Chapter 10

After Bobby and Keme hauled me out of the Jeep, I had to go through about eight performances of “Not that I’m not grateful.”

“You didn’t sound very grateful,” Fox said.

“But I am.”

“You sounded like that time Keme put a spider in your bath,” Millie said.

“I—”

“And we drove all the way out here,” Fox said.

“Yes, I know, but you were also kind of, um, vulturing my corpse, and I don’t even think my jeans would fit you—” I caught myself a moment too late.

Fox froze me with a glare. “Not to wear,” they said. “To burn. In your honor.”

“Uh, right.”

“After we drove all the way out here.”

“That’s enough,” Indira said quietly. She had discreetly returned her gun to her enormous purse, but it was hard to forget the enthusiasm in her earlier offer to wing him .

“And again,” I said, “I’m super grateful. I’m just not clear on why you all had to—ow!”

That was when Bobby apparently had reached his limit. He dragged me by the arm away from the rest of the group until we stood a good thirty yards farther up the shoulder. Then he released me so forcefully that it was almost a shove.

“Hey,” I said.

But Bobby didn’t say anything. The sun was setting, and it painted one side of him gold, highlighting the rich hue of his skin and the deep, earthy bronze of his eyes. The other side of him, though, it left in shadow. He had his hands on his hips, and it looked like that was more out of sheer force of will than anything—his fingertips were white from pressure, and he looked like a man holding himself together.

Somehow, though, he bit out two words: “What happened?”

I told him about my visit to Jane and Neil. I omitted—for the sake of expediency—my poking around Arlen’s garage and workshop, but I did mention that someone had been watching me from his front window.

“And I know what you’re going to ask,” I said, “but it could have been any of them. Whoever it was, they were definitely pushing themselves—physically, I mean. But we’re talking about a group of suspects who range from their sixties to their eighties. Neil is probably the fittest one, and even he would have been breathing hard by the time he got to the bottom of the hill.”

Bobby didn’t say anything for a moment. He looked like he was trying to take deep breaths, but instead, they were quick, and they sounded high in his chest. When he spoke, his words had a gasping quality that I’d never heard before. “I don’t even have words.” Breath. “For how stupid you are.”

Headlights flared in the distance. The hum of tires, a long way off, moved toward us.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You could have.” Breath. “Gotten yourself killed.”

I looked closer at him. Underneath the golden light of the sunset, he looked chalky, and his eyes were unusually wide. Beads of sweat glistened along his hairline and neck.

“Bobby—”

“You almost did.” Breath. “Get yourself killed.”

“Are you okay?”

“Because you did.” Breath. “What I’m always telling you.” Breath. “Not to do.”

His hands left his hips, and he seemed to have lost track of them. One of them floated out at his side. The other he pressed to his chest before seeming to become aware of it again and pulling it away.

“I think you need to sit down—”

“You ran off on your own.” Breath. “Like a child.”

“I’m okay. Everything’s okay, Bobby. I think you need to take a deep breath—”

“Everything is not okay!” His shout was strangely high pitched. “What if something happened to you?” And then his eyes got huge, and he pressed his hands to his chest and said in a normal tone, like we were having an ordinary conversation, “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“Dash?” Indira called from down the road.

“It’s Bobby!” I shouted back. I got an arm under him to keep him from falling, which wasn’t as easy as it sounds—Bobby is like 99% muscle, and I’m, well—what kind of paper do they make ice cream cartons out of?

The Last Picks hurried toward us as I lurched around, trying to keep Bobby (and me) from falling.

“What’s wrong?” Indira asked.

“He said he was having a heart attack,” Keme said. The boy was white with what I realized, a moment later, was fear.

“He’s not having a heart attack,” I said. My brain was starting to kick into gear after the shock. “He’s in perfect health, he works out a ridiculous amount, and he doesn’t even eat breakfast cookies or lunch cookies. He probably has the cholesterol levels of a stick of celery.”

Bobby wasn’t contributing much to the conversation at this point beyond the shrill, rapid breaths of hyperventilation.

“People in seemingly perfect health have cardiac events all the time,” Indira said, pulling her phone from her purse. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“How long is that going to take?” Keme asked. His voice was so tight with worry that I almost didn’t recognize it. “That’s going to take too long. We should drive him.” He looked like he tried to stop, but then he blurted, “We need to give him some Xanax.”

That particular statement merited further investigation, I decided—I wanted to know what was happening, or had happened, in Keme’s life that his first recourse was to dope someone up. But that was for later.

Millie looked equally at sea. “You should pat him on the back.”

