Samaritan

by Richard Price

  Utterly jazzed, she just stood there, elbows on the rail, wondering if there was anyone in the world who couldn’t be made happy by the sight of moving water, imagining herself waking up here, opening her eyes and there it would be, tossing up diamonds, slapping itself silly and making every day feel like Day One.

  Then, reentering the apartment from the terrace, she gave the living room a fresh look. Minus the caustic reek of mothballs, and discounting the faint arcs of black fingerprint powder that still clung to the front door and the wall around it like the mysterious markings of a prehistoric civilization, the place had the same vaguely geriatric un-lived-in feel as Mrs. Kuben’s digs next door; everything color-coordinated and spotless to the point of sterility, as if cleanliness itself were a school of style.

  Giving Ray the benefit of the doubt, she imagined that he had simply left everything the way he found it when he moved in three months ago; the only two objects that caught her eye as probably coming in with him were an old-time full-length funhouse mirror mounted on a wall in a heavy wooden frame, the ancient silvering on its bulbous rolling surface peeled and browning in all four corners; and, at the opposite end of the man-toy spectrum, a fifty-four-inch flat-screen television, the whole of it no thicker than a hardcover book and so recently purchased that a few minute shreds of static-charged packing foam still clung to the gunmetal-gray frame.

  Taking her time, looking for whatever, she began to roam the room as if she were in a museum, first checking out what hung on the walls. Three paintings: one, a hokey Paris street scene, all slanted umbrellas, quaint cafés and the base of the Eiffel Tower; two, a portrait of an aged Jew, gray-bearded, shawl-draped, an open prayer book in his gnarled hands; and last a stylized portrait of a wistful waif fondling a flower, the long-necked child so almond-eyed, almond-headed, that she seemed more alien than orphan.

  The only thing that spoke of Ray on these walls was a certificate announcing his Emmy nomination for writing Brokedown High. Nerese had heard enough about the show by now, but in truth had never seen it save for a few minutes now and then while channel-surfing, although she could imagine easily enough what it was like.

  Beneath this framed smidgen of prestige, on a low corner table that filled the square gap created by two couches positioned at right angles to each other, a modest accumulation of variously shaped vases sprouted like a miniature skyline; the original location of the one snatched up as a weapon indicated by a relatively dust-free circle.

  The large TV centered a floor-to-ceiling wall unit that extended the length of the living room, Nerese perusing the shelves now: novels, biographies, no double-takes there; a few hundred CDs; fifty or so movies on tape, mainstream stuff—Braveheart, West Side Story and the like—Nerese popping a few from their boxes to see if the cassette inside was in fact what the packaging advertised; everything checking out, no secret porno stash; and then she came upon two framed photos nestling on a shelf, one of his daughter—Ruby, Mrs. Kuben had said—playing basketball for her school; a graceful lanky thing, caught here airborne and arched like a bow during the tip-off. Her opposite number was a black girl with flying hair extensions who matched Ruby’s taut symmetry like they were twin folds of an inkblot, both kids wide-eyed, mouths agape, the basketball a pebbled moon inches above their extended fingertips.

  The second photo was a head shot of Ray’s ex-wife, blue-white skin, long reddish hair carelessly arranged and clear confident eyes, her mouth thin but with the slightest uptick at the corners as if she were politely listening to a long-winded joke she had heard before, Nerese intuiting by the combination of bone structure and facial expression that this woman had no ass on her whatsoever.

  There were two possibilities here regarding this photo: either Ray was still hung up on his ex or he just wanted to give his daughter a little visual continuity while playing musical houses; Nerese hoped it was the latter.

  Opening a cabinet beneath the television she came across the liquor stash: mostly kiddy shit, pimp shit—Amaretto, Boggs Cranberry Liqueur, Midori, retsina, whatever the hell that was—the only serious contender a quart of Seagrams, but it was three-quarters full, and dusty.

  In an adjoining cabinet Nerese discovered a stack of unboxed videos, maybe two dozen, each cassette neatly labeled, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, Oz, The Sopranos, general title followed by the series number, episode title and airing date.

  Running one through the VCR—that big flat-screen TV like visual morphine—she discovered that Law & Order was, in fact, Law & Order; Nerese both relieved and a little frustrated, this room not telling her shit.

