Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (17 page)

She cocks her head and touches it with her fingertips.

--Am I beautiful?

--Hell yeah, baby.

I pick her up and put her in the wheelchair at the foot of the bed.

And the night nurse is gone from her desk, hiding. And the intern in the elevator ignores
us and leans his head against the wall and closes his eyes. And the security guards on the
ground floor are all outside looking for the gutshot woman who climbed off her gurney and
threw one of them into a wall and ran out the door and drove off in an old Cadillac and
must be on more PCP than the devil. And the cabby that stops for us doesn't know how to
fold the wheelchair and neither do I so we leave it at the curb and when he drops us off
on Little West 12th Street I carry Evie in my arms to the door and kick it until someone
slides it open and I stagger in on a ruined leg and someone catches me and takes my girl
from me and I try to take her back and Daniel cradles her gently and smiles.

--Simon, you made it.

--L'chaim.

I take the Dixie cup of blood from Daniel.

--Is that supposed to be funny?

He hands the small pitcher of blood back to the Enclave who gave it to him.

--Sorry. Was that in bad taste? After your story, I couldn't quite resist.

I drink the blood and tear the cup in half and run my finger over the insides and stick it
in my mouth and suck it clean.

--Glad I could lighten your load.

He blows out his sunken cheeks. --
Lighten my load.

He holds a hand to the candle that sits between us on the floor and his skin goes
translucent.

--My load is amply light these days.

I crumple the cup and drop it.

He points at my knee.

--Any better?

I give it a poke with my index finger and the pain jumps up my spine.

--Feels like a hot-water bottle stuffed full of broken seashells.

His eyebrows rise.

--Oddly, I have no idea what that would feel like. May I?

I shrug.

--It's your place.

He pokes my knee. I flinch. He smiles.

--You know, I think you're right.
A hot-water bottle full of broken seashells.
You're showing a touch of the poet this morning, Simon.

--Want me to stick a finger in the hole in my neck and come up with a nice simile for that
sensation?

--No, no. I've had my hands in plenty of open wounds. I know well enough what they feel
like. But let's take a look in any case.

He picks up the candle and holds it close to the crusted bullet hole. He hums and taps the
side of my head and I tilt it away from the wound and the scabs crack and ooze.

--Well, I won't say I envy you, but it will heal.

He points at the knee.

--This could be more of a problem. The bone will knit, but it won't reform itself. You'll
have a nasty limp.

I look at the swollen purple mass.

--Care to take a crack at it?

He sets the candle down and places his hands on the knee and probes it, and waves of pain
and nausea roll over me and he digs his fingers in and shoves and presses, and chips and
flakes of bone scrape and snap into a new arrangement and he takes his hands away.

--Not as designed, I'm sure, but a little better. Maybe.

We sit.

Around us the Enclave are moving about. The blood is being passed up and down a seated
line of them. Some taking a slight drink, others fasting. A few push big brooms across the
floor. I pick up my crumpled cup and toss it into the heap of dust one of them is moving
down the length of the warehouse. A couple of them descend the steps from the loft that
runs the back of the building.

Somewhere up there, that's where they took Evie.

--So how about it, Daniel?

He's picking at an old spot of dry paint on the concrete floor.

--Hm?

I dig a finger into the wound on my neck. Feel it hurt me.

--How about we go take a look at my girl?

He drops his head far back and stares up into the darkness above us.

--There are skylights up there. We painted them black, of course. But we never covered them
over. It was discussed. Common sense suggested we should lay some sheets of plywood over
them. Tarps at the very least. But someone, it may have been me, argued against it. Our
home is so ordered. Disciplined. By necessity. We starve ourselves to the edge of reason.
Beyond. Without structure, rigidity of manner, it would devolve to chaos and bloodshed
here. Very quickly. But it's not natural. Proper, yes. But not natural. An element of the
random, danger, no matter how remote, seemed like a nice touch.

He rises, still looking up.