“He’s not a newborn,” I said.

“You should lay him on the ground and pump his legs,” Fox said. Even they sounded a bit frazzled. “Get the bad air out of his system.”

“I have no idea what that means,” I said, “but it sounds like something from a spaghetti Western.” Indira opened her mouth to say something, but I said, “Take it from someone who’s had a baker’s dozen of them: Bobby’s having a panic attack.”

Bobby moaned and shook his head, trying to say something.

“You’re okay,” I said. “I’m going to help him walk a little. He’ll be all right in a few minutes.”

“Dash—” Indira tried.

“You can call the ambulance if you want, but I think he’d rather talk to a doctor on his own. You know, privately.”

She looked unhappy, but she didn’t respond, and the phone stayed clutched at her side.

After a few final adjustments to make sure I could support Bobby’s weight, I got us moving. We shuffled away from our friends. Bobby was still struggling to breathe. He was also still sweating. Like, a lot. Broken asphalt and loose stone crunched underfoot. The car I’d seen down the highway rushed past us, and the wall of air that rolled out behind it smelled like diesel exhaust and hot rubber. Ahead of us, the sky was darkening to purple, and a line of cedars looked so perfect they might have been storybook illustrations.

After maybe a hundred yards, Bobby took a deeper breath, and the one after that was even deeper. He patted my arm, and I took that as a sign to stop. He leaned on me as he brought his breathing under control. Then, slowly, he covered his face with one hand.

He didn’t need to tell me how hard this was for him—not just the physically awful experience of a panic attack (which, if you’ve never had one, actually does feel like a heart attack), but even more so, the loss of control. Because Bobby wanted so desperately to be in control. Not in a bad way, but in control of himself. Of his body. Of his emotions. And so, naturally, anything that made him lose control was terrifying. It felt like a lifetime ago when he’d told me that, when our relationship had been different, and he’d trusted me.

“Can I do something for you?” I asked.

He shook his head; he was still covering his face.

“Do you want some water?”

He shook his head again.

“Would it help if I had a panic attack too?”

He let out a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh.

“Because I’m really good at them,” I said. “Like, I might have the world record. One time I had a panic attack about having panic attacks. I think that’s a meta-panic attack.”

When Bobby spoke, his voice was rough. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Why are you sorry?”

He didn’t answer.

“You’re human,” I said. “Humans have emotions. They get overwhelmed. Sometimes, there’s just a lot going on, and it ends up, you know, having an effect.”

Bobby’s nod was mechanical. He spoke in the low, measured tones of someone trying too hard to explain. “I haven’t been sleeping. I haven’t been getting enough sleep, I mean. The new apartment, the move, Kiefer—” He stopped, and it was a while before he tried again. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I couldn’t—I felt like I couldn’t say anything, like I couldn’t talk, and the harder I tried, the worse it got.”

I eased away from him, making sure he could stay upright on his own. Then, facing him, I took his hand in mine and eased it away from his face. He had nice hands; that was one of the things I’d noticed about him early on. And his hands fit mine just right. That was another of those things I’d realized. I squeezed, and I waited until he looked at me. It was a strangely hangdog look, his head still down, his eyes wary, as though I might have been waiting for this moment of vulnerability to—what? Hurt him? Mock him?

With a smile, I said, “Welcome to Crazy Town. Population two.”

Behind us, Fox shouted like someone at the end of their rope, “Because pumping their legs gets the bad air out! I don’t have to explain science to you!”

“Uh, population six,” I said.

Bobby’s answering smile was wan, lusterless. Not the goofy grin I’d come to—

I almost said I’d come to love.

“I do think you should talk to a doctor,” I said. “About not sleeping. And, if you want, about this. They can give you a prescription in case it happens again.”

Bobby didn’t say anything, but eventually, he nodded.

“And if you’re stressed about stuff, Bobby, you know you can talk to me, right? I mean, I recognize that, uh, earlier today was not my best look. But you’re my best friend. Of course I want to know what’s going on in your life. I’m a very good sounding board. Plus it’s a great, um, reason to take a break from writing.”

He nodded again slowly.

“Oh, and we really need to figure out what’s going on with Keme, because I don’t like how quickly he jumped to prescription meds.”

Bobby shook his head, a wavery movement that looked punch drunk more than anything, and managed to say, “Yeah, okay.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He licked his lips. For a moment, I had the strangest sensation that he was about to say something. But then his expression changed, and all he did was nod.

“Want to be my bodyguard while we wait for a tow truck?” I asked.

He nodded. And, to my surprise, he held my hand all the way back to join the Last Picks.