You (You #1)(74)

She cackles and her accent is so thick that I feel bad for the words coming out of her mouth. Nico chuckles. “The kid’s not from around here.”

Sue doesn’t laugh anymore. “No, shit, Sherlock. You got a license I can give to the gals up front?”

“No,” I lie. “I got mugged.”

“In the paahking lawt?”

“In Manhattan,” I answer in my most Whit Stillmanesque voice.

Sue rolls her eyes and I’m relieved when the doctor pulls the curtain across, then back again. Exit Sue, and my physician extends a hand. “I’m Dr. Kazikarnaski,” he says. “You can call me Dr. K.”

I nod, bobbing my head like a guy who sailed in Figawi would do. “Excellent,” I reply. “I’m Spencer.”

Dr. K prods my wounds and asks me who did this to me.

“Well,” I begin. “It’s been a wild twenty-four hours. I got jumped in Manhattan. I was leaving Lincoln Center and walking and the next thing you know, bam.”

I’d forgotten Nico was here and then he speaks. “Who was playing at Lincoln Center?”

I shrug. “We were just passing through,” I say and I wince to remind everyone that I am the patient. “Anyhow, then, I left the city and hit that storm. I had an accident. A deer. And, well, here we are.”

“That’s one old Buick you got,” says Nico. “What year is it?”

I wince and signal that I need a minute to recover. Fortunately, Nico and Dr. K fall into conversation about old cars, about the warm front moving in—gonna be like Indian summa according to Sue, who’s in and out—and they do all this instead of asking what an uppity sailor like me is doing in an ancient brown beast. Dr. K tears off his gloves and tosses them in the trash. He says my ribs aren’t cracked and my body wounds will heal. But my face is another story.

“Have you ever had stitches?” he wants to know.

I shake my head no.

A pregnant nurse with heavy eye makeup shuffles in with two coffees and two Danishes. I can’t believe my good fortune. I’m starving.

“Helen, you didn’t have to do that,” says Officer Nico as he takes the loot.

“Please,” she says. “I know you don’t got someone at home cooking for you. A man your size needs to eat.”

So do I but Nico chews and swallows my Danish and the doctor holds a syringe and tells me to close my eyes. “This will hurt,” he says and when Jude Law said that to Natalie Portman in Closer he wasn’t kidding, and you aren’t here to hold my hand.

The shot in my forehead doesn’t just hurt, it kills. Nico pats me on the back. “Breathe, Spence, you got this.”

The doctor jabs me again, this time on my cheek. I am told to stay put and wait for the anesthetic to kick in. The pregnant nurse dillydallies, hot for Nico. “So, Nico, how you doing over in Snotty Town?”

“Good enough.” He laughs. “You?”

“Better if I had a nice tall, strapping cup of hot chocolate to keep me warm at night, right, Nico?”

Nico is amused and the pregnant nurse shakes her ass as she leaves. “Say the word, hot stuff.”

Suddenly, I like it here, the way people are so blunt about what they want—Oxy, Nico’s dick, coffee—and I want to be a part of things, so I whisper to Nico, “You think they got any more Danishes hanging around?”

Instead of answering me, he pulls the curtain out, creating privacy. He takes out a notepad and I wish the medicine could numb my brain. I don’t like that notepad or that pen and it begins. “I know you don’t have your ID, but you wanna give me your address?”

I make something up and hope we’re done but we’re just getting started. Nico wants to know about me. He saw the car; he saw my blood on the street; that’s how he found me and I pray the snow is melting. I pray that you and Peach stay inside. I don’t want you to see my blood.

“And what you were looking for?” Nico asks. “Did you think those people were home?”

“I was so out of it, I don’t know.”

“You made a beeline for that house, Spencer. Why didn’t you try the gas station up the street?”

“I didn’t see it,” I say and why is he attacking me?

“But did you really think somebody would be home?”

“I don’t know.” I don’t want to do this. I want a Danish.

“Do you know anyone in LC, Spencer?”

“I didn’t even know I was in LC,” I say and it’s time to up my game. I know how to work a cop; I’m gonna say what I said when I got pinned for stealing candy when I was a little punk. I swallow and my lower lip trembles. I can act. And I stammer, “L-look, I don’t want to get into it, and it’s got nothing to do with anything, but my mom died. She just died.”

He pops his pen and closes his notepad. “Spencer, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

It’s easy to cry because I miss you and I still don’t know how to get back to you and you still haven’t called me to tell me you miss me. Nico gets me a Danish and I swallow it. When the doctor comes back and sews me up, I don’t feel a thing.

THIRTY minutes later, Nico and I are back in the lot and he wants to drive me to the train station. The scene out here has escalated. There’s a full-on tailgating party for junkies talking about which emergency facilities are loose with their Oxy. A guy in a tattered North Face jacket tries to break into a Mazda with a crowbar. Nico bellows, “Hey, Teddy. A little respect!”