The Smack

by RICHARD LANGE

Petty sat back and let her wrestle with it on her own. When she’d moved the table to where she wanted it, she adjusted her pillows.

  “I’m sorry I was such a bitch earlier,” she said. “But it’s ridiculous, her showing up here.”

  “I guess she’s worried about you,” Petty said.

  “I guess she’s fucking crazy,” Sam said.

  Petty didn’t dispute this.

  “I remember when I was six and she burned all your clothes,” Sam said.

  “I remember that, too,” Petty said.

  “She said she caught you cheating. I thought she meant at cards.”

  “I never cheated on her,” Petty said, and it was true. “My dad cheated on my mom, and I saw what it did to her, and I swore I’d never do that to my wife.”

  “But she thought you did,” Sam said.

  “She was wrong,” Petty said. “I might have been a bad husband in a hundred other ways, but I never cheated on her.”

  Sam chewed on this, deciding whether to believe him.

  “Why did she leave then?” she said.

  This was the great mystery of Petty’s life, the question he still asked himself at 3:00 a.m. on sleepless nights. To this day he wasn’t sure if Carrie had actually loved him for a time or had been playing him all along.

  They were living in Denver when she took off. They’d moved there from Vegas and were renting a brand-new three-bedroom house with a view of the Rockies and driving brand-new cars. Petty was working a house-flopping scam with a crooked Realtor and appraiser. The Realtor would hook him up with “motivated sellers,” homeowners under water on their mortgages and close to defaulting, and Petty would offer to help them get rid of the mortgages without ruining their credit and put a little cash in their pockets at the same time.

  This was during the bubble, when the introductory rates on all the shitty variable mortgages the banks had issued were expiring, so there were plenty of motivated sellers. If a homeowner went for Petty’s pitch, the Realtor and the appraiser would convince the bank holding the paper that the market value of the house was much lower than it actually was, and Petty would make an offer on the property based on this false valuation.

  Nine times out of ten the bank would agree to a short sale, because settling for less would be cheaper for them than foreclosing. Once Petty was listed as owner of the house, he’d turn around and sell it for actual market value, pocketing the difference between the short-sale price and the market price, that difference being anywhere from twenty to forty grand. The original homeowner and the appraiser each got 10 percent of this, and the Realtor was happy with her commissions from both sales. The bank got fucked over, but you know, fuck the bank.

  Petty’s plan had been to save enough money to buy some legit rental properties with an eye toward settling in Denver. Sam was eight years old, and they’d moved five times since she was born, either running from some kind of heat or chasing new swindles. He didn’t want her to grow up like that, like he had.

  Carrie seemed open to the idea of staying in town, too, had even been talking about a country club she wanted to join. But then one day she left Sam with a neighbor, e-mailed Petty to pick their little girl up there, and disappeared.

  He managed to get hold of her a week later, paid one of her friends a hundred bucks for her new cell number. They talked twice before she changed the number again. That’s when she told him she was with Hug. They’d had a fling in Vegas and been lusting after each other ever since. Petty asked her to return for Sam’s sake. The little girl had been crying since she left and jumped for the phone every time it rang.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Carrie said.

  “Was it really so awful being with us?” Petty said.

  “Not awful, but not good, either,” Carrie said. “Not great.”

  He’d had no direct contact with her since.

  Some years later a rumor went around that she and Hug had been involved in a thing, guns and dope and bloody payback. She’d either done time or barely managed to avoid it, depending on who you talked to. Petty didn’t care either way. He’d never forgive her for Sam’s tears, and he’d never forgive her for making him a mark.

  So why did she leave? Sam had asked. She stared at him from the bed, waiting for an answer.

  “She said she was bored,” Petty replied.

  “Do you remember the poem I wrote back then?” Sam said. “‘My mother ran away. Maybe she will stay. Or maybe she’ll come home someday and take my pain away.’”

  “Does it still hurt like that now?” Petty said.

