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Emergency Room, Bellevue Hospital,
East Twenty-seventh Street and First Avenue, Manhattan
September 22, 1999
THE GIANT TOMATO PLANTS lay in exact lines, each perfectly staked, and he walked along them in the sun, touching the basketball-sized fruits, most red, some still green, and their absolute perfection pleased him; not one was bruised or damaged by insects. If he pressed his nose through the vines and peered close to the tomatoes, actually brushed his eyelashes against their tightened skins, he could see inside them like translucent balloons; to his delight each contained his mother's red face, her eyes shut in private exhaustion, her mouth open just enough to take another shallow, labored breath. She'd tied a handkerchief over her thinning hair. Her eyes opened unevenly, like the weighted lids of a doll. Hello, Ricky-love. Mommy's tired today. She smiled with a false sweetness that begged him to go elsewhere for affection, for she was busy dying—your mother is very sick, son, we have to keep the house quiet for her—and then she could no longer even smile, and her eyes closed, again unevenly like a doll's, except this time one eye remained open a few seconds too long, watching strangely. He drew back from the tomatoes and resumed walking through the rows, toward his yellow truck parked nearby, and as he stepped over the soft earth, the plants changed in size, not only shrinking from the height of his shoulders to his waist to his knees to his feet but the rows narrowing as well, such that he understood that his size was changing, that he was growing up and away, so much that the tomato plants were now merely a green velveteen fuzz he brushed with his fingers. An excremental black ooze appeared, exactly the same stuff that came out of the diseased oysters that dragged up in the fishing net. You didn't want the oysters, they made you sick, but here they were growing all over his truck, little ones covering the bumper and hood and doors and roof, and he had to flick on the wipers to keep them off the windshield. The wipers crunched the oyster shells, leaving a brown-green smear across the glass. He got out of the truck and grabbed the snow shovel he kept behind the backseat. You had to scrape them fast before they grew back, and of course he was taking some of the paint off the truck, couldn't be helped. He worked for a few minutes and pushed the oysters into a crunchy pile, shoveling them like heavy-grade gravel, then retrieved the gas can from the truck and splashed it over the oysters. The matches were in his breast pocket. A quick puff of flame, then black smoke. Fucking oysters. The shells softened and sagged in the heat, burning like rubber, bubbling and fusing into a blackened soup that cooled quickly as the flames died away. A large black pancake remained. He pushed the blade of the snow shovel under one edge and lifted; as he suspected, a glistening metallic undersurface revealed itself. With the shovel he loosened around the edges and flipped over the giant black disk. The thing was immensely heavy; he could feel the quadriceps in his thighs gather, tightening the tendons around his knees, his calf muscles knot as they contracted. Easy, Rick, keep it balanced so you get the perfect flip. The edges sagged over the snow shovel like a dead thing. He took a breath and flipped the shovel. It landed heavily and the shimmery underside resolved itself into a silver pool. He bent over, peered down. He dropped his leg in, boot and all, and lifted out the flapping tail of a sea bass attached to his leg. He could feel it thrashing independently of his intention. A beautiful thing, every scale perfect. He dropped his fish-leg back in and pulled out his normal leg. Toes wiggling in a warm sock. Excellent. But what about his arm, could he do it with his arm? The question made him anxious. Come on, Rick, you pussy, you pussy-lover. Put it in. Paul would never do it. Paul would say, You got away with the leg, don't put in the arm. Don't fucking do it. Don't! Well, this was where they were different, he and Paul. At age twenty-nine he had injected himself with human growth hormone for three months and won the New York State Regionals, his biceps as wide around as a can of paint. At age twenty-four he had swallowed some kind of chemical in liquid suspension that was used to stimulate male horses on stud farms. Very illegal, very dangerous, and according to the other bodybuilders, very amazing—and then he'd fucked a girl off and on for six hours straight, his dick swelling up so hard that the skin began to fail, even splitting in a few places. Never mind the hallucinations and the sickening spasms in his chest. Never mind that he lost seven pounds. The next day his lower back was so cramped he couldn't walk, and the girl was under the care of her gynecologist. It was not his fault that she attempted suicide when he said he didn't want to see her anymore. At nineteen he had walked up the main cable of the Brooklyn Bridge, sliding one foot in front of the other as the slope of the cable steepened toward the top of the bridge's stone tower. When he reached the summit, he'd spray-painted his name over the other names, smoked a cigarette, and thought about jumping. So what was the big deal about sticking your arm into a pool of silver? At fifteen he and two other guys had set the southbound service lane of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on fire, using ten mattresses stolen from a motel outside JFK International that they'd soaked with gasoline. So fuck you, Paulie, fuck everything about you, your car and your wife, your paper shredder and your clean teeth. What have you ever done? I always did it, and I'm going to do it now. You always hated me, and I always hated you. I'm going to stick my arm in there and show you. He shoved his left hand into the cool thickness of the silver. Felt almost wet. Right down past the elbow, opening and closing his fingers in the warm chill of the liquid. When he pulled his arm out, it was a roaring wide-belt floor sander, spitting the silvery liquid everywhere. A loud fucker, vibrated his whole body. Industrial stand-up model, ran on 220 power. Took two guys to carry it up a staircase, but here he was waving it around. Better than the fish. Don't let the spinning belt touch you, take the flesh right off. He dropped the floor sander back into the shining pool. He could feel the machine stop spinning, the weight disappear from his shoulder. Everything was okay. But what came out was a length of rusted anchor chain that pinched him, pinched and rubbed and hurt, you could say that the fucking chain even burned, strangely, right through his arm halfway above the elbow, burned in a perfect line so much that you couldn't touch it—oh, God, you wanted to touch it to see if it was really true, but it hurt so much that—
"The Narcan is working," a calm voice announced. "Maybe ten seconds more."
