Chapters Thirty-One to Thirty-Five

Chapter 31

I was coming off a ten-thirty AM to ten-thirty PM shift when the supervisor said I had a phone call.

I thought it was strange because no one ever called me at work and it was sort of forbidden unless it was an emergency.

“Hello.”

“Yo, dude, you won’t believe whose here?” It was Fred.

“Where are you?”

“At the Brickyard, man.”

“Why are you calling me? It’s supposed to be emergencies only.”

“This is an emergency. I told the fucking supervisor. You have been on one long downer that is about to end, and that’s serves everyone’s interest. Now, guess again, whose here right now, now, nosing about no doubt for you?”

“I have no idea.”

“No idea. You’re worse than I thought. Get your butt down here now.”

“Why?”

“Because Carrie’s here.”

“So.”

“So, here’s the scoop, her fiancé dumped her. She was telling me, she was letting him sleep late when she went to work. She comes home early one day because she left a file at home she was working on, and she finds him banging her roommate Bobbie against the ottoman. Seems he was getting her on the night shift and her roommate coming in on the dayshift. She had to move out, get her own place. She’s looking good, I mean she’s still chunky, but she’s showing cleavage, and wearing a nice perfume. She’s definitely not going home alone, but I think she needs the consoling of an old friend more than she needs a toss in the hay. Get down here before last call and your long nightmare may be over.”

“Or just beginning,”

“Don’t be so fatalistic. I know that girl rocks your socks off. Now I’ve got to get back to the table. I’m on the news tonight.”

I knew it was a mistake, but I also felt a stirring from my atrophied loins. I knew Carrie and knew if what Fred said was true, she would be all over me before the night was over. My nose filled with the ghost scent of her skin. My heart began to race. My hands began to shake. While my brain said hold on, my heart lifted with possibility. Call me a sucker, but I was lonely, desperate and a dreamer.

I went in the side door so I could get a good view of the layout before I went in. I wanted to be casual, cool. I needed to look like I didn’t care about anything. I was just dropping for a beer after a hard day at work. I saw Carrie sitting with some girl friend’s, there table pulled over to the others. It looked like things were starting to wind down. I walked in in such a way that she would see me if she was looking toward the bar, but I wouldn’t have to notice her.

I ordered a draft, and lit up a cigarette, and was just making conversation with the bartender. I wasn’t there two minutes when I felt her presence beside me, I smelled her.

“Hey, stranger,” she said.

“I turned and looked at her with practiced cool. “Hey, how are you?”

“Good. I wasn’t expecting to see you here. They said, you don’t come around much.”

“Hey, once in awhile I come in for a draft. How about you, how’s Big Bad Bob?”

She made a face. “Don’t ask. I always end up going out with losers.”

“That makes me feel good about our time to together.”

“I wasn’t including you.’

“That’s good. You still living on King Street.”

“No, no, I just moved. I got a new place in Windsor, my own apartment, its small but its home.”

“Good, good for you.”

“How about you?”

“I’m still at the boarding house. I’ve been saving up money, though. I’m thinking about moving to California.”

“California?”

“Yeah, I hear the sun shines out there damn near everyday. I’m getting tired of the snow, plus nothing wrong with seeing the world, you only live once.”

“That’s right.”

I was trying hard to stay cool, but sitting there looking into big green eyes, smelling her perfume, seeing her cleavage; I was really having a hard time controlling myself. I wanted to put my tongue in her mouth so bad.

“You want a drink?”

“I was going to be going, but sure.”

“I’ll give you a ride home if your friend needs to go.”

“Okay, let me just talk to her.”

I saw her go over and talk to her friend. I saw her friend, crack a smile and look over at me.

We had a beer and made small talk. “I’m not dating cops anymore,” she said. “It’s like they put on a badge and it’s all about them. It’s like I’m special only because I’m with one of them. It’s bullshit. I’m my own person. You disrespect me, that’s it. I’m done with you. It’s given me time to think about what’s important.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it. I dated for awhile,” I lied, “Now I’m just chilling. I know what I what I want, and I don’t need distractions.”

I got her coat, when they said it was last call, and held it for her as she slipped her arms in. We walked out to my car, and I held the door for her. I put on a Saggy tape, but with low volume as I drove. She directed me. I pulled up opposite her door, and we looked at each other.

“I sure appreciate the ride,” she said.

“My pleasure.”

She didn’t go for the door. Our eyes held each other. There was a slow lean into a kiss, and then I don’t know who grabbed whom first, but we had a deep slow movie kiss going on. One thing you can say about us is there was always an animal magnetism.

“You want to come in?” she asked.

“I’d be delighted to.”

When we got in the door, she pulled me to her and we kissed again, our hands running against each other, and then she pushed me away. “You just got off work.”

“Yeah.”

“Look, take a shower and meet me in the bedroom when you’re done.”

I was a little put off, but I did it, scrubbing myself up good, and when I went into the bedroom, it was dark, but she had tiny red candles burning, and she lay there in her white Victoria Secret negligee. She gestured with one finger for me to enter. I knew I had no control of my own. I might as well face it.

