Give him a massage? Joanne performed that function, she’d confided, because it was necessary for his circulation, but he couldn’t feel it, because he couldn’t feel anything below the neck. The blast that took his limbs and his eye had severed his spinal cord. So he couldn’t move anything, not that he had much to move, and couldn’t feel anything, either.
She should leave, she thought. Say hello, say goodbye, and get the hell out.
But somehow she couldn’t.
“Paaaam.”
Her name, or at least the name she’d given him. His voice was low in pitch, raspy, as if dragged abrasively through his scarred throat.
“Yes, she’s right here, Bubba.”
“Paaaam.”
“I’m here, Alvin.”
“You came.” He had breath enough for a single phrase, then had to gather himself for the next one. “ ’S really you.”
“Yes.”
And, haltingly, in three- and four-word bursts, he told her and his sister how much she had meant to him, how her letters had kept his morale up throughout the horror of desert warfare, how he’d longed to return to her, how he’d despaired at her ever being able to find him after his accident.
“You never said, Bubba.”
“Try forget.” A ragged breath, a gathering of verbal forces. “She here now.”
“I’m here now,” she agreed, wondering what else she was supposed to say, and hard put to guess who he thought she was, and what role she played in his personal mythology.
“Sis...”
And he rasped out what he wanted. Some time alone with his Pam. Joanne was hesitant, then agreed it would be a chance for her to get the grocery shopping done, and see to a few other errands she never had a chance to run. You’re here all the time, he told her. You never get a minute to yourself. Take an hour, take two hours. And give him some time alone with his Pam.
It was hard to get the woman out of the trailer. She had to provide instructions for every possible contingency that might crop up during her absence. But finally Joanne was out the door, and they heard the Hyundai pull out and head off down the road.
“She gone.”
“Yes.”
“So who the fuck—” a ragged breath “are you?”
TWENTY
Who the fuck was she?
Well, that was easy. She told him she’d met him just once, at a bar in the West Twenties. That they’d gone back to her apartment where he’d spent the night before returning to his unit in Iraq.
He seemed to remember. Remembered the bar, thought he was in the wrong place with all the gays there, and then he got lucky after all. He remembered that. Remembered her, sort of. But her name, Pam—
“Well, I probably gave you a different name.”
But her real name was Pam?
“Yes, Pamela, Pam for short. Pam Headley.”
She’d come this close to saying Hedgemont, then remembered that was the name of the town. Changed it to Headley at the last moment.
And what was she doing there? She fumbled her way to an answer. She’d remembered his name, Googled it one day on a whim, and decided it wouldn’t take her that far out of her way to stop by and see him. She hadn’t known he’d been wounded, hadn’t known anything, and the last thing she wanted to do was intrude. But here she was, and if there was anything she could do for him—
“One thing.”
“What?”
Hesitation. As if he was afraid to tell her what he wanted.
Well, sure. Looking as he did, reduced to what he’d become, the cocksure quality that had struck her years ago was nowhere to be found.
“If it’s sexual,” she said, “anything at all, just tell me. I won’t have a problem with it. Whatever you want, just tell me.”
“Sex.”
“Whatever you’d like me to do—”
“Can’t feel anything.”
“Oh.”
“Neck down. Nothing.”
“I just thought—”
“Sometimes it gets hard.”
“It does?”
He got the words out, one ragged phrase at a time. He had no sensation there, but sometimes he got erections, and when it happened he knew it, sensed it somehow even without sensation. If his head was in the right position he could look down and see it.
And eventually it would go soft again, because he didn’t have a hand to jerk off with, and couldn’t have moved it if he did, or felt anything in either his hand or his penis. He’d tried to come by mental effort, tried to increase his excitement by thinking sexual thoughts, trotting out old memories, working up new fantasies. He let his thoughts run the gamut, tender, violent, aberrant. He’d entertain the memory or the fantasy for a while, and then his erection would subside, and that would be that.
Once or twice, though, he’d come very close while he was sleeping. Almost had a wet dream a time or two. Woke up, though, before he could climax, and that was as far as it went.
Jesus, she thought.
“Is it hard now?”
“Can’t see. But no, can tell it’s not.”
“May I see?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. A sheet covered his lower body, and she drew it down to mid-thigh. His penis was soft, and her hand went to it automatically, held it gently.
“Can you feel anything?”
“No.”
“But you like that I’m holding it.”
“Yeah.”
“And you can tell that I’m holding it, can’t you? I mean, of course you can, you can see what I’m doing, but let’s try something. Close your eyes, and I’ll hold it and then not hold it, like off and on, and you’ll know when I’m holding it and when I’m not. At least I think you will. Can we try that? Can you close your eyes?”
Eye, she thought. He only had one eye to close. Was it wrong to say what she’d said?
Well, it didn’t seem to matter. And he’d closed both eyes, anyway, because that’s how the eyelids seemed to work, you closed or opened them both at once, the real one and the glass one.
She played with him, fondled him. Then let go of him. Then held him again.
“You can tell, can’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Even if you can’t feel anything, you can tell. So deep inside somewhere, you’re feeling it. Your mind just doesn’t know it.”
