The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

  “What was that about?” Tinafey said as they continued toward the restaurant.

  “Nothing,” Petty said. “I’m a little drunk, I guess.”

  He ordered a Coke with his burrito instead of a beer, didn’t want Tinafey to remember him sloppy. She was subdued during dinner—no jokes, no movie-star gossip. Thrown off by his momentary freakout, Petty supposed, and disappointed at the way her trip to L.A. had ended, how heavy everything had gotten. He apologized and promised to make things up to her.

  “You wait,” he said. “I’m gonna show up in Memphis and drag you off to Miami for a week.”

  Tinafey didn’t scoff at him, but she didn’t smile, either. She chewed on the straw from her iced tea and gave him a look he couldn’t decipher.

  “What if I don’t go to Memphis tomorrow?” she said.

  The bartender was singing along to “Highway to Hell” as he poured shots for a couple from Houston. Petty wished the guy would shut up so he could concentrate.

  “What do you mean?” he said to Tinafey.

  “What if I stay with you a little longer?” she said.

  This threw Petty, and his first instinct was to search for the angle in her offer.

  “Why would you want to do that?” he said. “I’ll be at the hospital most of the time, and when I’m not, I’ll be working.”

  “I’ll help you out.”

  “Help me how?”

  “While you’re taking care of your daughter, I’ll take care of you.”

  “Is it that you’ve got cold feet about Memphis?” Petty said. “We can exchange the ticket if you’d rather go somewhere else.”

  “I’m fine with Memphis,” Tinafey said. “Memphis is gonna be great. But right now you need a friend.”

  Petty sat back and stared at her. If she was playing him, he couldn’t figure out for what.

  “I’m almost broke,” he said. “I’ll be moving to a cheap motel, and there won’t be any more fancy dinners. You don’t want to hang around for that.”

  “I don’t need fancy,” Tinafey said. “And I’ve got money. Not much, but some. You don’t have a wife comin’, do you?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Petty said.

  “Okay, then,” Tinafey said.

  The realization that she was sincere about helping him was more troubling to Petty than the possibility that she might have been conning him. A con had a motive. It was all about cash, and he was comfortable with that. Kindness was more complicated. It muddied the savage calculus that reduced every decision in his life to “Am I taking or being taken?” and the last thing he needed now were complications.

  “Baby,” he said. “That’s super sweet of you, but I think it’s best if you get on that plane tomorrow.”

  “Why?” Tinafey said.

  “Any other time, I’d beg you to stay, but you don’t need to be around this. It’s not your problem.”

  “I said I want to help out.”

  “And I’m saying you’ve got to go.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you, the fun’s over.”

  Tinafey’s eyes hardened into two dark stones.

  “Tell me the real reason,” she said.

  “That is the real reason,” Petty said.

  “No it ain’t. The real reason is ’cause I’m a whore.”

  Petty scoffed at her. “You don’t believe that,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me what I believe,” she said. “You don’t want me around because I’m a whore. You’re worried about what your daughter would think.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it ain’t,” Tinafey said. She stood quickly, near tears. “I’m going to the room.”

  Petty saw that he’d hurt her by refusing her offer, that it hadn’t been made lightly, and that she was as afraid of what it signified as he was.

  “Sit,” he said.

  “I heard enough.”

  “Sit. Please.”

  She perched lightly on the edge of her chair, ready to flee in an instant if she didn’t like the next thing that came out of his mouth. And right then he knew: he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t send her away, even though it was the right move.

  “You’re a good person,” Petty said. “I don’t meet many good people. I guess I don’t know how to act around them.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Tinafey said.

  “I’d love it if you’d stay,” Petty said.

  “You changed your mind just like that?”

  “I never wanted you to go. I just thought it’d be better for you.”

  Tinafey thought this over, then said, “Well, maybe I don’t want to stay now. Maybe I see I had you wrong.”

  “This isn’t something I can beg you for, baby,” Petty said. “It has to be your choice.”

  A smile rippled across Tinafey’s lips. “You could beg a little,” she said.

  “Please stay,” Petty said.

  Tinafey let him dangle for a few seconds, then said, “You came that close to blowin’ this good thing you got. You know that?”

  “I’ll try to do better.”

  “It ain’t that hard.”

  Petty took her hand. He kissed her cheek. He’d made his decision, and a key turned. A key turned, a door opened, and he found himself standing somewhere he’d never been before—him, a man who thought he’d been everywhere.

  16

  THE NEXT MORNING PETTY CHECKED OUT OF THE LOEWS AND drove to the City Center Motel, his and Tinafey’s new home. Still a little spooked after their encounter with the bald guy the night before, he kept an eye on the rearview mirror. At one point he circled a block, made four lefts in a row, but no tail was revealed. By the time they reached the motel, he was convinced they weren’t being followed.

  The City Center was a two-story cinder-block heap with thin walls and stained carpet hunched in the shadow of downtown’s high-rises. You could smell every other person who’d stayed in the room, and the swimming pool was empty except for six inches of black sludge. The weekly rate was cheap, though, and it was only a couple of blocks from the hospital.