  Before moving on to the rear quarters of the apartment, she hunkered down over the remains of the vase, only thin splinters and powdery nuggets remaining, the larger pieces having been removed to a crime lab, dropped into a ten-gallon terrarium with a dollop of Krazy Glue and fumed overnight in order to raise fingerprints. The results had been unhelpful, just Ray and his parents. The vase had had a bulbous base and a long thin neck, the thing most likely swung like a bat by that neck, which, the crime lab had told her, was missing from the accumulated pieces, probably snapping off on impact, the doer most likely taking it with him.

  Moving to the kitchen she found shrink-wrapped chicken parts and raw vegetables in the refrigerator—Ray actually cooking his own meals; some vitamins in there too, along with a half-full bottle of Heineken.

  As she knocked off the rest of the beer for him, she noticed five twenty-dollar bills sticking out from beneath a blender on the kitchen counter, plain as day—so much for a robbery, although when things got out of hand people tended to bolt, so . . .

  The bathroom was spotless, no hairs in the tub or sink, Ray starting to get on her nerves now.

  The medicine cabinet contained Advil, Mylanta, Donnatal—an antispasmodic for the gut that her mother used—and Ventolin, an asthma inhalant. There were no condoms—Nerese thinking about Ray’s light-skinned girlfriend—and, in keeping with Bobby Sugar’s report, no medication for HIV or any other STD—no evidence of a life-altering, revenge-inspiring medical condition.

  Above the toilet, matted vertically in the same elongated rectangular frame, were three taxi licenses: the top one, Usher Mittnacht looking out at her from 1935; the middle, Arthur Mitchell from 1958—Artie; Nerese had been dead-on in remembering the glasses and pompadour—and, holding up the other two, Raymond Mitchell, 1990, Ray looking a little fucked-up there, hollow-eyed and slack-mouthed—but who wouldn’t feel that way posing for a hack permit, third generation in a row like evolution spinning its wheels.

  This photo, however, given the tissue trauma he had sustained from the assault, offered to Nerese her first clean read of what Ray looked like as an adult. His face vaguely reminded her of an African mask, long and tapered with a small full mouth and slightly protruding heavy-lidded eyes—bedroom eyes, her mother would have called them. Yet despite their sleepy aspect, and despite the depressing circumstances behind the photo op, there was a distinct sense of almost too much alertness in his gaze, a constant monitoring quality that suggested to her that Ray hadn’t had an unself-conscious moment in his life.

  He had nice hair, though, dark and swirly, lying about his head in thick lazy piles like carelessly coiled ropes.

  In the bedroom there were more hand-labeled videos piled around a second TV—all Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel—Nerese not even bothering to give them a test drive, and in a night table drawer she found two joints, one half-smoked, both withered and weightless with age, Nerese muttering out loud, “At least finish the fucking thing, Ray,” and a small bottle of baby oil, which once again made her think of Ray’s lady friend although, considering the petrified joints, maybe he just suffered from dry elbows.

  In the closet, all of the clothes were mainstream retail—Gap, Levi’s, Banana Republic—no whips, leather, garter belts or boas, but in one of the corners hung a square-cornered multi-hangered plastic clothes protector like a zippered tent, inside which were a dozen skirt suits and pantsuits, m
ost of them cut from thick nubby material, couch material, the patterns and colors simultaneously garish and dull—the type of clothes respectable older women wore once sex was off the program; Nerese assumed these items had belonged to Ray’s mother. And that, she declared to herself, was that.

  But back in the living room, with the sunlight beaming in at a slightly different angle than before, Nerese noticed another bit of wall art that had eluded both her and the crime scene dusters: two greasy handprints, now highlighted by the rays, situated about ten feet to the left of the front door, flush to the surface, roughly five feet high and spaced approximately eighteen inches apart.

  Facing the wall and letting her own hands hover over the rough outlines, she found that if she stepped back a little without moving her upper body, she was in a perfect stance to be frisked, and utterly vulnerable to a head shot coming from either side of the plate or from behind.

  And if that blow were in fact coming up on the left side of the head, which was where Ray had caught it, the force and the direction of the impact would land her directly in the pile of medical and investigative debris on the floor.

