(Copyright 1994, 2007 Mary Jean Hughes. All rights reserved.)
The Pointing Finger
Tuesday, May 16, 1995 ‑‑ 25 years old
I was relaxing on the sand, sun warm on my naked body, when the page came.
"Who is it, Tegan dear?" asked Mrs. Orchard, a white‑haired sweetie.
Pulling the pager out of my handbag, I wondered with annoyance if I should simply turn it off. The darn thing had come into my life nine months before as necessary rigging for an independent computer consultant, and so far it outstripped even my best friend for sheer irritation value.
Thumb poised, professionalism won out at the last moment. I flipped the menu instead of the off button. The phone number displayed was familiar; I stared at it. It was Nicholas Makai.
In order to understand my surprise, you have to know my pager number is unpublished, and I give it out exclusively to clients. Makai is not a client. I wondered how the heck he had gotten hold of it. He knew all sorts of things, being an Information Specialist, but sometimes, like now, his knowledge bordered on the uncanny.
"Is it your office calling?" Mrs. Orchard asked.
I scratched my butt, which I only do when thinking at the nudist resort. "No. It's... a friend."
"A friend? Why don't you see if she wants to come down to the beach." Sun flashed off Mrs. Orchard's bifocals as she raised her face from the Erma Bombeck she was reading. Mrs. Orchard has been here forever, I think, ever since my parents first started bringing me to this beach. Contrary to popular opinion, naked sunbathing is not for voyeurs ‑‑ Mrs. Orchard is part of what makes it feel like family.
Then I tried to imagine bringing Nicholas Makai to the nude beach. No family feelings there, refuting everything I just said. When I'd first met him when he'd saved my mother's life, he gave me the willies. Now he gave me the shivers. The two are not the same. "Maybe," I said in my best imitation of my mother, leaving the possibility open without really meaning it. "I'd better call, though." When Makai contacted me, it was always for a reason.
The resort had a couple of public phones, and I plunked my quarter in one of them, considered calling collect and ended up billing it to my home phone. It rang twice.
"Makai and Associates," a sexy contralto answered.
"Hi, Ms. Truebody." She looks it, too. Makai's personal assistant has a figure that would stop a rampaging bull in its tracks and has been known to throw grown men into incoherent hyperbolic fits. Perhaps I exaggerate, I myself being the kind of woman who couldn't make a man's head turn if I wore nothing but cans of cold beer; no style, I guess. "This is Tegan Madigan. I got a page for this number. Did Mr. Makai call?"
"I'll check. One minute, Ms. Madigan."
Less than ten seconds later the line clicked, and I was again at the mercy of that stringbass‑vibrant voice, the voice of Nicholas Makai.
"Tegan Madigan. Thank you for returning my call."
Some people pronounce my name to rhyme with Megan, or Reagan. It's neither, it's TEA‑gun, emphasis on the TEA. Makai has never gotten it wrong, ever, though in our first meeting I have to admit I called him Mackay. It's mahk‑EYE.
"What do you have for me?" The debt I owed for my mother's life had long since been paid; this time Makai would be calling in the favor of getting my business out of trouble with a rather nasty and crooked entrepreneur.
"There's a man at 4428A North Elm. He has cerebral palsy, and he needs..."
Fear shot through me in an instant. In the past Makai has sent me into a variety of situations, all beyond my normal orbit, but never beyond my ability to handle. This, however, was. "Wait a minute. This guy is handicapped?"
Makai's voice took on a familiar dryness, as an amused parent. "I believe the current expression is 'physically challenged.'"
"Whatever. Mr. Makai, I've never turned you down before, and goodness knows I owe you for helping me out with Jonah Mooney. But no. I can't do this job."
Makai's voice became deceptively gentle. "What seems to be the problem, Ms. Madigan?"
How did I explain that handicapped people scare me to death? That I don't understand them, what to do for them, what not to do? That I'm afraid for them, afraid of them? "I just can't, Mr. Makai. Get someone else."
And then, ever the hero, I hung up on him.