He opened his eyes to look at the arm, to see how the chain snaked around it, even cut through it, probably cut through it, and when he did, he saw three men watching him, men he remembered but did not know. The floor was littered with fast-food bags, and they'd brought in a television.
"Oh, please!" he cried, his mouth hurting thickly. "Make it go away!"
"Can't do that, Rick," answered the one named Morris. "Your heartbeat was getting a little sleepy on me there. I had to snap you back."
He was laid out on a table in a bloody T-shirt. He lurched up. His right arm was still cuffed to the table. His left arm barely extended past his sleeve. A metal clamp was taped into the bandage. "You fuckers cut off my arm!"
Morris laid a heavy hand on Rick's chest. "Easy," he said, pushing Rick down gently, familiar with bodies in distress.
"My arm! You fuckers cut off my arm!"
"I did a very beautiful job packing that arm. Textbook."
I'm weak, Rick thought.
"You going to ask him about the money again?" said the one named Tommy.
"He doesn't know anything," said Morris, resting his palm on Rick's forehead.
"How can you tell?"
"How?" He frowned. "I've treated something like two thousand people in shock. You can't lie when you're in shock." Morris took Rick's pulse, checked his watch. "The body doesn't work that way. The body forgets things in shock, but it doesn't lie."
"What time is it?" Rick asked.
"Late. Early. Two a.m."
"Is my arm here?" he called upward.
"You arm's in the cooler," said Tommy. "We got it on ice. Like beer."
"Can I have it?" he asked in a faraway voice.
; Morris shook his head. "Not yet."
"When?"
"When we're done here."
He felt unable to lift his head. Hot but cold. "When is that?" He closed his eyes. He understood the pain as a kind of exposed wetness; if he could get the arm stuck back on, then maybe it would stop. His foot and rib and mouth hurt like there were holes in them, nails and glass and bone slivers. "What the fuck do you fucking want?" Rick cried at the ceiling.
"What does anybody want?" said Morris. "We want the cash."
He felt his breathing now. Some problem with his rib. The pain in the arm was wired into the breathing. He twisted to look.
"The more you move, Rick, the more the skin will differentiate at the edges of the wound." Morris pulled a candy bar from his pocket. "Here." He tore away the wrapper, broke off a piece, and pushed it between Rick's lips. "Get some sugar going."
"Where's my arm?"
Morris pointed and Rick lifted his head, just enough. A red plastic cooler, big enough for about a hundred pounds of tuna steaks. Sealed with duct tape, even. He collapsed back onto the table.
"Tell me about the money, Rick," said Morris.
"When we get to the hospital."
Morris handed Rick the candy bar. "We can't take you into the hospital."
"Drop me at the corner."
The men looked back and forth. "He doesn't know about the boxes," Tommy said. "Not after that."
"Probably got some stash somewhere, though."
"How much you got, Rick?"
"Oh, fuck," he breathed. "Maybe forty thousand."
"Not enough, man."
He'd known a hundred guys like them. "It's all I got." He ate the rest of the candy bar. It was helping. Maybe he could talk okay, despite the pain of the tooth. Morris wanted to get this thing wrapped up. "Take me and my arm to the hospital—to the corner, whatever. You each get something like . . . thirteen, fourteen thousand bucks. I don't have any more money. I had all my cash in my aunt's place."
"Yeah, we know. Where is it now?"
He found the texture of the ceiling interesting.
"What's wrong with him?"
"The sugar is hitting him pretty hard, I think."
"Where's the truck, Rick?"
"My truck. In a garage."
"Look in his wallet for the ticket."
They pulled it out of his pocket.
"Nothing."
"Give the man his wallet back, we don't need picky-shit cash."
"How did you find me?"
Morris ignored the question. "Where's the garage, Rick?"
He felt strange. "You know," he explained, "I saw my mother inside a tomato."
