“I guess Melissa could give them to you on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday when she comes in for PT, but they really wouldn’t have much time to work before you start exercising. And what about Tuesdays and Thursdays?”
“I’ll just ask Mrs. Richland in to give them to me. She could look the place over while she’s here. Maybe take some pictures and put them on her Facebook or Twitter.”
“Very funny.”
“It’s not just the midday pills,” he said. “There’s the ones at midnight.”
“I’ll be here to—”
“No, Charlie. It’s time you went back home. I’m sure your father misses you.”
“I’m just up the street from him!”
“Yes, and your bedroom is empty. There’s just one person at the supper table when he comes home. Men on their own can sometimes start thinking bad thoughts. I know all about that, believe me. You will leave my noon pills with me when you come in the morning to check on me and feed Radar, and you will leave my midnight pills when you go home at night.”
“I’m not supposed to do that!”
He nodded. “In case I cheat. Which would be a temptation, because I’m addicted to the goddam things. But I give you my word.” He got up on both elbows and fixed me with his eyes. “The first time I cheat I’ll tell you, and give the pills up entirely. Switch to Tylenol. That’s my promise, and I’ll keep it. Can you live with that?”
I thought it over and said I could. He put out his hand. We shook. That night I showed him how to access the films and TV shows stored on my laptop. I put two twenty-milligram Oxy pills in a little dish on the table beside his bed. I shouldered my backpack and held up my phone.
“If you need me, call. Day or night.”
“Day or night,” he agreed.
Radar followed me to the door. I bent, stroked her, gave her a hug. She licked my cheek. Then I went home.
12
He never cheated. Not once.
CHAPTER EIGHT Water Under the Bridge. The Fascination of Gold. An Old Dog. Newspaper News. An Arrest.
1
At first I gave Mr. Bowditch sponge baths three times a week, because there was no shower in the cramped downstairs bathroom. He allowed it but insisted on doing his privates himself （fine with me）。 I washed his scrawny chest and even scrawnier back, and once, after an unfortunate accident as he made his slow way to that cramped little bathroom, I washed his scrawny ass. The swearing and profanity that time was occasioned as much by embarrassment （bitter embarrassment） as anger.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said when he was back in his pajama bottoms. “I clean up Radar’s crap in the backyard all the time.”
He gave me his patented was-you-born-stupid look. “That’s different. Radar is a dog. She’d shit on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, if you let her.”
I found this mildly interesting. “Is there a lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower?”
Now came the patented Bowditch eye-roll. “I don’t know. I was making a point. Can I have a Coke?”
“Sure.” Since my dad had brought that sixpack, I always kept Coke in the house for Mr. Bowditch.
When I brought it back, he was out of bed and sitting in his old easy chair, Radar by his side. “Charlie, let me ask you something. All this you’re doing for me—”
“I get a very nice check for it every week, which I really appreciate even if I don’t always feel I’m doing enough to earn it.”
“You would have done it for free. You told me that while I was in the hospital, and I believe you meant it. So are you bucking for sainthood, or are you perhaps atoning for something?”
That was pretty sharp. I thought of my prayer—my deal with God—but I also thought of phoning in that bogus bomb threat to Stevens Elementary. Bertie thought it was the funniest thing ever, but all I could think about that night, with my dad drunk-snoring in the other room, was how we had scared a whole bunch of people, most of them little kids.
Meanwhile, Mr. Bowditch was watching me closely. “Atoning,” he said. “For what, I wonder?”
“You gave me a good job,” I said, “and I’m grateful. I like you even when you’re grouchy, although I admit that it’s a little harder then. Anything else is water under the bridge.”
He thought about that, then said something I haven’t forgotten. Maybe because my mother died on a bridge when I was going to Stevens Elementary myself, maybe just because it seemed important to me, and still does.