Actually, it was quite brave of me. You don't hang up on Makai and expect to get away with it.
I didn't.
The phone was ringing when I got home, eight, nine, ten as I fumbled with the key. I have an answering machine, but it's broken.
Ignoring it, I stripped off my clothes to climb into the shower. I enjoy going to the beach, it's a family atmosphere and very relaxing, but with my fair complexion I have to slather on SPF‑1000 with a trowel, and it gets pretty gloppy by the end of the day.
That phone rang the entire ten minutes I was in the shower.
Half‑dry and mad, I picked it up. "Hello, Mr. Makai."
"Ms. Madigan," he said cordially, as if he hadn't been driving me nuts for the past ten minutes. "I want you to come down to my office. We need to talk."
'We need to talk' usually means 'I need to lecture you.' That was the last thing I wanted. "No."
"Ms. Madigan. The gentleman in question needs help. He's being threatened on a regular basis by some young men in his area. Sooner or later these hoodlums will actually hurt him."
Water dripped from my body onto the hardwood floor. "What am I supposed to do, be a bodyguard? I'm not trained for that."
"A bodyguard would only be a temporary solution in any case. The man lives alone and can't avoid these bullies forever. He needs a more permanent solution."
"Self‑defense is not my area of expertise, Mr. Makai." The water left on my body was starting to steam. I resented this. I resented his calling on me to help. I resented his persistence. Most of all, I resented being forced to admit I was afraid. "Why don't you do it? Can't you help this guy?"
There was a moment of silence at the other end, more likely for me to consider the question than for him. He always has answers ready.
"If I do it," he finally said in his deep Father‑Knows‑Best voice, "I'll be robbing you of the opportunity to learn something, taking your achievement." I knew I'd been given a privileged look into Nicholas Makai's psyche.
But it didn't move me. "The answer's still no, Mr. Makai."
"Come down to the office," he said softly.
Into hell's jaws. "No, Mr. Makai." I hung up and unplugged the phone.
Returning from a client site the next evening I unlocked my front door and flung my briefcase on the couch. Flopping down on the big chair, I kicked my shoes off and sighed. This, I thought, was the one inconvenient thing about living alone; no one to bring you tea and cookies when your back ached and your energy level had dipped to that of a slug with mononucleosis.
I heard a slight rustle, opened my eyes, and squealed. There stood Makai, two steaming cups in hand. He removed my briefcase, sat easily on my couch and pushed one of the mugs across my coffee table at me.
In his own environs, Makai manages to look almost average, if you don't count the basilisk stare he has. Here, there was no mistaking the sheer size of the man, making my couch look like an oversized chair and my table like doll's furniture.
The fact that he was here was shocking enough. I almost always deal with Makai in his office or over the phone. He's like a teacher in that respect ‑‑ you start imagining they sleep in their classrooms.
"What are you doing here?" As if I didn't know.
He turned his ice‑handsome face on me. He's very dark in coloring and demeanor, and I've come up with and discarded several dozen theories as to who he really is, some of which would not be printable even by the National Enquirer. Tonight I cast him in the role of devilish tormentor; he didn't disappoint. "You need to do this, Ms. Madigan."
I suppose I could have gotten up and left, gone to Mom's house. But his Gorgon eyes, steady and never blinking, kept me pinned. "I can't do it, Mr. Makai."
"Why not?"
The bald question, arrowing straight to the heart of the matter, made me flinch. "I don't know what to do if someone is handicapped." My voice crept embarrassingly close to a whine. "I don't know how to behave."
"Why do you believe that?"
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling and spilled it. What the heck, he'd keep at me until I did. "I had a friend once." A small shudder passed through me with the memory. "She had asthma. We were camping and she had an attack. I didn't know what to do." I met his eyes. "I did nothing as she wheezed and wheezed for breath. I didn't know what to do," I repeated.
I stared at the fixture in the middle of my ceiling. There were fly bodies, like little raisins, in it. "She got to her medicine supply and after a while that helped. But it was almost half an hour of that horrible wheezing, and I didn't do a thing for her.
