Joe Pitt 3 - Half the Blood of Brooklyn (9 page)

He points the finger at me.

--So now, I need the head of Society security to do his job and go out to Brooklyn and
clean up a little mess that is, when you get right down to it, pretty much his own damn
fault, and make sure the Freaks understand that we offer them their best opportunity for
seamless integration into Manhattan.

He drops the finger.

--As for what you're up to, well, your private life, Joe, this girl you, I don't know,
take care of,
that's all well and good. From what I hear she brings out a real nurturing side in you.
And I guess I've heard things aren't going well with her. I'm sorry about that. God knows
the Society is more than sympathetic to anyone with any kind of illness, but, you know,
some hit closer to home than others. That, however, is neither, you know, here nor there.
There's a security problem that needs to be tended to. The Society needs you to tend to
it. If you can't tend to it, you need to let me know and we'll, for lack of a better
solution, dissolve this relationship and you can go back to your old status. And all that.

He leans back.

I think about
all that.

On my own dime again. No more Terry breathing down my neck. No more sit-downs with Predo.
No more taking care of everyone else's business before my own.

Yeah.

And no more easy blood. No more stipend from the Society coffers. Scuffling. Scraping for
my own blood, let alone the stuff for Evie's transfusions. And, sure, no more sit-downs
with Predo, but probably seeing him sooner than later. Once I'm out from Society sanction,
he'll be sending his giant to collect me. For accounts past due.

Rogue.

Alone.

God I want it.

God I want to be alone. Please let me be alone. Leave me alone. Don't ask me for
anything. I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to think about anyone else anymore.
I'm no good at it.

I reach out and drop the butt of my Lucky in Terry's teacup.

--Where am I going?

He slides the cup away.

--Coney Island.

Coney Island. The far edge of the world. Where the land runs out. Put it on a map, you'd
be scrawling
Here there be fucking monsters
across it.

I don't say anything, I don't have to.

Terry holds up a hand.

--Yeah, it's a bit of a haul. But you'll have wheels. And company. --
Company.
So why the fuck do
I
have to go?

He picks up his cup, remembers I dropped my smoke in it, frowns.

--The company is exactly why you're going, Joe.

He holds a finger up to signal the waiter who turns his back and continues flirting with
the cashier.

He sets the cup on the table.

--My own fault for being a dick. There's karma for you, Joe.

I look at the clock one last time. If I hurry, I'm pretty sure I can catch the drunk
orderly.

--Why I'm going, man? Company?

He pushes the cup away.

--Yeah, company. Well, like I say, their person, the Freaks', is coming here, but, they're
you know, leery, so, one of ours has to stay with them.

I rise, lean over the table.

--Fuck. No.

--Easy, man.

--I am not going out there to be tied up and sit in a basement with a bag over my face
waiting to find out if it all goes cool so I don't get my head sawed off. You want a pawn,
send one. Hurley's around here someplace.

He puts his hand over his heart.

--Hurley? No, not for this. And you? Sit hostage? No way. Man, that's like the whole point.
They're sending someone from their hierarchy, Joe. We have to do the same. That's why you
got to go, to make sure she gets back. I can't rely on Hurley if any, you know, subtlety
is called for.

I stay on my feet.

--She?

He glances at his watch.

--Yeah. And she's, you know, a valuable asset, so handle with care, right?

--I don't appreciate being discussed like I'm property.

We both look at Lydia.

Terry rises.

--Man, I wish I could be in on this. It's like a brave new world.

Lydia points at the check and money on the table.

--Is that what you're leaving for a tip? You know what someone makes in the service
industry, Terry? There's no minimum wage, no health benefits, no pension plan. You ever
waited tables?

Terry digs in his pocket.

--My bad. My bad.

I rub my forehead, look at Terry.

--It has to be tonight?

--Yeah. See, these aggressors I'm talking about, imperialists really, they're kind of
everywhere out there from what we hear.

--Great.

