On several occasions during the last two years of Walker’s uneventful, quickly ebbing life, he had summoned the courage to face the question of who he was. Was he his body, his brain, his name, or just the biological by-product of his mother and father’s lust—and so on and so forth until he’d listed all the possibilities except the one that felt right.
Waiting at the end of the questions was a limbo of paralyzing melancholy—a place in which he feared being trapped forever as a man without himself.
Sometimes he could shake the gloomy feeling by indulging himself in mindless activities like watching reruns of Mister Ed, or The Honeymooners, and poring over the stacks of ancient Sunday comics he kept in the basement. Sometimes, when Wilbur Post or Ralph Kramden failed to bring him back, it would take a whole day and a good night’s sleep before he felt normal again.
Now that he was coming into the home stretch, the question loomed larger than ever and he was no closer to an answer than he had been when he was fifteen and looking for God. Where was Mister Ed when you needed him?
The billboard’s red mouth twisted, as if it were trying to talk. Walker looked away. He was not at all sure he wanted to hear what the mouth had to say, since a growing anxiety was running a close second to the pain in his chest in the race for his attention.
Walker glanced over at Detlef who was curled into a ball like some stillborn tragedy. Had Detlef known who he was before they took out his brain?
For that matter, what about Joyce and the kids or the drunks from the bar? Did anyone else beside himself have panic attacks about who they were and why they were alive, or did they just live day-to-day eating, working, sleeping, reproducing, and leaving waste without ever giving it a second thought?
Not to be ignored any longer, pain arrested his thoughts and sent him searching for the call button. He needed to be delivered from the claws ripping his chest apart.
Cat appeared. “Looking for me?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Walker noticed that the red mouth stuck out its tongue at her.
“One Brampton’s isn’t doing it,” he grunted. “I need a double shot.”
“I read your mind.” Cat held up a syringe. “This is the big gun. You can have this much once an hour. I can give all of it now, taking a chance that it’ll wear off before you can have another dose, or I can give you half now and half in—”
“All of it now,” Walker said, out of his mind with the fire raging in his lungs.
She slid the needle into the rubber cap on the intravenous line and watched the oily swirls race through the tubing toward his vein. “You’ll be better in a sec, Walker. Relax and let the morphine do its work.”
The drug hit him head-on. He nodded toward the window. “Close the damned curtains on that mouth, will you?”
Not sure of what he was talking about, she looked out the window at the billboard. Squinting, she could just make out what could be interpreted as a red monster mouth dripping blood. In a long, painful death, she supposed everything had a way of turning macabre.
Waiting for Walker’s fist to relax, she checked his not-so-vital vital signs and changed his bed. She was repositioning the head of his bed when Walker raised his head off the pillow and waved. “Hey, Benny,” he shouted, “Benny Newmann, how’s by you?”
She glanced around the room. “Who are you talking to, Walker?”
Benny Newmann emerged from behind the curtain. Hovering effortlessly in mid-air, he did a somersault and hung upside down. Walker grinned.
Benny tipped his sailor’s cap, turned right side up, and offered his hand for shaking. Walker shook the ghostly hand and flinched when it detached at the wrist. Benny cackled, his mouth full of silver braces and pink gums. “What’re you doing here, Benny?”
“I was reading through the public notices the other day and I see that my old buddy Petey Walker is looking to sign on with a crew. I figure my fleet is as good as any, so, I fixed it with the higher ups. You’re with me, Petey. Welcome aboard.”
Walker looked blank. “What crew? What’re you talking about?”
Cat brought her face closer to Walker’s and stared into his glassy eyes. “Walker?”
“You’ll have to wait a minute, Miss,” he said, despite the fact he had no control over his tongue. “I'm signing on with Benny.”
Benny bowed. “Styx River Tours at your service. Took over the business from old man Charon almost thirty years ago. I’ve got myself a fleet of nine boats running the river. How about it, Walker? Ready to come aboard?”
“I don’t know. What do I have to do?”
“Keep the boats shipshape, maybe take a few souls up river, show them the sights, fulfill their sense of adventure.”
