“Why? Does he need your blood . . . uh, kind?” Ellen asked.
“Don’t know what kind he has, but mine’s that flavor lots of people like.”
Cautiously, Ellen’s lips twitched at a thought. She decided to go for it. “Vanilla?” she dared.
There was a barking laugh that made Ellen feel practically plucky. “More like tutti-frutti. Meet me there? My appointment is at four.”
Ellen looked at the alarm clock. Three. That meant she’d had about eight hours of sleep, not her usual twelve to fourteen, which typically used up most of her nonworking time. But she had something else to occupy her today. As well as possibly meeting Temerity, she could no longer put off going to the thrift store, because her left shoe was not of much use for anything other than throwing at spiders. Not that she would; she quite liked spiders, as long as they stayed in their corner. “Okay.”
“Great, see you outside.”
The thought of meeting up left Ellen humming a few notes of the music Temerity had played for her. She opened her refrigerator and stood looking in. After some consideration, she took out a loaf of bread, cheese, bologna, mayonnaise and a jar of pickles. She made a triple-decker sandwich, opting out of the mayonnaise, which, when she opened it and gazed in, made her stop humming. Her stomach vetoed the gunky white goo and she put it back, wishing she had brought home more of the apples. It had come as a complete revelation that she’d forgotten the taste of a good apple, outside of fried dough, and the compact orbs would be far easier to stash in a duffel bag than a ten-inch pie and nowhere near as sticky. She’d get some tonight.
Another layer of tape resurrected her mostly dead shoe enough to take her the three blocks to the thrift store. Ellen slipped in behind an unruly family. Their half-dozen or so young boys jerked and hopped and burst out like microwave popcorn around their parents, who, though not much older than midtwenties, looked worn-out and completely done. The activity was frenetic and dizzying to watch, so Ellen edged her way carefully around the frenzy and went to the shoes, which were an equally confusing, but less mobile, mess on rickety racks. After several minutes of searching, she found first the left and then the right of a slightly worn pair of black Converse that fit well enough. Now she had two shoes, but only one lace between them. Situating herself on a pile of rolled-up carpets, Ellen pulled the lace out of her old shoe and began to thread it into the new one. She had almost completed the task when she heard a cough, a sickly one, deep and grumbling.
The producer of the unhealthy reflex, whose size and symptoms fit the general description of the man she’d seen walking away from his meeting with the Boss last night, was standing near a large cardboard box. He was rooting through a tangled heap of hats, scarves and other miscellaneous accessories, holding a black leather glove in one hand and trying to locate its mate.
Ellen studied his face. What she could see of his skin had the yellowed and rutted pallor of a lifelong smoker who spent a lot of time in harsh weather. Most of his face was hidden behind a severely trimmed black beard. A woman stood next to him, fidgeting and tapping one foot compulsively. She looked forty but was probably in her late twenties. She was meth-addict thin and wearing so much makeup that it gave her skin the same cracked, rough appearance as her leather jacket. She was antsy and jumpy, her eyes constantly cutting to the door. She reached impatiently into the box and pulled out a different pair.
“How about these?” she asked.
“No good,” he muttered.
“Come on, let’s go, Georgi. What’s wrong with these?”
With an obvious effort at patience, he said, “No fingers, Loretta. We’ll go when I’m ready. Go look around.”
Without taking offense, Loretta threw the gloves back into the box and pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket. She dug in it with shaking fingers until she extracted one of the bent white cylinders and stuck it in her mouth. “Maybe I should look for a wedding dress,” she mumbled.
The man, Georgi, smiled and shook his head. “You don’t need a dress to get married at the courthouse.”
“I want one,” she whined.
“If you want, my sweet. Go outside and you can smoke.”
She began to wander toward the door, searching her pockets for a light. “Hurry up. I need a bump.”
When she was out of earshot, Georgi mumbled what sounded like a profanity in what Ellen assumed was Russian and continued rooting through the box.
