The Wrong Case

  While he was gone, I gobbled two of Amos’s pills, then two more. As I waited I let my fingers finally take inventory of my face. The doctor had gotten the top half of my left ear back on my face but he suggested plastic surgery. When I touched it, it throbbed so painfully that I decided to leave it alone. The star-shaped gash at my hairline, which I had probably gotten giving a head butt, hadn’t started swelling yet, so I could feel the dent and the forest of stitches. It felt as if this doctor had done a better job when he restitched my eyebrow than the first one. I didn’t bother to check my nose; the doctor had set it but told me that if I wanted to breathe out of it, they would have to operate, adding that he hoped I had good medical insurance. Jamison laughed, so I didn’t have to answer that.

  When Nickie came back, I spit a mouthful of bloody ice cubes on the ground. He seemed to have more control over his face and voice, but his hand went back to the middle of his chest as soon as he handed me the drink.

  “Wha-wha happened, Milo? Goddamn, you look terrible. Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?”

  “I just came from there,” I said, “and look what happened.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What happened? You wreck your car?”

  “No,” I said, sipping the drink and rattling the ice. “I got mugged. Right here in our fair city, Nickie, I got mugged.”

  “Wha-who-wha—”

  “Two guys jumped me in the alley next to the bank,” I said, not waiting for his question.

  “They get away?”

  “One did, yeah.”

  “What about the other—one?”

  “He’s dead,” I said, making myself say it.

  “How—Wha-what happened?”

  “I shot him in the face.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he groaned, looking sick, bending at the waist and belching.

  “You all right?”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you going to be all right, Nickie?”

  “Oh, yeah. Just haven’t eaten yet. Goddamned business keeps me jumping, Milo, and my goddamn stomach, you know.”

  “Might be an ulcer,” I said. “You should have it checked.”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Maybe so.”

  “Nickie, I’m gonna have to take a couple of days off, but I’ve got somebody to cover your friend’s lady friend. Is that okay?”

  “Don’t worry about it, you know. Take however long, you know, my friend will understand, you know.”

  “I already got it covered, Nickie.”

  “Okay, whatever you say, it’s okay,” he mumbled. “Hey, Milo, I heard about Simon, you know, and goddamn, I’m sorry.”

  “You know what they say, Nickie?”

  “Huh?”

  “Nobody lives forever.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, looking shocked. Maybe nobody had ever told him about it. “But I’m—I’m really sorry.”

  “Right,” I said. “Check with you later.”

  As I walked away he muttered something I didn’t hear. A little bit of Nickie’s pity and commiseration went a long way. I was too tired to stand around listening to him, so I went back to my rig and drove toward Mahoney’s like a shot.

  Thirteen

  Two long drunken days later, after the coroner’s jury had ruled Simon’s death accidental, the body was released to me. Thanks to Jamison, I was free to bury the body. He must have felt sorry for me because, even though the coroner’s jury hadn’t ruled on the man’s death in the alley, I hadn’t been charged with anything. It wasn’t because he couldn’t find me, either, since I spent the whole time in Mahoney’s, drunker than I’d been in years, too drunk to change clothes or even begin to understand the haze of pain around my head.

  So I buried Simon—alone to mourn him, just as he said it would be. Leo had come along, but he was collapsed behind a nearby gravestone, too drunk to know where he was or why. Simon and I were dressed for the occasion, he in my father’s overcoat, me in the bloody windbreaker. The rain had passed on, the sun returned, and the afternoon was as fresh as spring, the sky azure and cloudless, the air warm in the sun and cool in the shade. In the poplars along the road, a light breeze flashed among the crisp leaves, and the muted hum of traffic from the interstate highway buzzed like lazy bees in clover. Simon Rome had no service, no tedious eulogy at graveside. Just the sound of Leo retching. No ceremony. I had brought a bottle of Wild Turkey to place in the grave with him, but Leo and I had drunk and spilled most of it on the drive out. I shared the rest with the two trustees from the county jail, then tossed the empty bottle into the open grave, gathered the sack of wasted flesh that contained Leo, and went back to town.

  “You win, you old fart,” I whispered as I left the cemetery, “but you cheated.”

  —

  On the way back to the bar, I dumped Leo at the hospital, glad he could afford a private room. The charity ward had been filled with drunks who had nearly killed themselves with Leo’s free whiskey. Leo had fallen off the wagon, but I had fallen apart, withdrawn until I was as insensate as a stone just to hold the pieces together. The pain remained, as did the grief, as constant as a cloud of black flies. I drank, was drunk without being drunk, locked into that terrible and curious lucidity where the world has no more meaning than a movie, the colors vivid but the lighting too harsh, the focus so precise that the world seems cornered by sharp edges. So I walked into Mahoney’s, shouting for whiskey and blurred definition, for drunken sleep, forsaking vengeance, forgiving love.

  Later, afternoon threatening dusk, Dick Diamond woke me from the black hole of a dreamless sleep, his hand gently shaking my shoulder.

  “Hey, old buddy, let’s go home,” he said.

  “Have a drink,” I mumbled, raising my head from the table.