Walker thought for a moment, warming to the idea. “Remember how we always used to talk about owning one of those thirty-foot Pearsons and sailing around the world? Remember that raft we took up to…” He trailed off, transfixed by the sudden appearance of three deer grazing on a lawn that had sprouted around Detlef’s bed.
“How about it, Petey? You want I should pick you up on Friday?”
Walker didn’t answer. He was transfixed by the sight of Detlef dragging his peebag around like the ghost of Jacob Marley toting his chain of past transgressions. He made his way through the deer back to his bed, patting the animals as he went.
Having seen a lot of barroom wildlife in his time, Walker acted as if the events taking place were perfectly natural. “I’d like that, Benny, but I want to talk to Zoe first before I commit myself.”
Benny nodded thoughtfully and approached one of the grazing bucks. “Okay, Petey. You talk to Zoe and I’ll stop by again early Friday morning.” Hoisting himself onto the back of the deer, Benny trotted toward the curtain.
“Walker?” Cat pressed the cold cloth to his forehead and took his blood pressure once more. He was inching up toward ninety systolic. She breathed a sigh of relief, glad she hadn’t committed unintentional euthanasia.
Walker opened his eyes and looked at the woman without seeing her. “Are you waiting for the next boat, Miss?”
“Walker, you’re in the hospital. Are you with me?”
He nodded as Benny vanished along with the deer. “I was just talking with my friend.”
“There isn’t anybody else here, Walker. Your blood pressure dropped after I gave you morphine. I thought we lost you there for a minute. You feel okay now?”
“Yeah. My old friend Benny Newmann was here and signed me up for a crewing job starting on Friday. Then there were these three deer, and Detlef was walking around like normal.”
She used the hem of his sheet to wipe the sweat from his face. “Morphine can do funny things to your head.”
A soft clanking from the other side of the room signalled that Detlef was having another seizure. Both of them stared at the man’s pale hands flopping about on the sheet like a fish fresh out of water.
“Pain gone?”
Walker took a test breath. “It’s still there, but—”
“But you don’t care, right?”
“Right.”
She moved to get up, noticed his look of uncertainty and stayed put. “You still having a hard time with that black hole feeling?”
He chewed his lip and wished Zoe was with him. “Yeah. No. Shit, I don’t know. There are a couple of things I need to figure out first.”
“Anything I can help you with?” She put a hand over his. The simple gesture threatened to crack the poker face he’d hidden behind ever since he was given a death sentence. He debated whether to tell her about what was torturing him, then decided against it. “No. I need to figure it out for myself.”
* * *
In the nurses’ lounge, Cat washed her hands and stared at herself in the mirror. It was her patients’ need of her healing care that always drew her in.
And, in some mysterious way, each person she cared for gave her indefinable sacred gifts that made her more complete.
* * *
On her way to Cross’s room, Cat detoured into room 512. Sprawled facedown on his bed, Corky reminded her of a prisoner counting down time in his cell. She stood still and watched him for a moment, debating whether or not to try and talk with him again about what had happened. The way his foot pressed against the footboard and the deliberate twitching of his thumb told her he was not asleep, but aware of her presence and desperately wanting her to leave.
She let him be and peered into the room across the hall where, lying with earphones in place, Professor Dean grinned like a Cheshire cat. His balloons, affected by the heat, had dropped a foot or so from the ceiling.
At the other end of the hall, Walker’s wife and daughter were headed toward his room. Resisting her mother’s pace, the girl stopped outside Stella’s door and refused to budge. There was a short interval of pleading and debates that ended when the girl entered Stella’s room.
Stella and the girl were beaming at each other by the time she got there. The old woman’s face was more alive than ever, her eyes bright as bulbs. “Need anything, Stel?” she called from the doorway.
“How about a good-looking’ man?”
“You and me both.” Cat glanced toward the nurses’ station searching for any sign of thinning black hair and the glint of glasses. “Be back in a while with your pills, Stel.”
“I reckon I’ll be here unless they need me out on the basketball court to teach ’em a few plays.”
Cat made it as far as the acute-side doors, when from behind, a pair of strong arms wound themselves around her body and squeezed. She studied the contrast between her arms and the ones hugging her—smooth limbs lying on a mat of freckles.
“Your detective friend is in the lobby,” Nora said, releasing her. “Old monosyllabic Gage has deviated from his taciturn nature and is talking the poor guy’s ear off.”
