Testament Read Free

drawn up, and little by little they released her.
    “No, don’t fight it,” the doctor told her. “Relax. Make yourself calm. Try not to think.” He went over and closed the bedroom drapes, pale light filtering through, everything mostly in shadow.
    The bed had not yet been made. Claire lay on rumpled sheets, weeping steadily, rhythmically, disrupting the pattern to shudder and breathe, beginning to weep again. She wore mostly washed-out jeans around the house, but today she had put on an orange pleated skirt, and now it was hitched up, showing one buttock covered by her blue silk underwear. The elastic of the underwear was loose, itself hitched up above a fold of white-skinned hip. Between her legs a few black kinks of pubic hair stuck out from under the elastic. He glanced at the doctor, and feeling modest for her, he tugged down the skirt. She thrashed to get away from the touch of his hand.
    “I said, don’t fight it. Give in, let it put you to sleep,” the doctor ordered, bending close to her. His face was flushed from exertion, dark against his blond hair. He studied her, watching her weep and shudder and breathe. Slowly he straightened.
    “It’s working now. In a minute she’ll be under.” The doctor ran a hand through his hair, and his part was destroyed. “How about you?”
    “I don’t know.” He wanted to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “All right, I guess. Yes. I’m all right.”
    “Sure you are.” The doctor reached into his satchel and came out with a clear plastic vial of pills. “Take these two with a full glass of water. These other two are for when you go to bed.” The pills were long and yellow. “Break one in half and give it to your little girl. Remember. A full glass of water. Especially the little girl.”
    Reminded of Sarah, he suddenly wondered where she had gone this time. She had twice been in the way downstairs, and then she had disappeared.
    “Wait,” he said. “These things aren’t going to put me to sleep, are they?”
    The doctor looked sideways at him. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
    “I just don’t want to be put to sleep.”
    “They’re only to relax you. That’s the truth, no need to look like that. They might make you dizzy, so don’t try to drive, and don’t drink any alcohol with them. You’ll wind up on the floor.”
    Claire was weeping slowly now, softly, almost asleep.
    “I’ll stay with her until I’m certain she’ll be quiet,” the doctor told him. “Better go and take the pills.”
    He looked down at her, lingered uncertainly, then did what he was told.
     

4
     
    The bathroom was directly across the hall. Thinking of the poison in the milk, he stared uneasily at the glass of water in his hand. The water was clouded gray as it always was after several days of heavy rain. Still he could not stop thinking of poison. The pills maybe. But he knew that was crazy. Even if Kess had planned a follow-up, he would have picked another kind of man to deliver those pills, somebody older, who looked more like an experienced doctor; and Kess’s man would have said a name, would have mentioned something about the hospital to establish his credentials. But this man had not said anything; he had just gone right to work.
    The water had a gritty earthen taste that obscured any taste the pills might have had. They wedged down his throat in two choking lumps, He left the tap running, cupped cold water in his hands and splashed his face repeatedly.
    You knew what kind of man Kess was. You knew even before you met him. What the hell was going on in your head?
    The year before, in December, three of Kess’s lieutenants had been charged with attempted assassination. That was in Hartford, Connecticut—their target a third-term U.S. senator who wanted to establish trade relations with Cuba. They had attached a fire bomb under the stage in a hall where he was to give a much publicized speech, and it had failed to kill him only because midway through his