“Why not?”
“They’re slimy. If God had wanted mushrooms on a pepperoni pizza, He would have put them into the pepperoni along with God knows what else is in it.”
Dolan beamed. “Next time, order Chinese. I know this great place up on Hill—”
Carter interrupted, “Don’t you think we’re carrying this a little too far? If I am being watched by Feds, by now they must think we’re exchanging phone numbers.”
“Oh. Right.” Dolan tucked the thermal envelope under his arm. “I’ll have your photo tomorrow afternoon. Early-ish.”
“Good-ish,” Carter answered, and shut the door in his face.
Hot pizza and cold beer. A near perfect dinner. He sat in his recliner, put the pizza and his beer down on the wooden tray table next to it, and thumbed on the remote.
Three slabs later, he had to admit that picking the mushrooms off was defeating him. His taste buds adjusted to them slowly, or perhaps the beer was overcoming a natural aversion. As he chewed and looked the box over, a certain fact had become self-evident. One, Dolan had brought an extra large pizza and two, he wasn’t going to be able to make much more in the way of inroads on it.
Besides which, there was a certain congeniality in eating pizza, a camaraderie lacking when baching it. Carter sucked down the rest of his beer. Eating it alone beat not eating at all. It even beat eating a regular dinner, if hospital food were involved.
He thought of McKenzie Smith. He wondered what it would be like to have her sitting across the table from him, wrapping strings of hot cheese around her fingers and tongue, tucking the triangle of pizza into her mouth and smiling. Wiping off corner dabs of tomato sauce from her mouth. Leaning toward him, smelling slightly of parmesan and oregano and pepperoni....
“Shit.” Carter put down his empty. It was a shame to let a good pizza go to waste. He vaulted out of his chair and into the kitchen, where he found a substantial roll of aluminum foil, left over from Thanksgiving and turkey, probably. He covered the pizza box with its silvery sheen and then, somewhat impishly, found an old Christmas bow in the corner of the living room, blew off the dust bunnies, and taped it in the middle of the box.
Smelling redolently of pepperoni pizza, Carter attracted a few stares as he went up in the hospital elevator. A surgeon dressed in greens stared at him intently, before breaking into a smile and saying, “I hope your buddy appreciates that.”
“He will if I can do an end run around the nurses.”
“If not, bring it to the cardiac lounge on the second. I missed dinner.” The heart surgeon got out a floor before he did.
He knew McKenzie had been moved, but Joyce Tompkins had left word for him with the new room number. Almost diagonally across the unit, the door to her room was closed. Dinner had come and gone. The nurses were gathering the carts of empty trays to take back to the kitchen. As visiting hours were still in effect, they paid little or no attention to him, even when he slipped past the door marked “Restricted.”
She lay in a clump of sheets, facing away from the door, toward the curtained window bank. The room had a smell to it, a smell that he did not like, and liked even less after he identified it. The last occupant of this room had had a lingering illness, and died here. He wondered if she could sense it, too.
He dropped the pizza box on the portable tray table, the foil bursting open as he did so, filling the room with the smell of pepperoni and cheese. “I don’t like eating alone. How about you?”
She stirred and turned about in a tangle of covers, her eyes drooping and weary. The eye which had threatened that morning to swell closed had already begun to heal, going purple with yellowish streaks, the swelling nearly gone. “Already had dinner,” she managed, her voice thick.
They’d sedated her. Carter felt disappointment drop into his guts, where it simmered along with other feelings he didn’t seem to be responsible for. “Sure, but did you eat?”
“Not ... much.”
“Come on, come on. Besides, I owe you an apology.”
“Again?” She gave a humorless smile. “Most people just bring flowers.”
Despite the sedation, there was a hard glitter as she focused on him. He felt himself shrink a little under the examination. To her his failure must have been just one of many. He waved the pizza box seductively, wafting the aroma.
“Smells like a peace offering.”
“Smart girl.”
“You’re not doing a story on me? Evening edition or maybe you string for the National Enquirer ?”
“Ouch.” He screwed his face up. “That hurt. No. I’m not doing a story. As a matter of face, you’re wasting my valuable time.”
“Oh I am, am I?” A slightly amused look replaced the vulnerable one. “What do reporters do when they have to have dinner?”
“Sit up and pay attention.” He leaned over the railing, found the TV control. “The Dodgers are still on the road, but they’re broadcasting the Angels tonight. They’re still chasing the Rangers for first.”
“It’s early in the season. Never get excited until after the All-Star break,” she said faintly.
“Oh, another baseball fan, huh? Or just a critic?”
She shrugged, winced a little as if it hurt, then sat up, hugging her knees.
The TV set warmed up and the game came on, with the announcer saying earnestly, “The Angels roared out of their hottest spring training ever, slowed down a little, but now they’re back in the hunt for first place as June is just around the corner....”