THEY MAY NOT HAVE BEEN honorable men, but they were reasonable, especially when the reason was easy money and the prisoner was babbling, and so they threw an old coat over him, hiding his bandaged stump, and half-dragged him outside into the old taxi, the lettering and medallion number painted over poorly, the interior torn to hell, and sat him in the back, which made his stump and ribs hurt, and they each grabbed a handle and dropped the cooler into the trunk just like they said they would, and put the toolboxes in the front. He glanced down the block and under a streetlight saw a skinny dog looking back, something hanging from its mouth. Morris handed Rick a big bottle of Gatorade and said, Drink the whole thing. Drink it now, keep your fluids up. He did it and maybe felt better. One guy sat on each side of him, and after the long night neither had a beautiful smell. Morris sat at the wheel and pushed them crosstown on Fourteenth Street, a few people outside walking along peacefully. Hey, they cut off my arm! He would never say that because then they might not take him to the hospital, and besides, he was feeling a little weak, to be honest about it, his foot and ankle hurt as much as his arm, he couldn't really breathe the way he wanted, he was still thirsty and his head hurt. He wanted to sleep. Just get there, just, just.
"You all right, Rick?"
"He's in shock," Morris said, checking his mirror. "His pupils are big. He went from lying down to a sitting position. His heart is working a little harder, and probably there was too much sugar in that candy bar. His kidneys are dry, but he'll be okay. Five minutes he'll be better."
"But you remember about the truck, right, Rick?"
"Yes."
"Not going to forget that."
He shook his head, which made his face hurt. "No."
A few minutes later they were close to Bellevue and pulled over at the light.
"Rick, the hospital is up the block." Morris watched in the rearview mirror. "You go just up the block and there it is."
"Get me out first."
"First talk about the money."
"Outside. Get me out."
They opened a door. Gentlemen. Of course, they could shove him back into the car if they wanted. He dragged himself over the seat and put his feet on the pavement. He could barely move, his ankle and foot and arm hurt so much.
"We've been very cool here, Rick. Now you come through."
"Yellow truck. My truck." Something was wrong. His ears pounded.
"He looks weak to me."
"Where is the truck?"
"Ask the Russian guy."
Tommy slapped him. "What?"
"Garage, across from the gym. Lafayette. Grand Street. Second floor. Ask the Russian guy."
"The money's in the truck?"
He nodded exhaustedly. "Radiator. Pull the wire."
"What's at the end of the wire?" came the voice in his ear.
"Plastic bag. Filled with hundreds." Also the traveler's checks that Paul had given him.
The men looked at one another. "Let's go."
They opened the car trunk and dropped the big sealed ice chest on the pavement. "See, Rick, we're very cool here," said Morris. "You're one block from the hospital. The cooler is here, your arm inside. Everything is cool. Now you can stand up and get out."
He rose uneasily in his long coat, his foot hurting like broken fish bones, leaking blood, and staggered over to the cooler and sat on it. They yanked the car door shut and pulled into the traffic. Then up the avenue, then a turn at the light, then gone. He picked weakly at the duct tape around the cooler. Stand, he told himself. He couldn't stand. He stood anyway. Get someone to help. Who would help? Not many people out this late. He knelt and grabbed the ice chest by the handle and lifted one end. It was shockingly heavy. How could that be? Somebody had made a mistake. Too much ice. No way he could actually carry it. But he could drag it, he knew that, and he waited for the light. Don't think, don't worry, he told himself, just drag this box across First Avenue. Make your legs do the work. Worry about the police later, you want your arm back on. That's the thing. The pain chewed at his left side. Guys in wars do this shit, Rick thought, so can I. The light changed to green and he pulled. The fucker was heavy; it must have weighed three hundred pounds, all that ice in there. It was too big, that was the problem, they didn't need a chest that big. He bumped the thing off the curb and began to drag, knees bent, back bent against the weight, his left arm, the stump, doing nothing, just jerking around strangely, hurting like hell, and he pulled the thing across the first lane of traffic, scraping the shit out of the bottom of the chest, but who cared. The taxi drivers watched him; in the darkness nobody noticed he was missing his arm because of the long coat or saw his bloody foot, nobody understood, and that was fine because he was going to make it, he was going to do all good things . . . Halfway across he saw a van turning onto First, going too fast, and he was unsure whether to run or stay, and instead he pulled harder to make sure the ice chest was out of the path of the van, but the effort did not produce commensurate progress and the van honked in irritation, not slowing exactly but cutting its wheels sharply, not to avoid Rick but rather an old man ten steps behind him on First Avenue—the van had a choice of hitting the old man or Rick's ice chest, and so it hit the chest, the corner of the bumper catching the back of the box and spinning it out of Rick's hands. He jumped back, foot on fire with pain.
The v
an stopped. "Yo," said the driver, jumping out, a man in his twenties, head a bullet. "What the fuck you doing, you goddamn—" He saw the blood on Rick's T-shirt, stopped, and jumped back into the van.
Rick reached the cooler, which was dented but undamaged, and dragged it over to the curb. He noticed the cooler's drainage plug and pulled it. Water gushed out. Was there a bit of color in the water? He could do it, he was almost there.
HE DRAGGED THE TRUNK through the emergency ward's electronic doors, right past the guard up to the nurses' desk.
"I got my arm cut off," he croaked.
"What?" asked the nurse.
He shrugged his big coat to the floor. His shirt was a bloody mess.
"Lie down!" she commanded. "Clyde, I have a priority! Call Dr. Kulik." She turned back to Rick. "Sir, lie down! You need—"
"It's in here," he said, pounding the cooler. "Get someone down here who can put it back on!"
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