Read Online Cheapskate in Love by Skittle Booth - Free Book Online Page B

reason, he
thought, to force Linda to return. While gazing upward, he stubbed his foot on
a rock. Jerking his foot back from the pain, he lost his balance and fell to
the side off the trail. He landed on his back, six feet down the slope, where
the ground evened out slightly. He lay on top of the backpack, as drops of rain
came through the canopy of tree branches above him, sprinkling his face.
    For a moment, he didn’t move. He had made a considerable
amount of noise falling from the trail, and he wondered if Linda was returning
to see what had happened. He couldn’t hear her. Since he was uncertain that she
would come looking for him, he tried to raise himself.
    “ Ooooww ,” he screamed. In his
fall, Bill had pulled a muscle in his back. “Linda, help. My back.” He tried to
move again. “ Ooowww .” Louder he shouted, “Linda,
help.”
    After a few minutes, Linda returned to the spot on the trail
above him. Holding her umbrella steady over her head, she looked at him without
any feeling, as if she was at a Chinese fish market selecting what she would
have for dinner.
    “Linda, I hurt my back,” he whined. “You have to help me. I
can’t move. I think I need an ambulance. See?” Bill tried to roll on his side.
“ Ooowww , my back.” He returned to lying flat on his
back. As he lay on the ground in the uncomfortable position on top of the
backpack, pain, fatigue, and need were plainly visible on his face. He lifted
his hands a little toward Linda, beseeching her for help.
    In response to his appeal, without moving or displaying any
emotion, she told him, “Get up.”

 

Chapter 9

 
 
    At church the next day, Helen did not see Bill. It was
unusual for him to be absent. He was almost always at the same service she went
to, sitting close to the front on the right side, near the statue of the Virgin
Mary. In that sculpture, Mary was depicted as an attractive, young woman without
her child, raising her hands from her sides, as if she was about to give a warm
embrace. That sculpture was why he sat there, Helen had thought many times
before.
    When Helen didn’t see Bill at the service, instinctively she
knew that something was wrong. He might lust after pretty young
women—real women, not statues—and wish out loud for frequent play
time with one of them, but that was just talk. She was sure of it. He had been
repeating such things since he was a teenager, she sensed. For many years, she
had seen that he was a regular churchgoer and active within the church
community. She couldn’t explain to herself what might have prevented him from
attending church, especially since it seemed that he had broken up with Linda
again three days earlier. When he wasn’t trying to please a pretty young thing
like Linda, Helen was quite certain he wasn’t doing much of anything, except
moping.
    When she returned to the apartment building after church,
Helen asked Jonathan at the front desk if he had seen Bill. “No, not today,” he
said. “Yesterday, he went hiking with Linda. Or that’s where he said he was
going.”
    “Really?” said Helen. “He went hiking?” She knew he was not
the outdoors or athletic type.
    “They were supposed to go to Bear Mountain.”
    “I wonder if he saw a bear there,” she said.
    “Maybe he walked with one.”
    “He probably got mauled,” she conjectured. “I think someone
should see what shape he’s in.”
    “Maybe he’s still in the bear’s cave,” Jonathan suggested.
    “That’s doubtful,” she said, walking toward Bill’s
apartment. “Bears only like other bears. Bill is more of a weasel.”
    When Helen arrived at his apartment, she listened outside
the door. She didn’t hear anything on the inside. Pressing her ear to the door,
she thought she discerned some low human noises, but she wasn’t sure. Standing
back from the door, deliberating, the idea came to her to look into the
apartment from the outside, so she went to the nearest exit.
    When she came to the