The camera zooms in for a closeup of Nip the Cat, and beneath his saggy body a counter starts spinning off quantity sold. In less than a minute the counter rattles past one hundred. I’ve watched these counters before and I used to find myself wondering who the hell else was awake at four in the morning. But little by little I came to envision a whole nation of half-drunks and insomniacs, single moms with kids who won’t sleep and divorced salesmen wide awake on the edge of motel beds, all of us bathed in the blue light that binds us together. Now from my hospital bed, I imagine the Brain Trust in their collapsed sanctuary, enjoying a hundred channels, and again I hope that Winston has returned.
“Please make your calls now, as we’ll need to switch to a new item in just a minute,” the forever-smiling man says from off camera. But then his voice changes. “This next one’s a real treat. Oh yeah.” The tone sounds oddly familiar. “A one-of-a-kind special we won’t be able to offer ever again: the future of Buddy Cooper.”
The camera pulls back and I’m on TV. Only it’s the younger version of me. I’m in a sports jacket and I’m standing behind Nip the Cat.
“People, think this over,” the TV Buddy says. He grabs Nip, shakes him like a wet dishrag. “I mean geesh. These are beanbags. Total material cost might be twelve cents.”
I find myself hugging the clown-face balloon, which looks at me and smiles again, GET WELL SOON!
“Crazy what people get excited about, isn’t it?” he asks.
I nod. “What are you doing on QVC?”
“Things have gotten a bit more complicated since we parted ways,” the TV me says. “So I figured I’d better check in with you.”
I look up at the joy juice in the IV, but the TV me says, “C’mon, Buddy, let’s not play that game again. Don’t insult me by thinking I’m drug induced.”
“A man can hope, can’t he?”
He sighs, plops Nip back on the stand. “Here’s the breakdown: I’m here to help you out of the jam you’re in. I am absolutely your best friend in the whole entire world. And I’m not in the mood for attitude.”
My head’s starting to feel heavy again, soggy almost. I think to myself, Why did it have to be QVC? and even though I don’t say it out loud, my younger self on the screen smiles instantly. “You’re the only one who’s actually seeing me right now. Well, you and a handful of the gifted who just happened to be tuned in. Some tall glass of redhead recognizes me—she’s cute. Tell me, do you own many Beanie Babies?”
“Rhonda’s watching? Was she at the match?”
“If you do, I’d unload them. In a couple days a first-grader in Paducah is going to rip one open and choke to death on the beans during her little brother’s baptism. Poor kid goes down right on the altar. And worse, the whole thing gets caught on video. The bottom’s going to fall out of the market. Death does that.”
Suddenly the Beanie Baby counter stops cold, frozen at 252 sold. “Oops,” TV Buddy says. “You forget the power of subliminal suggestion. Anyway, we’ve got important matters to discuss. So what’s your next move?”
“Move?” I ask.
“Yeah. We need to get a game plan together. A mission profile.”
I struggle for a reason not to answer him and can’t think of any. “Well,” I finally say, “first off I’d like to talk to a doctor about my condition, I guess.”
“You’re going to be fine. Hardy brained you pretty good with that belt, but that thick nugget’s been concussed before. As for being shot, the left wing will be bitch sore for a while. Snake and Barney are worse off. Especially the ref. He caught a stray bullet. And then of course, there’s the kid.”
A flush of blame rises in my face. “I figure I’m in all kinds of shit from what I tried to do. Is he alright?”
“Oh sure. He’s fine. Up on seven actually and doing quite well.”
My eyes flash to my wrists, which are still not strapped to anything. But the thought occurs to me that I should probably be in handcuffs. If the cops saw what I tried to do. They could be waiting outside the room for all I know. Being charged with attempted homicide will almost certainly muck up my visitation rights with Brook.
TV Buddy knows my thoughts. He reaches off screen like Bugs Bunny and pulls back a copy of the Wilmington Star-News, the front page. The headline reads, “Champion and Masked Wrestler Stop Maniac, Save Crowd.”
