Page 371 of A Matter of Time

“Why? What’d you do to your eye?”

“It’s all busted open. Shit, it hurts.”

“Jor—”

I hung up on him too and then turned the phone off. I didn’t want them tracing the call like in the movies.

I ducked my head down and covered my face with my hand. It was funny that sometimes the smallest injuries, like paper cuts, hurt the most. The cut above my eyebrow hurt like crazy, but it really wasn’t that big. The scrape on my face and all the big red bruises, looked really bad but didn’t hurt as much as the cut. The waitress at the diner was very nice and got me hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and three small butterfly strips and one big one. I got it held together well, and after I had a short stack of pancakes, bacon and three eggs, orange juice, and lots of coffee, I gave her a ten-dollar tip. She was appreciative, and I felt better.

In the thrift store, looking for a new coat, I turned on my phone to call my brother back.

“Jory.”

“Hey, Dane.”

“Jory, buddy, you’re killing Sam.”

“What?”

“Sam’s losing it. He needs to see you, make sure you’re okay. The thing with this guy James… He’s really agitated about that.”

“Well, tell him not to be. I didn’t get assaulted or anything.”

There was a pause.

“By assaulted, do you mean raped?”

“Yeah, he threatened to—forget it. Don’t tell Sam, that won’t help.”

“Jory.” He barely got my name out.

“After I get a new coat, I’ll start taking the picture up and down the⁠—”

“What do you need a new coat for?”

“There’s blood all over my parka from a guy hitting me, and I don’t wanna look like some serial killer when I talk to these people, so I’ll call ya back after, okay?”

“Who hit you?”

Sometimes I talked like everyone knew what was going on, even when they were joining a program that was already in progress. “Some guy. It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you really hurt?”

“No.”

“Jory, may I remind you that you have a concussion? No one should be hitting you or⁠—”

“I know. I didn’t mean to get hit.” Like I got hit on purpose. “And I don’t have a concussion anymore. Be serious.”

“Jory, I want you back here now.”

“Okay,” I said, then I hung up and turned the phone off.

I found a parka that was a size too big for me but was clean and in pretty good shape. It was thirty dollars, which the cashier said was really too much for it. Apparently, most things in the store went for right around ten. She gave it to me for fifteen, which was really nice of her. I wore it out, shoving my bloody one into the plastic bag she gave me, and jogged back to my lovely rented Ford Taurus.

I started at the florist and worked my way from one end of the strip mall to the other. I finally got lucky at the bowling alley. The guy remembered seeing Caleb outside of the mailbox place on the corner sitting in a car. I thanked him profusely and made that my next stop.

At the mailbox rental store, the lady there remembered Caleb because he looked like her first husband. I asked her if that was good or not, and she said no, definitely not. It had, however, etched him into her brain. She was older, late sixties, and whether it was my smile, the fact I was hurt, or because she liked the color of my eyes, I didn’t know. Nevertheless, she sat there with me and tried to remember everything she could about the other man with Caleb Reid. Finally, after much searching through many small boxes filled with index cards, she found the card of the guy who had come with Caleb. His name was Greg Fain, and his address was in Oak Lawn, three streets away. I asked to keep the card and gave her a fifty-dollar bill for her trouble. She gave me a pen and a key chain flashlight before I walked out.