“Give me twenty minutes,” Michael mutters, and like a man called to the service of war he grabs his coat. He had fallen asleep on the couch in the study. He climbs the stairs quietly, feeling strangely like a guest in his own home, wary of the light that burns on his wife’s bedside table. He enters the room uneasily, dreading a strained encounter, but Annie is asleep and all the lines of discord have vanished from her face. For a moment he marvels at her beauty, her glorious brown hair, the fleshy protrusion of her upper lip, her T-shirt twisted appealingly across her breasts. His heart begins to pound. She has squandered her beauty, he thinks. He does not know what will happen between them now. But no matter how much he rationalizes what she did, and he does rationalize it, no matter how much he tries to talk himself into hating her, he finds himself loving her more. His love for her is ripe in his mouth. The fruit has rotted perhaps, but he refuses to spit it out. With routine compassion he picks up the book at her side and sets it on the nightstand. For a moment he stands there, half-expecting her to wake, almost hoping that she will. Not to fight anymore, but to find each other inside a single, wordless moment. To find each other and remember what brought them both there in the first place, and why neither has left. But it’s too late for that, and she doesn’t wake, and they’re paging him again. He writes her a note, GOT PAGED, and leans it against the base of the lamp, where she will find it in the morning. Then he switches off the light and steps into the hall, listening to the yearning silence of the big house. It makes him think of his kids and he looks in on them now before he goes. First comes Henry, his ten-year-old son, sprawled across the mattress amid blankets and toys and forgotten stuffed animals. The boy’s hamster, Harpo, spins obsessively in its cage and for a moment Michael just stands there, contemplating the creature’s useless exertion. In the room next door, Rosie, who is six, sleeps with perfect stillness, maintaining the meticulous hierarchical positioning of her dolls at the end of her bed. Michael can’t imagine loving anything more than his children and feels a pang of guilt because he rarely sees them. Quality time, that’s what he’s resorted to. All part of the failed equation, he thinks, heading down the crooked stairs of the old house and out into the cold night, where it has begun to snow again. The flakes are thick and white like the feathers of birds. He takes a moment to zipper his jacket, to pull on his hood. The night is quiet, the sound of snowfall a comfort somehow, and he pushes himself on, cursing himself for wasting time.
The Saab starts with a lusty roar that makes him grateful that he owns a good car, even though he does not consider himself a man of attachments or possessions. The car smells of leather and promise and his own pathetic gratitude and it comes to him that he’s been a fool in his marriage, that what came between him and Annie is his own goddamn fault. It’s about him, not her, he realizes. It’s about everything he’s not.
Angry now, he pulls out of the driveway and speeds down the road, blowing past the squad car parked on the corner. Ever since he delivered the sheriff’s babies none of the cops pull him over for speeding. They know people are waiting for him, people in pain, and they respect that. One of the benefits of living in a small town like High Meadow, he thinks, gunning the engine, winding down the hill past Slattery’s cow farm, the fields dark and dense and silent, veiled in a dusting of fresh snow. Too early in the season for snow, he thinks, just a couple of weeks shy of Thanksgiving, but the weather is always unpredictable in upstate New York, and after all these years he’s no stranger to it. Ordinarily in weather like this he’d take Route 17 down to Bunker Hill, but he’s worried about the girl in the ER and decides to take Valley Road instead to save time. Under ideal circumstances the shortcut is dangerous, complicated with tight, snakelike turns, but it takes fifteen minutes off the trip. Tonight Valley Road shimmers with ice. The naked trees seem to tremble in his headlights. The sleet comes out of the dark like millions of pins and he is forced to decelerate, taking the curves slowly, methodically. The suffering girl will have to wait, he tells himself; nothing he can do about it now. At the end of Valley Road he turns onto Route 20, streaming into a line of traffic behind a behemoth snowplow, then onto the interstate, the city of Albany like a white blur before him.
Downtown, the streets are deserted except for a few homeless stragglers. The green neon cross on St. Vincent’s Hospital blinks and buzzes like some divine Morse code. Only now, as he pulls through the mammoth jaws of the doctors’ parking garage and climbs the labyrinth of concrete to his spot on level four, does it occur to him that something may be amiss. That perhaps the phone call had been a hoax: the bleeding girl, Finney being sick. Now that he thinks about it, he hadn’t recognized the nurse’s voice and he knows all the nurses at St. Vincent’s. The garage is deserted. The hanging fluorescent lights move in the wind, squealing slightly on their hinges. He knows he’s paranoid—Comes with the territory, they’d told him when he’d first started at the clinic, and he’d been more than willing to accept that, but now, tonight, he senses danger and he hesitates getting out of the car at all. He looks up at the glass doors a hundred feet away, where a nurse passes by in her pink scrubs, and the sense of routine comforts him. His beeper sounds again—I’m coming, hold your fucking horses—and he grabs his bag and opens the door and they’re on him, three or four or even five men, dragging him across the concrete into the dark. Cursing him, shoving him, laughing a little with their raised fists, taking turns splitting open his face, pushing him from one man’s arms into another’s. A greasy terror sloshes through his head. And then he’s down on his knees, someone throttling him, wrapping a cord around his neck, and as the air leaves his body like a pierced balloon he wonders if they are finally going to kill him. The fat one speaks in a cold, even voice, sweat splashing off his lips: “We’ve had enough, Dr. Knowles, we’ve had enough of your bullshit,” and then a shock of pain in his balls, excruciating and dense, and he doubles over and pukes—and he is glad for a moment, puking, because he thinks they will leave him alone, but they don’t, they kick him again, and again, and he is down on all fours like a dog amid chewing-gum wrappers and cigarette butts and shattered glass and his own puke and he suddenly begins to cry. Where is the guard, he wonders now—why hasn’t anyone seen them, some nurse, some technician, some doctor? Why isn’t someone calling the police?