"And then there was the midget. Height challenged man. Whatever the accepted phrase is. He was in a side‑show at one of the fairs they set up over the summer. Do you know what I, the miracle of tact, asked? I asked him if it bothered him, people like me coming in to gawk at him. Now I say some pretty stupid things every once in a while, but that was downright nasty. I wasn't interested in his well‑being, I was just provoking him, because he was different."
"How old were you?"
I massaged my forehead, looking away again. Sometimes Makai gives me a headache. "Twelve, and I should have known better."
"Perhaps. And maybe you do know better, now. You'll never find out if you don't try."
At last I met his obsidian gaze, wondering if I looked as beaten as I felt. "I don't want to."
He simply raised both brows. "But you will."
Releasing my forehead, I stood. "Or what? You'll never help me again?"
He stood too, and towered over me in a way that made me feel impossibly young. "That won't be necessary." He took a slip of paper from his suit coat pocket and placed it on the table. "Here's the man's name, address, and phone number. Give him a call."
And then, arrogant bastard, he left.
The first thing I did the next morning was look up cerebral palsy. Oh God, brain damage. I have a hard enough time dealing with normal morons, having no patience for it. This would be impossible.
Give him a call. If I could have, I would have immersed myself in work as an excuse, but the computer at Vandersmeer Finance, my biggest client, was shut down for a week, undergoing an upgrade. I had finished up one additional job yesterday and no one had called yet with another. I had a small suspicion that no one would.
So that Thursday afternoon I found myself dialing.
"This is Paul Rivers," a thick voice answered.
"Uh, hi. My name's Tegan Madigan, and..."
"Yes, Ms. Madigan. Mr. Makai said you'd be c‑c‑calling." There was some stammer to the man's voice, but his words were normal enough.
"I don't know how much Mr. Makai has explained, but I'm really not sure what I can do for you."
There was a pause, and some labored breathing at the other end. "It only matters that you're willing to try, Ms. Madigan."
"Uh, right. Well, I don't know even what to try. You're having trouble with punks, right?"
"Some young men, Ms. Madigan." The short phrase took an age for the man to slur out. "They threaten me."
I scratched my butt. OK, maybe I don't only do it at the beach. "Can't you call the police?"
"No evidence," the man said.
I winced, imagining what evidence of violence would look like on a handicapped person. "Well, what about..."
"Ms. Madigan," the man interrupted me. "It would be easier," some breathing, "if you were to come over. See me, the area."
"Uh, yeah." It was the last thing I wanted to do. Curse Nicholas Makai and his interference. And double-curse his knowing I would do it anyway.
The handicapped man's townhouse was in an older section of town, on the boarder between Yuppy Boulevard and Scumsucker Lane. I knocked on the paint‑chipped front door; there was no doorbell.
I had to wait a long time before he got there. I guess I was surprised he got there at all. He was only middle‑aged, maybe early forties, but he was thin and all twisted up, gnarly like a crab‑apple tree. Arms canted at strange angles, and one finger pointed out as if poking for an invisible button. I felt strange, looking at him.
Forcing a smile, I said, "Hi, I'm Tegan."
"Yes, I know," he slurred gently. "I'm Paul Rivers. Glad to meet you."
He held out one gnarly hand, the one without the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate. Swallowing down my fear, I shook it.
From the way he held his hand, I expected it to be like shaking with a mannequin, but no, he was in there, like a normal human being. He even gave me a slight squeeze. "Nice to meet such a lovely young woman."
"Uh," I said with my normal quick wittedness. "Nice to meet you too, uh... Paul."
He invited me in and I followed him into his kitchen.
It was nice and neat, clean with a sparkle. There were homey little touches all around, and fresh flowers on the table. Someone helped him, I was sure of that.
Someone who loved him.
I chewed on that as he offered and made coffee. It took him longer than it would have for me, and I worried once or twice that he would drop the coffee bag, or the pot, but gritting my teeth I kept my chair and let him do it.
