Orchard Grove by Vincent Zandri

encourage the formation of a blood clot. A blood clot meant instant death.
    Taking hold of my crutches, I went back into the kitchen and downed four Advil with cold tap water that I drank right out of the faucet. Then, I sat myself back down at my typewriter, refocused my eyes on the words I’d typed only moments ago, and I waited… waited to once more hear the sound of Lana’s car pulling back up into her driveway.
     
    Maybe a half hour went by.
    But I couldn’t be certain. Time had become warped since Lana’s arrival in Orchard Grove. I measured it now not by the seconds or minutes that clicked away on the stove clock in the kitchen, but by the steady and consistent throbs of electric pain that would begin at the tip of my index toe, shoot at lightning speed up into my brain and then back down again to the tip of my toe.
    I thought about having another drink or maybe reigniting that green joint. But in truth, too much dope made me paranoid. I was already paranoid or neurotic anyway. Better that I stick to the booze in order to curb the pain. Something strong, like Jack. But then, what the hell was I doing? I’d already talked myself out of drinking anything else, earlier. As a result, I’d gotten some writing done. Maybe not a lot, but it was a start.
    Pulling the sheet of typed paper from the typewriter, I set it to the side with the others, and fit a clean sheet onto the spool. I sat there at the dining room table, staring at the newly typed pages, knowing that I should have been adding words to the new sheet. I’d done enough characterization study for one day. Now would be the time to begin my story. Maybe I would begin with a man staring out of his bedroom window onto a most beautiful apparition. A blonde beauty who’d just moved in next door with her cop husband, and who sunbathed on her back deck in the nude.
    I raised both hands, extended my index fingers, and typed, FADE IN.
    I was about to set the scene when the doorbell rang.

T he sudden noise startled me, as if someone sneaked up behind me and screamed “Boo!”
    I laid my hands flat onto the tabletop, pressed myself up, took a look over my shoulder out the living room picture window. I couldn’t see anyone, but then that made sense since whoever was ringing the bell was hidden behind the closed door.
    Fetching my crutches, I lifted myself up from the table, made my way through the living room to the front, solid wood door. When I made out Lana’s face through all three of the small clear glass panels embedded into the door, my pulse picked up, and for a brief moment anyway, I forgot all about the pain in my foot.
    Unlocking the deadbolt, I then twisted the opener counterclockwise. In order to open the door, I had to hop backwards on my good leg.
    “Don’t fall,” Lana said as she carefully stepped through the door, her lavender scent once more filling my senses.
    “I’ll try not to,” I said, feeling my throat constrict, and the center of my chest grow tight. “At this point, I might elect to have the whole damned foot amputated.”
    “Pain?” she said, brushing back her hair with an open hand, as if she were staring not into my eyes but into a mirror.
    “You have no idea,” I said, glancing down at the foot, seeing the small round spot of fresh blood that had formed on the new white sock that covered it. “Please come in, Lana.”
    She stepped into the vestibule and crossed over into the living room. I closed the door, locked it. But before joining her in the living room, I took the time to peer through the wooden door’s top most pane of glass onto the driveway and the Orchard Grove road beyond it.
    “Expecting somebody else?” Lana inquired. If I were writing this for my script, I would have said her voice sounded more sarcastic than inquisitive.
    “Just looking out for your husband. I’m in enough hurt as it is. I don’t need a bullet in my back.”
    “Oh, John wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you in the face while staring you