Ellen took her shoes to the front and paid. The man behind the register, his back twisted into a cruel, unnatural angle, did not trouble his tortured spine to look up as he slid the change across the counter. Grateful, Ellen took the shoes and fled the store.
The wiry Loretta woman was standing just outside the door, smoking next to a sign that read NO SMOKING WITHIN TWENTY FEET OF DOORWAY. Every deep drag on the cigarette pursed her mouth into an ugly pucker. A woman entering with two young children gave her a reprimanding look and waved a hand in front of her face. “Do you really have to smoke right here?” she asked, gesturing to the children.
“Yeah, I do,” Loretta said and exhaled a cloud of tar and nicotine in the woman’s direction. For a moment Ellen thought that the mother, whose nostrils actually flared, would launch into Loretta, but after an assessment of the brittle drug addict, the fire in the mother’s eyes faded to quiet disgust and she hustled her kids through the door.
Ellen wondered what would have happened if the mother had asked Loretta if she was having a bad day, like the woman on the bus with the groceries. She knew that it would probably have unfolded differently, most likely ending in physical assault. Loretta was the kind of person who had long ago replaced any kind of decency with a switchblade. She’d seen Loretta’s type before—“type,” that was the word, “blood type”—angry, miserable and violently self-destructive. The only way to deal with someone that mean and unstable was to walk away, or better yet, run, so that they didn’t have time to hit you in the back of the head with a convenient brick.
This Loretta woman struck an old, ominous chord in Ellen, launching another unwelcome flashback. A clear picture smacked on Ellen’s mental windshield of a chain-smoking drunk, her mother, arriving home with a shopping bag. Afraid to hope, Ellen watched eagerly as her mother reached in, handed her a small pack of peanut butter crackers, then took out a carton of cigarettes and a gallon bottle of vodka. Even after she greedily consumed the snack food, Ellen cried with hunger until her mother slapped her and sent her to her blanket on the floor.
Banishing the memory, Ellen turned her gaze through the plate-glass front of the thrift store to watch the young mother with her kids. The kids seemed well fed and happy. The woman leaned down and kissed the taller one on the head. Ellen thought, I’ll bet that’s nice. She would have been happy for her mother not to beat her.
Long years of experience made it easier to shake off the longing and the repulsion when the thankfully sparse recollections unleashed a sneak assault on her, though even the suggestion of hunger still panicked her. To distract herself, Ellen turned her focus back on Loretta, pulling out her notebook and writing the details of the vulgar couple and their exchange. It did the trick. It wasn’t long before the man Loretta had called Georgi came out.
Loretta took a last long, hard drag, then flicked her still-burning cigarette onto the sidewalk. She rubbed her hands together compulsively. “About time. Let’s go.”
He pulled the new gloves from the front of his pants with a smug glance back at the store. Stolen. Ellen wrote that down. Without bothering to hurry, he said, “I’ll drop you at the Clown, then I’ve got business.”
Loretta started to whine. “You promised me a fix.”
Ellen wrote, “The Clown.” It was a bar, not far away, that seemed to cater to the Russian populace around it, judging from the language of the altercations outside. She’d passed it many times. Its windowless front was a constant backdrop for drunken
fights and its back parking lot for the occasional unsolved stabbing.
“You’ll get it, baby, but business comes first,” Georgi said. Before she could respond, he started up the bike that Ellen had seen last night. The engine’s earsplitting volume shattered the relative quiet of the storefront, and Ellen’s hands flew up to cover her ears protectively. She could see Loretta’s mouth moving, but the discordant roar blocked out all other sound and interrupted everyone and everything around it. As the pair rode off, taking the onslaught with them, and Ellen was capable of thought, her first was why anyone would choose such a noisy vehicle, but then it occurred to her that anyone who had a brain would most likely want to be able to use it, so maybe only stupid people wanted to ride those things. She wrote that down too.
