Invisible Boy (26 page)

My teeth started chattering. “I love having a friend with a g-gun. Cuts through so much paperwork.”

“Speaking of that, I’m going to need a statement from you.”

“L-later?”

“Sure,” she said. “But did you see anything? Get a look at the car?”

“Skwarecki, I’m so c-cold.… ”

“Hey,” she called out. “Somebody got a blanket around here?”

I heard squeaky footsteps approaching, then felt something soft settle over my legs.

Better
.

She waited a moment until my teeth came to rest. “You remember anything about the car? Get any kind of look at it?”

I started to shake my head, then remembered the neckboard. “I got a look at the air. After that I don’t remember anything.
Even hitting the ground.”

Skwarecki didn’t say anything. The noise of everyone else rushing through the hallway filled in the silence.

“There were these two guys hanging around, though,” I said. “Across from me when I was out front at Prospect. That’s why I
walked out to the bus stop. When I looked back, one of them had left and the other one was staring at me, smiling. Freaked
me out.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, maybe the other guy went off to call somebody, you know? Like, say, a friend with a car.”

“I’m figuring this for a random hit-and-run,” she said. “Fucked up, but random.”

I thought back to the smiling guy. “It kind of felt like he knew…”

“Knew what?”

“Jesus,
I
don’t know. He was smiling at me and it gave me the creeps.”

“Maybe he liked the view of your ass.”

“I’m serious.”

“Fine,” she said. “What’d these guys look like?”

“Watch caps,” I said, “big down jackets, sloppy jeans, and very white sneakers.”

“You just described ninety percent of the male population between the ages of ten and thirty. In all five boroughs.”

“African American.”

“Narrows it down to twenty-six percent. That all you got?”

“Yeah,” I said, “pretty much.”

The truth was, I had no idea what the two guys looked like because I’d been doing my best
not
to look at them, and Skwarecki was no doubt totally right about it all just being random.

“You’re going back, right?” I asked.

“Where you got hit? I’ve already sent out a couple of uniforms, doing a canvass—see if anybody got a plate number.”

“Not that,” I said. “Back to the cemetery. I’m really glad you guys are checking whether anyone saw me get hit, but Bost is
right—we need the other shoe.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because you’re bleeding and your arm is broken and you’re working up to a helluva shiner on that left eye?”

“So?”

“So take a load off.”

“Skwarecki, what’re you, gonna make me
guilt
you into this?”

“Into what?”

“I’d like to have something to show for having gotten run down by a car this morning, okay? If it weren’t for the damn shoe,
I wouldn’t have been there.”

I didn’t mention the part about how I’d been out on that corner waiting for her to show up.

“Of course I’m going back,” she said, in this cheesy soothing voice. “Soon as they get you squared away.”

“You’re just waiting around to see if I cry once they start yanking on this arm to get the bones set, so you can tease me
later for being a total pussy.”

“Oh, like you’re not already crying?”

“Fuck yourself. Showed up an hour late and you didn’t bring doughnuts?”

“There was some shit going down at the precinct. We gotta get you a beeper or something.”

“Yeah, maybe it would have taken the impact.”

“Jesus, if I’d
know
n…?”

“It’s not like you ran me over, Skwarecki. And I’m grateful as all hell you showed up when you did, but I still want you to
get your tits out of my face and go find that shoe.”

“And you’re planning to, what, take a taxi home?”

“Subway,” I said.

“I don’t fucking
think
so.”

“Try and stop me.”

“I handcuff your good wrist to the gurney here, Madeline? Not like you’ll be breezing through any turnstiles. In your underwear.”

“Fine. I’ll call my husband. Ask him to take off early.”

“He’s at work?”

“Yeah. North Jersey.”

“Got a car?” she asked.

“Might be able to borrow one.”

“Better leave now, even still. What’s his number?”

I recited it. “Ask him to bring me some pants, will you?”

“I’ve got a pair of sweats out in the car.”

I said “Great,” then waited to hear her footsteps fading well away down the noisy hall before I closed my eyes against the
pain and started crying for real, which only made everything hurt worse. Plus which now my nose was all runny and I didn’t
want to wipe it on my blanket.

“Here’s a tissue,” said Skwarecki, leaning into view as she pressed a Kleenex gently against my upper lip.

“Oh, perfect,” I said, “you’re still here?”

“Shut up and blow.”

“Not unless you promise first that you’ll go find that shoe… with someone along who’s got your back.”

“Or what? You gonna snot me to death?”

“Damn straight.”

T
hree hours later I had a spiffy air cast and sling, seven stitches in a newly shaved oval on the side of my head, a fully
realized black eye, and a bellyful of painkillers.

Skwarecki was gone, and I lay propped up on my gurney back in the ER, waiting for Dean to arrive with Christoph’s Jeep. I
couldn’t feel a goddamn thing except for a velvet opiate glow floating around and through my entire body.

I had on cop-issue sweatpants and a hospital smock. A nurse had tucked a pillow under my damaged arm to help the swelling
go down, explaining that I couldn’t have a real cast for at least twenty-four hours.

My fat, bruise-dark fingers seemed adequate proof of that thesis, sticking straight out from the end of the whole splint shebang
like stiff little breakfast links.

I didn’t care. I was in fact wasted to the point of being awed by the soulful beauty emanating from each person whom fate
had contrived into ER with me: Dr. Hairy Hands, all the nurses, the little boy puking into a green plastic pan next bed over—even
the homeless-looking dude with blood gushing from his flattened nose.

One love, Jah guide.

“Bunny?”

I looked up at my husband’s stricken face and smiled. “Hey, it’s so great to see you.”

“What happened?”

“I got hit by a car,” I said.

“I know. Your friend Skwarecki told me on the phone. Are you okay?”

“I’m really, really good. Really.”

