“I’ll be fine,” she hollered, her hands cupped together. “Just e-mail me.”
I wake myself up laughing in the hospital bed. Just e-mail me. The words, the concept, like something from an unfamiliar language: Urdu or Farsi or the Latin of the Romans.
I ease my head back onto the pillow and breathe and try to steady myself a little. I can’t believe I let her go.
The insistent noise and fuss we have learned to expect from hospital rooms is absent now. No one charges down the hallway outside, no nurses in scrubs slip in and out of the door to check my fluid levels or bring dinner or adjust the bed. Every once in a while I hear a scream, or the squeaking wheel of a rolling cart, from some other room or from around some corner.
Eventually I get my legs off the bed and my feet on the floor, and I make my way over to where my clothes are heaped in a pile.
My arm is in a sling, wrapped elaborately in bandages and cinched tightly against my side. I find my watch. I find my shoes. I survey my clothing. The pants are wearable, but my blood-soaked shirt and jacket must be left behind, and I will stay in the hospital gown until I can stop at home and change.
After Martha’s house. First I’m going to stop at Albin Street and ask Martha a few questions.
Dr. Fenton is at the nurses’ station in the hallway, writing rapidly on the top clipboard on her pile. She looks up at me, shambling along the hall toward her, and looks down again.
“So—” I say.
“I get it,” she says. “You’re going.”
From an examination room behind Dr. Fenton there’s a steady anguished groaning. From another, someone is saying, “Just take it easy—just take it easy—just take it easy.”
“You should stay for twenty-four hours at least,” says Fenton. “You need to be observed. You need a course of antibiotics.”
“Oh,” I say, and look back over my shoulder at the desolate room. “Well, can I get that now?”
“I said you need a course of antibiotics,” she says, grabbing her clipboard and striding off. “We don’t have any.”
Houdini is waiting just outside the main lobby door of Concord Hospital, like a mafia bodyguard stationed at the sickbed of the capo. As soon as I emerge blinking into the parking lot in my pale blue gown he nods at me, I swear to God he does, and off we go.
2.
My watch says it’s 11:15, and I know that means 11:15 a.m. because the sun is high and bright as Houdini and I make our way north across Concord. But I don’t know what day it is—I literally have no idea. I was dead in the dirt at Fort Riley for who knows how long, and then I was on a helicopter and then I was in a bed on the fourth floor of Concord Hospital floating in and out of ether for years and years.
I walk as fast as I can manage across the city toward Martha’s house, my dead arm tight in its harness, sweat dripping down my back and plastering my hospital gown against my spine. Looking around, examining the city after being gone, it’s like one of those puzzle pages in a children’s magazine: Look at these two pictures and spot what’s changed. Down Pleasant Street and then up along Rumford. Walls with new graffiti; cars that had one wheel gone and the hood popped open are now down to the rims all the way around, or the glass of the windshield’s been pried out with a crowbar. Or they’re actually burning, thick black smoke pouring out of the engine. More houses that have been left behind, front doors yawning wide. Telephone poles made into stumps.
Last week Pirelli’s Deli on Wilde Street was bustling, a cheerful violence-free dry goods rummage, with a couple of guys giving haircuts, of all things, in the back. Now the chain grate is pulled down over the doors and windows, and Pirelli stands on the sidewalk scowling, a strip of ammunition across his chest like a bandito.
Houdini is growling as we walk, bounding out ahead of me, his eyes fierce yellow slits. The sun beats on the sidewalks.
“Martha?” I bang on the door with my left hand, pause for a moment, then bang again. “Martha, are you in there?”
The Cavatones’ lawn had been the only one mowed, but now it’s starting to catch up with the others, wildness creeping in, the trim green fuzz growing out like uncut hair. My arm pulses suddenly, painfully, and I wince.
I knock again, waiting to hear those locks being thrown open, one by one. Nothing. I shout. “Hey, Martha?”
Across the street a window blind snaps open, a wary face peers out. “Excuse me?” I call. “Hey—” The blinds shoot closed again. A dog barks somewhere, down the street, and Houdini twitches his small head around in search of the challenger.
My fist is raised to knock again when the door jerks open and a strong hand grabs my wrist, and somebody in one quick motion drags me inside and kicks the door closed behind me. I’m pushed against a wall, my right arm sending out spasms of pain, and there’s hot breath in my face. A tumble of hair, a crooked chin.
“Cortez,” I say. “Hello.”
“Oh, shit,” he says, the good-humored voice, the laughing eyes. “I know you.”
Cortez lets go of my wrist, steps back, embraces me like I’m an old friend he’s picking up at the airport. “Policeman!”
His staple gun is dangling from his right hand, but he leaves it angled down, pointed at the ground. Houdini is out on the porch, barking like a madman, so I step over and open the door, let him in.
“Where did you come from?” Cortez asks. “Why are you dressed for the mental asylum?”
“Where’s Martha?”
“Oh, hell,” he says, and flings himself into the Cavatones’ fat leather Barcalounger. “I thought you were going to tell me.”
“She’s not here?”
“I don’t lie, Policeman.”
Cortez watches with amusement while I search the small house, working my way through the closets of the living room, opening all the ones in the bedroom and peering under the bed, looking for Martha or evidence of Martha. Nothing. She’s gone, and her clothes are gone: her dressers empty, wooden hangers dangling on her side of the closet. Brett’s sidearm is also gone, the SIG Sauer he left behind for his wife’s protection when he went off to play crusader in the woods. In the kitchen, sunbeams still play across the warm wood table, and the brass kettle sits happily in its place on the stove. But there’s no sign of Martha, and my case has come full circle: It’s a missing person, just a different person than before.
I return to the living room and point an angry finger at Cortez.
“I thought you were supposed to be watching her?”
“I was,” he says, the staple gun lying across his lap like a kitten. “I am.”
“So?”
“So, I failed,” he says, and looks up at the ceiling with theatrical misery, as if to ask what kind of God could allow this to happen. “I absolutely failed.”
“Okay,” I say, “okay,” patting my pockets for a notebook, but of course I have no notebook—I have no pockets—and my right hand is my writing hand. “Just tell me the story.”
Cortez needs no prompting. He stands, gestures animatedly while he talks.
“On Saturday I came by three times. Three times I came.” He holds up forefinger, middle finger, pointer, and his rhythm is like a Bible story: Three times I called your name and three times you refused me. Three times Cortez the thief came from Garvins Falls Road on a bike-and-wagon, laden with supplies for Martha, three times he did a “comprehensive walkaround” to ensure the safety of the small home, checking the doors and windows, checking the perimeters. Morning, midday, sunset. Three times he made sure all was well; three times he paraded himself around with large and visible firearms, so any thugs or rapists would be aware of the presence of an armed defender. Sunday, Cortez says, same thing: morning visit, noon visit, nighttime.