Read SUMMER of FEAR for Free Online Page A

divorce
with a mere $75,000 for the vastly out earned Marty—something to the effect of
her wallet being even tighter than her ass. Could Martin's resentment have
festered? I also recalled, oh, quite clearly, how Amber had previously offered
me that same amount—$75,000—as enticement to keep me from filing a palimony
suit. I had no intention of suing her, nor of accepting the money, and I
clearly remember the bitterly comic battles we had over the issue.
    What I would have given at that point, some twenty years later, to have
$75,000 in the bank!
    "I can smell her perfume on the checks," said Erik. "I'd
screw them if I could get them to hold still long enough. It's amazing how a
person so beautiful and bright can be so stupid. Speaking of beauty, how is
Izzy?"
    "Isabella is perfect."
    "Your insurance doing what it's supposed
to?"
    "Yes."
    "Let me know if there's something I can do for you two. We rejects
have to stand together."
    "The proud, the many."
    "Take care, Russell, and don't try to pass yourself off as me
again. You're not nearly smart, handsome, or dangerous enough."
    "But I've got the same pain-in-the-ass
attitude."
    "Mine's better. It comes from the heart."
    "When did you get one of those?"
     

CHAPTER
FIVE

That night,
distressed and despairing, I made dinner for Isabella Our dinners were always
complex productions because Isabel was once a superlative cook and loves to
eat. The steroids she was taking to reduce swelling in her head also gave her a
robust appetite. She planned the menu; I followed her directions as best I
could. The maid prepared breakfast and lunch, then went home. Dinnertime was
strictly for us.
    Isabella
would sit in her wheelchair and direct. She was rested by then, up from a long
afternoon nap that sometime started after lunch. I would fuss around in the
kitchen, trying to do things right, open a bottle of wine, and start in on it.
We would talk.
    It
was a lot like the old days, if anything can be said to be the way it was
before you have a massive seizure, are diagnosed with an inoperable tumor,
undergo an experimental radiation-implant procedure, and lose most of the use
of your legs because of it. No, it was really not very much like the ole days
at all. In fact, Isabella couldn't even look at pictures of herself from
earlier times. The smiling, black-haired woman she saw in them seemed a prior
blessing that had since been revoked. Isabella is not a vain person—no more
than any of us are—but to see that old, strong, vital self was too much for
her. She was a big woman. She had gone from 130 shapely, capable pounds to
almost 200. Her coal black hair (Isabella is of Mexican descent, her maiden
name is Sandoval) had fallen out with the treatments, every last beautiful,
wavy shoulder-length strand. Her legs had shrunken from disuse.
    It was all that Isabella—a woman who could once skip along on one ski
behind a boat doing forty miles an hour— could do to struggle up from her chair
and use the cane to move across a room. The stairs leading up to our bedroom
were impossible, so we had an elevator installed. The first time Isabella used
it, she put on a pair of angels' wings and a halo that she'd worn to a costume
party just a few months before. On her lap, she carried the plastic toy-store
harp. She started out smiling and ended up crying. I stood there and watched
her descend, filled with that strange combination of love for this woman and
fury at what had happened to her.
    Isabella's world fluctuated between transcendent humor and bitter
despair. So did mine.
    One thing that Isabella's disease hadn't threatened was her piano
playing, the lovely sounds of which would fill our home each afternoon when she
got up from her nap. She played Bach and Mozart; she played the show tunes of
the thirties, she played Jerry Lee and Elton John; but most of all she played
her own compositions, which had come, over the last year, to be the most
achingly longing music I had ever heard. When her