  Petty decided to visit Sam before posting the listings for the condos, and he asked Tinafey to come with him.

  “Nah,” she said. “You go on. I’ll hang out here.”

  Petty didn’t push it. He’d put her through enough already.

  He walked to Good Samaritan. It was cold enough that he needed a jacket, but the sky was clear, only a few fuzzy clouds hovering above the distant mountains. His route took him down a street lined with brick tenements packed with Central American families. Everyone was at work at that hour, so the neighborhood was quiet. Two women sat talking on the steps of one of the buildings, surrounded by a flock of bouncing children. A scavenger fished for cans in a dumpster. An old man sprayed the sidewalk with a garden hose.

  The girl at the main desk of the hospital printed out a badge for him and directed him to Sam’s room, on the third floor. As far as hospitals went, this one wasn’t bad. The walls were freshly painted, the floors gleamed, and the staff bustled about with whitened smiles and an abundance of institutional good cheer. The air smelled funny, a hint of something troubling sneaking past the filters and deodorizers, but other than that, the place was nice enough.

  Sam’s room held three beds. In the first was an old Asian woman as shrunken and wrinkled as one of those dolls carved from an apple. Her head lolled on her pillow, and her toothless mouth gaped. What life she had left in her was concentrated in her eyes, which were glued to a TV on the wall, some game show. The second bed was empty, stripped of sheets, the helpless, humiliated mattress exposed. Sam lay in the third bed. Her TV was on, too, but she was gazing out the window.

  “See anything interesting?” Petty said.

  “This bird,” Sam replied. “It flaps, then glides; flaps, then glides. I think it’s a hawk.”

  “There are hawks in L.A.?”

  “There’s everything in L.A.”

  “Did you hav
e breakfast?”

  “I ate the fruit and toast, but the eggs were scary.”

  “I’ll sneak some McNuggets in later,” Petty said. Sam had loved Chicken McNuggets when she was a kid.

  “Make sure you get sweet-and-sour and honey mustard,” she said, playing along by reciting her standard childhood request.

  “I was going to come back last night, but they told me you were asleep,” he said.

  “Until they woke me up at five for my MRI,” she said.

  “Is that the machine they slide you into? The one that looks like a spaceship?”

  “It’s more like being tied up inside a garbage can while someone pounds on it with a hammer.”

  “I don’t know if I could handle that. I get claustrophobic getting on a plane.”

  “They also shoot you up with this dye that puts a nasty taste in your mouth. I almost vomited.”

  “Did they tell you anything afterward?”

  “Just that it’ll take a day or so to analyze the scan,” Sam said. “I’m stuck in here until then, I guess.”

  She had more color in her cheeks this morning, more energy. Petty noticed the flowers and bear he’d sent sitting on a shelf.

  “So those made it,” he said. “I didn’t know what you’d like.”

  “The bear’s cute,” Sam said.

  “Is there anything else I can get you?”

  “I’m good. My friend Jessica’s bringing my phone charger and makeup and stuff.”

  “That’s nice of her.”

  “She’s an orphan, like me. We take care of each other.”

  “You’re not an orphan,” Petty said patiently.

  “You know what I mean,” Sam said.

  “I’ll be around as long as you need me.”

  “I don’t need you at all,” Sam said. “If it makes you feel better about yourself to be here, cool, feel better about yourself, but I’m fine on my own.”

  She was twelve when she first turned on Petty and bit. He’d never gotten over the shock of it. And every time she’d lashed out since then had stung just as much.

  “Just let me play daddy for a couple days, all right?” he said.

  “Whatever,” Sam said. “But don’t push it.”

  A nurse stepped into the room. “How you doing, Mrs. Kong?” she called to the old woman in the other bed. Mrs. Kong didn’t respond. The nurse checked the monitors the woman was hooked up to and said, “The doctor will be by shortly, okay?” Again, no response. Mrs. Kong continued to stare at the TV.

  “She woke me up last night,” Sam whispered to Petty. “Singing a Chinese song.”

  “I’ll ask them to move you to a private room,” Petty said.

  “No,” Sam said. “I’m fine here.”

  The nurse, a Filipina with an accent and a mole on her cheek, came over to Sam’s bed. “How you doing?” she said. “You need water? Juice?”

  “Nope. Nothing,” Sam said.

  “You got the best bed,” the nurse said. “By the window.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “You want to take a shower? The doctor said it’s okay.”

  “That’d be awesome.”

  Petty was glad to have an excuse to leave. He needed to get back to the motel and put up the condo listings.

  “I’ll be back this evening,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sam said.

  “It’s no big deal,” he said. “I’m staying at a motel two blocks away.”

  “Really?” Sam said.

  “Yeah, so call if you need anything.”

  “Cool,” Sam said, sounding like she meant it. It wasn’t much, but Petty counted it as a victory.

  A woman was waiting for him in the hall.

  “Mr. Petty?” she said. “I’m from the hospital’s business department. Could we talk?”

  Diane was her name, Diane Rhee. Korean, chubby, bright blue contact lenses. Her office was on the first floor. Petty guessed that the framed photo of her and her baby and her husband on her desk was supposed to humanize her and put him at ease.

