Well, what of it? Direct confrontation has never been our specialty. He has a back; eventually, I will find it, and I will drive a sword into it.
In the meantime, I watch the woman. Susan Carrigan. Dull as church, predictable as famine. She does nothing to even endanger herself, much less the species, the planet. God’s alabaster moth hangs around her, sometimes in his enriched white-bread guise — Andy Harbinger! that’s his idea of humor! — so I don’t dare to make a move against her, not yet.
But what is his plan? What is this woman supposed to do? The aggravation is unbearable. Oh, the revenge I will take, once it’s safe!
As for the other one, my little Pami, she’s also disappeared. That’s less important.
I dare not fail. I dare not even ask for extra help. I dare not. What would be done to me—
No. We don’t even think about what would be done to me.
28
The doctor took Frank aside while Pami was getting dressed. “Have you had any sexual contact with that young woman?”
“Not me,” Frank said. “I won’t even shake her hand. I’m just here as a friend.”
The doctor was a pleasant enough guy, skinny, balding, about forty. It was hard to tell if he was looking worried about Pami, or if he just looked worried all the time. Being a doctor with a specialty in AIDS, he might as well look worried all the time. He said, “I get the impression she’s an illegal alien.”
Frank gave him a careful look. He said, “The other doctor.”
“Murphy. Who referred you.”
“Yeah, him. He agreed, the deal was, medicine’s the only thing we’re talking about. Cause we don’t want her to spread it, right?”
The doctor smiled thinly, but went on looking worried. “Don’t worry, Mr. Smith, I’m not going to call the Immigration Service. The only point I want to make is that Pami will be needing hospitalization very soon, and I’m not so sure she’ll qualify under any medical plan at all.”
“So what happens? They leave her in the street?”
The doctor shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “They might.”
“Nice people,” Frank said. “How long’s she got?”
“A month or two before she’ll need to be in the hospital. After that... Less than a year, certainly. Less than a week, perhaps.”
“And what can you do for her, between now and then?”
“You’ll have those prescriptions filled,” the doctor said. “The unguent will ease the chafing of the sores. The other things will help her symptomatically, make life a little more pleasant. That’s all that can be done, short of hospitalization.”
Pami came out, dressed again in the clothes Frank had bought her. She didn’t quite know how to wear them yet, so they hung on her as though they didn’t fit, but in fact they did. She smiled her crooked smile at the doctor. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and smiled back.
The doctor liked her; Frank could tell. The thing about Pami was, when she wasn’t being tough she was like a sweet little kid. Like a pet that could talk. Frank was keeping her around because, as he told himself, she gave him an interest in life, now that he was in semi-retirement with the East St. Louis cash. Anyway, it’s nice to know somebody that’s worse off than you, somebody you can feel sorry for.
The doctor pointed to his receptionist, telling Frank, “You can pay Mrs. Rubinstein.”
“Right.”
Mrs. Rubinstein said, “How will you be paying today, Mr. Smith?”
“Cash,” Frank said, bringing a wad of it out of his pants pocket.
The doctor, about to turn away, looked back and gave Frank a smile as crooked as Pami’s. “You, Mr. Smith,” he said, “are one of those enigmas that will keep me awake at night. I don’t suppose you’d care to satisfy my curiosity just a bit.”
“Nah,” Frank said.
They came walking around to the back of the NYU Medical Center, where they’d left Frank’s most recent car — a blue Toyota, stolen in New Jersey, now sporting altered New York plates — and some bum was lying on the ground against the curbside rear wheel. It looked as though he was drunk or something and fell off the curb, and now he couldn’t get up again. The way the car in front was jammed up against the Toyota, Frank wouldn’t be able to get clear without backing up, and he couldn’t do that with this bum lying draped around the rear wheel, so he poked the guy with his toe, saying, “Come on, pal, rise and shine. Make love to some other tire, okay?”
The bum moved, in some kind of fitful and ineffectual way that did no good at all. Wiped out on cheap port wine, probably. Frank bent and grabbed the guy’s arm through the sleeve of the ratty topcoat, but when he pulled, the guy just flopped over onto his back, the topcoat gaping open, showing striped pajamas underneath. “Jesus,” Frank said, in disgust, “this turkey doesn’t even have any clothes.”
“Oh, look,” Pami said, “look at his neck.”
There was some sort of wound on the guy’s neck, obscured by dried blood. There was more blood around his nose. He was Japanese or Chinese or something like that, and only half-conscious.
“Aw, crap,” Frank said. “I don’t even wanna touch him.” And he thought, him, too. All round me, people I don’t want to touch.
Pami hunkered beside the wounded drunken Jap, looking into his eyes. “He’s from the hospital.”
“You think so? Okay, lemme go get somebody, bring him back.”
But that roused the Jap, who suddenly, fitfully, shook his head back and forth, massive woozy headshakes, as though he had a lobster stuck to his nose.
Frank frowned down at him. “You from the hospital? Why you don’t wanna go back?”
The Jap was lying mostly on his back now on the asphalt, between the parked cars. He held his arms up toward Frank and pressed the insides of his wrists together, looking mutely past them at Frank.
“Handcuffs,” Frank decided. “They’ll arrest you?”
Now the Jap nodded, as vigorously and erratically as before.
Frank gazed upon him without love. “You got anything catching?”
Headshake.
Frank offered a sour grin. “Well, that’ll make a change. Come on,” he told Pami, “we’ll throw him in the backseat and get the hell out of here.”
While they packed he groused. “I don’t see why we gotta keep the guy around at all,” he muttered, putting his new all-cotton shirts in his new all-leather bag. “Some dumb Jap, can’t even talk, probably a loony.”
Pami paid him no attention. She didn’t have a whole lot of clothing to pack, but she took a long time at it because she had to stroke and refold and grin at every damn piece.
“Can’t even stay in one place on account of him,” Frank griped.
The problem was, in New York City there was no hotel room anywhere that you could get to without going past the front desk, and there was no way Frank was going to carry that mute sick Jap in and by the front desk and up to a room, without getting stopped. What they needed was a roadside motel somewhere, that Frank could go into the office of and pay in advance and then drive right on down and park in front of the room. So nobody sees the Jap at all.
“I don’t know how long we can carry him around, though,” Frank said.
Pami said, “Maybe he’ll get better.” She shrugged, and looked more bitter than she had for several days. “Maybe he’ll get better.”
They’d left him in the backseat of the Toyota, lying there like a pile of wash on its way to the laundromat, and when they came back around the corner from the motor hotel they’d been staying in on Tenth Avenue he was still there. Either asleep or dead. He moved slightly, disturbed, when they climbed in, so he wasn’t dead.