Elevation

CHAPTER 5 After the Race

That evening Scott was lying in a tub filled with water as hot as he could stand it, trying to soothe the ache out of his muscles. When his phone began to ring, he fumbled for it under the clean clothes folded on the chair by the tub. I’m tied to this damn thing, he thought.

“Hello?”

“Deirdre McComb, Mr. Carey. What night shall I set aside for our dinner? Next Monday would be good, because the restaurant is closed on Mondays.”

Scott smiled. “I think you misunderstood the wager, Ms. McComb. You won, and your dogs now have free rein on my lawn, in perpetuity.”

“We both know that isn’t exactly true,” she said. “In fact, you threw the race.”

“You deserved to win.”

She laughed. It was the first one he’d heard from her, and it was charming. “My high school running coach would tear his hair out if he heard such a sentiment. He used to say what you deserve has nothing to do with where you finish. I will take the win, however, if you invite us to dinner.”

“Then I’ll brush up on my vegetarian cooking. Next Monday works for me, but only if you bring your wife. Sevenish, say?”

“That’s fine, and she wouldn’t miss it. Also…” She hesitated. “I want to apologize for what I said. I know you didn’t cheat.”

“No apology necessary,” Scott said, and he meant it. Because, in a way he had cheated, involuntary as it might have been.

“If not for that, I need to apologize for how I’ve treated you. I could plead extenuating circumstances, but Missy tells me there are none, and she might be right about that. I have certain… attitudes… and changing them hasn’t been easy.”

He couldn’t think of what to say to that, so he changed the subject. “Are either of you gluten-free? Lactose-intolerant? Let me know, so I don’t make something you or Missy—Ms. Donaldson—can’t eat.”

She laughed again. “We don’t eat meat or fish, and that’s it. Everything else is on the table.”

“Even eggs?”

“Even eggs, Mr. Carey.”

“Scott. Call me Scott.”

“I will. And I’m Deirdre. Or DeeDee, to avoid confusion with Dee the dog.” She hesitated. “When we come to dinner, can you explain what happened when you pulled me up? I’ve had strange sensations while I’m running, strange perceptions, every runner will tell you the same—”

“I had a few myself,” Scott said. “From Hunter’s Hill on, things got very… weird.”

“But I’ve never felt anything like that. For a few seconds it was like I was on the space station, or something.”

“Yes, I can explain. But I’d like to invite my friend Dr. Ellis, who already knows. And his wife, if she’s available.” If she’ll come, was what Scott didn’t want to say.

“Fine. Until Monday, then. Oh, and be sure to look at the Press-Herald. The story won’t be in the newspaper until tomorrow, of course, but it’s online now.”

Sure it is, Scott thought. In the twenty-first century, print newspapers are also buggy-whip factories.

“I’ll do that.”

“Did you think it was lightning? There at the end?”

“Yes,” Scott said. What else would it have been? Lightning went with thunder like peanut butter went with jelly.

“So did I,” DeeDee McComb said.

He dressed and fired up his computer. The story was on the Press-Herald ’s homepage, and he was sure it would be on the front page of Saturday’s paper, maybe above the fold, barring any new world crisis. The headline read: LOCAL RESTAURANT OWNER WINS CASTLE ROCK TURKEY TROT. According to the paper, it was the first time a town resident had won the race since 1989. There were only two photographs in the online edition, but Scott guessed there would be more in Saturday’s print version. It hadn’t been lightning at the end; it had been the newspaper photographer, and he’d gotten class-A pix despite the rain.

The first one showed Deirdre and Scott together, with the Tin Bridge stoplight a smeary red in the background, which meant she must have fallen not even seventy yards from the finish. He had his arm around her waist. Hair that had come loose from her ponytail was plastered to her cheeks. She was looking up at him with exhausted wonder. He was looking down at her… and smiling.

SHE GOT BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A FRIEND, the caption read, and below that: Fellow Castle Rocker Scott Carey helps Deirdre Mc Comb to her feet after she took a spill on the wet road just short of the finish line.

The second photo was captioned VICTORY HUG, and named the three people in the picture: Deirdre McComb, Melissa Donaldson, and Scott Carey. Deirdre and Missy were embracing. Although Scott hadn’t actually touched them, only raised his arms and curled them around the women in an instinctive gesture to catch them if they fell, he looked like he was joining the hug.

The body of the story named the restaurant Deirdre McComb ran with “her partner,” and quoted a review that had run in the paper back in August, calling the food “veggie cuisine with Tex-Mex flair that has to be experienced; this is a trip worth making.”

Bill D. Cat had taken his usual position when Scott was at his desktop, perched on an endtable and watching his pet human with inscrutable green eyes.