  “How’s your daughter?” she said.

  “I haven’t heard anything yet,” he said.

  “That’s hard.”

  “It is.”

  Diane tapped at her keyboard and opened a file on her computer. She kept her eyes on it as she spoke.

  “Dr. Avakian mentioned that you wanted to be kept up to date on matters regarding Samantha’s care,” she said.

  “That’s right,” Petty said.

  “Well, unfortunately, as difficult a time as it is for Samantha and you, there needs to be a discussion of the financial aspects of her stay here.”

  “What’s to discuss?”

  “Samantha doesn’t have insurance, and she earns too much to be eligible for Medi-Cal.”

  “Which means?”

  “She’s what we call a self-pay patient and will be personally responsible for the cost of her treatment. We offer discounts on certain procedures to self-pays, but the costs can still be substantial. So in cases like this, we often transfer patients to County USC Medical Center, a public hospital. Costs are lower there, and they offer more assistance programs for low-income patients.”

  “What’s that like, County USC?” Petty said.

  “It’s a very nice facility,” Diane said.

  “Seriously, or is it the ghetto hospital?”

  “As I said, it’s a nice facility.”

  “Would you send your kid there?”

  Diane hesitated a little too long, and that was all the answer Petty needed.

  “I want Sam to stay here,” he said. “I’ll pay whatever it takes and sign whatever you need me to sign.”

  “I appreciate your wanting to help your daughter,” Diane said, “but legally she’s the patient, and it’s her financial status we take into account when deciding whether to move her.”

  “So I’ll give her the money, and she can give it to you,” Petty said.

  “That wouldn’t have any bearing on the transfer,” Diane said. “It’s frustrating, I know.”

  “Look,” Petty said. He took out his wallet, pulled all the money out of it, close to four hundred dollars, and placed it on the desk. “This is for you,” he said. “Keep her here, and there’ll be more tomorrow.”

  Diane stared at the money, then stared at Petty.

  “That’s not how things work around here,” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” Petty said. “That’s how things work everywhere.”

  Diane pursed her lips, exhaled loudly, and turned back to her computer.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

  Petty got up and started for the door.

  “You forgot something,” Diane said.

  “No, I didn’t,” Petty said.

  “Yes, you did,” Diane said, pointing at the money on her desk without looking at it.

  Petty reluctantly retrieved the cash. “Everything’ll be paid, I swear,” he said.

  Diane ignored him. Petty shoved the money in his pocket and went to the door again. He stopped on the threshold.

  “If you could get her a private room, that’d be great, too,” he said. “The one she’s in is really noisy.”

  Diane didn’t respond, didn’t even stop typing. Petty wondered if she’d heard him but didn’t push it by asking.

  And just like that, he was in over his head again. The condo hustle wasn’t going to bring in the kind of money he needed now, but at least it was a start. He stopped at a phone store and bought the cheapest disposable they had and loaded it with minutes. The wi-fi at the motel was so slow that it took him most of the afternoon to put the listings on Airbnb. “Affordable Luxury on Maui.” “Beautiful Condo Steps from the Beach.” “Sun! Fun! Sand!” They looked great, completely legit, and he expected the burner to start ringing at any minute.

  Tinafey watched TV with the sound down while he worked. She got restless after a while and went out for a walk. An hour later she came back with a turkey sa
ndwich and a bag of chips for him, then went outside and sat on the walkway in a plastic chair.

  Petty heard her through the door, talking to someone. Even though there was no way anybody could know where they were now, this still made him nervous. He peeked out the window and saw two people, a guy and a girl, sitting in front of the room next door. They were young, in their early twenties. The guy had a big, bushy beard, and the girl’s hair was cut short and dyed a faded blue. Both were smoking cigarettes. They didn’t look like anything to be worried about, so Petty kept working and did his best to ignore the occasional laughter.

  The conversation was still going strong when he finished posting the final listing. He straightened his clothes and opened the door.

  “There he is,” Tinafey said. She’d moved her chair to join the couple in front of their room.

  The guy held up a bottle. “Would you like some wine?” he said.

  “It’s good,” Tinafey said, raising a plastic cup.

  “Sure,” Petty said. He walked over and stood against the railing.

  “This here’s Bernard and Patricia,” Tinafey said. “They’re from France. This is Rowan.”

  “I hope we did not disturb you,” Bernard said. He handed Petty a cup and poured wine into it.

  “Nah,” Petty said. “Sounded like you guys were having fun.” The wine was white and cold and tasted like peaches.

  “Guess what?” Tinafey said. “They’re goin’ to Memphis.”

  “And Nashville and Clarksdale, too,” Patricia said. “To the crossroads. Do you know this place?”

  “I was in Nashville once,” Petty said. Drinking there, in a bar on Broadway. Some shitkicker came in and yelled, “Listen up, bartender! Gimme beer for my horses, whiskey for my men, and a nigger for my daughter!” That’s all Petty remembered about Nashville.

  Patricia explained the crossroads to him, the spot where a famous blues musician supposedly struck a deal with the devil. “It is very famous,” she said in her cute accent.