Distraught Drew had gone to his father’s house, completely lost in his grief. He’d never known such pain before. Those three days with Christie were what he’d yearned for all these years. She was his for those hours, but the moment he took his eyes off her she was lost to him again. His heart clenched into a fist, and everything he’d ever learned or loved sank into the cold ocean of his chest.
Thomas’s thoughts drifted as he sat there. At first he had been nervous about seeing Eric, but now he was visited by a feeling of quiet elation. These moments that he spent waiting were exquisite in their own way — perfect weather, with birds arcing through the sky and people walking and talking up and down the boulevard. It was one of those beautiful instants that get past you if you don’t look. But Thomas was looking. He had nowhere to go and everything to hope for.
While Thomas was having these thoughts, a purple Chrysler drove up and a tall young man climbed out. There was a dark cast to his face and a pained grimace in his expression.
Eric, Christie, and Mona had just gotten into the elevator on the twenty-fifth floor, going down to the street for a walk to the pizza restaurant that Mona loved.
Pittman and Rodriguez were finishing their coffees and ham sandwiches and thinking about going back on the prowl.
Drew stood not six feet from Thomas. After first glances, neither paid heed to the other.
The policemen were in the street, not a block from the Tennyson.
Eric and Christie and Mona entered the lobby. When Thomas saw Eric he stood up and smiled. He would wait patiently for his brother to come out.
Mona dashed for the revolving door, obviously ecstatic about their adventure. Christie came in the next partition, watching after the child and glowing. Eric came last. Just when he was sealed within the glass quarter section, Drew grabbed Thomas’s cart and shoved it into the aperture that Christie had just left.
“Hey, man!” Thomas grabbed Drew by the shoulder, but with a sweep of his arm the tall young man knocked Thomas to the ground.
He took out his father’s Luger, and Christie screamed.
This wasn’t how Drew had it planned. He didn’t want to confront Christie on the street. He wanted to follow Eric to a quiet place and kill him. Kill him and maybe later he could console Christie, take her away to rest. He would be the shoulder she could cry on. But seeing her he was overcome by unexpected hatred. All those things she said that excited him so much in bed now had other meanings. She had cheated on him, made him into a fool. Made love to Eric while telling him a hundred lies.
“Drew!” Christie shouted, and he hated her even more.
The pistol rose of its own accord. Drew didn’t hear the shot, only saw the young mother convulse. He fired three more times, and Christie was down.
Eric shouted and strained against the thick glass.
The child ran for her mother as Drew leveled the gun at her.
Thomas leaped through the air shouting, “Lily!” and he pulled Mona down, wrapping his skinny body around her.
The policemen were running by then.
Drew realized what he had done, but he couldn’t stop his arm and hand from aiming and firing.
Thomas felt each bullet enter his back. He counted them — one, two, three. And then he heard firecrackers and yelling. The child was the loudest, shouting for her mother. Then came Eric with that booming voice Thomas remembered from childhood. And then the darkness he’d known since the death of his mother began to brighten. It got lighter and lighter until all there was was light — no details or shadows, just pure light and then nothing at all.
15
Thomas awoke in a hospital room breathing in mild alcohol vapors and other medicinal scents. He tried to remember what had happened, why he was there, but it didn’t come immediately. His back hurt. That brought on the memory of being shot.
Who shot me? The police? No, that was a long time ago and in the front not the back.
There was a spider tentatively making its way up the eggshell-colored nylon curtain next to the window. Thomas smiled, feeling akin to the gangly arachnid trying to survive in a place where cleanliness meant her demise.
“Are you awake?” a woman’s voice asked.
Thomas looked up and saw that it was Ahn. For some reason this didn’t surprise him.
“Hi,” Thomas said.
“How are you?” she asked.
She put her knitting down and sat forward in the chair, touching the edge of the mattress with her fingertips.
“I’m okay, Ahn,” Thomas said.
The ageless Vietnamese woman frowned and tilted her head. She looked closely at the weathered, battered, and scarred face. Then she drew back in frightened surprise.
“Tommy?”
“Yeah.” The solitary word floated on the music of a lifelong apology.
“What’s happened to you?” Fear and guilt clouded her usually impassive face.
“Life, I guess.”
Thomas could see this life imagined in her eyes — the knife wounds and roofless nights, broken bones and empty pockets. Ahn suffered for him.
“I am so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t cry, Ahn. It’s not so bad. I’m alive.”
The little woman got to her feet and touched his callused hands, hands that were so big compared to his body that they seemed swollen.
“What happened?” Thomas asked.
“You were shot,” she said. “You saved Mona, but that boy shot you in the back trying to kill her.”
“That was the little girl?”
“Yes. The police came and killed him before he could finish killing you.”
It was as if she were talking about some story in a book or on Madeline’s TV, something far away from Thomas.
“And there was a woman?” he half-asked.
“Mona’s mother, Christie,” Ahn said solemnly. “She died on the way to the hospital.”
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said. “He took my cart and shoved it into the door. I tried to stop him.”
“You saved Mona, Tommy. Oh, Tommy, look at you.”
“Where’s Eric?”
“He’s getting ready for the funeral. It’s tomorrow. Dr. Nolan went with him. They asked me to come here and see about you. But, but they didn’t know who you were. They said your name was Bruno.”
“Why did you tell me not to call?” Thomas asked. The question had been in his heart for years. Just asking made him feel better.
Ahn couldn’t answer right away. Her eyes filled up, and she slumped into her chair.
Thomas’s back hurt and his breathing was shallow. He wanted to get up and comfort his old nurse but didn’t have the strength.
“It’s okay, Ahn. I’m here now.”
“But you are so hurt. Your hands and face. Your chest. How can all this happen to a child?”
Thomas found that he could still shrug if he didn’t pull his shoulders too high.
“I thought,” Ahn said. “I thought that if you came back home something bad would happen to you, like your mother. Maybe you get sick. I don’t know.”
“Because of Eric?”
Ahn nodded.
“Eric can’t hurt me, Ahn. He’s my brother. He always saved me.”
There was sunlight shining in through the window. Thomas realized that it didn’t hurt his eyes. He smiled then and so did Ahn.
“I forgot you,” she confessed.
“I never forgot you.”
Thomas slipped into a coma that evening. Dr. Nolan and Eric came to the hospital when Ahn told them who he was. They stood over his frail body.