In the deafness of the thumping reverb in her eardrums, Ellen switched her shoes, throwing the old pair into the trash can, and started out for the hospital.
The “new” shoes were a good find, only slightly worn with plenty of squishiness left in the soles, and Ellen enjoyed the cushioning, the bouncy effect. The bottoms of her old ones had been compressed and worn until they were leaf thin, with all the spring of a sheet of aluminum foil. She found herself walking a bit faster and enjoying the separation between feet and concrete.
The spring in her step got her to the hospital in half the time. She positioned herself between two of the large planters at the very edge of the entrance plaza, waiting for Temerity, feeling winded but oddly energized. When she did arrive, the blind girl found her way to the same bench they’d occupied while they waited for Justice, and sat listening.
After a glance down at her shoes, Ellen crept slowly up behind Temerity, leaned down and was just about to whisper Boo, when Temerity jumped up and said, “Oh good, you’re here. Let’s go in.”
“What . . . how? I got new shoes.”
“I can tell. Nice, by the way. But you also have a distinctive smell. Everybody does. Yours is very homey, like”—she paused with a concentrated, dreamy look—“breakfast cooking, something like that.”
“Breakfast?” Ellen asked, her mouth starting to water. “Like bacon?”
Temerity smiled. “Yes, but combined with cinnamon rolls in the oven. One of my very favorite smells.”
“Mine too!” Ellen said.
Temerity reached out a hand and Ellen automatically turned so that she was facing the same direction and her friend could lay it on her shoulder. “Between you and me,” Temerity whispered, “it’s always mystified me that some people get up and have just coffee. Really?”
“I know, right?” Ellen said. It had always befuddled her that anyone could skip breakfast, especially bacon.
Temerity got a pass to the blood donor suite. Once there, she sat with a volunteer who filled in her paperwork for her. Ellen took up a position in a chair by the door and stared listlessly at the TV in the waiting room. A soap opera was on and it grated on her nerves. Did people really say, He’s a shadow of his former self? or You will be mine. Oh yes, you will be mine? She’d never heard a real person say either of those phrases, and she listened to a lot. The theater of real life was so much more intense and interesting, which was why it was her uncontested favorite diversion. Second to that, Ellen liked books—at least you could pick and picture your own show, and the paperbacks were only a quarter at the thrift store.
After a half hour or so, Temerity was led into a different room. She was back in about fifteen minutes, with a cotton ball taped on her arm and a box of juice in one hand. She found Ellen and sat down next to her. Ellen stared at the cotton where a small, dark red dot showed through the clear tape that covered it. The spot of blood made her feel queasy and she had to look away.
“I’m not supposed to go anywhere for a few minutes. They’re afraid I’ll black out and then they’ll have to admit me. I tried to explain that I’d faint if I saw something besides nothing. Blackout is my norm. Alas, to no avail, so we have to wait.”
“Did it hurt?” Ellen asked.
Temerity rocked once. “No, not really. I mean, there’s a little prick at the beginning, but then you don’t really notice it. Are you afraid of needles?”
“I don’t know.” Ellen considered her answer and then decided that was wrong, so she changed it. “Yes. I mean, it’s weird, having something metal go into your skin.” The very thought made her dizzy and the room teetered a bit. A flash of standing in a line at school, a cold swab on her arm, and a stinging prick. Waking on the floor, the other kids laughing at her, her face burning. She shuddered and pushed the thoughts away.
A frown creased Temerity’s pretty face. “You know nobody likes needles, don’t you?” When Ellen didn’t answer, she seemed to take it as a yes. “All you have to do is think about how the medicine will make you better, protect you, if you’re getting a shot, or how much worse it is for the person who needs the blood you’re giving, if that’s the reason, and that puts it all in perspective.”
Perspective, Ellen thought, meant so many things. She didn’t like to think about it.
They waited for fifteen minutes, during which time they shared a small pack of cheese crackers that Temerity had selected from the mandatory after-donation snack foods. It was a tiny snack, but Ellen enjoyed the salty crunch. While they ate, Ellen told Temerity about Irena and the phone call the night before.