  “No, thanks.”

  “For me, man, for me.”

  “You’ve had enough,” he replied. “There’s no need to kill yourself.”

  “Get my own goddamned whiskey,” I said, rising. When he reached for me, I swung at him blindly, but he ducked my fist, caught my arm over his shoulders, and carried me out into the neon-smudged dusk, carried me toward home and sleep, struggling uphill all the way.

  —

  In the confusion of sleep, she finally came to me, on wings in a cool throbbing wind, on her belly sinuous, angel and snake, her hair fire, her hair blood flower blooming, her hands cold, fingers ice, tears hot, her hands holding me again, to her soft breast, rocking and singing, small moans and the sound of a child weeping, hold me, held my face, my head cracked like a fallen egg…

  And when I rose up from sleep, she came with the pain, forgiving, unlike the pain unforgiving that filled my body and burst out around the spike driven between my eyes, a pain more fierce than the thirst.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Whiskey,” somebody answered.

  “No,” she sighed, “no.”

  “Yes I know yes what I’m doing I’ve been drunk before I need whiskey now and again to stand this,” I pleaded, crying finally, not for Simon or myself or loves lost, but for whiskey against this thirst.

  She brought a bottle and a glass; foolishly, I held the bottle, my teeth rattling against the glass, and poured it into the fire inside, my stomach pleading for another, which I had, and another again. But when it came up, I couldn’t find the toilet, couldn’t hide the blood from her, couldn’t find my hands to cover.

  “Shouldn’t he be in the hospital?” she asked somebody vague in the distance.

  “He wouldn’t like it,” a voice answered.

  I croaked approval, then fell asleep. Or something akin.

  “Hi,” she said when next I woke. “How are you now?”

  “Hi,” I answered, twisting in the fog, awake enough to appreciate the pain.

  “You feel better, love?” she asked, gathering my hand in hers.

  “Worse—but that’s an improvement.”

  “How so?”

  “I’d have to get better to die.
”

  —

  “There’s a number by the phone, a doctor, call him, tell him—I’ve been drinking…but I’m sober now and need a boost…he’ll understand…and next time I…wake up…food…love…”

  —

  When it seemed that the toast and tea were going to stay down, I started on the soup, but the spoon clattered against the side of the bowl.

  “Let me help,” she said.

  “Nope. Recovery is a matter of will. These small things count,” I said, but had to abandon the spoon in favor of drinking from the bowl. “I used to go with a Chinese girl.”

  “Really.”

  “And she made the best egg-drop soup in the world.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And if I had some now, I’d be up and about in a flash.”

  “You just stay in bed, mister.”

  “Oh, lady, I intend to. If I’d known it took all this to get you into my bedroom, I would have done it sooner. I know how, you know.”

  “Just hush,” she murmured. “And don’t be silly.” But her smile glowed like a sunrise.

  —

  As I wiped the mist from the mirror, I asked the graybeard therein if he might be me, but she answered from the bedroom.

  “I certainly hope not.”

  “Me too.”

  “You need some help?” she asked from the bathroom doorway.

  “Take off your clothes and leap right in,” I said, smoothing lather over the lumps and bruises.

  “It would probably kill you.”

  “Braggart.”

  “You’ll see,” she smirked.

  “I damn sure hope so,” I said, but there were sudden serious lines around her eyes, so I added lightly, “When are we going to get married?”

  “After you join the AA.”

  “I don’t want to hang around with a bunch of fucking drunks.”

  —

  “I just fell apart, that’s all. Too much happening at once. It’s cheaper than a breakdown. And if it doesn’t kill you, easier to recover from. My father was a drunk, my mother was a drunk and a suicide, and my life hasn’t been very pretty. I have neither character nor morals, no religion, no purpose in life, except as Simon said, to get by, so is it any wonder that I drink?”

  “No.”

  “At least I don’t have to go to meetings?”

  “No?”

  “My name is Milton Chester Milodragovitch, the third, and I’m a drunk. Thank God.”

  “No.”

  —

  When it became obvious that I had survived myself once again, we went out into the backyard to sun and listen to the creek as it constructed a rushing silence. We rattled our way through the weight of Sunday’s paper, sipping tea and chattering as foolishly as two slightly mad squirrels. Beside her firm body, clad in a pink bikini, I felt like a suit of old clothes left in the alley for the garbage truck. But the sun worked on me, drawing a quick sweat, a greasy skim, like that of a chronic invalid, slimy with waste, odorous with my body’s disgust. I went in and showered it off. The second sweat, when it came, was better, still rancid and bitter, so I repeated the shower.

  “You spend more time in the water than a fish,” she commented when I came back out, then she rolled over on her stomach slowly, stretching languidly.

  “Smart-ass,” I said.

  “Dirty-mouth.”

  This time, as I lay beneath the sun, my body seemed to become flesh again instead of a sack of vile, tepid fluid, my skin tightening as old muscle rose to meet the warmth. My face still felt as hard as dried mud, and as comfortable to carry, but my limbs began to rejoice about survival. When I seemed whole, I rose and knelt beside her lounge chair, ran my hand down the small of her back, across the heated skin soft with oil and clean sweat.