Cat tossed her hair away from her face, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. “So what?”
“No reason in particular. I just thought you might like to pull on a lab coat before he gets here, since your nipples are about three inches erect.”
Cat glanced down and groaned. Under the clingy scrub top, the little suckers were as noticeable as blinking neon signs.
“Think about baseball,” Nora suggested. “Maybe they’ll go away.”
Slipping into someone’s abandoned lab coat, Cat headed to Cross’s room, paying close attention to the bits and pieces of conversation drifting around the crowded hallway. ‘Mobile eavesdropping’ she called it, like turning the radio dial every few seconds to a different station.
“…I’m going to do some pulmonary toilet on Mr. Sagepool, so cover my lights.”
“So then the doctor says, ‘Don’t worry, the balls will cover your eyes.’”
“I used to put mine in the sink until Sister Mary Pat told me they tasted better in the garage.”
“…deep panic state. My feeling is there’s been some major psychological insult, but the patient is unwilling to communicate at this time.”
“…catechols. They’re our only hope.”
Cat approached the threshold of Cross’s room, rehearsing what she’d say to David Padcula when he arrived. ‘Detective Padcula, master of the killer swivel chair I presume?’
Did she want to be so flippant? Maybe a professional approach would do better.
‘You see, Detective, Cross’s neurological functions seem to have stabilized without any deficit—no apparent loss of memory function short or long term. But we did intubate quickly and hyperventilated her so that even if a subdural hematoma had…subdural hematoma? Well, in layman’s terms that involves hemorrhaging into the subdura of the…’
Sure, okay, if he’s into medical textbooks. How about a simple ‘hello’?
Her swooshing Loretta Young entrance into Cross’s room was abruptly aborted as her stethoscope caught on the door handle and choked her like a black rubber noose. The move was vaudevillian enough to make Cross pause in her sketching.
“Very charming entrance, Nurse Richardson,” Cat said in her patronizing-piano-teacher voice. “For how many years have inanimate objects been out to get you?”
Cross smiled carefully, trying not to put a strain on the bruises and cuts around her mouth.
“How’re you feeling?” Cat asked, relieved to find that she and Cross were alone. It would give her some time to compose herself and break the news of the detective’s impending visit.
Cross resumed sketching. “I’m okay.” The underlying tone of misery was hard to miss.
“Do you hurt anywhere?”
Cross briefly touched the plaster cast around the arm that ached like fire and shook the head that throbbed with every move. “Not at all.”
“Surely your ribs must be tender?”
Cross averted her eyes. “No, they aren’t. I’m fine.”
Cat listened to Cross’s lungs. The shallow inspirations were the norm for someone with broken ribs, it being too painful to take full breaths.
“You’re sure your ribs aren’t sore? You don’t need to be stoic with me. I can give you pain pills to take the edge off. Nothing heavy, maybe a couple of—”
“I said nothing hurts!”
From her emergency room days, Cat remembered dislocated shoulders, kidney stones, and broken ribs as ailments that caused pain of sweat-and-scream magnitude. Cross was making light of her injuries in order to minimize Michael’s crime against her.
“Has anyone called about me?” Cross asked without looking up.
Opting not to answer the loaded question behind the question, Cat said, “You’ve had at least a hundred calls from newspapers and magazines. Nathan checks in a lot, and a woman from one of the galleries in Sausalito—”
“Anyone else? I mean—“
“No, Michael Lake hasn’t called, nor has he been here looking for you, and I don’t think he will, since he must be aware the police are searching for him.”
Donning a pair of exam gloves, Cat lifted the corner of the gauze covering Cross’s left breast. Even with plastic surgery, it would still leave an ugly scar.
When the wounds were cleaned and dressed, Cat glanced at her watch. “There’s a detective on his way up to ask you some questions.”
Cross stiffened and held her hands out as if she were warding off the devil. “I don’t want to talk to anybody! Michael didn’t hurt me. I…I was on my roof trying to hammer down some shingles before the next rain and I slipped and fell into the lemon tree.” She forced a laugh. “You should have seen me holding on with my fingernails all the way down. It was—”
“Cross, it’s okay.” Cat said quietly.
