rodgermm

@@@@@"What brings you out this way?" I asked him"Oh, Kathi tells me you're planning to bump yourself off," he saidIt was the tone he might have used to say Kathi tells me you're having a lawn party and there are fresh Krispy Kremes on offer"Any truth to that rumor?" I opened my mouth, then closed it againOnce, when I was ten and growing up in Eau Claire, I took a comic book from a drugstore spin-around, put it down the front of my jeans, then dropped my tee-shirt over itAs I was strolling out the door, feeling jacked up and very clever, a clerk grabbed me by the armShe lifted my shirt with her other 27 hand and exposed my ill-gotten treasure"How did that get there?" she asked meNot in the forty years since that day had I been so completely stuck for an answer to a simple questionFinally - long after such a response could have any weight - I said, "That's ridiculousI don't know where she could have gotten such an ideaSure you don't want a Coke?" "Thanks, but I'll pass I got up and got a Coke from the kitchen fridgeI tucked the bottle firmly between my stump and my chest-wall - possible but painful, I don't know what you may have seen in the movies, but broken ribs hurt for a long time - and spun off the cap with my left handCaught a break there, muchacho, as Wireman says"I'm surprised you'd take her seriously in any case," I said as I came back in"Kathi's a hell of a physical therapist, but a headshrinker she's not I paused before sitting down"Neither are you, actuallyIn the technical sense 28 Kamen cupped an enormous hand behind an ear that looked roughly the size of a desk drawera ratcheting noise? I believe I do!" "What are you talking about?" "It's the charmingly medieval sound a person's defenses make when they go up He tried an ironic wink, but the size of the man's face made irony impossible