“Tell you what, Bill,” Scott said. “If that doesn’t bring in customers, nothing will.”

He went into the bathroom and stepped on the scale. Its news didn’t surprise him. He was down to 137. It might have been the day’s exertions, but he didn’t actually believe that. What he believed was that by booting his metabolism into a higher gear (and overdrive at the end), he had sped the process up even more.

It was starting to look like Zero Day might come weeks earlier than he had anticipated.

Myra Ellis did come to dinner with her husband. She was timid at first—almost skittish—and so was Missy Donaldson, but a glass of Pinot (which Scott served with cheese, crackers, and olives) loosened both ladies up. And then, a miracle—they discovered they were both mycologically inclined, and spent most of the meal talking about edible mushrooms.

“You know so much about them!” Myra exclaimed. “May I ask if you went to culinary school?”

“I did. After I met DeeDee, but long before we were married. I went to ICE. That’s—”

“The Institute of Culinary Education in New York!” Myra exclaimed. A few crumbs tumbled onto her frilly silk blouse. She didn’t notice. “It’s famous! Oh my God, I’m so jealous!”

Deirdre was looking at them and smiling. Doctor Bob was, too. So that was good.

Scott had spent the morning at the local Hannaford’s, with Nora’s left-behind copy of The Joy of Cooking propped open in the child seat of his grocery cart. He asked many questions, and research paid off, as it usually did. He served vegetarian lasagna Florentine with garlic toast points. He was gratified—but not surprised—to see Deirdre put away not one or two but three big slices. She was still in post-run mode, and stuffing carbs.

“For dessert it’s only store-bought pound cake,” he said, “but the chocolate whipped cream I made myself.”

“I haven’t had that since I was a kid,” Doctor Bob said. “My mom made it for special occasions. We kids called it choco-cream. Bring it on, Scott.”

“Plus Chianti,” Scott said.

Deirdre applauded. She was flushed, her eyes sparkling, a woman with every part of her body clearly operating in top form. “Bring that on, too!”

It was a fine meal, and the first time he’d pulled out all the stops in the kitchen since Nora had decamped. As he watched them eat and listened to them talk, he realized how empty this house had been with just him and Bill to ramble around in it.

The five of them demolished the pound cake. As Scott began to collect the plates, both Myra and Missy rose. “Let us do that,” Myra said. “You cooked.”

“Not at all, ma’am,” Scott said. “I’m just going to put everything on the counter and load up the dishwasher later on.”

He took the dessert plates into the kitchen and stacked them on the counter. He turned and Deirdre was standing there, smiling.

“If you ever want a job, Missy’s looking for a sous chef.”

“I don’t think I could keep up with her,” Scott said, “but I’ll keep it in mind. How was business over the weekend? Must have been good if Missy’s looking for help.”

“Sold out,” she said. “Every table. People from away, but also people from the Rock that I’ve never seen before, at least not in our place. And we’re booked solid for the next nine or ten days. This is like opening all over again, when people come to see what you’ve got. If what you’ve got isn’t tasty, or even just so-so, most don’t try again. But what Missy makes is a lot more than so-so. They will come back.”

“Winning the race made a difference, huh?”

“The pictures were what made the difference. And without you, the pictures would have just been a dyke winning a footrace, big deal.”

“You’re too hard on yourself.”

She shook her head, smiling. “I don’t think so. Brace yourself, big boy, I’m coming in for a hug.”

She stepped forward. Scott stepped back, holding his hands out, palms forward. Her face clouded.

“It’s not you,” he said. “Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to hug you. We both deserve it. But it might not be safe.”

Missy was standing in the kitchen doorway with wineglasses held between her fingers by the stems. “What is it, Scott? Is something wrong with you?”

He grinned. “You might say.”

Doctor Bob joined the women. “Are you going to tell them?”

“Yes,” Scott said. “In the living room.”

He told them everything. The relief was enormous. Myra only looked puzzled, as if she hadn’t quite taken it in, but Missy was disbelieving.

“It’s not possible. People’s bodies change when they lose weight, that’s just a fact.”

Scott hesitated, then went to where she was sitting next to Deirdre on the couch. “Give me your hand. Just for a second.”

She held it out with no hesitation. Total trust. This much can’t hurt, he told himself, and hoped it was true. He had pulled Deirdre to her feet when she’d fallen, after all, and she was all right.

He took Missy’s hand and pulled. She flew up from the couch, her hair streaming out behind her and her eyes wide. He caught her to keep her from crashing into him, lifted her, set her down, and stepped back. Her knees flexed when his hands left her and weight came back into her body. Then she stood, staring at him in amazement.

“You… I… Jesus!”

“What was it like?” Doctor Bob asked. He was sitting forward in his chair, eyes bright. “Tell me!”