Lydia puts her hands in the pockets of her Carhartt jacket.

--Except on Friday night. So if we don't want to mess with them we go now.

Why couldn't it have been Hurley?

--It's political. Not that I'm saying any decision isn't political, but in this case it's
more so. Every time you put one of those things in your mouth and light it and inhale and
then blow the smoke for other people to breathe, that's a political decision.

With Hurley I could have smoked without getting this shit.

--And don't look at me like that. Just because it can't affect me or you, that doesn't make
it OK. We may be afflicted, we may have been infected with a disease that's enabled us at
the same time that it's disenabled us, but we have to remember that we live in the same
world as everyone else. That's the biggest danger I see to the Society charter. The fact
that we need blood to survive, that's going to be a huge psychological hurdle for
non-Vyral people to clear, but the psychological impact of that need on the Vyrally
impaired is as big an obstacle. I see it all the time, the drinking of blood, the fact
that it comes from uninfected humans makes it very easy to begin seeing the uninfected as
somehow less real than us. We can't afford that kind of,
elitism
isn't the word, but that kind of superiority to creep into our thinking. Smoking, just
freely spewing your secondhand smoke around to kill people, that's political, Joe, whether
you want to accept the fact or not.

I offer the pack to Lydia again.

--So you want one or not?

She slumps back in her seat.

--Just keep your window down, OK, I hate the smell of the fucking things and I don't want
their stink all over the van.

I light up.

--Sure, window down, of course. I mean, where the hell am I gonna throw the butts if the
window's not down?

She looks out her own window.

--Karma, Joe, it's gonna shit all over you one day.

--And it's been so good to me up till now.

--Without you even knowing it.

--Whatever.

I park the Econoline and open the door.

Lydia looks at the sign on the storefront and shakes her head.

--No. No, you will not be drinking and driving.

I step out of the van.

--Keep your panties on, it's not for me.

At Beth Israel, I find my orderly and give him his pint of Gilbey's and he uses his
passkey in the elevator and takes me up to Evie's floor. The night nurse rises behind her
desk as we approach, a hand reaching for the phone, but the orderly goes to her and slips
her the twenty bucks I gave him and she turns down the hall and walks into the bathroom.

The orderly takes a hit off his pint.

--Five minutes.

I go into Evie's room. Curtains are drawn around her bed and the old lady's. I duck under
hers.

She looks like hell.

I look at the bags in her IV stand. Straight fluids in one. And a morphine drip. She must
have cramped badly after the chemo. She must have dry heaved for a couple hours and been
unable to sleep. A trache tube juts from her throat. That's new.

I think about the night we met.

I think about putting a hand over the end of the tube.

I touch the scabs that have grown over the part of my ear the Count didn't rip off my head
and think about peeling them away and leaning over the bed and pressing the wound to
Evie's lips and finding out what kind of girl she really is.

What kind of man I am.

I take the chart from the foot of her bed and look at it. It means nothing to me. I put it
back. I put a hand in my jacket pocket and take out the candy necklace from Solomon's
store. I put it on the bedside table and leave, not having the guts to do anything that
might help her.

The night nurse is at her station. I stop in front of her. She smells like a different
brand of disinfectant than the one they use to clean everything in here.

--Why the trache tube?

She doesn't take her eyes from the screen of her computer, just raises her hand and rubs
her fingers against her thumb. I grab her wrist. With a squeeze and a twist and a pull I
could mash her radius and ulna and tear her hand from her arm and drop it in her lap and
walk out with her screams as a sound track.

She looks at my fingers wrapped around her wrist.

--You'll have to let go of me, sir.

This isn't her fault. Evie being sick has nothing to do with her. She's just trying to get
by.

I squeeze.

She gasps.

I haul her up out of her chair.

--The fucking hole in her neck, why's it there?

She puts her hand over mine, plucks at my fingers, stops, pats my wrist as if to calm me.