TV Buddy rattles the paper around and clears his throat. “When the gunman began shooting indiscriminately into the helpless audience, which included women and children, Mr. Appleseed and the as-yet-unidentified masked wrestler teamed up to thwart the deadly youth. Regrettably, Paul ‘Snake Handler’ Hillwigger and Barney Henderson were seriously wounded in the fighting. The would-be assassin is undergoing psychiatric evaluation as he recuperates but remains closely guarded by police.”
“But that’s not the way it happened,” I say. “That’s not the truth.”
“It is now. The story’s been printed.”
I wonder how the story came out with that kind of spin, and TV Buddy says, “That Quinn—give him lemons and he makes lemonade, huh? Still, it’s a good thing that kid only brought a six-shooter or you’d have ventilated his skull for sure.”
“I’m sorry about that. Listen, you understand that I didn’t start off with the intention of actually hurting—”
“I know who you were actually intending to hurt, Buddy, but confession’s a whole different division. That kind of thing concerns the past, an important realm for you to consider. As for me, I’m here to talk market future.”
With that he tosses Nip the Cat and reaches off camera again. This time his hand comes back with a Beanie Baby Unknown Kentucky Terror. It’s got a little blue suit on and a blue mask and everything. TV Buddy grins my grin and says, “Our market research shows real potential for this model. Though of course, new versions automatically come with a certain risk.”
I don’t like the way that sounds. “What do you want from me?” I ask him.
“What do you want for yourself?”
My body feels suddenly weary. I aim the remote at the TV and try the off button.
“Cut that shit out!” he snaps. “This is serious. Now what do you want for yourself?”
I close my eyes. Breathe slowly and calmly. “I just want to get out of this mess. I want my life to be like it was a week ago.”
“A week? Buddy, you forget who you’re talking to. I was here when we wore the golden boots, when total victory wasn’t an if but a when.”
Maybe it’s the weight of this craziness or the joy juice in the IV, but I feel like I’m about to slide into a coma. Everything’s moving slow and heavy. I mumble, “So why don’t you tell me what I want if you’re such a fortune-teller?”
“Geesh. You’re getting hostile again and I’m just trying to help you out. All I’m saying is this: You’re clearly in the middle of something here—I mean, you’ll agree with me that this certainly qualifies as a situation, right? Now getting completely out of it might not be too hard. But then where would you be? Back on the brown couch at three a.m.? I know what you want, Buddy, and I’m here to tell you: All the scripts are shot to hell now. It’s time to take control and improvise.”
Take control of what? I’m confused and drowsy. And I’m slightly hurt by the fact that according to the counter on the screen, not a single Unknown Kentucky Terror has sold. My Evil Clown balloon has lost almost all its air.
The room darkens.
“Don’t try the frontal assault here. Trust me. Covert action has never been more called for. And Buddy, keep your head down. We’re in this thing together.”
The screen seems to be growing fuzzy. The voice plugged in my ear is fading away. “I’ll try to rendezvous with you somewhere down the line but I can’t guarantee anything.” The last words I hear him say are, “And one more thing, about that carrot top Rhonda …” but then my head goes light and I’m out cold.
Some time later (an hour? a day?) I awaken to squeaking sneakers in the hallway, the
predawn shuffle of hospitals. The second sensation I am aware of is my bladder, full and impatient. With my attention focused on that zone, I also realize I’ve been cathetered. I have tape in places no man would want to find adhesives. Groggy, I find the nurse’s call button and consider sending up a flare, getting detached from the plumbing and inquiring about my official prognosis. I’d like to know who’s been running what tests. But I hold off, caught by the strange suspicion that information is the key to my dilemma; something about all this seems horribly wrong, phony. Right now the only edge I’ve got is that everybody figures me for Captain Vegetable. So I decide to follow TV Buddy’s advice, stay covert until I gather some reliable intelligence. Having formed a tentative action plan, I release a stream of urine, though it’s hard to overcome the sense that I’m wetting the bed. Also, it is unsettling that I cannot shake.