“It was… well… I don’t think I can.”

“Try,” he urged.

“It was a little like being on a rollercoaster when it goes over the top of the first steep hill and starts down. My stomach went up…” She laughed shakily, still staring at Scott. “Everything went up!”

“I tried it with Bill,” Scott said, and nodded to where his cat was currently stretched out on the brick hearth. “He freaked out. Laddered scratches up my arm in his hurry to jump down, and Bill never scratches.”

“Anything you take hold of has no weight?” Deirdre said. “Is that really true?”

Scott thought about this. He had thought about it often, and sometimes it seemed to him that what was happening to him wasn’t a phenomenon but something like a germ, or a virus.

“Living things have no weight. To them, at least, but—”

“They have weight to you.”

“Yes.”

“But other things? Inanimate objects?”

“Once I pick them up… or wear them… no. No weight.” He shrugged.

“How can that be?” Myra asked. “How can that possibly be?” She looked at her husband. “Do you know?”

He shook his head.

“How did it start?” Deirdre asked. “What caused it?”

“No idea. I don’t even know when it started, because I wasn’t in the habit of weighing myself until the process was already under way.”

“In the kitchen you said it wasn’t safe.”

“I said it might not be. I don’t know for sure, but that sort of sudden weightlessness might screw up your heart… your blood-pressure… your brain function… who knows?”

“Astronauts are weightless,” Missy objected. “Or almost. I guess those circling the earth must still be subject to at least some gravitational pull. And the ones who walked on the moon, as well.”

“It isn’t just that, is it?” Deirdre said. “You’re afraid it might be contagious.”

Scott nodded. “The idea has crossed my mind.”

There was a moment of silence, while all of them tried to digest the indigestible. Then Missy said, “You have to go to a clinic! You have to be examined! Let the doctors who… who know about this sort of thing…”

She trailed off, recognizing the obvious: there were no doctors who knew about this sort of thing.

“They might be able to find a way to reverse it,” she said eventually. She turned to Ellis. “You’re a doctor. Tell him!”

“I have,” Doctor Bob said. “Many times. Scott refuses. At first I thought that was wrong of him—wrongheaded—but I’ve changed my mind. I doubt very much if this is something that can be scientifically investigated. It may stop on its own… even reverse itself… but I don’t think the best doctors in the world could understand it, let alone affect it in any way, positive or negative.”

“And I have no desire to spend the remainder of my weight-loss program in a hospital room or a government facility, being examined,” Scott said.

“Or as a public curiosity, I suppose,” Deirdre said. “I get that. Perfectly.”

Scott nodded. “So you’ll understand when I ask you to promise that what’s been said in this room has to stay in this room.”

“But what will happen to you?” Missy burst out. “What will happen to you when you have no weight left?”

“I don’t know.”

“How will you live? You can’t just… just…” She looked around wildly, as if hoping for someone to finish her thought. No one did. “You can’t just float along the ceiling!”

Scott, who had already thought of a life like that, only shrugged again.

Myra Ellis leaned forward, her hands so tightly clasped the knuckles were white. “Are you very frightened? I suppose you must be.”

“That’s the thing,” Scott said. “I’m not. I was at the very beginning, but now… I don’t know… it seems sort of okay.”

There were tears in Deirdre’s eyes, but she smiled. “I think I get that, too,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe you do.”

He thought that if any of them found it impossible to keep his secret, it would be Myra Ellis, with her church groups and committees. But she did keep it. All of them did. They became a kind of cabal, getting together once a week at Holy Frijole, where Deirdre always kept a table reserved for them, with a little placard on it that said Dr. Ellis Party. The place was always full, or nearly, and Deirdre said that after the new year, if things didn’t slow down, they would have to open earlier and institute a second sitting. Missy had indeed hired a sous chef to help her in the kitchen, and on Scott’s advice, she hired someone local—Milly Jacobs’s oldest daughter.

“She’s a little slow,” Missy said, “but she’s willing to learn, and by the time the summer people come back, she’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Then she blushed and looked down at her hands, realizing Scott might not be around when the summer people came back.

On December 10th, Deirdre McComb lit the big Christmas tree in the Castle Rock town square. Almost a thousand people turned out for the evening ceremony, which included the high school chorus singing seasonal songs. Mayor Coughlin, dressed as Santa Claus, arrived by helicopter.

There was applause when Deirdre mounted the podium, and a roar of approval when she proclaimed the thirty-foot spruce as “the best Christmas tree in the best town in New England.”

The lights came on, the neon angel at the top twirled and curtseyed, and the crowd sang along with the high schoolers: Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches. Scott was amused to see Trevor Yount singing and applauding along with everyone else.

On that day, Scott Carey weighed 114 pounds.