his breath and a little of the pain had retreated from the cramping sensations in his thigh, Gregory House limped piteously out to the Repsol, unlocked the transmission, and grasped the handlebars with both hands.
Using the front of the bike as a crutch, he guided it carefully through the door and into the motel room. He had to turn the handlebars to the right, and then sharply back to the left to get them to clear the sides of the door. When it was inside, he closed and locked the door and lowered the kickstand. The damned thing blocked the entrance to the bathroom, but that couldn't be helped. There was no other way, unless he wanted to sleep with it.
Fuckin' A … you tell 'em, Ace!0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
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