The Detroit Electric Scheme (24 page)

“Could you bring it to Big Boy? I told Adamo I'd get him the money today. Rent.”

Wesley's mouth dropped open. “Rent? My God, Will, what the . . .
Yeah, I'll do it. Should I bring him anything else? Perhaps a dozen roses and a box of chocolates?”

I grimaced. I knew it was crazy. “No, the rent will suffice. And I'll pay you back.”

After he went to the door and opened it, he paused and looked back at me. “Boy, are you lucky I like you.”

I forced a grin and hooked my thumb toward the door. “I know. Now get on home.”

As soon as Wesley left, I locked the door behind him and hurried over to my duster. I was salivating. A bottle of cheap whiskey filled each of the four inside pockets. I set the cigarette on the edge of the table and slipped out the bottle I'd already started. I used my teeth to pull out the cork, raised the bottle to my mouth, and tipped my head back. The first long swallow burned my throat. The second spread that familiar warmth through my midsection. On the third I felt the first touch of the slow eclipse that would darken my mind and get me from this day to the next.

It would keep me from thinking.

 

While Elizabeth slept, I stayed out at the table sipping whiskey. Not enough to get drunk, just enough to keep that smooth feeling from leaving my head. Wind whistled in through cracks in the wall. This room was even colder than the bedroom.

A baby started crying in the apartment behind me. I took a drink. A minute later, two men walked past in the hallway speaking Italian, their footsteps like the fall of a hammer on the wooden floor. I took another drink. The baby kept crying. I wished someone would do something about it, but it just got louder and louder. I pulled the salt pork from the bag of supplies I'd bought and looked at it for a moment before setting it on the table. More people thudded past in the hallway. I drank some more. I didn't realize I'd been sitting so long until I noticed that the orange glow inside the stove was much brighter than I remembered. Sunset wasn't far away.

I heard a scuffling of feet on the floor of the bedroom. Elizabeth started gagging. I put away the bottle, went to the bedroom door, and knocked softly.

“Go away!” Elizabeth screamed.

I opened the door.

She was squatting in the back corner of the room facing the wall, hunched over with both arms cradling her stomach.

“Elizabeth!” I rushed into the room and knelt beside her.

Her hair hung in sweaty lanks over her face. Vomit stained her dress, filling the room with its stench. “Oh, God, Will, go!” She wailed and cried, her voice thick and wet. “Go!”

How could I have stayed in the other room so long? I turned her head toward me and combed back her hair with my fingers. “No, Lizzie. I'm staying. Help will be here in a couple of hours. We're going to do this together.”

She sobbed, and her mouth stretched open in a ghastly rictus. “I'm afraid. It hurts.” In a sudden movement, she reached out with both hands and grasped the front of my shirt. “You've got to get me more,” she said, eyes wide, unfocused.

“Lizzie, I can't.”

“I can taper off.” Tears and mucus streamed down her face. “Just let me do that.”

My heart was breaking. But I couldn't. “No, honey. You've already started.” I caressed her cheek with the back of my hand. “It'll get better soon, I promise.”

She threw my hand off her and jerked me forward, my shirt held in an iron grip. “You bastard!” she screamed. “You bastard! I should have killed you!” Her screams soon melted into sobs, and she let go of my shirt and curled up on the floor in the fetal position, crying and moaning. Finally, she fell asleep.

The room was becoming rose-tinted by the sunset. The delicate glow through the window softened her form until I saw her as an Impressionist portrait, beautiful but diffuse, each measured brushstroke incomplete yet creating something approaching perfection. I loved this woman. I had hurt her like no one else ever could. But at least I was suffering, too.

I went out to the table, picked up the bottle, and carried it into the bedroom, leaving the door open so I would be sure to hear Wesley. Leaning my back against the wall, I slid down to the floor and had another drink or two in the deepening gloom. Some time later, a soft knock sounded against the apartment door. I hurried out to the table and felt inside my duster for the empty pocket. After I slid the whiskey bottle inside, I called out, “Who's there?”

“Will, it's me,” Wesley said.

