"GUESSWORK"

- Chapter Seventeen -

"The Diner" - #1

Working his way off the saddle of the bike was intimidating and painful. He was not sure whether he could maintain balance long enough to drag his leg across and down without waves of pain whirling in his thigh, spiking upward, making him dizzy and lightheaded.

He decided that if he leaned forward across the gas tank and over the handlebars, he could slide his foot gradually over the saddle and ease down across the side of the bike until it was on the ground. He tried it, drawing backward slowly, his right hand still supporting the knee. His sore foot gradually scraped across the leather and down over the paint and the chrome. Success. It was on the ground. Rock meeting macadam. One more experiment, one more excursion into guesswork that forever made a contest of his compromised life.

Many times he felt like a contortionist, a plastic toy with joints that swiveled like those of G. I. Joe. He could be contorted in any direction to achieve the desired result, and then swivel back again when the task was completed. Over the years he had come up with a few compensatory tricks to replace things he could no longer manage with the natural ease of an able-bodied human being. He'd made the action of getting up off a floor with no support into a work of art. He had made the lifting of a crippled leg with one hand look effortless and natural, and he had learned to use a cane with an expertise that gave his painful lurching gait the look of grace …

"Grace with ripples" … as Wilson had mentioned once.

House stood still, leaning most of his weight against the bike. His leg hurt again with a dogged persistence that made the tears well up. He forced himself to rest there until the turmoil of the overtaxed muscles and tendons had a chance to tame down to manageable levels.

Ironically, he could feel himself half-smiling into the air at another intrusion into his thoughts by his best friend. He had hornswoggled Wilson completely; left him standing in the dust when he'd turned tail and run away in his selfish bid for freedom. He figured Wilson simply hadn't "got" it. Hadn't made the connection. Hadn't found the damn phone. No reflection on Wilson. His mind did not work the same way House's did.

He gathered his sacred "mental mantle" self-consciously around himself as he reached down for the cane and grasped it tightly in his swollen hand. He looked around surreptitiously, checking the layout of the little hamlet that reclined lazily around him. Apparently no one had witnessed his clunky, awkward movements. Or cared. How damned important did he think he was?

Bullshit!

Not a soul that he could see moved around on foot, and there was not a single vehicle in motion on the street. Ghost town.

But the lights were on in the diner.

A fairly new red Chevy pickup was parked a little further toward the south, and behind it something tiny and bilious green and foreign. There was an old blue station wagon that screamed "Chrysler!" up the street in the other direction, and across from it stood a rusty old sedan of uncertain vintage. He could see other vehicles poking out of private parking spaces here and there. None of them running.

Across the street from where he stood, a filthy white Cadillac something-or-other had pulled in and shut down about the same time he had, catty-cornered from his own position. He could hear the faint ticking from the heat of its recent passage as it cooled down. Behind the opaqued glass of its windows he thought he could see the faint silhouette of the driver, still behind the wheel, head bent low over what might be a road map. The cant of the nose and the sharp incline of the brow reminded him a little of Wilson. He scoffed. Hell! Everywhere he looked there was something that reminded him of Wilson.

He hitched his breath as a shot of pain spiked in his thigh, and thoughts of the guy in the Caddy fled quickly. Silliness anyway … that Wilson would be anywhere within five hundred miles of this Godforsaken neck of the woods … or driving some huge, fancy, pretentious shag buggy. Furthermore … Wilson was probably back in Princeton, spending Sunday afternoon scratching his head and wondering what the hell was going on.

A little bit of irony here that his friend's image seemed to be everyplace he looked …

Wishful thinking!

When he could finally move, he planted the cane firmly beside his right foot only long enough to shuffle the left one the half step it took to bring it alongside. He could tolerate precious little weight on the right. By the time he reached the bottom of the diner's steps, a little of the misery had receded, but getting up there looked easily as difficult as a full flight of stairs, and the passage intimidated him more than he cared to admit.

Gregory House took a deep breath and reached out to grasp the wrought iron railing with his left hand. He could not make the steps in a normal manner, and it was time to become innovative again. He placed most of his weight midway between the cane and the railing. He held his right leg straight, but not stiff. He gathered himself and tested his balance, and when it was right, he hopped up one step and realigned the balance between the railing and the cane without placing weight on the right. In this manner, he made it up the five steps without incident, and sweating like crazy, pulled open the door in triumph.

The inside of the diner turned out almost as he'd imagined it from looking at it outside. The white and red enamel and the polished chrome took him back to high school and college days when such eateries were widely popular in college towns with teen hangouts. He felt right at home in his leather jacket, full beard, filthy jeans and muddy motorcycle boots.

He looked around at the vintage Formica tabletops, countertops, plastic-upholstered bench seats at the booths along the window wall. A step backward in time. Behind the counter, a full menu hung on the wall, and beside it a list of ice cream flavors as long as his arm. He chose a booth near the center of the dining area and moved slowly toward it.

As he'd expected, the swelling in his foot was receding now that he'd been able to get it moving, and his fingers were feeling more like fingers than clubs. He removed his backpack and dropped it onto the seat to his left, then removed the leather jacket and piled it on top and to the right of the backpack. He eased down gingerly and settled into the padded springiness of the bench seat, placed the cane across the table to his left within easy reach.