The whole time I wondered whether that was the right thing to do, or if I should have offered to help.
Finally, when it was too late, when the steam from the freshly‑brewed coffee curled up into my face, I said, "I suppose I should have offered to help?"
Now as you're probably already aware, I am not gifted with a silver tongue, but to me this was really stupid and insensitive, and I realized it the moment it sat in the air before me. But of course, it was too late to call it back, and I could only sit and blush.
Then Paul did a strange and wonderful thing. He smiled gently at me, and said, "How nice of you to be concerned. I could see you agonizing over that, Tegan. You don't have to worry. Whatever you want to help with, or not, is fine with me."
It was in that moment that I realized Paul Rivers was one of the most perceptive men I've ever met, perhaps approaching Nicholas Makai.
"Thank you," I said softly, looking at my coffee cup. Paul took my hand in his, twisted and gnarled comforting strong and healthy. Only our emotions were reversed. He was the healthy one, I the one in need.
He understood my discomfort, and made it easy for me to care about him. It didn't matter to him if I made mistakes in trying to do the right thing. "Tell me about these bullies," I said, confidence rising.
He not only told me, he showed me.
"Let's go for a walk." Paul, I found, shuffled at exactly the same rate as my friend Mrs. Orchard from the beach. I told him about her, omitting the nature of the beach, of course. Paul chatted easily, his speech impediment less and less noticeable as I got used to it.
In fact, I was so engrossed in a story he was telling about the cat who thought Paul's younger brother peeing was a water fountain that I never even noticed the two boys approach us.
Boys, I call them. They were pretty big boys.
"Hey, Ugly, you got a girlfriend now?" One boy scrunched up his face and canted his body into a cruel imitation of Paul's disability.
The other boy threw small sticks at us.
They didn't hurt, or leave a mark, but they stung. And they scared me.
I am rather on the small side, but I've never had to deal with physical violence in my entire life. Now it looked as though physical violence was imminent.
"Let's get out of here," I said into Paul's ear, grabbing his thin arm and pulling him, shuffling, away. God, he was so slow and awkward. The boys continued to throw things at us, bits of paper and refuse and sticks that started to get bigger.
I was breathing fast. Makai with all his size would have been welcome at that moment, but it was me and Paul, shuffling and staggering. I tried to think of what to do, but the best I could come up with was swinging my purse into their faces.
If I had to, I would.
Fortunately, a neighbor running his dog came along then. The boys slunk off, dog barking after them and neighbor yelling. Paul and I went as quickly as we could back to his townhouse.
"What are we going to do?" I asked Paul plaintively.
"Have some coffee," he said, voice frosted with breathlessness, but calm.
"What? Are you out of your mind? Those kids are nasty bastards!" I'm afraid my vocabulary drops into the gutter when I'm scared.
Paul took my hand in his. I was coming to see only one of them worked properly, the other frozen forever in the 'Where is Pointer?' position. It didn't matter; his gentle squeeze was comforting. "We're safe here, Tegan. And thanks."
"Thanks? Thanks for what?" I hadn't done anything but panic, a playback of my asthmatic friend.
"Thanks for acting so quickly to get us out of there. I'm afraid my feet sort of gum up when something like this happens." Paul gave me another of his wonderful smiles.
"Oh." Heck. I had done something right.
The next day an ad in the paper grabbed my attention. I had been stalking around all day like a caged animal, trying to think of some solution for Paul's bully problem. I had come up with, and discarded, an attack dog, a buddy system, mace, and a gun. The dog would need to be cared for, the buddy not always available, a gun too dangerous if taken away, and if Paul could barely walk in a bad situation, how could he reliably fire a gun or spray mace?
But the ad prodded another idea. What the heck, it was only a phone call.
"Good evening, Nightwind Martial Arts."
"Hi. I saw in the paper that you specialize in self‑defense. Do you train physically challenged people?"
"Yes, we have several mildly disabled children in class. Mostly Attention Deficit, you know. What disability does your child have?"