“Let’s medicate the poor bastard.” Someone yanks back his head and pries open his mouth, dropping in pills. He doesn’t swallow, but then he gags and chokes and the bitter powder burns his throat. Water comes next, and more pills, and he can’t breathe. Surrender, he tells himself, you have no choice! His body lax as butter, everything blurred and slow and jangling with silence. I can’t fucking hear you! he thinks dully. Their big hands, quivering faces, mouths open in laughter. I can’t hear anything.
They put him in the trunk. The road vibrates under his head like a jackhammer. For the moment he is relieved to be left alone; he is relieved to be alive. And then it comes to him, suddenly, vividly, that he is going to die.
For months he has waited for this moment, feared it, and now that it is here, finally, now that it is happening to him, yes, to him, it is all the terror he imagined and worse.
Snowflakes on his face. The sky is kissing you, Daddy, he hears his daughter whispering. The men are talking but he cannot make out a word of it. He feels the prick of a needle, the warm drug rushing through him, bringing a taste into his mouth, cotton candy, and a feeling throughout his limbs that is not entirely unpleasant. The men smell of whiskey and triumph as they grip his body and pull him out of the dark place. Staggering with his weight, they bring him in their arms to a car and they put him into it, behind the wheel. Even in his dementia he knows it’s his own car, he recognizes the smell, Rosie’s paddock boots in the back, Henry’s chocolate bars for Cub Scouts, and they strap him in and turn the key and the engine screams. He wants to tell them that he can’t see, he’s in no shape to drive, but his mouth won’t work, his tongue is too big, and now the car is moving, it floats for a moment i
n midair, then tumbles through the dark like a clumsy animal. Suddenly he understands what they have done and he doesn’t care, really, it doesn’t matter anymore, and he forgets it, he forgives them all their stupidity, and he can only remember her face, her beautiful mouth. Annie! He screams inside his head. He is screaming and screaming. Annie!
But it is too late. And his wife can’t hear him.
2
THEY WAIT UNDER the marquee of the X-rated movie house. There are six or seven of them, mostly men. The women like wilted flowers. Some of them carry signs, emblems of their helplessness. She does not know if they have just come out, or if they have been waiting all night. It is almost five, the sky still dark. It could be day or night to these people, she thinks; it is all the same. Sleep is a luxury none of them can afford. Inadequately dressed, they shake and dance in the cold, waiting for an opportunity. You’ll see cars driving up slow. Negotiating. Sometimes they get in, sometimes they don’t. Depends on the job. Depends what it entails. Mostly sex favors, things of that nature. That’s what happens when you’re desperate, Lydia thinks. You’ll do anything for money. Well, she knows about desperate. No one has to tell her. And she needs somebody desperate now.
She parks the rented Taurus across the street and watches for several minutes, trying to decide which one she wants. She’s been down here plenty with her church. A part of the city where no woman feels safe, even in daylight. The street lamps are already decorated with Christmas ornaments, but there’s no sign of merriment here. Just broken-down people with nothing to lose. Shaking in the cold. She considers the random poetry of their signs. She doesn’t want the one with AIDS, with her luck she’ll probably catch something, and Hungry just stands there, forlorn as a scarecrow. Will Work for Food smiles at her and gives a little wave. Looks like we have a winner, she thinks almost gleefully, and pulls out fast to the other side of the street. The man shuffles over, toking on his cigarette. He’s wearing a flannel shirt, trousers, black boots. She leans across the seat and puts the window down. “I need somebody strong. You strong?”
“Depends what for?”
“I need something moved.”
The man hesitates.
“It won’t take long. And it pays.”
“Pays what?”
“Fifty.”
“Don’t want no trouble.”
“Won’t have any.”
“All right, then,” he says, “I’ll go along with it.” He gets in and smiles, reaches out his big hand. “Name’s Ooms. Walter Ooms.”
“Hello, Mr. Ooms.”
His clothes carry the smell of cheap rum, a tawdry medicinal smell. It puts her in mind of her father, when she was just a girl in the oppressive silence of their house.
“You from around here?” she asks him.
“Up north. My daddy had a cow farm. But that’s all gone now. Anyway, he’s dead.”
The wind sweeps the snow along the street. Snowbanks, gray from exhaust, hunker like inert animals. It begins to sleet and the streets clear of people. Even the hookers disappear, their faces smeared by the hard wind. Cars twist and scatter on the ice.