“Maybe.”
“You have a beautiful penis. I don’t want to stop touching it. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard or soft. It’s just beautiful.”
And it was, sort of. In a sense it was just a dick, and God knows she’d seen enough of them in her time, but she was connecting with it in a way that was, well, getting her hot. He couldn’t feel anything, and she was getting hot. Go figure that one.
“I want it in my mouth,” she told him. “I want to suck that beautiful cock, and play with your balls, and stick my finger up your ass. I want it for me, see, and I don’t give a shit whether you can feel anything or not. But you’re gonna feel it, Alvin, even if the message doesn’t get all the way to your brain. Your cock’s gonna feel it. It’s gonna get hard as a fucking rock and I’m gonna suck it and suck it and suck it and you’re gonna come like crazy and I’m gonna swallow every drop. Every fucking drop, you hear me?”
“Alvin?”
His eyes opened, and the good one met hers and held it. Was it clearer now?Was there a light in it that hadn’t been present earlier?
“Did you feel any of that?”
He took a moment. Then he said, “I knew when it happened.”
“Was there pleasure?”
“Kind of.”
“There was for me. I had an orgasm.”
“Don’t have to say that.”
“It’s true.”
“Yeah?”
“I was touching myself, but I think I would have come anyway. It was all intensely hot for me. I’m glad you got Joanne to give us some time alone. I guess this is what you had in mind.”
“No.”
“Or something like it, and if there’s anything else—”
“Different.”
“Oh?”
“You wouldn’t do it.”
“Wouldn’t do what? Alvin, anything you want me to do, all you have to do is ask.”
His eye bored into hers. There was something there but it was hard to read.
“You’re afraid to tell me what you want.”
“Yeah.”
“Because of what I’ll think of you? Alvin, I won’t—”
“Don’t care what you think of me.”
“Then why—”
“Because you won’t do it.”
“I can’t if you won’t tell me what it is.”
“Only thing I want.”
She waited. That would do it, she knew. If she just waited him out, sooner or later he’d tell her.
“Pam...”
Still waited.
“Kill me.”
Words and phrases, spilling out in fits and starts:
Can’t stand it. Nothing to live for. Can’t get better. Can’t keep from getting worse. Dying by inches. Sis won’t let me die. ‘Bubba, you’re all I live for.’ Jesus. ‘Bubba, together we’ll keep you going.’ Sweet Jesus. ‘Bubba, keeping you alive’s what keeps me alive.’ Only person ever loved me and I’m starting to hate her because she won’t let me fucking die.
Just kill me. All I want’s for it to be over. Don’t worry about hurting me. Can’t nobody hurt me. Don’t feel nothing. Except inside. Inside the pain’s always there. Only one way to make it go away and that’s kill me.
Can’t ask it of you. I know that. You’re good, you’re gentle, you’re kind. You ain’t no killer. I know all that. Asking you anyway. Begging you. Nobody else to beg. Nobody comes here but Sis. Anybody ever does show up, one look and they’re gone. Can’t blame ’em.
Can’t take no more of this. Can’t eat, can’t move, can’t pay attention to TV. All I got left’s a heart won’t quit beating and a voice in my head won’t shut up. Tried to kill myself by force of will. Didn’t work. Couldn’t make myself come that way. Couldn’t make myself die either. All my mind’s good for is letting me know how miserable I am.
Used to think an orgasm might give me some pleasure. Was like watching it happen to somebody else. Now that’s not even there to hope for. Nothing to hope for, nothing but dying.
“Stop,” she said.
After a moment he murmured something, and she had to lean close and ask him to say it again.
“Sorry,” he said, in his ragged whisper.
“For what?”
“Laying it all on you. Held it all in so long, nobody to talk to. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Look, I’ll do it.”
“What?”
“What you asked. I’ll kill you.”
He stared at her.
“Not today,” she said. “Your sister’ll be back any minute. In fact I think I hear a car. I’ll come back tomorrow and we can send her shopping again, and once she’s out the door you can tell me if you really want to go through with it.”
“I already told you. You think I’ll change my mind?”
“You might. You told me because it was safe to tell me because you flat knew I wouldn’t do what you wanted. Well, you were wrong about that. I’ll do it. But you’ll have to tell me tomorrow that it’s still what you want. And that’s her car, she just cut the engine. I’ll get out of here in a minute, and I’ll be back tomorrow, and she’ll go shopping again and by the time she gets back I’ll be gone forever. And, if it’s still what you want, so will you.”
*
The only motel, a quarter-mile or so from the convenience store, was about what you’d expect. Hedgemont didn’t get much in the way of tourist traffic, so most of the units were rented by the week to the sort of people who could only dream of working their way up to a broken-down house trailer.
She paid cash in advance for a single night and tried to remember what name she’d told Kirkaby and his sister. Pam, of course, and not Hedgemont, because that was the name of this shithole town, but it started out that way before she caught herself, and what was it? Hedges? Hedgeworth?