To cover the whiskey on my breath, I bit a chunk off the salt pork and chewed it while opening the door.

Wesley guided Dr. Miller into the apartment with a gentle push in the back. “Have you noticed it's a little dark in here?” Wesley said. He flicked his lighter with his bandaged hands.

“Sorry.” I swallowed the pork and grabbed a candle off the table. Wesley lit it, and I slipped it into the wax-caked sconce on the wall. The yellow light threw long, flickering shadows across the room.

The doctor's eyes flitted about nervously. Wesley looked worried, but I knew his concern was for Elizabeth and me, not his surroundings. Dr. Miller tightened his grip on his black medical bag. Glancing at the bedroom door, he said, “How's she doing?”

“Not well.”

“You know she needs a hospital.”

“She won't go,” I said. “This is the only way. There's no reason I can't do this, is there? I mean, with your help?”

“It's not a good idea. Elizabeth's life is at stake here.”

“You said it yourself, Doctor. The only way she'll achieve a permanent cure is if she wants it. She wants this. Maybe that will be enough.”

Dr. Miller set his medical bag on the edge of the table, shaking his head slowly. “All right. But I must insist that I examine her first.”

“That's fine with me,” I said. “Elizabeth may not be quite so enthusiastic.”

He adjusted his spectacles and gave me a sidelong glance. “She is here of her own volition?”

“Yes, but I'm not sure she'll admit that right at this moment.”

He cleared his throat and looked away. “You understand . . . I can't be a party to any . . . criminal activities.”

“Criminal? Doctor, she asked me to do this. She wants to get off heroin, but she's afraid to go to a hospital.” I grabbed hold of his arm. “Right now she's in serious pain and isn't rational. I need your help.”

The bedroom door cracked open, and Elizabeth peeked out. “Dr. Miller,” she said, her voice trembling. “Come in here. Just you.”

The doctor poured a glass of water from the pail, took a deep breath, and entered the bedroom, closing the door behind him. For perhaps a minute, he spoke to her in low, soothing tones, but her voice became louder and more strident by the second.

Then Elizabeth shouted, “But you don't know what
he
did!”

Dr. Miller said something quietly.

Her tone turned to pleading. “If I just had a little more . . . I can taper off, Doctor. Please, please . . .” Her words dissolved into sobs.

The doctor's voice was a murmur through the thin apartment walls. After a few minutes they both were quiet.

The doctor finally came out of the room with his medical bag under one arm, wiping his hands with a handkerchief. “She'll sleep now.” He tucked the handkerchief into his breast pocket and smiled. “It took a few minutes for Elizabeth to admit she was here with you willingly, but her basic decency came through. That's a good sign. You may be able to pull this off.”

He set his bag on the table and rooted around in it for a minute before pulling out a pair of brown medicine bottles, a small spoon, and a large bottle of pills. He held out the small bottles. “This is belladonna extract. It counteracts some of the effects of the heroin and causes a delirium that helps mask the pain of withdrawal.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “But in too large a dosage it will kill her. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

He pointed to the other bottle. “These will help to purge the drug from her system. I gave her a single teaspoon of belladonna and three of the pills with a full glass of water. I'm going to observe her for a while to make sure the dosage is correct. Would you mind if I use that chair?” He pointed to the chair that held my duster.

“No, not at all,” I said, rushing over to it and carefully removing my coat. When I laid it on the floor, the bottles made a muffled clunk. I stiffened for a moment before I recovered and brought the chair to him. Neither he nor Wesley appeared to notice the sound.

Dr. Miller took the chair and opened the bedroom door again. “You
two may take a break if you'd like. I suspect I'll be watching her for at least two hours. Will, do you have something I can wash her with, and anything else for her to wear?”

I took a washcloth, a bar of soap, a towel, and a flannel nightgown from the table, and carried them into the bedroom along with the pail of water. Dr. Miller shut the door when I left. I sat next to Wesley on the floor near the stove with my back propped against the wall.

He reached into his right coat pocket with his thumb and forefinger, and awkwardly pulled out his little derringer. “Sorry, it's all I've got left,” he whispered. “One shot, and it's not a man-stopper by any means, but it'll slow somebody down if you need to use it.” He dug half a dozen bullets out of his waistcoat pocket.