After all the excitement, I spend time watching the sun slowly color the thin curtains. With the gradual illumination, my surroundings come into focus. Just past the foot of the bed, a wall of flowers blooms—a whole garden of reds, yellows, and greens. Brook is the only person who ever gave me flowers, and it’s been years, literally. Recalling the balloons, I reach behind me and tug down a bunch. I split a tiny card and read, “We love you, Terror. We’re all praying for you.”
Two cushioned chairs—one green, one pink—sit next to the bed. My shoulder feels cold. The gauze is stained with dark matter leaking from my wound. Beneath the bandages encircling my head, my cheeks tingle.
Footsteps at my door cue me to close my eyes. They move to one of the chairs, and its wooden legs scrape along the floor and then there is quiet breathing and the rattle of what sounds like cheap jewelry. The whispering that comes is so low it barely even sounds like breath is escaping. I take the chance and crack open one eye. It’s a woman—her head bowed, her eager fingers working a rosary. She is dressed in black, but wears no habit. This woman is clearly a nun of some kind, though why she is here I haven’t a clue. Imagine her surprise and joy if I came out right now. If I were to sit bolt upright and scream, “I see the light!” I could make her whole life make sense.
I settle back into the darkness, tiring again, and consider silently saying the rosary with Sister X. Ten Hail Marys, an Our Father, ten Hail Marys. Or is it the other way around? My weary mind falls to old habits, boyhood ways, and I end up praying the way my father taught me when I went to bed at night. Thank you for Brook. Thank you for the doctors. Thank you for Hardy. Please help Snake. Please help Barney. Please help Dr. Winston. Please help Rhonda. When I get to Alix, I’m not sure what to say—thank you or please, so I just stay quiet and settle into the dark listening to the whispering nun.
My next awakening is quick and sharp, snapping me from a dream in which everyone I knew was a Beanie Baby. A voice, in the dream at first, but then here in the real world, speaks. “Smile, B. C.”
My eyes almost open at the shock, but Quinn’s the last one I want to know the score. The way he played Hardy off me, telling him we were part of a divine plan. And then there’s the newspaper deal. Leave it to Quinn to score PR points from a shooting. Those investors are either drooling with envy over Quinn’s scavenger skills or they’re offended by the actions of a sick brain. I’d hope for offended, but my money’s on drooling.
Quinn’s steps circle the bed. There’s a chik-chik. Whir. Chik-chik.
A man’s voice from the hallway says, “Sir? Could I ask what exactly you’re doing?”
“My standing policy is to always invite open dialogue. Feel free to make any constructive suggestions.” Chik-chik. Whir. Chik-chik. It’s a camera.
“Please, sir, if you’d just explain what exactly you’re doing. I don’t want to have to contact security.”
“No one wants to contact security, son. It alters the power dynamic in frightening and unpredictable ways.” Chik-chik.
“Sir?”
The clicking stops. “I have a significant financial investment in this patient’s well-being. Furthermore, I write checks to his insurance company, which writes checks for this hospital, which writes checks to you so you can write checks to your landlady. So the moral of the story is: Piss off.”
The man huffs once, says, “Asshole,” and leaves.
There are more camera snaps and clicks. I can hear Quinn breathing and imagine him beaming that perfect smile from that always tanned face. Whatever his purpose is for pictures of the Broken Buddy, all I can do is lie here and listen to him go through half a roll before new footsteps enter the scene. The door closes. The three of us are alone.
“Lowell, this is my job, and my job is important—to me and to my family.”
“Can you pull those curtains open a little, J. K.?” Quinn asks. “Some heavenly light falling behind him will really create a nice effect.”
“Lowell, I’m dying here. An intern tells me somebody’s taking pictures and I figure it’s the damn cops. My irritable bowel’s a total mess. It’s burning my insides.” A shooshing sound brings a brighter glow through my eyelids.
Chik-chik. “You’ve got access to medication. I have complete faith in your abilities. What I need now is an accurate assessment of the current situation. You said he would regain consciousness by morning. It’s after lunch, and this is not conscious.”
“After this deal we’re even, OK, Quinn? No more Exit 351’s.”
