QUINCY FOUND LYDELL’S NEW room at Detroit Receiving by tracking the music all the way from the nurses’ station. Lydell was propped up in bed with his eyes shut and his hands folded on his stomach. He looked like a corpse. On the TV mounted near the ceiling Bugs Bunny was giving the Tasmanian Devil a nervous breakdown, but in mime; there was no room for any sound but the Supremes shouting “Itching in My Heart” from the transistor radio on the bedside table. Quincy picked it up and dialed it off.
Lydell opened his eyes, saw Quincy, and grinned. His friend was getting used to his resemblance to a skull when he did that. “Hey, bro. That there’s my life support.”
“When I brought it here I didn’t think you was going to use it to drive out cockroaches,” Quincy said. “The nurses was doing odds and evens to see which one was going to get to throw it out the window and you after it when I come along.”
“You should of let them. Maybe that Shannon’d win. She likes me.”
“She the one with the tits?”
“They all got tits; that’s why they call them nurses. Last time she give me a sponge bath I tried to impress her, but I think they put saltpeter in my i.v.”
Quincy pointed his chin at the curtain dividing the dim room. “Who’s next door?”
“Search me. I think he died.”
“How’s the food?”
Lydell lifted a hand with a flexible tube taped to the underside of the wrist. “I’ll ring for a straw and you can try it yourself.”
“Guess I wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying.”
“No good, man. One of us got to listen.”
“Krystal says hello.”
“That’s nice. She never said it when I was around.”
“Well, you know Krystal.”
“Too short. How’s the old lady?”
The woman Lydell boarded with had been too stiff with arthritis to come visit. “The joints, you know.” Quincy shrugged.
“I bet she been sleeping with that hot water bottle. I told her that wet heat just makes it worse.”
“She says she’ll be off her butt to cook you kidneys when you get out. She says they’re your favorite. I didn’t know that.”
“I ain’t getting out.”
“Want me to open them blinds? View from up here’s better than what you had on three.”
“You bring the cigs?”
“Now, what you want with them? They’re what put you in here.”
Lydell grunted in disgust, rummaged in the drawer of the table, and fell back. “C’mon. They only put me to sleep so’s they can sneak in and take ’em away.”
“Ain’t you dying fast enough?”
“Dogs. The boy went and said the word.”
Quincy took the pack of Kents out of his shirt pocket, opened it, and gave him one. “I never knew you to just up and roll over.” He held the match.
The smoke came out in a sigh. Lydell put his head back against the window. “I seen about a thousand numbers come up. I figure mine’s past due.”
“Doc says it’s operable.”
“He tell you what they got to take out?”
“Well, there’s always craps.”
Lydell grinned, puffed, and plucked a shred of tobacco from his lower lip. He frowned. “Some son of a bitch stole the jade holder my daddy give me.”
“You won it off Joe Petite on three straight throws.”
“My daddy’d of give me one like it if he didn’t run off. Hear from Wilson?”
“Too early.”
“I see on TV the cops hit Beatrice Blackwood’s place.”
“She made bail. No big thing.”
“Three raids in two weeks. I figure the cops know. That Wilson’s all mouth and no balls.”
“If that was the case he’d be in jail all the time.”
“Maybe that’s how he stays out.”
“They ain’t arrested me,” Quincy said. “No reason. For just about the first time since I can remember I ain’t doing nothing against the law.”
“How’s it feel?”
“Not as bad as I thought.”
“I hear once you get used to it you don’t never want to go back.”
“That’s cornholing.”
“I never done that either.”
Quincy stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m thinking maybe I been wasting my time with numbers. I’m thinking maybe Mahomet’s on to something with this civil rights thing.”
“Forget that racket. The money’s for shit and the cops bust sticks on your head.”
“I ain’t thinking of making money at it,” Quincy said. “Didn’t you feel nothing at all when the police was slapping you and Mahomet around?”
“I felt a cop’s arm across’t my throat and my arm getting busted.”
“I don’t know, Lydell. You and me we always laughed at Wilson McCoy and that bunch, marching and throwing bricks and getting the shit beat out of them for no money. Maybe they been right all along. Not about what they been doing, but why they done it. Maybe change is coming.”
“Take a hot bath and forget about it.”
“No, really. I been studying on it a lot lately.”
“Don’t turn Christer on me, Quincy. You’re all I got.” Lydell held out the cigarette. “You better put that out now and find me a nurse. I ain’t feeling too good.”
Quincy got one from the station, a small dark woman of about thirty with a nice shape, and waited in the corridor while she went in. A white man in his fifties shuffled past in paper slippers and a checked robe, using his i.v. stand as a walking stick. He had a little hole in the white gauze wrapped around his throat, and from time to time he inserted the filter end of a burning cigarette in the hole. Smoke blew out.
Quincy felt heat between his fingers, looked down, and saw he was still holding Lydell’s Kent. He dropped it quickly and mashed it underfoot.
He felt conspicuous. He was wearing his chalkstripe double-breasted over peach silk. Suddenly he was convinced he looked like a pimp. He wanted to go home and change clothes, but he hadn’t a gray suit or a white shirt to his name.
The nurse came out. She had large chocolate-brown eyes. “Someone’s been smoking in there.”
“Sorry.”
“You’d better finish your visit. That sedative will take effect in a few minutes.”
“Thanks. You Shannon?”
She put a hand on her hip. “Now, what’s that boy been saying about me?”
“He’d rather be kicked by you than kissed by Diana Ross.”
“One of you lights up in that room again he’ll get his wish. You, too. I’ve carried around bigger men than you.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“I already did.” She touched his arm, then walked away down the hall.
Lydell was lying flat with the TV off. From the doorway, Quincy noticed for the first time that his friend was going bald in front. He hadn’t seen him often without his hat. Quincy approached the bed. “I see what you mean about that Shannon. A man could get took care of by worse.”
“You ought to see what I get at night.”
“Cuter than Shannon?”
“Like Moms Mabley.”
“Want me to bring you anything next time?”
“Pack of Rents.”
Quincy rested his hands on the bedrail where other hands had worn the white enamel down to bare metal. “You got any ideas at all about why you and me are friends?”
“You used to wail the shit out of the big kids when I couldn’t talk my way clear.”
“That’s why I’m your friend. How come you’re mine?”
“‘Cause you’re too big, and you’re uglier than you are big. I bet Krystal puts a bag over her head too just in case yours comes off.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“No.”
“Me either.”
Lydell closed his eyes. Quincy was about to leave when they opened again and turned his way. “What’s that you said once’t about a Viking funeral?”
“I don’t recall it.”
“Sure you do.”
“It was in Beau Geste,” Quincy said. “When Gary Cooper and his brothers was kids in the movie they thought that was the best way to go out, burning in a boat cast adrift on the water. That’s what his brothers done to him in the end when he got killed. It didn’t mean nothing. I was just talking to hear myself.”
“Think you can fix up something like it for me?”
“In twenty or thirty years, when it’s time.”
A hand too bony to support Lydell’s World Series ring closed on one of Quincy’s. “No shit, Quincy. This here’s Lydell. We went in together on our first whore.”
“Man, she was ugly.”
“First whores is supposed to be. I ain’t much for water. A fire’ll do. Make it kind of big, huh?”
Quincy laid his other hand on top of Lydell’s. “I’ll burn down the town.”
“Shiiit.” Lydell grinned and went to sleep.