  “It made me tough,” Sam said. “And that’s good. I’m the one my friends come to when they’re falling apart, all the girls who grew up in magic princess land.”

  “You wanted to be a princess, too,” Petty said. “I bought you the dress.”

  “Yeah, well, you probably wanted to be a policeman, and look at you.”

  “A cop? No way. A fireman, maybe, but never a cop.”

  Sam laughed. “Look,” she said, pulling a deck of cards out of her bag. “I had Jessica bring these.”

  She swung the table over, shuffled the cards, and had Petty pick one, memorize it, and place it on top of the deck.

  “Does this ring a bell?” she said.

  It was a trick Petty had shown her when she was a kid. She squared the deck, sneaking a peek at the bottom card as she did, and had Petty cut. Then she spread the cards out on the table faceup, looked for the former bottom card, and pointed to the card to the left of it, Petty’s card.

  “Sim sala bim,” she said.

  “What about the other trick?” Petty said. “The Seven Detectives.”

  “The Seven Detectives,” she said in a funny voice and looked through the deck for the four kings, the setup for the trick.

  “I can’t believe you remember these,” Petty said. “I can’t even remember my own phone number.”

  Sam pulled the king of spades and froze. Her face went blank, like she was listening to a voice in her head. She began to tremble.

  “What’s wrong?” Petty said.

  The trembling got worse. She dropped the cards, and her hands curled in at the wrists. Petty started to shake, too. He jumped up out of his chair.

  “Sam?”

  Her head flopped back onto the pillow, and her eyes rolled. The convulsions were so violent now that the bed squeaked their rhythm. Petty called for a nurse. Sam was making choking noises. Foam oozed from between her lips. Petty looked around for something to put in her mouth to keep her from biting her tongue. He grabbed the plastic fork from the enchilada tray, but his hands belonged to someone else; he couldn’t keep hold of it.

  “Nurse!” he yelled again. “Somebody get a nurse!” He was at the bottom of a dark pit, alone with the echo of his voice. He was in a crowded subway car with no room to draw a breath. He pried open Sam’s clenched jaw and stuck his knuckle between her teeth. She chomped down hard, and he gritted his own teeth against the pain.

  “Nurse!” he said again. “Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!”

  20

  TINAFEY SHOWED UP AROUND NINE. PETTY CALLED TO TELL her what happened, and she took a cab from the jazz club to the hospital. He decided to hold off on calling his mom until he heard something definite about Sam. All he knew now was that she’d been moved to intensive care. As for Carrie, he had no idea how to get in touch with her and didn’t want to deal with her right now anyway.

  He and Tinafey sat next to Sam’s empty bed. Quiet had descended over the hospital, the fidgety quiet of a crowded place. Mrs. Kong and the Mexican woman were asleep. Petty counted the beeps of Mrs. Kong’s machines to keep from going crazy.

  “She’s gonna be all right,” Tinafey said out of nowhere, as if she’d read his mind. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  Dr. Avakian had a lousy poker face. Petty read him as soon as he walked into the room. Bad news. He asked to talk to Petty alone. Petty followed him out into the hall and down past the nurses’ station. Avakian lo
oked both ways before he spoke.

  “Your daughter had another seizure,” he said.

  “I know. I was there,” Petty said.

  “It was a major one, but she’s stable now.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  Dr. Avakian paused and exhaled forcefully. Petty caught a whiff of cigarette smoke on his breath. The doctor pinched the bridge of his nose and screwed his eyes shut.

  “What I’m going to tell you next I’m not supposed to be telling you,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Petty said.

  “You’re her father,” Dr. Avakian said. “You should know.”

  “Thank you,” Petty said.

  Dr. Avakian opened his eyes. “The results of the MRI are in, and the neurologist will go over them with you tomorrow,” he said. “But between you and me, it doesn’t look good.”

  Petty stiffened like a soldier standing at attention, made his spine steel so he didn’t slump to the floor.

  “In what way?” he said.

  “Without going into detail, there’s a tumor,” Dr. Avakian said. “A big one.”

