The Nirvana Plague (6 page)

“Unless they’re doing it deliberately.”

“Yes. But I don’t have any suspicion that they are doing so. One of these women has been institutionalized for most of the past twelve years. She has been far more resistant to medical treatment than your husband. Although, her doctor told me, they have been unable to locate any lesions or other apparent neurological insult, he believes there is a high probability that her illness has a physical etiology. In light of the change I saw in her personality today, I would now say that is unlikely to be the case.”

“But that doesn’t explain anything either.”

“No.”

Marley braked suddenly and turned into her street. He drove like there was no one else on the road.

“It’s just here,” she said, pointing out one in a long row of tenements.

Marley drilled the car over to the curb.

She looked up hoping to see a light on, but it was dark.

“We used to have a house,” she said, “when Roger was still teaching. Once the insurance ran out and the money was gone, we had to sell it. Anyway, it’s better for him here. He likes being near the campus. For some reason he was afraid of our neighbors in the suburbs. The Stepford people.”

“I live in the suburbs.”

She put out her hand to him. “Thanks again for rescuing me. I really appreciate it.”

He shook her hand, but said, “Why don’t I walk you up, in case he has come home. I’d like to talk to him as soon as possible.”

“He’s not home.”

“Let me walk you up anyway, just to be sure. I’d feel better about it.”

They lived on the second floor. Marley followed her up the stairs. Karen felt embarrassed by the grimy wallpaper. Most of their neighbors were students. As they came up, she clicked her remote and her door popped open and the lights came on inside.

Marley waited in the hall.

She went in and called for Roger and returned.

“You’ll call me when he shows up, won’t you?” Marley said.

“Yes. All right.”

“All right then.”

Suddenly, she didn’t want to be alone there. “Should I just bring him back to the hospital?” she said.

He turned back. “What about your car?”

“They’ll bring it round here eventually.”

“That’s a long tow, isn’t it? Can you afford it?”

That’s getting personal, she thought. “I can afford you.”

“Then you may as well pay me as pay the tow service,” Marley answered.

“Sorry.”

He smiled, a little victoriously, and went on: “So, have your car towed to the nearest service station for a recharge. When Roger comes back, you call me, and I’ll come talk to him and drive you both down to get your car. All right? Doctor’s orders.”

She acquiesced, and shut the door, magnetic locks snicking tight. From the window she watched him get back into his Mercedes and drive off.

Time for that drink, she thought, and headed for the kitchen.

Late at night on the north side of Chicago.

A man walks unhurriedly down a darkened street. The empty shells of dead shops mass against either curb, their fading grey faces cross-painted with ribbons of colorful graffiti. The man does not wonder where he is or why he’s here or where he’s going.

Presently he comes upon a small pool of light and bare warmth in the emptiness of the desert neighborhood. On a street corner, five men huddle round a flame in a trash can, shoulders hunched, nodding and talking little jets of language at each other.

“The fuck you did.”

“I’m telling you.”

“Bitch, ain’t got no such thing.”

“I’m telling you.”

“Man says he got a place down the Loop.”

“Yeah? So’s my left nut.”

“Right.”

“Left, I said.”

“Who the man got working it then?”

The wanderer smiles vaguely as he nears the group. He walks so quietly, they don’t notice him till he’s quite close.

“Who this?”

“Fuck I know.”

“Want something, man?”

He walks on saying nothing.

“Swallow your tongue?”

“You lost, silent sam?”

“Quiet, ain’t you?”

“Man, I’m speaking at you, fuck.”

“Let him go.”

“Asswipe sombitch.”

“Forget it.”

Beyond the cold men and the barrel fire, two women stand in the crooked glare of an open door. Cigarette smoke and hard music drift from within. The women watch him approach and smile in welcome.

“Hey, baby, how you doing?”

“What you doing out here all alone?”

As the wanderer passes by them, they step in front of him, and he stops. His eyes look calmly into theirs.

“Want to come inside, hon?” says one.

“Or do you want to come inside this?” says the other, opening her coat a little.

The wanderer’s vague smile remains unchanged as he turns to go around them.

“You lookin for something special, hon?”

The wanderer walks away without speaking, but the two women follow him.

“What’s your problem, man? You too good to speak to me, mister?”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with you anyway? You see something you don’t like? That your problem? You don’t like what you seen?”

He walks on without answering. They follow him closer, one on either side of him, their shoulders bumping his shoulders.

“Maybe you got no money? Maybe that’s your problem?”

“How much money you got on you, man? Maybe we can work something out. How much you got?”

He stops now and turns. The women press close to him, breasts against his arms, and their hands grope his body.

“How much money you got, I said.”

“You got a wallet, baby, or’s that just your lumpy little ass?”

“What’s this?”

“He got a roll?”

“Fuck no.”

As they search him, the women push him back into a dark doorway. He does not resist them. They open his coat, and search all his pockets. They unzip his pants and put their hands inside.

“You like that?”

He watches their faces as they fumble with him.

“Ain’t you got
nothing
on you? What you doing out here anyway? What you looking for? Who are you?”

“Can’t you talk?”

“What the fuck’s wrong with you, man?”

“Hey, stupid!”