  A little spooked by her re-creation, and thinking that she had pretty much gotten all she could from an eyeball read of the scene for now, Nerese was granted one last discovery when she wound up skating on a sheet of paper that lay camouflaged on one of the large white floor tiles as she headed for the door.

  With a bellyful of adrenaline from her near spill, she picked up the sheet and found on the flip side a masterfully drawn caricature, done in ballpoint ink, of a preadolescent homie, some ghetto Dondi, clothes comically oversize, the kid floppy as a puppy except that he was brandishing an enormous hand cannon—specifically, an anatomically correct Glock 19—aiming it directly at Nerese, the legend printed deco-style beneath his feet: “What’s Mine Is Mine.”

  Pocketing the drawing, she finally left the apartment.

  Outdoors again, she inhaled a low-tide stench, funky but evocative, coming off the conjunction of river and bay. And she thought about Ray, ex-cabbie, ex–TV show writer, up there in his apartment surrounded by seniors, watching endless taped TV shows, cooking dinner for himself and seeing his daughter, what . . . one night a week? Two weekends a month?

  Then Ray the other way—inner-city public school volunteer with money to burn, hooking up with some other-tribe girlfriend, bringing her around, bringing around her other-tribe kids, “wild Indians,” she guessed his half-crazed neighbors would call them; bringing around at least one young male street acquaintance who might or might not be the hard-core artist in her pocket, bringing around whoever and whoever and whoever had put him against that wall, intent on sending him into the black land.

  Standing there under the drifting cry of the gulls, Nerese looked out across the Hudson to the skyline of lower New York. Then, turning around, she took in the Gothic spires of the Medical Center in downtown Dempsy. Little Venice was roughly equidistant from both—but despite the toney digs, the views, the peaceful primacy of bird caw and sun-dappled water, she experienced not so much a sense of exclusivity, as that of being stranded.

  Chapter 6

  Hospital—February 12

  “Can you tell me where you are?” the neurologist asked in an impersonal singsong as he shined a light in Ray’s left eye to see if the right pupil would sympathetically dilate—the consensual reflex, Nerese thought it was called.

  “Our Lady of Perpetual Misery,” Ray snapped, no real humor in his voice.

  “Can you spell the word ‘house’ backwards?” slowly withdrawing the light to test for distance adjustment.

  “Sure I can,” Ray said, then defiantly clammed up.

  “Can you do so, please?” In that same impervious lilt.

  “E, S, O . . . E-S-U-O-H.”

  “OK. Can you tell me the name of the President?” The light gliding from far left to far right.

  “President of what . . .”

  “The United States?”

  “Davy Crockett.”

  “Can you tell me the name of the President of the United States, please?”

  “Oh give me a fucking break!” Ray brayed like a mule, his voice crackling with exasperation, dehydration and maybe a little something else—something not fully arrived yet.

  Refraining from announcing her presence until the neurologist finished his bedside exam, Nerese was shocked at the change in Ray over the last twenty-four hours. The good news was that he was more alert; the bad, that he was nearly out of control with agitation.

  His skin, merely sallow the day before, was now the color of air-hardened cheese, and even through the empurpled mask of ecchymosis that raccooned his eyes she could plainly pick up the hollow pockets of shadow deepening under his blood-drowned whites, the Decadron-induced sleeplessness, or once again, something as yet unannounced, starting to ferociously take its toll.

  She was desperate for the neurologist to finish up so she could get to work here.

  “Are you experiencing any headaches?” the doc murmured as he flipped up the bottom of the blanket to expose Ray’s feet.

  “You mean besides you?” Then, “Hey!” aimed at Nerese as he finally noticed her standing quietly beyond the pale.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” She gave him back a discreet wave, once again musing on the fact that because of the nature of his injuries she could stare at his face all day long and still not have any idea of what he normally looked like.

  “Are we done yet?” Ray asked with a sprightly rage.

  “Almost,” the neurologist murmured, running a pencil-shaped metal rod up the sole of one foot.

  “That’s the Babinski test?” Nerese asked cautiously.

  “Babinski reflex,” running the other foot, Ray barely responding to the pressure.