  “Is she going to die?” Petty said.

  “The neurologist will discuss the prognosis when you meet with her,” Dr. Avakian said. “Why I’m speaking with you now is this. May I be candid?”

  “Please do,” Petty said.

  “Your daughter is a self-pay patient, correct?”

  “That’s right. But it’s not a problem. I’ll cover everything.”

  “And how are you fixed for money?”

  The question confused Petty. “I do okay,” he said. “Why?”

  “Treating a tumor like this is very expensive,” Dr. Avakian said. “You’ll be able to negotiate the costs down, but still, an illness like this can break you if you’re not prepared.”

  “How much are we talking about?” Petty said.

  “A million dollars at least, and it could be much more, depending on how things go.”

  “Jesus,” Petty said.

  “That’s why I’m giving you an early warning,” Dr. Avakian said. “Father to father, I advise you to start gathering the funds now. I don’t know what that means to you—selling stocks, selling property, borrowing from relatives—but start the process now.”

  “Jesus,” Petty said again.

  A fluorescent tube in the fixture above him had been flickering all through the conversation. He’d been able to ignore it before, but now it was all he could do not to reach up and smash it to bits.

  Sam wouldn’t be out of intensive care until morning, so Petty and Tinafey returned to the motel, where Petty spent a long night tossing and turning on the too-soft bed. Tinafey laid a comforting arm across his chest, but it felt like a strap yanked tight. He shrugged it off and rolled to the edge of the mattress. He knew what he had to do, but the city’s noisy nocturnal simmer derailed his every attempt to come up with a way to do it. Helicopters hovered, brakes squealed, and sirens howled like madmen on fire. When he tried opening his eyes and concentrating on the ceiling, the calm, white expanse of stucco mocked his turmoil.

  Somewhere near dawn, with daylight creeping in around the drapes, he dozed off. The anguished groan of a garbage truck hefting an overloaded dumpster woke him a couple minutes later, but the time away had been enough. The first step of a plan had tumbled into place.

  He needed the army money, and to get it, he needed Tinafey’s help. That meant telling her everything. About Avi and Don and the rumor that had brought him here. About Tony. About the dead cowboy. He laid it all out for her over coffee at the counter of an IHOP on the ground floor of a downtown office building. Ten seconds into his confession, she slipped on her sunglasses in order to hide her eyes from him. By the time he finished, she had a hand covering her mouth, too, so that he had no idea how his revelations had gone over. She sat silently for a long, tense moment, then sighed and reached for her cappuccino.

  “Motherfuckin’ hustlers,” she said.

  “It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this,” Petty said.

  “When does it ever turn out like it’s supposed to?” she said. She sipped her coffee and shook her head, disgusted.

  The after-church crowd poured in, and the line of people waiting for tables stretched out the front door of the restaurant. Everybody in their Sunday best, everybody freshly sanctified. They talked excitedly about TV shows they liked and discount tickets to Universal Studios. The Korean guy at the host’s station cracked bad jokes that kept them laughing.

  “What kind of bagel can fly?” he asked a black woman in a fancy hat.

  “I don’t know. What kind?”

  “A plain bagel.”

  “You were supposed to be in Memphis by now, and I was supposed to be in Phoenix,” Petty said to Tinafey. “Both of us free and clear.”

  “But now what?” Tinafey said.

  “I need that money to pay for Sam’s treatment,” Petty said. “And if the kid was telling the truth about having it, I’m gonna take it from him.”

  “You mean steal it from him,” Tinafey said.

  Petty shrugged.

  “And what about the other motherfucker?” Tinafey said. “Avi. You said he might still be after the money, too, might have someone else looking for it, looking for you.”

  “If that’s true, I’ve got to beat him to it,” Petty said.

  “What the fuck are you thinkin’?” Tinafey said. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “There’s already one man dead here. You didn’t kill him, but they can put you away for it just the same. Or maybe you’ll end up out there in the desert, too, buried next to him.”