--The herpes lesions have spread into her throat. There was severe esophagitis and
swelling.

I let her go and she drops into her chair, cradling her left wrist, staring at the dark
ring of bruises around it.

I drop a fifty on her desk. Think about it. Pick it up and put it back in my pocket and
leave.

Lydia looks up from the map she's spread over the dashboard as I climb in the van.

I point at it.

--I want to get there fast.

She traces a line with her fingernail.

--FDR to the BQE.

I grind the ignition and the engine catches.

She raps a knuckle on the plywood wall that seals off the windowless rear of the van.

--If there's an emergency, don't try to race back for me. Just park and wait out the sun in
the back.

I look out the windshield up at the hospital, and turn in my seat and punch a hole in the
plywood and heave and it crashes into the back of the van, leaving it wide open to any
light that might pour in through the windshield.

Lydia picks up a scrap of wood, looks at it, sticks it in my face.

--What the fuck, Pitt? What the fuck?

I put the van in gear.

--Incentive to get this shit done before sunrise.

I pull from the curb, running a red light, speeding toward the FDR.

--What are you looking for?

We've cleared the eastern end of the Manhattan Bridge and I'm taking us through the insane
series of ramps and loops that will put us on the BQE.

--I'm looking for signs.

Lydia takes her foot off the dash, leans over and looks at my face.

--No you're not.

I point out the windshield.

--The assholes that designed this shit wanted to kill us. I'm trying to find the signs
that'll keep us from plowing into something made of concrete.

She leans back and puts her feet up.

--You're looking for an ambush.

I tighten my fingers on the wheel.

--No, I'm not.

She crosses her ankles.

--You're looking for a bunch of savage infecteds in loincloths. You're looking for zombie
parachutists. You're looking for dragons. You're in the wilderness and you're scared the
lions, tigers and bears are going to eat you.

I stop scanning the edges of the road and overhanging tree branches and overpasses and
cars that pull up alongside us. I stop looking at any of the places I've been looking at,
searching for ambushes.

--I'm just driving.

She taps the toe of her Doc Martens on the windshield.

--You ever been off of the Island? Before, I mean.

--I was born in the Bronx.

--You're such a New Yorker, never been anywhere. I traveled. I did a semester in Europe, in
Italy. Went everywhere. And I'm from the West Coast. When I came out here I took a whole
month to drive crosscountry. Been to Canada. Costa Rica. Mexico. Hawaii when I was a kid.
Been to fucking Disney World. Most disgusting place on earth. Consumerism at its worst.

I chain another smoke.

--That radio work?

--Sure.

I toss the spent butt out the window.

--Mind playing something on it?

--What do you want to hear?

--Something that isn't you.

She flips the bird at me and clicks the radio and settles the dial on some college station
that's playing some chick with an acoustic guitar.

Pet the Cat music, Evie calls it.

--This OK?

--If it includes you shutting up, it's OK.

She nods, draws a little spiral in the dust on the dash.

--How's she doing, your friend?

I reach over and spin the dial and put it on a jazz station and turn it up. Coltrane plays
Stardust.

Lydia ruffles her short hair.

--Just that you never asked about HIV again after that one time and I didn't know if you'd
been able to get her some new meds. And stopping at the hospital just made me wonder?

--She's fine.

--If she's in the hospital, she isn't fine. I told you before, I know people in the
treatment community. One of the Lesbian Gay and Other Gendered Alliance members was a
hospice worker. If she needs care, we could arrange something.

--She doesn't need care.

--Hospital's not the place for someone who's really sick. They don't give a shit. Fucking
HMOs, it's all about the bottom line. Get them in and get them out. Free up the beds for
another pile of dollars. She could be at home, if she's that bad.

We grind into traffic merging from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and start crawling through
Red Hook.

--She's not staying in the hospital. She's gonna be fine.

Lydia tugs on her rainbow-enameled ear cuff.

--You're not thinking about doing something to
make
her fine, are you, Joe?