Headley! Pam Headley, and it was nice she remembered, but it didn’t matter because the old drunk in the office didn’t give her anything to sign, just took her money and slapped a key on the counter.
Half an hour later she was sitting in front of the last black-and-white TV in America and eating food from the convenience store— Fritos, Hostess cupcakes, Slim Jims. She forced herself to use the shower, dried herself with the ratty little towel they provided. Stayed up late, woke up early.
Mid-morning, she was back at the trailer.
It was hard getting rid of Joanne. She didn’t have to do any more shopping, she told them. Had everything they needed. Why burn up gasoline driving around?
Alvin insisted. He wanted some time alone with Pam. She’d be leaving soon, he might never see her again, and he wanted time together, just the two of them.
The woman got a mulish look on her face. But what could she do? “Maybe I’ll visit my friend Aggie,” she said. “That’s all the way over in Timber Creek. Say an hour there and an hour back, and she wouldn’t let me leave without she gives me lunch. So four hours? That enough time for the two of you to do whatever it is you have in mind?”
Joanne grabbed her purse, got her car keys in hand, let the screen door slam behind her. Alvin was about to say something, but she made him wait until she heard the car start up and pull away. Then she asked him if he’d changed his mind.
“No. What got me through the night was knowing it was the last one I had to get through. And you?”
“Me?”
“Change your mind?”
“No. I’ll do it.”
“Yeah, what I realized about you. Last night, thinking. You’re steel inside.”
She let that go.
“Tried to spare you. Last night. Tried to swallow my tongue. Supposed to be a way to kill yourself, shuts off the air flow. Heard of it somewhere. Don’t know if it’s even possible, but I couldn’t do it.”
“I said I’d do it.”
“I know. There’s a pillow on the sofa. No? What’s wrong with that?”
“Pinpoint hemorrhages on the eyeballs. First thing anybody’d look for, and then they’d look at Joanne.”
“Sis? Anybody who knows her’d know she wouldn’t do it in a million years.”
“So then they’d come looking for me. They wouldn’t find me, but they’d come looking, and who needs it? I’m not gonna hold a pillow over your face, okay? It’s not that easy if the person’s conscious, anyway.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve done this before, okay? And not as a fucking act of mercy, either. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Like a roadside bomb, comes from out of nowhere and takes you by surprise.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I put a pillow over a guy’s face once,” she said, “and then I sat on it, and I have to say it was H-O-T. But I don’t think he liked it much, and it took him a while to die. Which was fine with me, but I like you, and I want this to be easy, so why don’t you just let me do it my way?”
God, the look in his eye.
“I have some drugs with me. Should be quick and easy, and if you feel anything you won’t feel it for very long.”
“I can’t swallow pills.”
“This would be an injection. There’ll be a pinprick, but you won’t feel that, will you?”
“No.”
She’d prepared the syringe before she left the motel, filled it from one of the vials from the drugstore in Glens Falls. Now she retrieved it from her suitcase and showed it to him.
“All set,” she said. “Anything you’d like to do first?”
“Like what? Eat a sandwich? Take a quick jog around the block?”
“I thought you might want to have sex again.”
“No.”
“Or
, I don’t know. Say a prayer?”
“Not much for praying.”
“Me neither. You figure there’s anything afterward?”
“After you die, you mean?”
“Maybe you’ll have your body back again. You know, in another dimension. Your arms and legs, and everything healthy.”
“Not counting on it.”
“Or maybe it’s a kind of existence where there aren’t bodies.”
“Just souls floating around?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe it’s nothing,” he said. “Maybe it just, you know, stops.”
“Maybe. This vein looks good. Are you ready?”
“More than ready.”
“I don’t suppose I need an alcohol swab. I guess infection’s not a consideration. Sorry, I’m all thumbs all of a sudden. Just as well you can’t feel anything. Okay, I think I’ve got it in the vein. Alvin?”
“What?”
“Look, if there is something afterward, and somebody up there wants a report, would you tell them I wasn’t bad all the time? That there was one time I did something good?”
Jesus, was that a tear in the corner of his eye?
She pressed the plunger, kept looking at his eye, watched the light fade from it.
One.
TWENTY-ONE
One.
A bus, a plane, another bus. A Rust Belt city in east-central Ohio, immune to economic cycles because it had been in its own permanent recession ever since the end of the Second World War. A dingy SRO hotel, her drab room so small that the initials might as easily have stood for Standing Room Only as Single Room Occupancy.
And a minimum-wage job two blocks away, in a shop that sold rolling papers and recycled jeans. She wore the same basic outfit every day, loose jeans and a bulky sweater, and she didn’t put on makeup or lipstick, or do anything with her hair. She kept herself as unattractive as possible short of putting on weight or breaking out in pimples, but a certain number of guys hit on her anyway. Some guys were like that; the mere possibility that you might be the possessor of a vagina was all it took to arouse their interest.
She deflected any attention that came her way, meeting their gaze with a slack-jawed, bovine stare, missing the point of their innuendo. Some of them probably thought she was retarded. One way or the other, they all lost what minimal interest she’d inspired.
Hard Case Crime: Getting Off Page 17