  “I’m going to get the money for Sam,” Petty said. “After that, what happens happens.”

  “Oh, my God,” Tinafey said. She put her hands over her ears. “Why are you even tellin’ me all this?”

  “I need your help,” Petty said.

  “And I need to get my ass up and walk out of here right now.”

  “Please, baby.”

  “What about your wife?” Tinafey said. “She’s here. Get her to help you.”

  “I can’t trust her,” Petty said. “I can trust you.”

  “What’s the best day to go to the beach?” the Korean said.

  “Come on, now, what day?” a guy in a suit said, playing along.

  “Sunday!”

  Tinafey carved grooves into her foam cup with the tip of her thumbnail. She wouldn’t look Petty in the eye.

  “Baby.…” she said.

  “Make one phone call for me,” Petty said.

  “I know we’re talkin’ about your little girl and everything, but—”

  “One call, and I’ll give you ten grand and put you on a plane to Memphis this afternoon. I’m an asshole for asking, but I don’t have anybody else.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I do understand. It’s not your problem, so why should you get mixed up in it? But I swear, nobody will ever know you had anything to do with it.”

  “You don’t understand,” Tinafey said. “It’s not me I’m worried about.” She gouged another groove into her cup, and another. “It’s you.”

  The tumor was located on Sam’s cerebrum. Petty asked Dr. Wilkes, Sam’s neurologist, to spell that and wrote the word down so he didn’t have to watch what happened to Sam’s face while she digested the news. She was back in her room with Mrs. Kong and the Mexican woman. Carrie was there, too. Petty had dragged her number out of Sam and called her. It seemed like the right thing to do.

  Dr. Wilkes was wearing heels. A white lab coat, a dark blue skirt, and turquoise pumps. The pumps irritated Petty. They hinted at frivolousness, at a life outside the hospital. He didn’t want to think about her shopping. He wanted all her time to be spent helping Sam.

  The first step was to operate, she said. In two days, on Tuesday, they’d go in and remove as much as of the tumor as they could without damaging the brain. Once they’d analyzed the tumor and determined what type they were dealing with
, they’d be able to make a more accurate diagnosis and proceed with further treatment.

  Dr. Wilkes breezed through this like she was reminding them of the rules to a game they’d all played before. Petty recognized the tactic. He used it in his phone scams to make marks feel stupid about asking questions, like his pitch was something they were already supposed to know. Sam, however, didn’t fall for it.

  “Is the tumor serious?” she said.

  “All brain tumors are serious,” Dr. Wilkes said. “But some are more serious than others.” She had short gray hair and a forced smile. “We’ll know exactly what we’re dealing with after the surgery,” she said.

  “Brain surgery,” Sam said.

  “It sounds scary, I know. But your surgeon and everybody else involved are really, really good at what they do.”

  “Everybody who’s going to cut my head open.”

  “Oh, my God, Sam,” Carrie said with a look of horror. “Please.”

  “They’ll be doing a craniotomy, which, yes, does involve temporarily removing a section of the skull,” Dr. Wilkes said. “This will give them access to the brain and allow them to remove the tumor. The most interesting aspect is that you’ll be awake during the entire procedure.”

  “Wait: what?” Sam said.

  The color drained from her face, and Petty’s own stomach lurched.

  “You’ll be guiding the surgeon, in a way,” Dr. Wilkes said. “He’ll stimulate areas of your brain and ask you if you feel it. Your responses will help him decide how much of the tumor it’s safe to remove.”

  Sam slapped a hand over her mouth. “I think I’m gonna throw up,” she said.

  A nurse who’d been standing by stepped in with a plastic tray. Petty turned away while Sam vomited. The room’s window was fogged over. He reached out and cleared a square of glass with the edge of his hand and watched the cars moving down in the street and the people going about their business. So we had all these fucking computers and lasers and miracle drugs, and it still came down to cutting a hole in someone’s skull. Petty had always thought we were further along than that and now felt like he’d been sold a bill of goods.