--So every once in a while, a bird dies in midflight. An owl, of all things, once shattered
two panes and landed at my feet just a few yards from this spot. Snow and ice built up
another time and brought down an entire skylight. A bullet someone had fired into the air.
The wind. A flaw in the glass suddenly exposed. All these have happened. Each time we've
repaired or replaced the broken glass, painted it black, and left it uncovered. Each time
it causes great excitement. Most every other physical aspect of our lives being all but
utterly predictable.

He looks at me.

--And you know, not once, never, have any of the accidents occurred by the light of day.

He looks up again.

--I don't know what that means. But I find it a bit of a disappointment.

He bends at the waist and puts a hand alongside his mouth and whispers.

--There have been more than a few Enclave over the years who I would have given my eyeteeth
to see hit with a sudden blast of sunlight.

He straightens and looks around at the white figures bustling about.

--Prigs most of them. Unseasoned. So little sense of proportion. That's one of the dangers
of the cloistered life. An expansive sense of the universe, sure, but try having a
conversation about art or music or a woman's legs and they have nothing to contribute at
all.
You've
been around.
You've
seen a thing or two.

A strand of tendon in his neck starts to jump and he claps a hand over it.

--Hm. Yes. Seen. Things.

He takes the hand away. The tendon is still.

--Do you remember, do you remember the Wraith, Simon?

I look elsewhere.

--I was out of my skull, man. I don't know what I remember.

--Don't lie. It's beneath you.

I almost laugh at that one.

He does laugh.

--Alright, yes, lying is far from beneath you. Little is beneath you except the floor. I
surrender. But. The Wraith. Something for you to think about. It came from somewhere.

--If you say so.

--I do. It came from somewhere. I know. We asked it here. From somewhere else. But, Simon,
that doesn't mean I know what it is. I do have a theory.

I get my good leg under me and lever myself to my feet.

--Daniel.

--Yes? What?

--You're acting kind of weird. I mean, even for you. Are you OK?

He spreads his arms wide, lets them drop to his sides.

--Simon, if only I had the time to answer a question like that.

--Well, if you're done spacing out here, how about we go look at Evie?

An Enclave comes near, hovers just off Daniel's shoulder.

Daniel looks at him, holds up a finger. The Enclave stays there. Daniel brushes at him
with the finger. The Enclave takes a step back, but doesn't leave.

Daniel nods, looks at me.

--I'm sorry, you asked what?

--Evie. My girl, Daniel. I need to know.

He raises a hand.

--Right, yes. The girl. You want to know who she is.

--No, I know who she is, man, I want to-

He lays a hand on my chest. It burns.

--Simon, you want to know who she is. Not her name. Not where she was born. Not what her
parents do or where she went to school or if she ever wore braces. You want to know who
she is. What she is.

He raises his hand and cups my chin, the heat from his skin is intolerable.

--You want to know if she's like you.

The Enclave shuffles his feet.

Daniel moves his hand to my cheek.

--What will you do, Simon? What the hell will you do?

I swallow some spit and the muscles contracting in my neck pull at the wound.

--I. If she. I'll, I'll save her, Daniel. She's dying and I want to. So.

He drops his hand.

--That's not what I meant.

The Enclave moves closer again and Daniel nods. He tugs my sleeve.

--Come on, I'll help you.

He moves next to me and I put a hand on his shoulder and we walk.

--Thank you for coming by and telling me what you've been up to, Simon. Your stories always
serve as a reminder. Of how pitifully banal most of the world's concerns are. And how
hilarious the contortions most people go through to make themselves believe any of it
matters.

--Sure. My pleasure.

More Enclave are coming near, clustering, walking behind and around us.

The door is in front of us.

We stop.

I take my hand from Daniel's shoulder.

--Daniel, I'm not leaving, man. I'm not going anywhere until you look at Evie and tell me.

He takes a step toward the door, places a hand on it, runs his fingers across the even
white paint that covers the steel.