I slipped the gun and ammunition into the inside pocket of my jacket. “Thanks, Wes. I don't know what I'd do without you.”

He grinned. “Well, you'd certainly have a lot less sunshine in your day.”

“Wes, if you don't mind me asking, what the hell are you doing in Detroit?”

“As opposed to, let me guess, New York?”

“Well, yeah. You've got the talent.”

He was quiet for a moment. The hum of Elizabeth's voice carried through the wall.

“You never know.” He picked up a scrap of newspaper from the floor, crumpled it up, and began tossing it in the air and catching it. “Perhaps I'll make it to the Great White Way someday. But I kind of like being a big fish in a small pond. In New York, I'd be a minnow in an ocean.”

“Could you explain something to me?” I said. “I was cruel to you. And not just once. Over and over. Yet you still tried to be my friend. Why?”

He glanced at me with a tentative smile. “You reminded me of myself. I haven't always been the
bon vivant
man about town you see before you. For most of my life, I've been hurt and angry, but most of all filled with self-loathing. Because of what I am.”

It was my turn to be quiet. After a moment, I said, “What turned you around?”

“A . . . friend.” His eyes cut to the floor. “He made me realize I wasn't a freak. He helped me believe I was a good person.”

“I'd like to meet him.” I meant it.

His face clouded. He threw the ball of paper onto the pile of trash in the corner. “We're not friends anymore. The truth is he's why I stayed in Detroit. But he left last summer.”

“What happened?”

“What ever happens? One person changes and the other doesn't, or changes in a different way. One grows weary of the other. What was once joyful becomes painful. The bloom withers and dies.”

We sat quietly for a few minutes. I watched the coals flare in the stove. Elizabeth's voice rose in the bedroom.

“So, what was she like?” Wesley said. “Before.”

I wrapped my arms around my knees and brought them up to my chest. “She loved me. It sounds so simple, I know, but that's what I remember. Whenever she saw me her eyes would light up, like her love was a spark burning so brightly it couldn't be contained.” I shook my head. “I never realized how much I should cherish that look. Until it was gone.”

The coals popped and hissed. I pulled out my wallet and handed him Elizabeth's note. “She used to send me letters at the office. I finally asked her to stop because the other managers were needling me. It was too embarrassing.” I could feel tears begin to well up in my eyes. “She loved me, Wes. She loved me, and I made her stop.”

Wesley handed the note back to me. “We all have regrets, William. It's part of being human.” We sat for a while in a companionable silence. He cleared his throat. “So you seem to have gotten past it.”

“Past what?”

“Past who I am.” He smiled. “You know, an entertainer.”

I nodded, surprised at myself. “I have. I don't care if you're an ‘entertainer' or a Mexican spy or a Martian. You're an amazing fellow.”

“Thanks. You know, I don't want to bugger every man or boy who comes along any more than you want to have sex with every female you see. I may be wired a little differently, but we're more alike than you'd know.”

“No. I'm not like you.” I sighed and then turned my head so he could see my eyes. “But I wish I was.”

 

Hours passed before Dr. Miller opened the door and asked me to come in.

Elizabeth lay on her back tucked into a pair of warm blankets. Her eyes were closed, and she was having an animated yet unintelligible conversation with some unseen person.

Dr. Miller gestured toward her and said, “I'm happy with the dosage. One teaspoon and three pills every six hours until next Tuesday unless her behavior changes significantly.”

“But that's . . . five days. I thought you said it takes seven.”

He nodded and pulled out another small bottle. “Five days of belladonna, two more under sedation, to be sure the drugs have been fully flushed from her system. Hallucinations are perfectly normal in a belladonna delirium. Under no circumstance is she to be left alone at any time. Force her to drink as much water as you can. It will hydrate her and help flush out the heroin.” He cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Her vomiting should clear up in a day or so, but, for the most part, she won't have control over her bodily functions. You really should have a woman here, a nurse, to keep her clean. I know many who I'm sure would be discreet—”