Forever Odd

the engine idling.
        This suggested that they had fled in haste. Or intended to return for a quick getaway.
        The Blue Moon doesn’t serve breakfast, only lunch and dinner. Kitchen workers do not begin to arrive until a couple hours after dawn. The cafe should have been locked. I doubted that Simon had shot his way inside to raid the restaurant refrigerators.
        There are easier ways to get a cold chicken leg, though maybe none quicker.
        I couldn’t imagine where they had gone-or why they abandoned the van if in fact they were not returning.
        From one of the second-floor lighted apartment windows, an elderly woman in a blue robe gazed down. She appeared less alarmed than curious.
        I eased to the passenger’s side of the vehicle, slowly circled toward the rear.
        At the back, the pair of doors on the cargo hold also stood open. Interior light revealed no one inside.
        Sirens rose in the night, approaching.
        I wondered who had fired the shotgun, at whom, and why.
        As deformed and vulnerable as he is, Danny couldn’t have wrested the weapon away from his tormentors. Even if he had tried to use the shotgun, the recoil would have broken his shoulder, if not also one of his arms.
        Turning in a circle, mystified, I wondered what had happened to my friend with brittle bones.

----

    TEN
        
        P. OSWALD BOONE, FOUR-HUNDRED-POUND CULINARY black belt in white silk pajamas, whom I’d recently awakened, moved with the grace and swiftness of a dojo master as he whipped up breakfast in the kitchen of his Craftsman-style house.
        At times his weight scares me, and I worry about his suffering heart. But when he’s cooking, he seems weightless, floating, like those gravity-defying warriors in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - though he didn’t actually bound over the center island.
        Watching him that February morning, I considered that if he had spent his life killing himself with food, it might also be true that without the solace and refuge of food, he would have been dead long ago. Every life is complicated, every mind a kingdom of unmapped mysteries, and Ozzie’s more than most.
        Although he never speaks of how or what or why, I know that his childhood was difficult, that his parents broke his heart. Books and excess poundage are his insulation against pain.
        He is a writer, with two successful series of mystery novels and numerous nonfiction books to his credit. He is so productive that the day may come when one copy of each of his books, stacked on a scale, will surpass his body weight.
        Because he had assured me that writing would prove to be psychic chemotherapy effective against psychological tumors, I had written my true story of loss and perseverance-and had put it in a drawer, at peace if not happy. To his dismay, I had told him that I was done with writing.
        I believed it, too. Now here I am again, putting words to paper, serving as my own psychological oncologist.
        Perhaps in time I will follow Ozzie’s every example, and weigh four hundred pounds. I won’t be able to run with ghosts and slip down dark alleyways in quite the swift and stealthy fashion that I do now; but perhaps children will be amused by my hippopotamic heroics, and no one will disagree that bringing laughter to children in a dark world is admirable.
        While Ozzie cooked, I told him about Dr. Jessup and all that had occurred since the dead radiologist had come to me in the middle of the night. Although as I recounted events I worried about Danny, I worried as well about Terrible Chester.
        Terrible Chester, the cat about which every dog has nightmares, allows Ozzie to live with him. Ozzie cherishes this feline no less than he loves food and books.
        Although Terrible Chester has never clawed me with the ferocity of which I believe he is capable, he has more than once urinated on my shoes. Ozzie says this is an expression of affection. This theory holds that the cat is marking me with his scent to identify me as an approved member of his family.
        I have noticed that when Terrible Chester wishes to express his affection for Ozzie, he does so by cuddling and purring.
        Since Ozzie opened the front door to me, as we passed through the house, and during the time that I sat in the kitchen, I had not seen Terrible Chester. This made me nervous. My shoes were new.
        He is a