“You lookin at me? What you lookin at me like that for? You wanna look, you gotta pay. Nobody tell you you can look at me.”

“You an idiot, baby? Huh? Answer me!”

One of them pinches his cheek in her hand and pulls his face toward hers. “Look at me, bitch, when I’m talking to you! A
woman
is talking to you!” In the darkness, their faces are dim, but she sees in his eyes a glimmer of light. “No, you ain’t no idiot, are you? No, you’re just a bastard, ain’t you? You’re just a fucking asshole, ain’t you? Answer me!” She slaps him hard twice.

Though he is taller and stronger than either woman, he does not try to defend himself from the blows. But now he finds his voice to speak, saying softly: “There’s nothing here to give.”

His voice startles them.

One says, “I don’t need
nothing
from you, asshole!”

The other punches him in the stomach. She knows how to punch a man, and he grunts in pain, bending forward.

They start hitting him freely. They punch him in the nose, and he protects his face with his arms as the blood pours from his nostrils. He tries to walk out between them, but they trip him and he stumbles. One grabs his coat and pulls him backward. The other kicks him hard in the groin, and he falls to his knees on the sidewalk gasping.

One woman takes out a knife and flicks it open. She presses the point of it against his ear as she swears at him. “I think I’ll just cut your throat, you sonnabitch.”

His head moves as he gasps for breath, and the fine blade cuts his ear.

“What you think about that?”

The man looks up at her.

She looks at him. “You think I never killed no man before you?” she says.

He says nothing, does not look away.

“That what you think? You think I don’t know how to cut a man’s throat?”

He looks at her hard. His face is tense with pain, and yet, in his eyes, in his look, there is no suffering, no fear, and no deception.

The woman with the knife stands back from him, grimacing, almost snarling at him.

“Do it!” says the other.

She draws back the knife, as if to plunge it into his open eyes.

“Do it!”

He does not look away as her hand comes down on him. She cracks him on the crown of his head with the butt of the knife.

The kneeling man begins to lose his balance then. His calm bright eyes dimming, his look wanders now from her face. He wavers and slumps down on the sidewalk.

The women in their pointed shoes start kicking him viciously in the ribs. At first he flinches, but they keep kicking him until he no longer reacts.

Karen settled into her nest-chair with wine, crackers, phone, and remote control, and turned on the news. It was somehow immoral to be comfortable at home when Roger was God knew where, but she needed the television to get her mind off a situation she couldn’t do anything about. With any luck, the wine would soon put her to sleep.

The news was typically horrific: All transportation of any kind into and out of India had been shut down. All transportation inside the country was also suspended, except for government vehicles, no trains, no cars, not even bicycles, were moving. The Ebola outbreak was known to have killed over thirteen-thousand people so far. The US continued to slug it out with all comers, politically and militarily, and all to no effect. The three feet of snow dumped on the eastern states was slowly melting while the non-experts debated whether global warming was now inducing the next ice age or not. Meanwhile, out in Hollywood, the latest silicone siren was playfully denying any romantic interest in her handsome leading man—

The phone rang with the doorcall tone, startling her straight to her feet. She ran out of the apartment without even answering it, bolted down the stairs three at a time, and yanked the door to the foyer open.

It was Marley. “Karen,” he said. “I just got a call from the police.”

Her heart stopped.

“Roger is in the hospital.”

“What?” she said. “What?”

“Roger is in the hospital.”

“He went back?”

“No. He’s not at Joplin. He’s in the emergency room at Hudson Regional.”

“Oh no.”

“I just spoke to the admitting physician. He told me Roger’s not too bad. Why don’t you get your coat, and I’ll drive you?”

She turned around and started back upstairs. Marley followed her. Over her shoulder, she said, “Why did they call you?”

“It was the police. Because I’d called them earlier this evening about Roger.”

“Why haven’t they called me?”

“I told them they didn’t need to call you. I’d take care of it.”

She came back out with her coat and jerked the door shut behind her. “What happened to him?”

“I gather he was mugged.”

“How bad is he?”

“Several simple fractures — ribs and metacarpals. Superficial cuts and contusions. Mild hypothermia. Some stitches, maintenance IV, codeine. Nothing serious. No apparent internal injuries. They’re admitting him for the night at least — just to make sure. He’s conscious and alert.”

“Fuck,” she said. “What next.”

It was nearly 1:00 a.m. before Karen finally saw her husband. She had obtained Roger’s room number by phone on the way, and walked past the nurses’ station on the fifth floor trauma unit without even breaking stride.

One of them demanded, “Who are you?” but Karen didn’t even look back.

Somebody said, “You can’t go down there!” — somebody else, “Call security!”

But Marley, tagging after her, stopped long enough to flash his credentials and quell the panic. He didn’t have privileges at Hudson, but a doctor is a doctor.

Though all the lights in his room were off, the door was standing open and enough light spilled in from the shadowy corridor that Karen could see that Roger was awake — lying flat in the bed, uncovered, all the sheets and pillows on the floor, an IV pump hanging from the wall. She could see that his face was swollen and bruised. He had a line of stitches through his upper lip and another down one side of his forehead, and his right arm was in a cast. She was already crying by the time she reached his bedside.