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.“Because I don’t care!”He felt the freedom of not caring.My God, but wasn’t that what his whole generation had stood for, when they were packing the ends of rifles with spindly assed daisies? Wasn’t this a bona fide do your own thing feeling? And yet he was having his first awakening at age forty-four, like some pale and confused soldier who’d been hiding out in the Philippine jungle, unaware that World War II ended forty years earlier.Unaware of so many things.He’d been a virgin, hadn’t he, a hymenal membrane blocking the way to his true emotions? He’d been a pretender when he grew his hair long, before the disapproving eyes of Dr.Philip Stone, and wore those flapping flare-legged pants which gave so much freedom to his calf muscles.He’d never really felt the euphoria of pure freedom until now.It was a joyous event.Herbert pirouetted at the door and came back.“He really is under a lot of stress,” he heard Herbert whisper to the receptionist.She seemed in the act of phoning someone.But Frederick truly didn’t care.He didn’t care if there might be folks in the operating room who could hear him.They could take his words with them to meet their makers.Not only do men regret the past, they also fear the future, Mr.Bator said now, because the flow of time seems to be sweeping them toward their deaths, as swimmers are swept toward a waterfall.“What the hell do you know?” Frederick yelled at his old teacher.“You’re a closet homosexual.That’s what’s wrong with you!”Herbert and the receptionist stared.For a second, Frederick again feared losing his place in line.His ankle burst forth with a new supply of pain.He wished some endorphins would kick in.Herbert walked back over to him and stood looking down.“You always thought you were a peg above me, didn’t you?” Herbert asked.His face seemed about to explode.“The poet.A real ladies’ man.Well, let’s clear the air right now, Freddy.”Frederick shook his head.“I was talking to Mr.Bator,” he said, but Herbert wasn’t listening.“I’m gonna tell you what’s wrong with me, little brother, whether you want to hear it or not.One day I’m trying to figure out what it was they threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge in ‘Ode to Billy Joe.’ The next day I’m up to my ass in mud in the Mekong Delta, tap-dancing across a mine field.One day I’m trying to figure out whether John is the Walrus, or Paul is the Walrus.The next day I’m dragging a dying man I’ve never seen before in my life out of a rice paddy, his guts trailing behind.But you never went to Vietnam, did you, Freddy? You went to Woodstock.You were up to your ankles in mud in upstate New York.You’re probably still suffering from posttraumatic syndrome.One of the stages might have collapsed.You could have caught your bell-bottoms on some raspberry bushes.Well, let me tell you something, you conscientious asshole.You’re not the walking wounded, so don’t flatter yourself.Chandra should’ve left you years ago.”That said, Herbert walked to the exit door and disappeared into the night outside.A door to the waiting room opened just then and a nurse with a smile on her face beckoned with a hand.“Mr.Stone,” she said.“The doctor will see you now.”Hitching himself up onto his ankle, Frederick stood.So this was his just reward, after forty-four years of minding his own business? This was what the gods would deliver him to, as a penance for his so-called hubris? He thought of Hephaestus, once married to Venus—another heartless bitch—and how he was tossed off Mount Olympus by a jealous Zeus, thus breaking his leg and leaving him crippled.Feeling a kinship to the bandy-legged bugger, Frederick gritted his teeth and took a first step.There were worse things than a permanent limp.“Be careful of this one, Margaret,” he heard the receptionist whisper as he hobbled down the corridor.TenIt was almost ten o’clock when Frederick awoke to the sounds of neighborhood children playing a game of street baseball at the end of the cul-de-sac.His neck felt cramped, his legs shriveled things.Sleeping on a settee did not offer the most advantageous positions for the body.This type of settee was commonly referred to as a daybed—a misnomer, the bed part—a thing that even Shakespeare was familiar with, for it was on just such a piece of furniture that Malvolio announces, in Twelfth Night, that he has “left Olivia sleeping.” Frederick doubted that Olivia slept well; no wonder she was such a mournful creature.Had Shakespeare ever nodded off on a daybed? After all, the piece originated in his century.Did he rush home from plague-filled London, smelling of booze and women, only to have Anne Hathaway-Shakespeare banish him to the settee? Probably.Extraneare.After replaying his messages, most of them from disgruntled clients, Frederick made a pot of coffee and stood waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sunshine coming in through the kitchen window.It had been a full week, seven god-awful days since the disastrous episodes at Bobbin Road and the emergency clinic.It had become almost impossible for him to sleep at night, what with a painful ankle, not to mention the shortcomings of the settee.As a result, he had been falling asleep at dawn, physical exhaustion winning out over mental stress.And he’d been sleeping soundly past noon.The only reason he had risen earlier this day was a message he had heard come in on his answering machine, just past ten o’clock, while he lay on the settee hoping to sleep again but listening instead to the children shout things like “Good pitch, Sarah!” Or “Run, Jacob!” He had been trying to recall just when summer vacation would end in those parts, when the school bell would sound as loudly as the Pied Piper’s horn and lure all the little progeny back inside those thick, soundproof walls.“It’s me, Freddy,” he had heard Herbert Stone say.“It’s time we had a talk.”This was good news, Frederick now thought as he edged two slices of bread into the toaster.He had been unable for a full week to get Herbert to speak to him.A long, limping week.Not even on the Fourth of July would Herbert answer his phone, so Frederick had watched the fireworks alone from his front porch, before he retreated into the privacy of the house
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