“You’re on really, really good drugs right now.”

“Mm.
Yes!
Innnnndubitably.”

“Not to harsh your buzz,” he said, “but you also look like you got beaten to shit.”

“I fought the car and the car won. Doobie-do.”

I closed my eyes, grooving on how the fluorescent lights made the inside of my eyelids glow pretty and scarlet. “
Wow
.”

“I’m going to go see how I sign you out. Then we’ll get you home.”

“You’re amazing. Thank you so much for being so amazing… all the, like,
time
.”

He smoothed a strand of hair off my forehead. “Bunny, have you eaten today?”

“Food,” I said, “
wow
.”

I dozed off until he came back with a nurse. They put my high-tops back on, then helped me sit up before gently swinging my
legs over the side of the gurney.

They’d parked a wheelchair right next to me, but just leaning a few inches to port so I could reach for the floor with my
right sneaker’s toe loosed a retinal cascade of hot, sharp little stars.

Dean bent down to brace me, his mouth close to my ear. “Bunny?”

“Can’t,” I said, eyes shut again.

I felt him wrap one arm around my waist and snake the other beneath my knees. “Okay?”

I leaned into him. “Feel sick.”

“I got you,” he said, lifting me gently off the gurney. “Don’t worry.”

I remember Dean fastening my seat belt, and then the sun glittering on the East River when we drove across a bridge.

“Look,” I said. “All those girders. All that sky.”

His hand was light on my knee. “Home soon. Go back to sleep.”

“Wakey-wakey,” chirped Pagan. “We got you a cheeseburger.”

I was on the sofa, adrift in a bay of pillows.

Pagan and Sue and Dean were seated around the coffee table next to me, prising lids off a bunch of crimped-foil take-out containers.

“You guys rule,” I said, voice croaky. “Anything to drink?”

Sue slid a tall paper cup across the table. “Pepsi—not diet. Dean figured you could use the sugar.”

I pulled it closer with my left hand, then tried to lift my head

toward the straw.

No luck, and my mouth felt like a coal scuttle.

“Here.” Sue bent the straw at its crinkled hinge, picked up the whole vessel, and tucked it into my armpit. “Can you reach?”

“Think so.” I craned my head up a couple of inches and managed to get the straw between my teeth.

The cup shifted, ice sloshing, and a tide of sweet effervescence flooded my mouth.

Heaven
.

“Big excitement today, huh?” asked Pagan.

“I guess.” I sucked down another sip of cola bliss.

She dipped a french fry in catsup. “What were you, wandering around in the middle of the road?”

“Sidewalk,” I said. “I heard the tires hit the curb.”

“Before the actual car hit
you
?” she asked.

“Pretty much.”

Sue took a bite of her own fry, examining my sling and air cast. “Fucked you right the hell up—”

“But thank you for not dying,” added Pagan.

“No shit,” I said, grazing the coffee table’s wooden edge with my knuckles in gratitude.

Dean had a burger in his hand, but he didn’t raise it to his mouth. “Bunny, do you think this had anything to do with the
little cemetery kid?”

“Skwarecki doesn’t think so,” I said. “I mean, maybe in a small town the whole thing would be fishy, but it’s Queens—couple
of million people?”

“Rush hour,” said Sue. “Everybody driving like maniacs?”

“Exactly. What are the odds, right?” I got the straw in my teeth again.

Dean took a bite of burger, chewed, and swallowed. “You mentioned two guys, though, when we were coming home from the hospital.
And one of them left?”

“Prospect is off the main drag,” I said. “The front gate’s on this little unpaved lane across from a college, and there were
some people walking by. Skwarecki was way late. These two guys came out from the subway—a little walkway under the tracks—and
then they were hanging out in the campus gate across from me. Not like they were sharpening machetes or anything, but I figured
I should move out to the street. There was a bus stop, more people around.”

“And then you got run over?” asked Pagan.

“Run
under
, really. That car had me airborne like a bull with a rodeo clown.”

“You landed on your arm?” asked Sue.

“I don’t know. I hit my head on the roof and then bounced.”

“That explains the stitches,” said Pagan.

I shrugged and then winced. “We got any more painkillers? Everything’s starting to throb again.”

“In the kitchen,” said Dean, taking one more quick bite of his burger before standing up to go get them.

“You are a young bronzed god,” I called after him.

“You’re high,” his voice echoed back down the hallway.

“So what happened with the two guys?” asked Pagan.

“Nothing, really,” I said. “Just… when I looked back over my shoulder, one of them was gone, and the other one was kind of
smiling at me.”

“Smiling, like ‘creepy grin of foreboding’ or just ‘have a nice day’?” she asked.

“Pagan,” said Sue, “when’s the last time some strange guy smiled at you without whipping out a box cutter and demanding your
wallet?”

“Last month, on the subway,” answered my sister.

“You mean the one who whipped out his dick and then barfed on you?” I asked.

Sue settled back into her chair, arms crossed. “My point exactly.”

“He didn’t really barf on
me
,” said Pagan. “His briefcase got the worst of it.”

Dean came back in, white paper bag in hand. “Want me to unscrew the cap for you?”

“Please,” I said.

He shook out a pair of tablets into the palm of my left hand. “Got enough soda left to swallow those?”

“Sure.” I dumped them into my mouth and washed them down.

“Now eat some burger,” he said.

“Fries first, okay?”

He picked up a few and held them to my lips.

I bit off half and started chewing, mumbling “Need salt” through my mouthful of potato.

Dean shook his head. “No they don’t.”

I started to call him a rat bastard and he shoved the fry-ends into my open mouth.

“No fair,” I said once I’d swallowed.

“
Eat,
” he said.

The phone rang and Sue grabbed it.

I turned away from the piece of cheeseburger Dean was swooping toward my mouth.