  If his toes had splayed and arched that would have been bad news, otherwise known as a positive or negative Babinski, she could never remember which.

  “He’s looking good, huh?” she ventured.

  “So far,” the guy not turning to her. “Hold your hands out directly in front of you and close your eyes, please?”

  Ray thrust his arms forward, his hands bunched into fists.

  “Close your eyes, please?”

  Ray looked to Nerese in exasperation.

  “Close your eyes, please?”

  Ray finally did as he was told, looking now, with his stitched bashed and multicolored face, his lightly shut eyelids and his double straight-arm, like a caricature of the Frankenstein monster.

  “Hold them steady, please?”

  Ray stiffened slightly at the elbows to lock himself in as the doctor, sliding the flat of his hand between the extended fists, lightly batted them back and forth as if to widen the gap.

  “Steady, please?”

  Fuming ostentatiously, Ray complied as the doctor continued his fluttery assault.

  “Steady . . .”

  Nerese knew he was looking for one of the arms to involuntarily fall away from the other: pronator drift it was called, a sign of incipient paresis on the side of the body opposite the trauma site, the blinkered patient not even aware that he was flunking, but Ray seemed to be hanging in just fine.

  “OK, then,” the neurologist said, then simply walked away, Ray calling after him, “Don’t I even get a fucking lollipop?”

  Nerese waited a beat for this latest profanity to stop reverberating through the ward before she dropped her shoulder bag, shrugged off her coat and sat in what she already thought of as her chair.

  “You always curse people out like that?”

  “Like what,” Ray said.

  “How you feeling today.”

  “Me? Freaked. Bored. I can’t read, I can’t watch TV, I try to listen to books on tape but I can’t, I can’t . . . I go off somewheres, or I get hung up on some sentence or phrase, next thing I know I missed half a chapter,” the words rattling out of him like rocks down a chute.

  Nerese saw no evidence of a book, a television or a cassette player
, didn’t think the last two would even be permitted in a ward like this, and concluded that Ray had been either hallucinating or dreaming about these activities.

  “You getting any visitors?”

  “You.”

  “How ’bout your daughter?”

  “No. I don’t want her here. Are you kidding me? I look like fuckin’ Linda Blair. I mean look at this.” Tapping the shaved and sutured patch of scalp. “It’s like a fuckin’ helipad up there. So no. No Ruby. She’d completely flip.”

  “That’s too bad,” Nerese said gently.

  “I mean, I talk to her on the phone, but, you know, that’s not . . . She’s thirteen, so it’s, How’s school. Good. How’s Mom. Fine. How’s tricks. Good. I don’t think kids start using full sentences until they graduate college, and they’re incapable of asking you about your motherfucking day until they’re thirty-five. So, I know, it’s like, I know she’s very . . . She’s, she’s suffering over this, but I don’t see how coming here . . .”

  “What do you mean, she’s suffering?” Nerese going to work.

  “‘What do you mean, she’s suffering?’ ” Ray mimicking her note for note. “And by the way, talking about kids? As soon as I’m presentable? I want you to bring your son in to see me. You know, because you were talking full-boat scholarship or the Army, right? It just so happens that I write great recommendations for college, been doing it since I was a high school teacher, so let me just talk to him, get a sense of where he’s coming from, and I will do him right.”

  “Great,” Nerese said, thinking, In a pig’s ass.

  “I think that’s my true art form, the college recommendation, plus you know, with the cachet of the TV show under my feet? You know, the scholastic and secular? All’s I need is a little face-to-face for inspiration, then forget about it, anywhere he wants to go. In like Flynn.”

  “OK then,” Nerese dismissing all this self-trumpeting as Decadron-tongue.

  But even if Ray’s offer had been a sober one, Nerese would never have taken him up on it. Butchie, Antoine, her mother, her uncle and especially she herself, when appropriate, were all part of the arsenal of charm-and-disarm; Darren was off-limits. Using his name in the course of an investigation always gave her the creeps; made her feel like something bad was about to happen. Even the little she had semi-complained about him to Ray during her first visit to the hospital left her with a faint sense of dread, and now that she and Ray were officially reacquainted, Nerese doubted that she’d ever voluntarily bring up her son’s name again.