Thanks for asking, I feel wonderful, I said.
I’m so very glad to hear it, Henry, Mr. Kindt said.
How was your tour of the ward with my aunt?
I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it when she comes to see you, Henry.
I can’t wait.
Oh, I suspect you can.
Mr. Kindt smiled.
I shuddered.
Cold? Mr. Kindt said. Funny, I am too. Or not funny. No, I don’t think so. You see, not long after Lulu left, I had a visitor of my own. Someone I hadn’t seen in many years. Most curious. He came and sat at the foot of my bed, much the way I often sit at the foot of yours. He was dressed in a pair of bathing trunks and dripped much more than seemed reasonable onto my sheets.
Who was it?
A young man. He reminded me much of myself in my own distant youth, except of course for the bathing trunks. And in fact he told me we shared a name.
So there is more than one of you here now.
Yes, but I don’t get the feeling he will be visiting you.
Well that’s a relief.
Yes, I suppose it must be. I wonder if he will drop in again? I suspect I should set out a towel.
Did you unload the merchandise?
I wouldn’t be sitting here smiling so much and discussing the beauty and sadness of aquatic wonders if I hadn’t. Or perhaps I should say I probably wouldn’t. After all, it is my favorite subject.
Along with history.
Yes, along with history. The accumulation of remembered circumstance.
You mean the pile.
Do I?
Yes, the pile of dead fish. I don’t feel very well, Mr. Kindt.
I know you don’t, Henry.
Very early that morning, I had put on the robe with the fake card, limped through the halls of the ward, which, incidentally, had gone dim, not to say dark, again, and picked up the speed.
Mr. Kindt had come into my room four times before I had relented. Each time he had gotten angrier, less eloquent, more insistent. Each time he had brought up Aunt Lulu.
She’s not at all like you described her to me, he said.
No comment, I said.
You need a little less juice in your system, Henry, it’s clouding your judgment, he said.
So no one came around with my meds. Not even after I had pressed the button that was supposed to bring them, not after I had called out, not after I had walked down the hallways of the ward and out into the little garden and yelled. Deserted. All the terminal, critical, serious, and mild cases were gone, the machines in their rooms strangely mute, no longer pumping and blinking. Even Mr. Kindt’s room was empty. I found a couple of loose cigars and a box of crackers. I lit one of the cigars and pressed the glowing end against the cracker box and burned a hole. Then I took a few crackers out and ate them. Or tried to eat them. It didn’t work — I couldn’t swallow, not even close. I spit what I had chewed into Mr. Kindt’s toilet, flushed, and, still holding the cigar, walked out.
I went to Dr. Tulp’s office and banged on the door for a while. Then sat on the floor, slumping considerably, my wound hurting hideously, expecting Aunt Lulu or who knows what to show up at any minute, and smoked.
Then I put on the robe and went to get the speed.
So maybe now …I said.
Oh, not quite yet, Henry, Mr. Kindt said. You made things quite difficult for me, you see. You made my position less certain, and even if it was only briefly, dear Henry, you will have to continue to pay for a time.
For how long?
Mr. Kindt shrugged. For a time. But you must think of it as an exchange — a simple transaction. Difficulty for difficulty. I would call it quite fair.
Like wampum and some hatchet heads for an island.
It’s much less problematic a transaction than that one was, Mr. Kindt said.
I’ll leave, I said. I’ll get the fuck out of here.
Leave? Mr. Kindt said. Leave here? None of us get to leave. Don’t be outrageous. That’s just silly, Henry.
It was. I didn’t completely know that yet, but that is certainly how it has turned out.
O.K., fine, I’ll talk to Dr. Tulp.
Do so. Yes, please do.
Dr. Tulp, who was back in her office, barely looked up at me over her papers.
I’m very busy, Henry, she said.
Like last night.
Yes, she said, like last night, like today, like tomorrow. This is a hospital in a city where hospitals are much needed, perhaps now more than ever. A hospital is a center of learning and healing. Here we are in the business of casting light into the shadows, of banishing trauma, of soothing hurts. How is the incision?
It’s great. I’m just fantastic. I really appreciate your concern.
It was necessary, Henry. It will help. You were drifting. I suspect it will lead you back on track.
Dr. Tulp’s eyes, which had flipped up for a moment, went back to her papers. I stood up. Dr. Tulp’s hand moved toward the buzzer that would bring the attendants. I sat back down.
My aunt, I said.
Dr. Tulp raised an eyebrow.
Never mind. Forget that. I don’t want to talk about her. Mr. Kindt.
Dr. Tulp straightened her papers and put them down.
My friend. He’s changed. I offended him. He’s getting out of control. He says he’s got his own visitor now. A guy in swim trunks. Is there a pool here? I think it’s supposed to mean something.
Sorry, Henry, I don’t follow you.
It’s me. I’m the one who’s been ripping this place off. Mr. Kindt took over for Job. I pissed him off.
Slow down, Henry.
He’s withholding my meds.
No one is withholding your medication, Henry.
Yes, someone definitely the fuck is.
No, Henry, Dr. Tulp said.
See, my boy, said Mr. Kindt when I returned. There is unfortunately absolutely nothing your beautiful young Dr. Tulp will do.
No, I don’t think there is.
I looked at him.
Well, I said.
Yes, dear boy? he asked.
I shut my eyes. I counted to fifty then opened them. He was still there. I took a deep breath. I sighed.
You could at least apologize for calling me a little shit earlier, I said.
Did I call you a little shit? After all it doesn’t quite sound like me, does it? Not quite the variety of vocabulary I would elect to employ.
I shook my head. It didn’t. It sounded like Aunt Lulu. Mr. Kindt took a step toward me and took my hands in his.
I am not the one who needs to apologize to you for anything, Henry, am I? he said. Not for anything, relatively speaking, too serious?
No, I suppose not, I said.
I think my apologies, if there are to be any, will be directed elsewhere — toward my poor wet young man. In fact perhaps I should slip off for a time and see if I can’t make myself more available to him.
Mr. Kindt gave a nervous little laugh, like a lightbulb breaking, like a tiny frozen fist shattering against a wall.
I nodded and squeezed his soft, near-translucent hands.
Ah, my dear Henry, my dear, dear Henry, I sense we are starting to understand each other, he said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The night of Mr. Kindt’s murder it rained hard. I had a couple of drinks at the Horseshoe and watched the rain beat down on the park and finally wondered, with more than a mild sense of unease, what I’d gotten myself into. It’s not that I wasn’t happy enough to help Mr. Kindt out with his little fantasy, but after the events of the past week, since the night with Tulip, since my visit to Mel the Hat’s and his various insights, since a meeting with Cornelius and the others on, as Cornelius put it, the various modalities of the crime, not to mention my encounter with the proposed victim himself and the subsequent revelations about the famous night on Lake Otsego, my brain was really chewing at things, and these things did not taste good.