From the Corner of His Eye

thugs with big fists and lead pipes. With each beat, his heart seemed to press painfully against constricting bands, and his throat was raw.
        A two-prong oxygen feed was snugged against his nasal septum The sweet, cool flow was welcome. He could still taste the vile mess of which he had rid himself, however, and his tongue and teeth felt as if they were coated with mold.
        At least he wasn't vomiting anymore.
        Immediately at the thought of regurgitation, his abdominal muscles contracted like those of a laboratory frog zapped by an electric current, and he choked on a rising horror.
        What is happening to me.
        The paramedic snatched the oxygen feed from his patient's nose and quickly elevated his head, providing a purge towel to catch the thin ejecta.
        Junior's body betrayed him as before, and also in new ways that terrified and humiliated him, involving every bodily fluid except cerebrospinal. For a while, inside that rocking ambulance, he wished that he were in a gondola upon the waters of the Styx, his misery at an end.
        When the convulsive seizure passed, as he collapsed back on the spattered pillow, shuddering at the stench rising from his hideously fouled clothes, Junior was suddenly struck by an idea that was either madness or a brilliant deductive insight: Naomi, the hateful bitch, she poisoned me!
        The paramedic, fingers pressed to the radial artery in Junior's right wrist, must have felt a rocket-quick acceleration in his pulse rate.
        Junior and Naomi had taken their dried apricots from the same bag. Reached in the bag without looking. Shook them out into the palms of their hands. She could not have controlled which pieces of fruit he received and which she ate.
        Did she poison herself as well? Was it her intention to kill him and commit suicide?
        Not cheerful, life-loving, high-spirited, churchgoing Naomi. She saw every day through a golden haze that came from the sun in her heart.
        He'd once spoken that very sentiment to her. Golden haze, sun in the heart. His words had melted her, tears had sprung into her eyes, and sex been better than ever.
        More likely the poison had been in his cheese sandwich or in his water bottle.
        His heart rebelled at the thought of lovely Naomi committing such Sweet-tempered, generous, honest, kind Naomi had surely been incapable of murdering anyone-least of all the man she loved.
        Unless she hadn't loved him.
        The paramedic pumped the inflation cuff of the sphygmomanometer, and Junior's blood pressure was most likely high enough to induce a stroke, driven skyward by the thought that Naomi's love had been a lie.
        Maybe she had just married him for his… No, that was a dead end. He didn't have any money.
        She had loved him, all right. She had adored him. Worshiped would not be too strong a word.
        Now that the possibility of treachery had occurred to Junior, however, he couldn't rid himself of suspicion. Good Naomi, who gave immeasurably more to everyone than she took, would forevermore stand in a shadow of doubt in his memory.
        After all, you could never really know anyone, not really know every last corner of someone's mind or heart. No human being was perfect.
        Even someone of saintly habits and selfless behavior might be a monster in his heart, filled with unspeakable desires, which he might act upon only once or never.
        He was all but certain that he himself, for example, would not kill another wife. For one thing, considering that his marriage to Naomi was now stained by the most terrible of doubts, he couldn't imagine how he might ever again trust anyone sufficiently to take the wedding vows.
        Junior closed his weary eyes and gratefully submitted as the paramedic wiped his greasy face and his crusted lips with a cool, damp cloth.
        Naomi's beautiful countenance rose in his mind, and she looked beautific for a moment, but then he thought he saw a certain slyness in her angelic smile, a disturbing glint of calculation in her once loving eyes.
        Losing his cherished wife was devastating, a wound beyond all hope of healing, but this was even worse: having his bright image of her stained by suspicion. Naomi was no longer present to provide comfort and consolation, and now Junior didn't even have untainted memories of her to sustain him. As always, it was not the action that troubled