Chapter 32


People are stubborn. They hate to give up bad habit. The gambler returns to the slot machine, alcoholic returns to the bottle, the drug addict to the needle -- all in search of that elusive high. So I always returned to Carrie despite all the bullshit. I kept dreaming of the highs, the moments of passion, the look in her eye that made me believe there was something there for me. I was a moth circling the light, a fly circling a giant flytrap plant, a mouse in the paws of a cruel cat.

Why did I put up with the way she treated me? Maybe it was because I thought it had something to do with her upbringing and not with her soul. Maybe she was just holding me down so it would make her feel better about her own low opinion of herself. She hadn’t had the easiest go of it. Her father had abused her, her parents divorced, and her mother had to work three jobs to raise her and her sisters, and they’d moved around quite a bit, from house to smaller house, to apartments and worse apartments. She had some issues of her own and maybe down deep had better qualities I just hadn’t seen. We fell into the same pattern, fighting, making up, me only seeing her two nights a week. She denied it, but I knew two guys she was seeing on the side, and neither of them would even take her out.

Why did I stay? How could I even lay with her at night, knowing what I knew? It was because I needed it, I needed it to get me through the night. My life was empty and without direction. All I had was hope that she would reward me in the end, and that she would find a worth in me I could not find in myself.

Because she took me for granted, I had to try harder. I applied for a couple police and fire departments, but with my bad shoulder I couldn’t pass the physicals. I thought about getting out of public safety entirely, but with only a high school education, there was nothing else I could do that would pay me as much.

I might be able to make more per hour in another line of work, but nowhere had overtime like the ambulance. I needed every dollar I could make or pick up, although even that was losing its appeal – I knew what I was doing was wrong and my continual denial of that fact was fraying quite badly.

Chapter 33

I awoke with a fever, my sheets soaked through. It was 4:30 A.M. I was due in at work at seven. I couldn’t get up, I was nauseous, dizzy. I felt a retch, and then the next thing I knew my mouth was full of vomit. I tried to keep my mouth closed to keep from spewing on the floor until I could get to the hallway bathroom, but I couldn’t hold it back. It went all over my blanket and the floor. I managed to fall out of bed and half crawl to the waste basket where I retched again. I could barely hold my head up. The room started spinning. I thought I was dying.

I crawled across the hot desert sands. The sun blistered my back. My tongue was swollen. My heart was racing even though I knew I had to be dreaming. A conveyor belt with people on it went past me. There were old ladies and old men, people I had known, patients I’d had. The belt has small clouds under it, and gradually the belt went up into the sky, into the far distance, and I looked up and I saw a hotel up there and I knew it was heaven where they were all going.

Not me. There I was crawling on the hot sand, crawling past horned young men wearing bandoleer gun belts and Chicago Bulls jackets sitting in beach chairs and drinking umbrella drinks. They gave me the thumbs down as I crawled past. AC DC’s “Highway to Hell.” blared from the speakers. Carrie sat in a life guard chair. She was naked, but her whole body was devil red. Her breasts were huge and she had two devils sitting on each knee of hers, licking her breasts while she smiled and turned her nose up at me.

I didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell me I was having problems with guilt.

I woke up again at 6:25. I was still on the floor. I had a horrendous headache and felt parched. I tried to get up, but my head spun even worse than before. I knew I had to call work, but I didn’t think I could reach the phone on my desk. I tried to stand and I threw up again.

The phone rang. I managed to get it. I tried to hold myself against the desk, but I was too weak. I curled back down to the floor.

“Where the hell are you? You’re on the schedule. Get your slacker butt in here. We’re getting killed this morning.”

“I’m sick,” I said.

“Sick? No, you’re not, not unless you call in four hours ahead of time, you’re not sick, you’re tardy. Now get in here.”

“No, I’m really sick.”

“Out fucking drinking, you ought to know better. You’re a young man; you can work with a hangover. I did all the time in my day.”

“No, no, I’m really, really sick.”

There was silence on the other end.

“What do you want me to do about it? Are you telling me you’re not coming in? It’s an unexcused absence.”

“I’m sick.”

I guess my voice sounded puny enough that he took some notice.

“Are you all right? You’re never sick. You got a broad there?”

“No, I’m sick. I’ve got a fever.”

“All right, since you never book off, I’ll let this one go. Be here tomorrow or call in. Four hours notice. I’m cutting you slack this time.”

I hung the phone up.

I had some aspirin and some ginger ale. I took four aspirin. I had the worst headache of my life. The ginger ale was flat.

I guessed I had some kind of twenty-four hour bug, and the best thing would be to just lay there and let it pass. I didn’t have a thermometer, but I knew I had a really really bad fever. My head was spinning so much I just prayed I could sleep and wake up and be better.

I thrashed. I felt like I was on some kind of mind-altering drug. I was back in my dream crawling across the sands when all of a sudden I came across a set of feet. They were old with long nasty toenails that hadn’t been cut for years, thick, curved brown and green fungusy nails. The legs were thick and edematous, elephant like legs. I looked up and saw an old woman sitting in a wheel chair. She shook her head. “Shame, Shame. I am so disappointed in you. You were such a nice young man.”

