Joey kicked me again, then there were footsteps and, a long time later, an engine fired to life and faded away into the buzz of the highway.

I lay with my face pressed down into the parking lot, and no one came and no one saw. It was cold. Cars moved past on the service road, but none pulled in. Out front there would be people coming and going for the bar, but not back here. After a while I pushed myself up and tested my balance and went to my room.

I took four aspirin and peeled off my clothes and looked at myself. You get kicked in the lower back and you worry about the kidneys, and you get kicked in the ribs and you worry they’re broken. I leaned forward and back and from side to side and raised my arms over my head. The places where I was kicked throbbed with a sort of a dull ache and when I raised my arms the right side of my back below the shoulder blade hurt but not the way it would hurt if anything was broken. I urinated. There was no blood. Kidneys were okay, but I’d have to check again later in the night.

I closed the toilet lid and sat on the seat and felt myself living. I felt the blood move and the lungs work and the muscles pull against bone. I hurt, but it was better than being in the hospital, and it was better than being dead. I had been hurt bad before, and I knew what that felt like. This wasn’t bad.

I took a very cold shower, and then I dressed and went out to the ice machine and brought back a tub of ice. I undressed again and took another four aspirin and put some of the ice in one of the snowy-white Howard Johnson towels. I stacked the pillows at the head of the bed and sat against the pillows with the ice on my head. An hour later I dressed and put on my jacket and walked back to the bar. It was nine-forty-five. The bartender was gone and the bar was closed and so was the restaurant. That’s life in Chelam.

I went back to my room and put more ice in the towel and lay there for a very long time thinking about Karen Shipley.

Chapter Eleven

Eleven

The next morning my back felt stiff and hard, and the place behind my ear ached with a doughy, immediate presence. I took more of the aspirin, soaked in a hot bath to loosen the back, and then did yoga, starting with the simplest stretches and working my way through the spine rock and the cobra and the spine twist. The back hurt quite a bit at first but warmed and felt better as I worked.