A Hole In One, Paul Weininger [top novels to read txt] 📗

bed, and Carol gave him a gentle hug and a deep, long-lasting kiss.

Two hours later, the nurse returned to check his vitals and woke them both up. “Mrs. Bloom, I must ask you to leave now. It’s past visiting hours and I need to take your husband’s vitals and try to get him ready to be released tomorrow.” Obviously neither one of them had any intention of correcting the nurse about their non-marital status. It really wasn’t any of her business, but Bloom realized she had a job to do, and he wasn’t going to interfere if it might hasten his release from the pre-morgue, as he called it. That’s how he always viewed hospitals in the past; you come in walking but ride out on a gurney to be taken to the morgue. The nurse told him that all his vitals were within normal ranges.

Carol went home to Jules. Four hours later, Jules went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and that’s when she called Neil at his hospital bed and told him of the conversation she and Jules had when she got home. She said that he began his questioning with, “Where the hell have you been, I’ve been calling your cell all afternoon and you didn’t answer it. Why the hell not?”

Neil asked her, “And how did you handle that?”

She replied how she felt bewildered by Jules’grilling and that she had to stare at him awhile to come up with a viable reply. “First off, I went to visit Rabbi Bloom in the hospital. You do know he was shot, don’t you? And there are signs all over the hospital letting visitors know that all cell phones must be turned off. After my visit, I went window-shopping at the stores in downtown Sedona and forgot that my cell phone was still off because of the hospital rules. I just neglected to turn it on again. I’m sorry if that pissed you off, but if you take a close look, you’ll notice that I am home before 6:00 p.m., so what’s all the fuss about?”

“How did he take your answer?” asked the Rabbi.

She told him that Jules said, “I just don’t like not being able to get hold of you. Why the hell did you go visit the Rabbi? You’re not even a congregant. I go to synagogue every week and instead of you coming with me, you usually decide to go shopping or out with the girls.”

“Was he satisfied with your answer, Carol?”

She replied, “Not really, he just kept his questions coming at me like a machine gun so I explained to him why I had come to see you by telling him crossly, ‘Look, Jules, I went and visited the Rabbi because I was representing you and me as a couple, since I knew that you alone wouldn’t go visit him.’”

“Did that end the conversation with Jules?” Neil asked.

“Not really,” she replied. “He then asked me, ‘What did you and Bloom talk about?’”

“I told him, ‘Oh, just the usual stuff.’ That I had asked you how you were feeling; how much pain you were in. I also asked him if he knew why anyone would shoot you and if he did, who was it? I said that I couldn’t understand why any person might want to do something so despicable, especially to a Rabbi. ‘Do you have any idea why a person might want to kill him, Jules?’”

Jules seemed to take a step back. “What makes you think that I would have any idea why somebody would try and kill the Rabbi? No one at the synagogue came up with any names and I certainly never thought about it.”

“Neil,” Carol continued, “I wasn’t convinced by Jules’denial and suspect that he might be the person who shot you, if he knows about our affair. There was something in the way he’s been behaving lately that gave me the impression that he knows or at least suspects us. Anyway, darling, Jules just kept up his interrogation. He asked me very suspiciously, ‘What else did the two of you talk about? After all, you were with him quite a long time even before you went shopping.’ I simply answered, ‘What makes you think I was with him a long time before I went shopping?’ Jules response was, ‘Because I called your girlfriends to find out if they knew where you were. Remember you didn’t answer your cell and none of your friends except Rachell had any idea. Rachell knew that you went to the hospital to visit the Rabbi and said that she hadn’t seen you all afternoon. So, I’m guessing, you must have been at the hospital a few hours. Is that your idea of a couple’s representation of a visit?’”

“That really pissed me off, Neil. I suspected that Jules was skillfully trying to get at whether I was having an affair with you. I decided that I was just not going to give him the ammunition he was seeking, so I reacted angrily and said, ‘Don’t be a wise-ass, Jules. Yes, I did stay awhile but I was certainly not there for hours, nor did I tell you that I went shopping with Rachell after I left the hospital. What I said was that I went shopping and by that I meant I was alone, Jules. I was not with my girlfriends, so it’s not unusual for Rachell not to have seen me all afternoon. Neil asked me about you, and if you were still going to the Sabbath services even though he was not able to be there to conduct them.’Then he asked me what I was doing with myself while you were at services. So, I told him that I kept busy by just shopping around town.”

“I made a mistake, though,” she went on, “by using your first name, and Jules caught on. He asked me, ‘When did you and the Rabbi get to calling each other by your first names? I don’t even call