Morris appeared to wait for Rick to protest, but he felt despondent, exhausted, the pain sawing across his bleeding tooth stump, his eyesight purpled and darkening.
"I'm going to take good care of you, okay? But if you try to resist me now, start calling me names or fighting, then I'm going to give you Narcan. What is that, you might ask? I call it God in a syringe. It blocks the reception of morphine. The antidote. You can make guys who look dead from an OD get up and sing. I've done that, a real crowd-pleaser, let me tell you. You start giving me shit, Rick, then I'm going to give you two milligrams of Narcan and that is going to block the fifteen milligrams of morphine that I gave you before. It takes twenty seconds to work. All right? Which is to say that your arm is going to go from feeling not bad at all to feeling like someone just cut it off, which"-Morris calmed himself-"of course, someone did." He looked at Tommy. "Get my circular saw. Also, I folded some plastic overalls in there. Okay, we'll put that music on."
"You got tapes?" Tommy's voice echoed in the cavernous room.
I love my hand, my fingers, Rick thought with strange detachment. "Wait, wait," he said weakly. "Wait-"
"I've got the Rolling Stones, I've got Salt-N-Pepa, the Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson-you know, 'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain'-all kinds of good music." Morris turned back to Rick. "You got a request?"
Rick made a fist with his left hand, just to remember. Oh, Paul, he thought, please do something.
"Make your pick," ordered Morris.
He spittled a piece of tooth onto his lower lip. The pain came back to his rib. "Give me the Bruce."
"Great choice." Morris nodded his approval. "Fine. Make it loud, Tommy. Good. Yes. I'll take the saw." He looked at Rick, his mouth a tight slit of concentration. "This goes quick, man, just listen to the music."
Room 527, Pierre Hotel Sixty-first Street and Fifth Avenue, Manhattan September 21, 1999
Somebody buys his suits for him, she realized, seeing Charlie leaning darkly against the hotel bar reading a sheet of paper and sipping his drink. He didn't notice her come toward him, which worried her, since she'd spent what time and money she had to make him think she was someone she was not, buying new lipstick, perfume, and a pair of fake gold earrings. How ridiculous the trouble she'd gone to, considering that he'd probably gone to no trouble at all! Wriggling into her one little black dress again-what choice did she have? Well, you gotta do who you gotta do, they used to say at the prison. She'd worked the lunch shift at Jim-Jack's, finally leaving at four, then hurried home through the windy rain to shower and put herself together, wondering what men in their late fifties liked in a younger woman. Youth, for starters. But nothing flashy or cheap-looking. If a man like Charlie wasn't comfortable, he wasn't going to get involved. He would smile politely and move on. Now she slipped past the few other men at the bar and let her hand touch Charlie's sleeve.
"Hey, mister," she whispered close as he turned. "Remember me? I'm that girl who flirted with you last night." She kissed him quickly on the cheek, leaving a smudge. She felt nervous, a little insecure, but a drink would fix that. "Been here long?"
"No." He shook his head and folded the paper and slipped it into his breast pocket. They stood silently, and as before he seemed to be studying her. But his attention was not cold and hard; rather, it seemed to come from some other part of him. His blue eyes were sorrowful. She remembered what he'd said about his son.
She ordered a drink. "You seem glum. Or preoccupied. Or noncommittal."
"Nah," he said, "just business." He shifted his weight uncomfortably.
"Just glum old preoccupying business?"
"That's it," he said. "Everybody wears a nice suit and you try to kill the other guy first."
She touched the scar on his hand, rubbed it. "Why did you become a businessman?"
"I wanted to make money."
"Did you ever have any other inclinations?"
"You mean artistic or musical or something? Tap-dancing?"
"I don't know."
"At the time I had to think of something to do to support my family. I had to pull a rabbit out of a hat."
She sipped at her glass, not sure what to say.
"I was in my early thirties and I needed a new start."
It seemed impossible that he'd never been able to do whatever he wanted. "Something happened?" she asked.
"Something always happens, Melissa. I'm sure a few things have happened to you."
"Why do you say that?" She felt the drink warming her cheeks. "You don't think I'm just some nice young woman who likes talking to you?"
"I think you are nice and young, and what I don't get is why you're not married already or with some great guy starting out."
If you only knew, she thought. "If you only knew," she said.
"It can't be that bad."
"No," she agreed. "It's not. But I wandered into this place last night and heard you eviscerate whoever it was on the phone, and then you glared at me like I was the problem and I thought, Well, here's a live one." She gave him a soft jab in the arm. "Okay?"
"Okay." He smiled. "You're something."
"I better be something," she teased. "How else am I going to get your attention?"
"You did all right in that department."
"I noticed before that your back looks like it hurts."
"I'm okay."
He was a little defensive. "You just walked stiffly, that's all."
He didn't say anything.
"You hurt it?"
He pulled the same piece of paper from his breast pocket, scanned it distractedly, refolded it, and put it back. "Long time ago."
Again a silence fell between them. He looked down with a troubled expression. She wanted to kiss his brow. He can't say it, she thought; he wants to, but he doesn't know how. She leaned closer to him. "Charlie?" she whispered.
"Yes?"
She kept her hand on his arm, rubbed the material of his suit ever so softly. "Get a room."
"Here?"
She nodded. "C'mon. You can lie down. I'll give you a back rub and make charming conversation that you won't appreciate because you like the back rub so much."
He studied her, with sadness it seemed, a yearning that pained him. "Melissa," he exhaled, "I'm an old guy. I-"
She touched her finger to his lips. "Trust me," she whispered next to his cheek. "We'll just talk if that's what you want."
He sighed heavily, as if unable not to comply, and pulled out his billfold. He slipped a credit card onto the bar, then found a napkin, unclicked his fountain pen, and wrote, as she watched the letters appear, "I need a nice room for two, now. Arrange this, please-and tip yourself $500." He beckoned the bartender and slid the card and napkin toward him.
The bartender inspected the napkin, blinked his quiet assent, did not look at Christina, then disappeared to the phone.
The room was too cold, and he turned down the air conditioning. They left the lights off, and the last edge of the day fell in through the windows. He sat in a padded armchair and faced her, and she said to herself, Look at his eyes, that's where you'll find him. The other things are not him, maybe even a disguise somehow, as you have disguised yourself for him. She lit a cigarette. "I shouldn't do this."