“I don’t believe you,” Tom said the next morning. “I just do not believe you.”
“What?”
“Your neck is covered with hickeys again.”
“So what if it is?”
“You are a glutton for punishment.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m going to take you to ADRC. Put you through rehab. See if we can’t get you dried out altogether. You looked like you had gone straight, but I could see it, I could see the little shakes and twitches behind your altar-boy persona of these last weeks. You’re a junkie, a junkie for that chick’s evil hoodoo.”
I just tried to ignore him. Though the truth was I knew that I needed some kind of answer, some kind of solution to the Carrie situation. I spent my life living day to day and I knew I needed a longer-term outlook. I had to make a break one way or the other. I needed a sign.
“463, 220 Capen Street for the unknown,” came over the radio. “Possible welfare check.”
“220 Capen,” Tom said. “Your lady friend. We haven’t heard from her for a while. Were you on the outs with her too? This is turning into reunion week for you.”
As we pulled up, we could see the pile of newspapers at the door, five days’ worth. The mailman, who met us out front, said he had called. “She hasn’t picked up her mail this week. I almost called yesterday. It’s not like she hasn’t let a few days slide in the past, but I’ve never seen her go this long. Usually the visiting nurse brings it in. I don’t know why she hasn’t. Maybe she went out of town. It’s just unusual.”
Tom and I looked at each other. “You first,” he said. “If she’s home, one way or another, it’s going to be stinky.”
We went in through the back door. The house always had a musty aged smell to it. Miss Broadbent and her health aides didn’t always clean up after her dog. The air today was heavier with a hint of a familiar rotting smell. The closer we got to the stairs, the more pronounced it became. “I better get the monitor,” Tom said.
If that was her, he was right, all that we would need was a six-second strip and to write down the time.
I started up the stairs. Smells didn’t affect me like they did Tom. He was a great paramedic and fearless, but he had a weak stomach when it came to dead bodies. He carried around Vick’s in his bag that he sometimes put under his lip to ward off the smell. I just tried not to breathe through my nose. Upstairs, even I had a hard time with it. I looked in the bedroom. She wasn’t in the bed. The bathroom door was open. I glanced in. There she was.
She looked like she’d fallen off the throne some time before. She was leaned up against the radiator, which was slowly baking the flesh off her. It looked like the dog had eaten some of her leg. It was dark, raw and ripped open. She had to have been dead five days. Her body was swollen with gas, and if I hadn’t known she was white, I would have thought she was black.
“You find her?” Tom called from downstairs. Then I heard him gag. I heard him heave, and then swear.
“Yeah, I found her,” I said.
“Do I need to come up?”
“No. You don’t even need to a run a strip. She’s long gone.”
“Fuck, I’m going outside.” And I heard him retch again.
I stood there looking at her, thinking how sad it was what our lives come to, what her life and all the dreams she’d once had had come to—this—rotting alone in a bathroom, being nibbled on by your own dog, no family or friends to look after you. I wondered why the visiting nurse or home health aide hadn’t found her sooner. Maybe they’d thought she was out of town when they knocked and no one came to the door. It was a shame.
I thought about how her family had come to the end of its line. I looked down and saw the dog standing next to me, looking in at her too. I thought about giving him a good kick, but then I thought, a dog, like a person, has to eat, has to do what it has to do to survive.
That was when a gleam caught my eye. It came from under the radiator. I went in and got down on my knees and looked. I knew what it was. It was her ring, her diamond ring. It must have fallen off her skinny finger when she died, and rolled under the radiator.
I reached down and picked it up. It was a beautiful ring. I imagined how she must have felt when she first received it. A ring like that had seen a lot itself, from the day it was clinked out of a wall in some South African mine. It had arrived at her house and glimpsed a young beauty, and then every day had seen her slowly age, and now rot. I wondered where it would go now, and if it would ever see the face of another young woman, and then it dawned on me.
The ring had been a curse to her. She’d be better off without it up in heaven, where she could be free to find a new man. And the ring, maybe it needed a new start too, a new chance to deliver on its promise. Plus, it was a big diamond—too big to go back in the earth. She had no family, no one to pass it on to.
I put it in my pocket. Who the hell would ever know?
“She good and dead?” Tom said.
I nodded.
“So what do I write?”
“Found pulseless and apneic in advanced state of decomposition.”
“Advanced state of decomposition. That works for me. My condolences,” Tom said.
“For what?”
“For your grief.”
“My grief?”
“On the passing of your old gal. Don’t fret too much. There are plenty of other old ladies out there who I’m sure would like the companionship of a younger man, someone to pick them up when they fall, wipe the shit off their butts.”
While he babbled on, I just looked out the window, much more serious thoughts on my mind. I pondered and planned.