THE BLIND and THE LAME

7. A Day of Rest

I was in bed by ten and slept until eight in the morning, better than I had in a long time. Accumulated stress had caught up with me. I realized I was exhausted in every way and just craved rest. When I emerged from the shower there was a tap on the door on Robbie's side. "You decent?" he asked.

"Not really," I replied. I wrapped the towel around me and opened the door. Robbie, clad in shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops, said, "Maria will have breakfast ready for us at 8:30. See you then." He could have told me through the door, but he wanted to have a look, I was sure of that. When I returned to my room the bed was made and a pair of shorts and a tie-dyed t-shirt lay on it, with a new pair of black flip-flops on top of them. I thought, "Looks like the uniform of the day." I put them on, got on my crutches and made my way to the breakfast nook. Robbie was there with a big glass of orange juice in front of him. "'Morning, slowpoke. What took you so long?"

"C'mon, Robbie," I said. "Quit pulling my chain." I asked, "Are we going somewhere today?"

"No, my mom wants you to rest. She suggested chilling out by the pool."

"Sounds good to me," I said. I lit into the light breakfast Maria had fixed for us while Robbie poked through it. I returned to my room and found swim trunks laid out for me. Maria never seemed overly busy or frazzled in the least but she sure was efficient. I got into them and found Robbie waiting at the elevator when it reached the first floor. "I heard it come up for you and decided to wait here." Another chance to look.

"OK, let's go," he said. When we got outside I hollered, "Last one in is a rotten egg," as I skip-stepped to the edge of the pool, dropped the crutches, plunged in and swam to the other end. I met Robbie halfway into my return trip. "No fair!" he hollered. Poor Robbie! He had had to ditch his glasses, and his skinny musculature just couldn't hold a candle to what I had in my upper body. We swam leisurely back and I limped to one of the chaise lounges in the shade of the overhang that sheltered the large patio. Robbie ate me up with his eyes as he retrieved my crutches from where I'd dropped them and set them by my chaise lounge. Without his glasses I must have been a pretty blurry sight but that never stopped him. He flopped onto his chaise lounge and retrieved his glasses from the table between us. He was having a good look until I asked, as I often did, "What are you looking at?"

"You know," he said.

"Why does my body turn you on so?" I asked for the millionth time.

"I don't know," he said. "But it does."

"Can I tell you something?" I said.

"Sure," he replied.

"It turns me on too, and I don't know why. I remember when they first put me on crutches and I saw myself in a full-length mirror they had there. It was like I was finally the way I was supposed to be."

"You were five then," Robbie said. "It sure wasn't about sex."

"No, but it settled something deep inside me. I'm sure you've seen that one-legged kid around town," I said.

"Yeah, Johnny McKay," he said. "His whole left leg was gone."

"Wow, you even know his name. You really do your homework," I said.

"I was at the bank one time with my dad when I was a little kid. He was there with his mom and I asked my dad who he was," said Robbie. "Dad told me, and he said to quit staring at him, it wasn't polite. I asked what had happened to him, and dad said 'cancer.' I asked what that was and he said I really didn't want to know."

"Hah!" I exclaimed. "That's exactly what my mother told me."

"You know what it is now, right?" Robbie said.