They are on either side of me, and their silence hangs over my bed. Finally, it’s Quinn who speaks. “Let’s discuss the future of our relationship as we walk. I need to secure some shots of Snake, and you can play doctor. Proceed.”
As they step into the hallway I hear the doctor say, “Lowell, this is my job, and my job is important—to me and to my family.” Clearly, he prepared this line in advance and hoped it would have a significant impact.
After they’re gone, I roll around the idea of what Quinn’s got going on with this doctor. My list includes: drug trafficking, underage abortions, the black market sale of babies, and plastic surgery on individuals needing deep cover. This last thought makes me reach for the gauze wrapped around my face, and I wonder why my skin tingles and what’s waiting beneath these bandages.
With the curtains open, I can see the tree outside my window. The June air sends its leaves waving and twisting, and I wish I could be at Wrightsville Beach or Greenfield Lake, feel a breeze on my stale skin. Squirrels tightrope by on a telephone wire, and after a while I get the feeling it’s not many squirrels but just one, getting offstage of the window frame and then turning around again. Just as this idea occurs to me the squirrel pauses. He stares at me, as if studying my mind, a notion I don’t care for at all.
But I’m distracted from these important considerations by the familiar piano music that floats in from the hallway. Somebody in the room next to mine, or maybe somebody at the nurses’ station, has the TV tuned in to Waves Will Crash. Once the action starts, I can recognize the voices but not what they’re saying. As I strain to make sense of the dialogue, I’m dying to grab that remote and get the TV running. I’m somehow convinced that this might be the episode Lauren finally remembers if Stack or Longley is the father of the child in her womb. For her sake, I hope it’s Stack. Back before she had amnesia, Lauren believed Longley only hit her because she deserved it but it’s really because he’s a sick bastard who needs to be pistol-whipped. I close my eyes and focus on tuning in the words more clearly but it’s no use. I feel myself sliding back into sleep and I start inventing my own version of the story, making Lauren strong and confident, putting a butcher knife in her hand one night after Longley comes home from the bar and hits her, after he passes out in his favorite chair.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I come to, Alix is holding my hand. Don’t ask me how I know it’s her, I simply do. She has it lifted just slightly, and her hand rests beneath it. Almost like I am holding hers. That’s what she used to like. She didn’t just want to have our hands together. She wanted me to grip hers, like she was always afraid I mig
ht let go. Thinking of the apple perfume she used to wear, I inhale, but I only get a lungful of hospital antiseptic. I wonder how long she’s been here. When she talked to the doctor, how did she introduce herself? “Please, doctor, you have to tell me, I’m his—”
It’s hard not to squeeze Alix’s hand when I’ve wanted to for so long. Hard to just lie here like a dead fish. But I always hate the movies when they zoom in on the patient’s hand, held loosely by the caring blond nurse or the son named Billy, and the patient twitches a bit then gently folds his fingers around the loved one’s hand. I want my return to be original. Any second now Alix will bend over and whisper into my ear, “Coop, I don’t know if you can hear this or not, but don’t leave me. Hang on. We need you.” And I’ll open my eyes and blink back tears and whisper, “I’ll never leave you.”
I know that’s been done before too, but I like the way it plays.
I hear pages being turned and become aware of weight against my leg. Alix is reading something heavy and hard. She must have a Bible propped open on the bed. She’s come to pray over me, upset because of the way our last meeting went in the parking lot the night of the dance benefit. She can’t stand the notion of that being our final scene together. When she heard I was hurt she must have been terrified that she’d lose me before she had a chance to set things right between us. She slides her hand out from under mine and the weight on my leg disappears. The cushions of her chair squeak and sigh. Right now, she’s begging God not to take me away, searching the scripture for the words that will help her through this dark period. This could be a real opportunity for me. If she begins to read something out loud, I could take advantage of that. Or maybe she’ll say something like, “Oh Lord, please give me a sign.”
If she asks for a sign of any kind I am definitely taking it as a cue for decisive action.
Buddy Cooper Finds a Way Page 12