She gave a lopsided smile. “Same old Angels.”
He agreed. “Like a house on fire until the All-Star Break.”
“My dad ...” she swallowed carefully. “My dad always wanted to see a Freeway World Series.”
“Never happen. It’s a conspiracy. The Dodgers win, the Angels lose. The Angels win, the Dodgers lose. It’s an unwritten law of the franchise.” He passed a decently warm piece of pizza on a napkin to her. “It’s a little known fact.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Mushrooms on pepperoni?”
He laughed and settled back to watch the game. She managed two slices, he ate three more and the last couple were snagged by the night charge nurse who dropped in to see who was visiting. She recognized Carter from the heart transplant story and backed out quietly, once bribed.
He watched McKenzie neatly lick the last of the pizza juice from her fingers, dainty as a kitten grooming itself.
“That was good,” she admitted. “But I expect chocolate if you want me to forgive Moreno.”
“Moreno? He giving you a hard time?”
She dried her hands on a cloth napkin. “He doesn’t believe me. None of them do.”
“Did you trash the room?”
McKenzie shot him a look, almost of betrayal, then shook her head. The meal seemed to have revitalized her slightly. Her speech sharpened, her eyes brightened. “As if I would want to. Jack was here. In fact, he left me something—” She began to search among the blankets. “He sent it in a card with the flowers—” She picked and looked, then gave up with a frustrated sigh. “I can’t find it.”
“A threatening note?”
“A piece of my dog’s ear.”
He had been knocking back one of her multiple cartons of apple juice and choked as it went down his windpipe. She sat and watched as he caught his breath. “A ... what?”
“I had a dog. I’ve always had dogs, so there’s like this big empty hole in here without one,” she made a fist over her chest, “so Jack let me get this golden retriever pup. Cody. Biggest feet you’ve ever seen. A good dog. Jack came home early from a trip. Came home mean. I don’t know why, I never knew why. Cody got between us, tried to protect me, so Jack—Jack carved him up. So I cleaned up the kitchen and buried my dog and as soon as Jack left the house, I left, too. I don’t know how he found me. I haven’t spoken to my father since I left high school. He wasn’t someone you’d think I’d come back to. But Jack found me. And he brought a souvenir.” She looked
at her empty hand. “He told me he had more. Bits and pieces of my dog....” She cleared her throat. “They gave me a sedative, y’know. So I’ve been just sort of lying here, sleeping, drifting in and out and you know what I keep thinking of, what I think I’ll find when I wake up? I think I’m going to find his head on the pillow next to me, just like that guy in The Godfather did his racehorse.”
He watched her shudder. He hadn’t had a dog in a long time. With his lifestyle, a cat was more suitable, but even that was difficult. There was neutering, traveling, adjusting to new apartments and cities every few years. His last cat had gotten disgusted and wandered off, found a new home. He knew because the adopted owner had called the ID tag’s number, asked about shots, and re-fused to return him, saying the cat was obviously happier at his place. He would have liked to dispute that, but knew the finder was probably right.
“Dogs can be like a member of the family,” he said, finally, inadequately.
“Yeah.” She held her breath for a moment. “I miss him.
There are times when—when I still think he’s here, close to me.” Then, “I never once imagined a pizza box.”
She reminded him of the punching clown he’d had as a kid. Knock her clean over and she still bounced up. Looking at her, seeing anew the marks from the past few days, he was struck by the irony of that.
“Look, it doesn’t matter if Moreno doesn’t believe you as long as Joyce does. She’ll fight like a tiger for you.”
Mac wrapped a corner of the sheet around her finger. Her gaze strayed to the television screen where Tim Salmon came up to bat and hit a hard line drive that he stretched out to a double for the Angels. “Did she tell you they’re sending me to psychiatric tomorrow?”
That would have scared him, and he thought he could tell that it scared her. “How do you feel about that?”
“Joyce says it’s okay. Actually, it’s probably the best way to prove I didn’t flip out. A few tests and I’m out of there, right?”
“Probably.”
“And when my father comes out of the coma, he can tell them what happened.” Her eyes went to the television screen again, tracking the game.
“Any word on his condition?”
She shook her head. Then she said, “Do you know your fingers twitch when you talk to me?”
He felt his face warm. “Old habit,” he answered. “I learned to type the hard way, practice, practice, practice. I still do it, unconsciously. I’m typing our conversation even as we speak.”
“That’s not good.”
“Why?”
“You’re not paying full attention to me. Half your mind is directing your fingers what keys to hit.”
“Half? Even a chimpanzee can type with only a quarter of his brain.”
“Maybe a quarter, then.” McKenzie laughed. “It could be worse. Your nose could twitch when you talked.”
“My nose?”