"He's a forty year old man. He's got cerebral palsy." I waited, holding my breath.
"There are some techniques we could show him. I think it would be worth your while to come in and see."
Possibly it was all just a line to take my money. But it might prove fruitful. I wouldn’t find out if I didn’t try.
As it turned out, both of us enrolled. I could tell you about the classes, but I think it's more instructive to relate another incident between me, Paul, and the two bullies that happened less than a month later.
Paul, who has an unexpected interest in computers, had become quite a friend; I'd taken to spending Tuesday nights with him, experimenting with various programs or just chatting. We decided to walk over to the local ice cream place, or 'shuffle over' as we both called our walks together. On the way we were stopped by the two boys.
"Hey, it's Ugly and his girlfriend again!" The one nudged the other and they both snickered.
I thought I was going to get to try out my fledgling self‑defense skills, but Paul held up his good hand. "I'll handle this, Tegan."
By now I knew Paul well enough to realize he had something to prove to himself. Standing aside, I watched Paul shuffle up to the bigger of the two boys.
"Leave us alone," Paul said, body twisted so that he had to cock his head way to the side to meet the bully's eyes.
The boy spat. "Whatcha gonna do, Ugly?" He pushed Paul, grabbing the frail man and ramming him back into me.
I caught Paul and steadied him. Paul straightened and reached toward the young man with his paralyzed hand.
"Ooh, Ugly's going to cast his evil magic on me. I'm scared." He turned his head to laugh with his comrade, and at that moment Paul pressed his stiffened index finger, hard, into the bully's larynx.
The young man gagged and pulled back, and Paul quickly followed him with another thrust. "Hey!" the young man said, eyes watering. Paul switched his attack, shoving his immobile finger up and into the bully's diaphragm. Already well off‑balance, the young man went over, pulling his comrade down with him.
They didn't run away. But after collecting themselves, pushing embarrassed off the ground and straightening their clothes, they did leave. Huffing, threatening, but they did leave.
I was so proud of Paul, I hugged him. Sure, he felt a little different than Mom or Mrs. Orchard, but he was warm like them, and I could feel his heart beating.
All in all, I guessed, there were more similarities between Paul and me than differences. He was physically challenged, I was... socially challenged.
Which was why I really botched my next question. "Paul, how'd you like to come to the nude beach with me?"
He stared at me in the just‑flared orange glow of the street‑light, face fully as chiseled‑cold as Nicholas Makai's.
Oh, God, what an idiot I am. He probably thought I meant to make fun of him. He doesn't realize we go to the nude beach to relax, that we don't care what bodies look like. I've blown it, a wonderful, sweet man, he doesn't deserve my ineptitude.
Then Paul smiled his slow, wonderful smile. "Why Tegan. I thought you'd never ask."
"How nice of you to bring your friend, Tegan," Mrs. Orchard said, passing out the juice boxes she'd brought. "But you didn't say he was such a handsome man."
Paul could blush as well as I could. And like me, he blushed all the way down to his, well, you know.
I didn't say anything. Mrs. Orchard, in her gently animated way, was taking care of all the first‑time discomforts. "Juice, Paul? What a nice healthy tan you have. Do you spend much time outdoors? Here, let me do the straw for you. They're tricky, but my four‑year‑old grand‑nephew showed me the secret. Do you read? I'm reading Michael Crichton now, I just love his books. You too? Oh, how nice, Paul..."
Laying back in the sand, I felt the sun warm my body. I was almost completely relaxed when the pager tweeted.
Sighing, I rolled over and pulled the box out of my purse, punching up the page. It was Makai's number.
"Another friend, dear?" Mrs. Orchard, who was rubbing SPF‑15 into Paul's shoulders leaned over and peered at the pager as if it could tell her. "Why don't you invite her down to the beach?"
I thought of Nicholas Makai, bigger than life and just as naked.
I shivered. "Here we go again!"
Do you like this or not? Please e-mail me at Mary and let me know!