NOS4A2(155)

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“No, sweetheart,” Vic said, as if she were speaking to her son.

Maggie slipped onto the couch beside her and pressed herself to Vic’s side, her bony hip against Vic’s, her bony elbow across Vic’s stomach.

“Will you hold me, Vic?” Maggie asked in a tremulous voice. “It’s been a long time s-s-since anyone nice held m-m-muh-me. I m-m-muh-mean, I know you’re not into girls, since you have a k-k-kid and all, but—”

Vic put her arm around Maggie’s waist and held the thin, shivering woman against her.

“You can shut up now, you know,” Vic said.

“Oh,” Maggie said. “Oh, okay. That’s a relief.”





Laconia


THEY WOULDN’T LET LOU WALK ANYWHERE, DIDN’T WANT TO TAKE A chance that the fat man might get dizzy and fall onto his face, so after his examination he sat in a wheelchair and a man-nurse wheeled him to recovery.

The man-nurse was his age and had sleepy eyes with dark circles under them, and a jutting Cro-Magnon forehead. His name tag said, improbably, BILBO. He had a spaceship tattooed on one hairy forearm: Serenity from the TV show Firefly.

“‘I am a leaf on the wind,’” Lou said, and the man-nurse said, “Dude, don’t say that. I don’t want to start crying on the job.”

The detective followed, carrying Lou’s clothes in a paper bag. Lou didn’t like the way the guy smelled of nicotine and menthol, but mostly of nicotine, and he didn’t like the way the guy seemed too small for his clothes so everything sagged: his shirt, his clam-colored trousers, his shabby jacket.

Daltry asked, “What are you two talking about?”

“Firefly,” the man-nurse said, without looking back. “We’re Browncoats.”

“What’s that mean? You two gonna gay-marry?” Daltry asked, and laughed at his own joke.

Bilbo the man-nurse said, “Jesus. Go back to the fifties, dude.” But he didn’t say it loud enough for Daltry to hear.

Recovery was a single big room containing two rows of beds, each bed parked in its own little compartment defined by pale green curtains. Bilbo wheeled Lou almost to the far end of the room before turning toward an empty bed on the right.

“Your suite, monsieur,” Bilbo said.

Lou heaved himself up onto the mattress while Bilbo hung a bright sack of fluid from the stainless-steel rack standing alongside. Lou still had the intravenous cannula taped to his right arm, and Bilbo plugged it into the drip. Lou felt the fluid right away, a strong, icy stream that measurably dropped the whole temperature of his body.

“Should I be afraid?” Lou asked.

“Of an angioplasty? No. On the scale of medical complexity, it’s only slightly trickier than having your wisdom teeth removed. Just have the surgery. No fear.”

“Uh-uh,” Lou said. “I’m not talking about the angioplasty. I mean the stuff you’re pumping into me. What is it? Something serious?”

“Oh. This is nothing. You’re not going under the knife today, so you don’t get the good shit. This is a blood-thinning agent. Also, it’ll mellow you out. Got to keep the mellows going.”

“It’ll put me to sleep?”

“Faster than a marathon of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”

Daltry dropped the paper bag into the chair next to the bed. Lou’s clothes were folded up and stacked in a pile, his boxers on top, big as a pillowcase.

“How long has he got to be here?” Daltry asked.

“We’ll hold him for observation overnight.”

“That’s not real good goddamn timing.”

“Artery stenosis is famously inconvenient,” Bilbo said. “It never calls in advance. Just drops in to party whenever it feels like it.”

Daltry slipped his cell phone out of his pocket.

“You can’t use that here.”

Daltry said, “Where can I use it?”

“You’d have to walk back through the emergency room and go outside.”

Daltry nodded, gave Lou a slow, disapproving look. “Don’t go anywhere, Mr. Carmody.” He turned and started down the length of the room.

“And he paddled away in his douche canoe,” Bilbo said.

“What if I need to make a call?” Lou said. “Can I make a call before I go beddy-bye? My son, man. Have you heard about my son? I need to call my parents. They’re not going to be able to sleep tonight until I let them know what’s happening.”

A lie. If he got his mother on the phone and started telling her about Wayne, she would have no idea who he was talking about. She was in assisted living and only capable of recognizing Lou himself one day out of three. It would be even more surprising if his father were interested in the latest news. He had been dead for four years.

“I can snag you a phone,” Bilbo said. “Something we can plug in next to the bed. Just try and relax. I’ll be back in five.”

He stepped away from the bed, drew the curtain shut, and walked away.

Lou didn’t wait, and he didn’t think about it. He was the kid on the motorcycle again, hauling skinny Vic McQueen up onto the seat behind him, feeling her trembling arms around his waist.

He threw his legs over the side of the cot and jerked the cannula out of his arm. A fat BB of blood swelled up from the needle hole.