“No, it’s not okay. I fell. I—”
Someone knocked. “Miss Cross?”
Cross shot Cat an angry look before they both turned toward the voice.
To Cross, the detective was the evil bounty hunter, a menacing threat to the one she loved. To Cat, he was an apple-cheeked Lancelot with a brand-new haircut that made him appear younger and more innocent than she remembered.
His eyes met Cat’s and held her gaze for a few seconds. She melted, barely able to control the onrush of pheromones that made her want to jump him.
He introduced himself as he settled in the armchair next to the bed. Rather than return the greeting, Cross gave him a hostile glance and resumed sketching.
He took a notebook from his raincoat. “Miss Cross, do you know why I’m here?”
“Yes,” she answered curtly. “You want to know where Michael is. You think he did this to me. You want to put him in prison.” She slapped her sketchbook. “Let’s get this straight—Michael did not hurt me. I fell down the embankment behind my cabin. I don’t know where he is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. All you want is someone to blame so the media can have a juicy story and you can have your fifteen minutes of fame and get a promotion. You want to be the easy hero, but it won’t work, Mr. Padooza or whatever your name is. Michael is very… Michael is…”
Lucy shoved herself back into the pillows, glaring at the wall.
Cat sat on the bed. “Before you lost consciousness, you told the paramedics it was Michael who’d beaten you. Then a minute ago, you told me you fell off your roof. Now you say you slid down an embankment.”
“Deep down Michael is a good person,” Cross whispered.
David opened a manila folder and placed it on the artist’s lap. “Miss Cross? This is Michael Lake’s police file. It says he’s hurt other women before. He’s been arrested numerous times for serious crimes against these women. There is suspicion that he may have murdered a woman.
“We need your help finding Mr. Lake before he hurts someone else. Any information you can give us about his habits, where he goes, who his friends are, what he does, things like that.”
Cross remained silent, lips pursed.
Taking off his glasses, David pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know you love him, Miss Cross, but Michael needs help. I’ve dealt with men like Michael my whole career. He’s sick. He can’t control his violence. I know you don’t believe this, but you’re very lucky he didn’t kill you.”
Cross pushed the file away, trying not to look at the report sheet. On top was Michael’s mug shot. For just a second, she thought his eyes did look dangerous.
David leaned close, creating an intimate space between them. “Michael Lake tried to beat you to death, and he almost succeeded. Don’t you remember?”
Cross mouthed a silent ‘No’.
Cat rubbed Cross’s foot through the covers. “If you don’t believe Detective Padcula, read the reports about this man who hurts women time and time again.”
Cross looked from Cat to the detective. “Please, you have to understand that Michael is the way he is because people have hurt him. If he were to go to jail, he’d die. You think he’s horrible, but he’s like a child who’s lost and scared.”
Going to the closet, Cat found a hand mirror that Nathan had thought to include in Cross’s toiletries bag. She held it a few inches from Cross’s face. “Look at what this ‘lost and scared child’ did to you, Cross.”
In spite of herself, Cross stared at the face in the mirror, touching her nose then the slash across her cheek as if she did not believe what she was seeing. After a minute, she pushed the mirror away and closed her eyes.
David took her hand and cradled it. “Lucy, please, you have to—“
Cross flared, snatching her hand out of his, though Cat could see her rage had lost some of its fire. “Michael won’t hurt anybody else. I’m the one who caused this whole thing. I argued with him. He needed me to love him, not bitch at him. I shouldn’t have talked back. I should have just loved him better and this never would have happened. It’s my fault.”
“You don’t believe what you’re saying,” Cat said firmly. “I know you don’t. Stop for a minute and think about what happened. Get past that pretty face and the sex and see what he’s done to you. Not just these injuries, but look at what he’s done to your spirit. He’s robbed you of who you are.”
Cross lay back exhausted. The dull headache that never seemed to ease had left her nauseated. “I want to sleep,” she said bitterly. “You’ll never understand. Please just leave me alone.”
Resigned, David nodded. “Alright, but if you change your mind and want to talk, call me.” He took a card from his raincoat, wrote his home phone number on the back and put it on her bedside table next to the phone. “Call day or night.”