  “Yes?” she breathed.

  “Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For coming.”

  “You’re welcome, but it seemed the least I could do under the circumstances. This whole thing is my fault, and I wouldn’t blame you for hating me—I mean, after leaving you outside my motel room when you were half dead, I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “No,” I said, “it’s not your fault at all. I walked into this with my eyes open, or at least they were both open at the time, and whatever happened, it was my fault.”

  “You mean you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. Just so you hang around for a while, till I get well, then maybe—”

  “Don’t,” she groaned, rising from under my hand, turning away with a sob. “Don’t say that.” Then she covered her face with her hands and ran across the yard to the edge of the creek.

  The hand that had held her was still there, as if measuring the height of a child, and it trembled. I never knew what to do when a woman ran away, could never tell if they wanted to be alone or if they wanted me to follow. I had tried both ways, but neither worked.

  “Hey,” I said, and she turned. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  Whatever she said was inaudible against the noise of the creek.

  “What?”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do!” she shouted, stomping her foot angrily, her fists wiping roughly at the tears. But she was smiling, so I went to her, held her against me.

  “I can’t have this happen,” she said. “I have a job—”

  “You better hang on to it,” I said, “because I don’t have one.”

  “And I don’t know what to tell my mother.”

  “Tell her our children will have red hair and Cossack tempers.”

  “That’s not funny,” she whimpered.

  “Then tell her we’ll be happy because we’re both too old to be unkind.”

  “Don’t say things like that unless you mean them, unless you’re serious.”

  “I’ve been serious from the beginning.”

  “Oh God, I don’t know, it’s all so confusing,” she said. “I don’t know—what to say—to anybody—anymore…”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, holding her tightly, so tightly that I felt her breath sigh out. “It will be all right,” I said, staring over her shoulder into the sun-dappled shade on the creek. Inside my chest, the stone I had placed there crumbled into white dust, and now I could cry for Simon and love for myself. Only my face was hard, scabs and scars and lumps, the tape over my nose making it seem that I saw the world from a cage or through the narrow slit in a cell door.

  “I’m not what I seem,” she said softly.

  “Nobody ever is,” I said, thinking of her little brother in spite of myself. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I can’t help it,” she whispered. “You don’t understand—about me.”

  “Do I have to understand you to love you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody has ever loved me.”

  “I do,” I said. And it wasn’t hard at all.

  She nodded, gazing into the distance, then tucked her head against my chest, and we stood there, sun-flushed skin, heated flesh, hands slowly touching each other’s backs.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  “If you want,” she answered in an oddly small voice, as if she had no say in the matter, no will with which to either resist or comply.

  “I need you, love,” I said, and she followed me into the house.

  —

  Against our flesh, fired in the sun, the sheets were cool, and we were as timid as children, shy and clumsy, graceless, banging noses and clicking teeth, giggling among the aching moans. Once inside her, though, I found that lovely compliance, her hips tilting toward my need, and as I knelt above her, watched her face lose focus, her eyes widen, her tiny white teeth nipping at her lower lip between sighs and moans, as I waited, still, unmoving, all the sorrow emptied from me into her.

  “You’re lovely,” I said, “absolutely beautiful.”

  She focused her eyes, smiled slowly, saying, “And you’re the ugliest man I’ve ever met.”


  —

  “It wasn’t very good, was it?”

  “It was kind. That’s enough. We’re not children, we’ll learn.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I didn’t hurt your face?”

  “Who could hurt a face like this?”

  “Someone surely tried.”

  —

  It was an easy Sunday, small talk and gentle love, weak drinks dissolving, cigarette smoke captured by bars of sunlight. The delight of a new body, the tracing of design among freckles. An afternoon of touching. Waking to the pleasure of a new love.

  But once when I woke, she was gone. I found her at the back door, wrapped in the bedspread against the evening chill, watching the stars perforate the sunset sky.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered mournfully.

  “Come on.”

  “Well, okay, it’s Raymond.”

  “What about him?”

  “Every time I start to feel happy again, I think of him—and the man—whoever killed him.”

  “What makes you so sure that somebody killed him?” I asked as gently as I could.

  “You still don’t believe me, do you?” she asked as she turned around. Her face was shadowed, but I could see her eyes, which were oddly blank. “Do you?”

  “It could have been an accident,” I suggested mildly.

  “How many times do I have to tell you that Raymond was not a drug addict,” she said, her voice as empty as her eyes.

  “Love, you may have to face the fact that he was.”

  “Never,” she whispered. “And even if he was, it was because somebody forced him, and that’s the same as killing him. Isn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” I said, not wanting to argue with her stony grief.

  “You know something you’re not telling me,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “I’ll tell you someday,” I said.

  “When?”

  “When you feel—when you don’t feel so strongly about his death,” I said.

  “People never understand,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “How I felt about Raymond. If you understood, you’d tell me what it is that you know.”

  “It’s sort of—incomplete,” I said, feeling myself being pulled back into the case. “When I know all of it, I’ll tell you.”