“So now she has a sick baby to care for that isn’t even hers that she got saddled with in the first place?” Temerity summed up.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“And people feel sorry for me. Jesus, how does someone like Irena, and so many others, get along in the world?” Temerity asked sadly. Ellen thought, Some do, some don’t, but she didn’t say it out loud. “And you said they came here last night? We should see if we can find out what’s wrong.”
“You could just ask Justice’s friend Dr. Amanda,” Ellen said.
“No. She can’t really tell us about patients’ medical details. What she told Justice about the other two was either general knowledge or outside the hospital’s legal domain. Think about it. Janelle met Cindy, and a shooting victim wasn’t doing well. No medical details. Next idea.”
“Um . . .” Ellen didn’t have any other ideas, and then she remembered the Crows. “There are these two women who work with her. They said they were going to come down here today to see her.”
“Oh.” Temerity softened. “I’m glad she has friends.”
“She doesn’t.” Ellen explained, briefly, about the Crows’ insatiable appetite for gossip and the real reason for their visit—information. “So, I’m likely to hear whatever there is to know at work.”
“Okay, I guess we’ll have to count on that. We’ve been sitting here long enough.” She stood up. “I want to go and see if we can find out anything about J.B.”
Ellen didn’t even try to talk her out of it. The force that was Temerity just drew her along. They snaked their way through the passages again until they were seated in the intensive care unit’s waiting room. Ellen searched around, but there were no suspicious-looking young men this time. Looking through the glass down the hallway, Ellen did not see the police officer who had been posted outside J.B.’s room on their previous visit.
“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad,” Temerity said when Ellen told her. “I mean, on the one hand, he could have stabilized so they moved him to a regular room. On the other hand . . .” She let it hang.
“He could be dead,” Ellen finished.
Temerity sighed and patted Ellen’s arm. “Yes, that was implied,” she said.
They waited for half an hour. Ellen occupied the time by watching some of life’s other vignettes around her: a young woman crying in the corner who was being comforted by a young man who might be her boyfriend; a cold-faced older man engrossed in a thick spy novel, whose exterior calm was betrayed by the anxious twitching of his eyes to the ICU door each time it swung open
; a family of four who was joined by a man exiting one of the units. They huddled together to hear the news of a loved one. The outlook was uncertain and the reactions of the four were evenly tied. Two took the news as hopeful, the other two despaired.
Perspective, Ellen thought again. It’s all in the perspective. Losing patience, Temerity tried to get information from the nurses’ station but, unable to claim being a family member, she found herself denied.
“But he doesn’t have any family,” Temerity pleaded. “I’m his neighbor.”
There was such pathos in her voice, which Ellen thought was probably mostly legitimate, that the nurse relented and told her that the patient had been moved, but that was all she could say.
“So, that’s good news, right?” Temerity pressed.
The nurse glanced around. “He’s been moved from intensive care. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything else.” The phone on her desk buzzed and the nurse answered it, effectively ending any further exchange.
“So,” Temerity said as they walked away, “he’s probably somewhere else in the hospital. I think we should seek.”
Though Ellen was as intrigued as ever by many of the stories she was seeing about the hospital, the new addition of seeing the characters in these scenes as people who were suffering was beginning to leech strength from her. Empathy, something Ellen had only a sketchy understanding of, and still, for her, in its infantile stage, was draining. But she was aware enough to understand that maybe if the stories were positive, she would feel somewhat restored.
“Let’s go back to the baby floor,” she suggested. It was mostly happy there.
“J.B. won’t be there, and Cindy won’t still be there either, I don’t think,” Temerity told her. “As long as she had a normal delivery, which she did, with no insurance and the Newlands most likely out of the picture, they would boot her out as soon as possible, two days max.”
This threw Ellen. “She’s not back at the apartment,” she said.
Invisible Ellen Page 16
