Lisey's Story(55)
"Thank you," she said.
"Very welcome, please come again," Mr. Patel said, and settled back to watch Darryl Worley sing "Awful, Beautiful Life." It was one of his favorites. 13
Lisey had parked beside the store so not to block access to any of the gas pumps - there were fourteen, on seven spanking-clean islands - and once she was behind the wheel of her car again, she started the engine so she could roll down her window. The XM radio under the dash (how Scott would have loved all those music channels) came on at the same time, playing low. It was tuned to The 50s on 5, and Lisey wasn't exactly surprised to hear "Sh-Boom." Not The Chords, though; this was the cover version, recorded by a quartet Scott had insisted on calling The Four White Boys. Except when he was drunk. Then he called them The Four Cleancut Honkies.
She tore the top off one of her new packs and slipped a Salem Light between her lips for the first time in...when was the last time she'd slipped? Five years ago? Seven? When the BMW's lighter popped, she applied it to the tip of her cigarette and took a cautious drag of mentholated smoke. She coughed it back out at once, eyes watering. She tried another drag. That one went a little better, but now her head was starting to swim. A third drag. Not coughing at all now, just feeling like she was going to faint. If she fell forward against the steering wheel, the horn would start blaring and Mr. Patel would rush out to see what was wrong. Maybe he'd be in time to keep her from burning her stupid self up - was that kind of death immolation or defenestration? Scott would have known, just as he'd known who had done the black version of "Sh-Boom" - The Chords - and who'd owned the pool hall in The Last Picture Show - Sam the Lion. But Scott, The Chords, and Sam the Lion were all gone.
She butted the cigarette in the previously immaculate ashtray. She couldn't remember the name of the motel in Nashville, either, the one she'd gone back to when she'd finally left the hospital ("Yea, you returneth like a drunkard to his wine and a dog to its spew,"
she heard the Scott in her head intone), only that the desk clerk had given her one of the crappy rooms in back with nothing to look at but a high board fence. It seemed to her that every dog in Nashville had been behind it, barking and barking and barking. Those dogs made the long-ago Pluto seem like a piker. She had lain in one of the twin beds knowing she'd never get to sleep, that every time she got close she'd see Blondie swiveling the muzzle of his cunting little gun toward Scott's heart, would hear Blondie saying I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias, and snap wide-awake again. But eventually she had gone to sleep, had gotten just enough to stagger through the next day on - three hours, maybe four - and how had she managed that remarkable feat? With the help of the silver spade, that was how. She'd laid it on the floor next to the bed where she could reach down and touch it any old time she began to think she had been too late and too slow. Or that Scott would take a turn for the worse in the night. And that was something else she hadn't thought of in all the years since. Lisey reached back and touched the spade now. She lit another Salem Light with her free hand and made herself remember going in to see him the next morning, climbing up to the third-floor ICU wing in the already sweltering heat because there was a sign in front of the only two patient elevators on that side of the hospital reading OUT OF SERVICE. She thought about what had happened as she approached his room. It was silly, really, just one of those 14
It's one of those silly things where you scare the living hell out of someone without meaning to. Lisey's coming down the hall from the stairs at the end of the wing, and the nurse is coming out of room 319 with a tray in her hands, looking back over her shoulder into the room with a frown on her face. Lisey says hello so the nurse (who can't be a day over twenty-three and looks even younger) will know she's there. It's a mild greeting, a little-Lisey hello for sure, but the nurse gives out a tiny high-pitched scream and drops the tray. The plate and coffee cup both survive - they are tough old cafeteria birds - but the juice-glass shatters, spraying oj on the linoleum and the nurse's previously immaculate white shoes. She gives Lisey a wide-eyed deer-inthe-headlights glance, seems for a moment about to take to her heels, then grabs hold of herself and says the conventional thing: "Oh, sorry, you startled me." She squats, the hem of her uniform pulling up over her white-stockinged Nancy Nurse knees, and puts the plate and cup back on the tray. Then, moving with a grace that is both swift and careful, she begins plucking up the pieces of broken glass. Lisey squats and begins to help.
"Oh, ma'am, you don't have to," the nurse says. She speaks with a deep southern twang. "It was entirely my fault. I wasn't looking where I was going."
"That's okay," Lisey says. She manages to beat the young nurse to a few shards and deposits them on the tray. Then she uses the napkin to begin blotting up the spilled juice.
"That's my husband's breakfast tray. I'd feel guilty if I didn't help."
The nurse gives her a funny look - akin to the You're married to HIM? stare Lisey has more or less gotten used to - but it's not exactly that look. Then she drops her gaze back to the floor and begins hunting for any pieces of glass she might have missed.
"He ate, didn't he?" Lisey says, smiling.
"Yes, ma'am. He did very well, considering what he's been through. Half a cup of coffee - all he's allowed right now - a scrambled egg, some applesauce, and a cup of Jell-O. The juice he didn't finish. As you see." She stands up with the tray. "I'll get a hand-towel from the nurses' station and mop up the rest of that."