“I’m sensitive,” I told her.
“So I see.”
“Seriously, the slightest thing affects me,” I assured her.
“We need to report this to the study. Any new effect can be meaningful.”
“Look, I’m not the type to be in a study. And don’t these studies benefit the clinicians and the scientists, not the patients?”
I did agree to revisit the cardiologist, a fellow named Craven, who was in charge of my case but never seemed to recognize me. Thankfully, though, he recognized my heart. I suppose that was the important thing. I’d had a new electrocardiogram and Craven studied the results. He asked if my heart was racing. I admitted it was. I was given a prescription for nitroglycerin and told that when my heart started hurting I should slip a tablet under my tongue. I might occasionally experience angina brought on by the neurological and cardiac shock of the strike. Very common. I limped out of there with my ointment and my nitro, a commonplace wreck.
I spied Renny as I was walking across the campus. It was the first week of summer school and he was taking Modern Architecture; that was his major. In all honesty I wanted to avoid him; I didn’t want a friend. But he spotted me and shouted out for me to wait, so I did.
“Trying to sneak away?” Renny was wearing khaki shorts, sneakers, an Orlon University T-shirt, and his heavy leather gloves.
“I was being treated for a disgusting little skin condition.” I showed him my arm. We sat down on a bench under a cabbage palm.
“Want to trade?” he said. When he saw the look on my face he added, “I’m kidding. Just a little levity. No guilt if my effects are worse than yours. We’re beyond that. Fellow survivors and all.”
I suppose as friends we suited each other in some strange way. He told me a little about his life — his parents were doctors in Miami, his younger sister was still in high school. The only thing he’d ever been interested in was building things; he’d been obsessed with architecture since the first time he played with blocks. Now with his hands afflicted, he worried that architecture might no longer be an option.
Renny was only twenty-one, but he seemed older once he got to talking. He gazed at the other students passing by. I saw what was in his eyes. The others had no idea of what he’d been through. They were moving through a world in which people didn’t limp or have holes in their heads. In their universe no one wore gloves when the temperature climbed toward a hundred degrees. No one woke in the middle of the night, in pain, alone. A stranger in his own life.
“Do you think every person has one defining secret?” Renny asked.
I laughed, nursing my own most current secret, Lazarus Jones. “Don’t you think we’re more complex than that? Don’t we all have endless secrets?”
“Little, bullshit ones. Sure. I don’t mean those. Who do you love? Who did you fuck? Everyone has them. I mean one defining secret. The essence of a person. If you figure that out, you figure out the riddle of that particular human being.”
“Is this your way of getting me to confide in you?”
“Maybe. Just give me one of your bullshit secrets. But be careful. That might make us friends.”
I was surprised. Though he was a stranger to me, I’d thought he had assumed we were friends. Renny, it turned out, wasn’t easy to fool. I suppose he was used to people shrugging him off. The sun was in his face, blurring his features. All in all, Renny wasn’t a bad-looking guy, but not a single girl walking by had glanced at him. The limp, the withered foot, the hole in his head, the gloves. That’s what they saw.
Would it hurt me to give him something? Just a tiny bit?
“I went to see Lazarus Jones.”
Renny stared at me, then threw his head back and laughed. He might have even chortled. “Now that is bullshit.”
“Seriously. I did.”
“Bullshit and crap. Times two.”
“Fine. Don’t believe me.”
“Yeah, well then, tell me. Did he really chase Wyman off with a gun?”
“Unloaded. He didn’t want to be their lab rat.”
“Wow. Sympathy for the devil. Maybe you really did meet him.”
“He’s not the devil. And I’m hardly sympathetic.” Now that was bullshit. “He owns an orange grove.” Enough of this. “Okay, so now give me one of your secrets.”
“There’s one,” Renny said mournfully.
I followed his gaze. Several young women were on their way to the dorms. Frankly, I couldn’t tell one from the other. They were all pretty and young.