He waited for a response, and, not getting one, replaced his glasses and stood. “I’ll stop in again tomorrow to see how you’re getting along.” He touched Cat’s shoulder and pointed to the door. “Miss Richardson, may I speak with you outside for a moment?”
Caught between feeling a need to comfort Cross and thrilling to his invitation, Cat looked from one to the other, decided Cross would be okay for two minutes, and walked calmly out into the hall, clutching her stethoscope.
The moment he turned to face her, her, her mind jumped its track and went out of control. She imagined her face as a twitching mass of drooping, wrinkled eyelids and fleshy nasolabial folds. Sudden fears cropped up that wild nostril hairs matted with clumps of dried mucus were hanging from her nose, while between the crevices of her teeth, black and green organic material gathered in a combined effort to sabotage whatever natural beauty she may once have had.
Surreptitiously pinching the end of her nose in an ‘I’m-just-thinking’ gesture, she felt for nasal deposits and ugly bristles. There was no point in alarm, she thought, though the image of her as reflected in the wide lenses of his glasses was definitely Quasimodo-ish.
“Hi,” she said, her lips trembling. She had meant it to be a low and intimate greeting; instead, it came out sounding like Yoda under water.
He took a step closer, and as he did so, his raincoat fell open, revealing his shoulder holster and gun—just as she had imagined.
“Do you think you can talk to her, Red? The district attorney is going after this guy regardless of what she says or doesn’t say, but it would help if she could give us some information.”
“I’d planned on doing just that.”
“Good. I hope the information I gave her about his other victims will wake her up.”
For a moment, he stared at her as if he was trying to fix her image in his mind, then took out his notebook and jotted something down. When he finished, he smiled and, unsure of what to do next, gazed at the floor. It was then he noticed her feet for the first time. He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and took out his notebook again.
It seemed to her that he wrote for a very long time. When he finally put away his pen, he was grinning. “I’ve got to run back to my office for a meeting or I’d ask you to have a cup of coffee.”
She tried hard to get her mind to dip into her vast supply of snappy comebacks, but there was nothing on the tip of her tongue except blanks. It was pre-limerence performance anxiety rendering her mute.
“I don’t do coffee,” she said finally, wanting to kick herself even as she said the words. She undoubtedly sounded like an idiot. I don’t do coffee?
He glanced at the elevator indicator and then his watch. At the same moment, her renegade stethoscope slipped from around her neck and landed on the floor between them with a dull clunk.
Stooping to retrieve the thing, some of her hair caught on his raincoat button—the one closest to his crotch.
Face-to-face with his fly, she struggled to catch hold of the unwieldy rubber and metal menace on the floor, at the same time attempting to untangle her hair from his button.
“Here, let me help,” he said, at first gingerly trying to unwind her hair, then plucking at it as if Medusa herself were climbing up his coat.
Three or four passersby paused briefly to stare.
“You know, Red,” he chuckled, “if our jobs don’t work out, I’ll bet we could get a job in North Beach in one of those live love-act places.”
Blushing furiously, she wheezed with laughter and gave her hair a hard yank, separating it from the button.
Their wails of hysterical laughter were dying down when she said, “That was good for me, Blackie, how about you?” which set them off again.
When they got hold of themselves, they settled into an awkward silence.
He searched her face slowly, until he noticed her notice and began sidestepping to the elevator. “Are you going to be here tomorrow, say about one p.m. or so?”
“I hope so. How about you?”
“Gonna try.” He paused. “Thanks for your help with Miss Cross. I appreciate it.”
She was moving an inch at a time back into Cross’s room. “Anytime, Blackie.” It had definitely been easier on the phone—at least her mind had functioned. She had to get a grip on herself.
He stepped onto the crowded elevator and waved a final time.
“Hey!” She crossed the hall and wedged one of her noteworthy feet against the elevator doors that were now straining to close. The hotel elevator scene from Barefoot in the Park played clearly in her mind: he a bespectacled Robert Redford in a raincoat with a few straggling strands of red hair still hanging from a lower front button; she, Jane Fonda in special-order running shoes striking a sexy pose.
“Whatever you do, David…” She paused. The group in the elevator waited with him. “…don’t hurt the duck.”