Ooms adjusts the vent so the heat hits him in the face. “I got rolled last week; they took my coat. I got a sister down in Florida. I ought to just go down there, but we ain’t spoke in years. Don’t need no coat down there, don’t need no heat.” He snorts into a scrap of newspaper and coughs a few times.
“There’s some whiskey down there if you want it.”
“All right.”
“In the bag down there. That’ll warm you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He takes out the bottle, gulps it down. “That’s good,” he says. “That’ll do the trick.”
“Have as much as you like.”
“All right, then. Don’t mind if I do. Course I don’t drink much as a habit. Don’t have the taste for it.”
She knows this is a lie. “Unlike my husband, who can’t get enough of it. But he can’t get enough of most things.” She smiles. “It’s a personality disorder. He’s just a big spoiled baby.”
“I got married once. Long time ago. She left me. That’s when my life took a turn.”
Walter Ooms coughs and wheezes, spits out the window. It is a distraction, she realizes. His way of changing the subject. Stopped at a traffic light she spots a squad car in the Stewart’s lot. Two cops drinking coffee, laughing over some joke. The circumstances were beyond my control, she imagines telling them. The light changes and she turns onto the interstate ramp. The highway is dark, thick with snow.
“Cigarette?” she offers, and he takes it readily, lights it up, drags deep. Ooms is a man who takes what is offered him, no matter what. He is shorter than her husband, wiry and nimble, a man accustomed to being on his feet. His face is smooth, glossy. He has the lazy eyes of a crook.
“Won’t be much longer now,” she tells him.
He smokes and nods, watching the road, his face going light and dark under the drooping highway lights. Riding in the car through the darkness with the strange man, she begins to feel a deepening sense of dread. It hums in her ear like a ghost. It makes her weak, her belly taut with fear. There’s no turning back now.
She gets off the interstate and heads down Valley Road, where they’d staged the accident. Now the car is dark and silent except for the distraction of the wipers, and her heart begins to pound with anticipation. The road runs parallel to the highway, an obscure shortcut with no posted speed limit, overlooked by police. Winding, heart-squealing curves and no guardrail, a thirty-foot drop on one side into a valley of trees so thick you can scarcely see the cars flying by on the interstate. One or two houses high on the hill, secluded in dense pockets of overgrowth. The houses are dark, and the road is empty. Three miles into it she pulls over and cuts the lights. Shadows swirl and scatter on the windshield. “Out,” she says.
“What for?” He looks around blandly. “Hey, lady, what is this?”
“You want your money or not?”
“I already done said I did.”
“I got five hundred dollars in my wallet, you interested in that?”
“Well, now, that depends.” He looks around at the wild darkness. “I hadn’t counted on working outside, out in the cold and whatnot.” His eyes graze her breasts, her legs. “I think that’s worth a little something extra, don’t you?”
For the first time she notices tattoos up his forearms, barbed wire around both wrists. A keen whine begins to churn in her chest. She thinks of reaching under the seat for her pistol, but she does not want him to see it just now. “You’ll get what you want, Ooms,” she promises, putting her hand on his leg. They get out. The wind pants and churns. Freezing rain falls from the sky like slivers of glass. She starts to shake. She gets the blanket from the trunk and hands him the flashlight and together they start down the hill, sliding in the snow, fighting the onslaught of branches that attack like some medieval infantry. The doctor’s car is nose down, obscured by the heavy trees and the opaque curtain of sleet.
“What in hell is that?” Ooms shouts.
“An accident. Hurry!”
Descending the hill, she slips on a sheet of ice and skids down on her back. Snow in her mouth, in her fists. Walter Ooms pulls her up and they move on, breathing hard, their bodies wet and brittle in the cold. The battered car ticks and shifts under the sighing trees, the smell of gasoline like a threat. “It’s leaking out of the tank,” Ooms warns.
She opens the driver’s door and grapples for a pulse, feels the beat of life in the doctor’s veins. Tears rush to her eyes. Prayers fall from her lips, soft as flower petals. Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. The doctor mutters for her help, his head lolling deliriously, his shirt saturated with vomit, a cumulus gust that makes her reel. She pushes him back against the seat, wincing at the gash on his forehead. “Please, mister, help me get him out.”
Ooms gathers the man in his arms, pulls him from the wreck, and unfolds him on the blanket. The doctor
whines in pain like a suffering animal and her heart winds up with remorse. Please don’t die on me now, Dr. Knowles. They wrap him in the blanket like a mummy and start to drag him up. The hill is steep, the ground uneven and reckless, and they struggle with the burden, the wet wool of the blanket slipping in their hands. The plan in her head starts to dissipate. The plan was good, but now she doesn’t know. It’s so much harder in real life and it weakens her and she doesn’t think she can go through with it to the end. “I can’t,” she says, letting go, the blunt sting of ice on her fingertips. Ooms groans with effort as he drags the doctor up and she scrambles after him, shouting until her lungs ache for him to wait, if he will just please wait she will help him. He turns irritably and she trains the flashlight on him, his face ablaze in the spotlight, and she can see him for who he is, and she knows that he will want something from her now, far more than she is willing to give, and he will not let her alone until he gets it.