House sighed. He did not quite know what to do with his leg. It ached, and there was nowhere to prop it up, unless he slouched down in his seat almost up to his neck. Certain inconveniences included with his crippledness were still a total pain in the ass … and elsewhere. He prepared to make do with the reality of what was …

There were batwing doors that led from the counter area to what was most certainly the kitchen, and as Gregg House sat catching his breath, they whop-whopped open and closed a couple of times. He looked up in a distracted manner to gaze eyeball-to-eyeball at a pretty face splotched with freckles and surrounded by carrot-red hair.

The girl leaned across the counter on her elbows and grinned at him. "Howdy, y'awl. I'm Penny."

He gawked. She was pretty. Pretty enough to take his breath away. "Uh … howdy … I'm Gregg." He frowned. This was the second person to whom he'd revealed his name.

What was wrong with him?

Her drawl was so thick he had trouble putting it together at first. "Whut brangs yew down ta this neck o'the woods, Graigg?"

"Unhh …" He felt a moment of northern inarticulateness in her presence. His brain was slow in picking up the nuances of her speech. He made no smart remarks as ordinarily he might have done, for he was indeed the intruder here. He couldn't contain the half-smile though, as he continued to wrack his brain for some kind of appropriate answer, not a total lie. "How'd you know I'm a stranger?"

She snorted good-naturedly. "Hah! Ah cain tell a snowbird from a mah-h-lle away!" The grin that followed the long, drawn out statement held him in rapture for a moment, and he was beginning to fold his mind around the inflections and the altered southern grammatical style. Actually, it was pleasantly distracting and a more than a little welcome.

He allowed himself a smile in return. When in Rome …

"Is it too early to order lunch?"

She smiled at him again, and he was almost charmed. "Aint never too early to git-ya some lunch here. What would you like, Sugah? Our cook … BillyJoe? He makes honey frhiied poke chops to diah for! Sweet 'taters, cornbread … big ol' ice tea … apple peih a'la mode for dee-zert …"

"Stop right there," he said. "You talked me into it."

She nodded. "Thought so. Comin' raaht up."

He was amazed how quickly her manner of speaking was smoothing out along his aural relays. "Thanks. Uh … could I have a glass of water?" He was already digging in his backpack for the damn meds.

She nodded. "Raaht away."

The doors beyond the counter whop-whopped again and she disappeared back behind them. House opened the vials and dropped the required meds into his left palm. He put the vials away again and turned his right hand to the business of massaging the angry, buzzing muscles of his thigh.

When she returned, Penny had his glass of water in one hand and a flat, white object in the other. She set down the water in front of him, and unfolded the other thing. To his surprise, it was a small foldable stool, and he watch in consternation as she opened it and placed it on the floor beneath his table. He took the meds while her back was turned, and drank part of the water.

When she stood up again, he was staring at her. She dropped her gaze for a moment beneath his scrutiny, but then seemed to gather courage. "Aint none o' my bidness," she began, "but I saw when y'awl came in, that y'awl walk with a cane … an' I thought … maybe it might help to prop up yore pore foot a little bit …"

He was decidedly uncomfortable, and uncertain how to react to this second random act of kindness during his journey. His mind returned quickly to Molly back in Baltimore, and her instinctive attention to his comfort. She had offered no pity, just a need observed and accommodations willingly made.

Penny stood at the end of the table, awaiting his decision. Not urging, just waiting. Did he want her to help him? He, who was so conditioned against patronizing, sympathy or pity? He looked away for a moment, tortured with indecision and filled with misgivings.

Finally, he nodded. Once. A dip of his chin and done. At that moment, if it might have accomplished anything to ease his pain, he would have let her carry him.

She knelt at the spot where his foot leaned stiff and unwieldy against the floor. She positioned the stool and touched the area of his jeans near the calf. "I'm gonna lift you up … and slaade the stool under yore foot. Ready?"

He nodded, gathering himself. "Yeah …"

And it was done. She rose and turned toward the kitchen again, making no mention of the important thing she had just done for him. Another need observed. And met.

"Yore lunch'll be out d'rectly, Graigg. An' when y'awl're ready to leave … ?"

He looked up.

"Y'awl should go out through the keetchen. Aint no steps out thattaway … don't want y'awl to try to go back down the damn front steps. BillyJoe says he'll push yore bike around back for ya … he saw y'awl ride onto the parkin' lot awhile ago when he was out for a smoke …"

Gregory House looked after her retreating back as the doors whop-whopped behind her.

"Thank you," he said. He hoped she'd heard him. He was too choked up to say it again.

A half hour later, James Wilson in the SUV across the street, saw a thin young man in tee shirt, blue jeans and apron, come out the front door of the diner, hurry down the steps and grasp the handlebars of the Honda Repsol. The hairs rose at the base of Wilson's neck as he saw the young man and the bike disappear around back.

What the … ???

Ten minutes later, Gregory House, apparently quite all right and ready to resume his odyssey, rode out of the parking lot, turned right and rode out of sight. As the Repsol made the corner, House's eyes rested for a split second on the Cadillac Escalade. Wilson could have sworn their eyes touched and held for the briefest of moments. Then he was gone. Had House seen him? Recognized him? There was no indication, and no way to tell.

Wilson got out of the car and walked across the road.

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