--You, you are well seasoned. You I could talk to about a woman's leg. But I wish you had
some little of the other, a concern for things larger than yourself. It would have made
our conversations more fruitful. You might have learned something. You might have. Well.
Who cares, really? Not you. Not even me. Not anymore.

I look at the Enclave arrayed around us. All of them.

I tug at the waist of Axler's pants.

--Daniel, I'm not going out there without her.

He puts his other hand on the door, lays both palms flat and leans his forehead between
them.

--If you'd ever listened once. If you'd ever observed for the slightest moment what happens
here, you'd know what an ass you're making of yourself.

I reach for him and I am pinned suddenly to the door and it takes a moment to realize that
Daniel has taken me by the throat and snatched me to his side.

--Look, Simon, look around and what do you see? What do you ever see here?

I look. I see Daniel. I see Enclave.

I try to move. His grip tightens, threatens to tear off my head.

--Yes. You see always one thing. Enclave. In here. Always the same. Enclave. Nothing else
comes in. Nothing else leaves. Only Enclave.

His fingers loosen.

--And you ask if the girl is like you. She is as much like you as I am or any of us here.

He takes his hand away.

--You are Enclave.

Tears, viscous and white are filling his eyes.

--As she is here, as I let her in, so she is Enclave too.

I break for the stairs.

And am in the grip of Enclave. Held fast.

Daniel wipes the back of his hand over a cheek, smearing the tears. He shakes and his
teeth chatter and he clenches his fists and a bone breaks in the back of his hand and juts
from his skin and he exhales slow and stops shaking. But the tears keep coming.

--As for leaving. She'll have the chance to make that decision for herself.

He looks up at the black skylight.

--For the moment, I'm the only one going out.

He turns to the southward-facing door and takes the handle and pulls and it slides open on
well-greased tracks and the light washes in and the Enclave rustle back from it and Daniel
walks out onto the loading dock and steps off and drops to the street and walks across the
cobbles that peek through the worn tarmac of Little West 12th and the sun crests the tops
of the tenements at the east end of the street and hammers him and he turns into it and
lets the thin white robe fall off his shoulder and to the ground and the light reflects
off his white skin and he smiles and his head turns our way.

And watching him there, smiling in the sun, for a moment I believe.

Then purple blossoms like the ones that cover Evie climb over his face.

Cancers boil out of his nostrils and his ears.

His eyes swell and puss drains from them and steams.

The Enclave release me as they scuttle farther from the sunlight and I tear a white shawl
from one's shoulders and the bones Daniel shifted in my knee come loose and I drag my leg
outside and into the street and wrap the shawl around my head and when I grab Daniel's
wrist the skin slips off the bone and I get my arms under him and scoop him off the
cobbles and for the second time I lurch into the darkness with a diseased and wasted thing
in my arms.

But no one takes this one from me.

Noises come from the misshapen clot of tumors that used to be his face and I put my ear to
a bloody and bone-rimmed hole and he reeks poison.

A mass that used to be a hand touches my face. --
Be seeing you, Joe.

And he laughs and coughs his throat out on the floor and he dies.

The room is quiet except for the sound of the door rolling shut. As the light is cut off,
glass breaks, and a large black bird falls dead a few yards from us, pinned to the ground
by a shaft of morning sunlight.

--OK, man, now that was just plain freaky.

I look up and watch as the Count comes down the stairs, dressed all in white.

--I don't know about you, but I have had one weird fucking night. I mean, no shock there,
right? Not in this place. I'm guessing nothing that passes even remotely as unweird has
happened in this joint for a loooongass time. But look who I'm telling. Oh, oh, man, do
they always do that?

I watch as the Enclave that has placed the bucket under Daniel's hanging corpse slits its
throat. Nothing comes out of the gash.

I pat my pockets. Find my cigarettes. I put one in my mouth and try to find my lighter.
Stop looking. Watch as the Enclave begins to cut Daniel open from crotch to neck.

The Count leans over and snaps a Bic in front of my face.