Act of God

but you feel the progress, and that keeps you going.”
    “Thanks, Norm.”
    “Don’t mention it. You stay active at our age, these things are gonna happen to you. Trick is to come back the right way.”
    “Tell Elie I got the message.”
    Norm grinned. “What are you doing for the Fourth?”
    “Of July?”
    “Right.”
    “No plans.”
    “I’m having a party at my place, watch the fireworks and concert. You interested?”
    About five hundred thousand people jam themselves onto the riverbank to listen to the Boston Pops play in the Hatch Shell and to see the special effects get launched from an anchored barge. “Can I bring a date?”
    “Sure, but nothing else. I’ll have booze and buffet. Be fifty, sixty people there. Who knows, maybe one of them needs a private eye.”
    “Networking.”
    “The way the world turns.”
    I did a very light circuit of the remaining machines, then twenty minutes on the bike and ten on the StairMaster. Pulling on my sweatshirt, I stopped at Elie’s front counter.
    He looked up from a newspaper. “How’d the workout
    go?”
    “About the way you thought it should.”
    “Hey, John, I’m not trying—”
    “You were right, El. Thanks.”
    “No big thing. You coming to Norm’s party?”
    “First my personal trainer, now my social secretary.”
    A big smile. “Everybody needs somebody sometime.”

    “How about a movie?”
    “Don’t feel like sitting, Nance.”
    She turned a page in the newspaper. “Video?”
    “Don’t feel like sitting here, either.”
    Nancy Meagher looked at me across the coffee table in her living room. We’d just cleared it of dinner dishes, Renfield in a ball on her couch, snoozing off the scraps I’d fed him.
    Nancy said, “If you were a little younger, we could go to one of the rock clubs.”
    “Funny.”
    “No, really. Jesus Lizard is at the Paradise .”
    “Sounds totally awesome.”
    “How about Sexploitation at the Rat?”
    “What do they do?”
    “Says here ‘retro-dance.’ ”
    “You know what that means?”
    “No.”
    “Maybe you’re too old for the clubs, too.”
    “Here’s another—oh, you’ll love this one. Look.”
    I set down the last of my beer and read the name of the group. Tequila Mockingbird. “I don’t get it.”
    “Say it out loud.”
    I did. “I get it.”
    Nancy ’s voice changed. “I don’t.”
    I looked at her. “What do you mean?”
    “I know your being banged up has been—”
    “I’m a little more than banged up, Nance. Parts don’t work the way they’re supposed to anymore.”
    “But you’re doing what you can about that, right?”
    “I can’t do anything about it.”
    “Yes, you can, and you are. You’ve been to the doctor, you had that magnetic thing.”
    “Magnetic resonance imaging.”
    “The doctor will read the image or whatever you call it, and prescribe what you should do.”
    “What if there’s nothing I can do?”
    “Oh, great. John, it’s not like you to be so... defeatist. What’s the matter?”
    I told her about what Norm said at Nautilus.
    “So? That sounds encouraging.”
    “Encouraging.”
    “Yes. If those things worked for him, there’s a good chance they’ll work for you.”
    “Nance, I’m not a real estate wheel who just wants to stay in good shape. I’m a private investigator who has to be able to do things.”
    “We’re back to that, are we?”
    Without names or details, I told her the trouble I’d had with Larry Rivkind on the staircase at Value Furniture. “John, he sucker-punched you.”
    “And therefore?”
    “And therefore it wasn’t your knee or your shoulder or your less-than-immortal masculinity that let that happen. Even if you were fine physically, you never would have blocked that punch.”
    “ Granted. But afterward, I was barely able to handle him without hurting him.”
    “But you did.”
    “He was just a college kid, Beth.”
    Nancy ’s fine blue eyes filled. “You’ve never done that before.”
    “Done what?”
    “Called me ‘Beth.’ ”
    “Jesus. Did I?”
    “Yes.”
    “Nance—”
    “Just don’t touch me for a minute, okay?”
    “Okay.”
    She used the edge of her forefinger to swipe at the tears. “That’s been the hardest part about being with you, John.” I hated to ask, but I didn’t see it. “What has?”
    “That. You’re with me, but you’re not with me.”
    “Nancy, I just plain don’t get it.”
    “Look.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “When we first met, I understood about