“No, seriously.” McKenzie waved at him to listen. “I had this girlfriend in high school—she got her nose done for graduation. Done early, actually, so she could enjoy her senior year. And I don’t know what they did to it, maybe they made it too short, but every time she spoke, her nose bobbed up and down in time with her upper lip. We stared at it for months, fascinated.”
“Another plastic surgery horror tale. This town is full of them.” Carter sat back, thinking of older movie queens with faces drawn so tight they looked like Mardi Gras masks.
The phone chimed. McKenzie jumped, rattling the tray table. Carter caught the pizza box as it went sliding. She made no move to answer it. Her face went cold.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Jack,” she said. “He’s called three times tonight already. I don’t know how he gets through. I called downstairs. They said the switchboard closes at ten. So I won’t answer any calls until then.”
“Let me talk to him. I’d like to aim a shot or two at him.” He reached for the receiver.
“No.”
“It’ll ring forever.”
“Why do you care?”
Carter stared at her. There was a unique beauty under her recent wounds. Not Barbie Doll pretty, but strength and intelligence, the way Ingrid Bergman used to be beautiful. God, how he missed seeing movies with Ingrid Bergman in them. “I don’t know why I care, I just do,” he answered.
Another ring. Then McKenzie reached for the receiver, said, “Hello,” and shoved the phone at Carter.
He could hear the man’s voice long before bringing the instrument up to his ear, a flat, plain voice, stringing expletives through the air. Carter listened until the first break, then answered, “If the stalking laws don’t get you, I will,” and broke the connection.
She looked at him, not wide-eyed, she’d been through too much for that, but measuring him. The phone began to ring again, so he unclipped the cord from the end of the handset. It stopped abruptly.
“After ten,” he said, “Reconnect it. And give me a call then, okay?”
He stood up. “I know psychiatric sounds scary, but you won’t be in the high security ward. They’ll put you in the first ward. People will have to sign in and out, and the calls will be screened. In the long run, you’ll be safer.”
She digested that. “All right.” She paused. “Will I get any more pizza deliveries?”
“Chinese next time. I’ll see Joyce puts me on the approved visitation list. Okay?”
The baseball crowd erupted in a muted roar. The corner of her mouth curved upward. “Sounds like they approve.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t have much choice. Hospital food is terrible.”
Carter left, his heart, not to mention his stomach, both lighter and fuller than it had been when he came in.
Susan stared at the results from the Smith testing until she thought she would go cross-eyed, then she realized what she saw. From a deeper level of consciousness than she thought possible, the young woman was introducing and directing other stimuli to the program. It was almost as though she’d dropped into REM sleep, but she couldn’t have, not even with concussive symptoms. Not and still be receiving the projected program.
What, then, had she done?
And, if she could drop into this state at will, what stimuli could she respond to? Accept. Produce. Interface with.
She tapped the end of the pen on her teeth, as she scanned the readout again. That was one possible explanation for what she saw on the grids. She picked up the phone, called the room to interview her. Someone picked up the line and abruptly disconnected it. Susan stared at the receiver, then redialed. The phone rang interminably, with no one answering it.
Switchboard overload, no doubt. All her questions would have to wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow the subject would be hers. Tomorrow Susan would learn what potential McKenzie Smith had to interface with the subconscious mind ... and outer stimuli.
She walked across the lab to the sensory deprivation chamber, tapped on the shell, and opened it slowly.
The water inside stirred sluggishly. She could smell its faint chlorine odor from the chemicals which flavored the Los Angeles water supply as the young man within coiled and uncoiled. She checked her watch. “That was an excellent session, Brandon. How do you feel?”
Other than his head, which was kept in a mild restraint (it would be too easy for him to slip down and drown himself, if he wished), he floated effortlessly, surrounded by torpid water, cushioned by the soundless chamber of the egg. He’d screamed the first two times she’d put him in. She hadn’t heard it, of course, not once the chamber was closed, but she had heard the telltale hoarseness in his voice when she’d come back for him. She undid the neck restraint, not unlike the pillories used for Puritans.
He didn’t like to cooperate with her, this Brandon, and he stared balefully at her now. He liked to be called Brand, as in Brand X, from Generation X, yet another reflection of his low self-regard. She refused to cooperate with that. “Brandon?”
“Fine,” he said.
Actually, if he were into it, she knew the experience could be quite relaxing. He kept himself bunched up now, and she looked at him critically, his cheeks turned bright red.
He was at that age, she thought, when personal privacy was at its utmost premium. She turned away, holding a towel out for him. Water sloshed as he grabbed it up.
His modesty mattered little to her. The cameras scanning the lab had already recorded his lithe, naked figure as he’d climbed into the chamber. She would take the film out before she left that night, take it home, and ready the video for translation to software, to be digitized and transformed.
The computer age was full of marvels.
Death Watch Page 19