“Help me,” I said. “Water? Water?”

“What have you done to deserve a drop?”

”I’ve got to drink. I’m dying.”

“Hold yourself now, grab hold of my leg.”

I hesitated.

“Go on, grab and hold on for your life!”

I grabbed and held on and suddenly I was being whisked through the air. I don’t know if I was more scared of falling or getting stuck to her legs, my arms sunk into her edematous skin as I held on. I was so parched I lapped the beads of moisture on her legs. She swatted the top of my head. “I didn’t say you could drink!” We flew through a spinning psychedelic tunnel. I saw the pages of a calendar fly off like in the old time travel movie, the pages going backwards, November, October, September, August July, June. May. April, March, February, January, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1994, 1989, 1982, 1977, 1971, 1963, 1957, 1952 and then we popped on in the spring of 1949. There were flowering Dogwood Trees. We were on the streets of Hartford, in the North End except the houses were all beautiful, freshly painted with flower garden, and children playing in the yards, birds singing.

“Recognize that house?” she said.

I did. It was the house on Ridgefield Street. It had a fresh coat of light robin blue paint. The grass was a thick green and a giant oak tree grew in the yard that was surrounded by a white picket fence. “It’s Miss Broadbent’s House,” I said.

“It’s the Broadbent family’s house,” she corrected me. “Mr. Broadbent’s at work at the typewriter factory. His wife’s in at the Wadsworth Museum attending a lecture. That’s me in the kitchen, preparing the dinner – I was employed there for nearly twenty-five years, and up in the bedroom there...”

And the next thing I knew I could see right into the bedroom, “There’s young Terry Broadbent. Look at that smile on her pretty face.” She lay on her freshly made bed, staring at the ring on her finger, a big diamond engagement ring. “She’s twenty-three years old.” She had such a beautiful clear complexion. She looked like she was in a trance.

“Isn’t she look like she’s the happiest girl in the world,” my escort said. “Young man took her out last night, proposed, gave her that ring, and well, gave her a little bit more than her mommy and daddy know. Young people today aren’t any different from what they were back then. They all have those needs. I did myself at a time, if you can believe that. Look at her staring into the diamond. What do you think she sees? It’s s shame, life don’t work out, isn’t it?”

“What happened to her fiancé?”

She chortled, and then said, “We’ve got more stops to make, grab on again.” And whoosh we sped toward the downtown, I was holding on to her ankles. We, and banging over the city streets. We stopped at a bar on Main Street and rolled right through the front door. There in the bar, several young men laughed raucously as the waitress brought them another round of drinks.

“So you gave her a ring,” one said.

“Yes, I did and that was it. She couldn’t say yes soon enough after all these evenings of saying no, if you know what I mean.”

“You didn’t?”

“It was unbelievable. She was a hellcat. I’ve got claw marks in my back. You think she looks nice in a dress? Seeing her naked...my god.”

“A ring, isn’t that a lot just to get there or are you really going to marry her?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe, certainly not for a couple years, I told her I had to get my business up and going, and of course I have my business trips. I am a freeborn man if you follow.”

“You are a cad. What did the ring set you back?’

“Nothing. I got it off a dead lady.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I went to see a client. No one answered the door. It was open so I went in calling her name. Found her dead on the living floor. Cold and stiff. Eight-seven, she just dropped. I saw the ring there nice and shiny and thought, ‘Hey now, there’s my ticket.’ She didn’t have any relatives so I knew no one would miss it.”

“That’s too much. That’s evil.”

“Well, she’ll never know. And I tell you if there’s evil in me, there some devil in her. She keeps doing me like she did me last night, I just might go ahead and marry her.”

“What a snake,” I said to my escort.

“That’s right, and you know what happened to him, don’t you?”

“He gets struck by a bolt of lightning.”

“You read this story before?”

“No, I was just guessing.”

“Let me do the telling.”

“Was it a bolt of lightning?”

“No, No.” She shook her head. “He went to jail for twenty years for theft.”

“For the ring?”

“No, they never found out about that. He was embezzling company funds. They sent him to jail, and he died there of consumption within three years.”

“Does she know that?”

“Yes, she does, but all she’ll tell people is he died in a crash before they could marry. She found out about the other women, too, but she felt he loved her above them, she felt like if only they married, everything would be fine.”

“That’s crazy.”

“No, people believe what they want. The good part of their souls believes in the good part of other people’s, in the possibility of their redemptions. You see the heart wants to be loved. The heart wants always to be believed. That’s why it’s so easy to steal.”

I woke up vomiting again. My head was exploding. The phone rang.

It was Carrie. “Where the hell are you? Are we going out?”

“I’m sick.”

“Sick. You have another broad there?”

“No, I’m vomiting, I’ve got a fever. I ache all over.”

“You do sound sort of sick. I hope you didn’t give it to me. You could have called earlier. You sure you don’t have a girlfriend there?”

“I’m sure. I just need to sleep.”

“All right, I’ll see you Friday then. You let me know sooner if you can’t make it so I can make other plans.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, and lay my head back down. My head was throbbing. This was no ordinary virus.

I lay wondering if she had wished that I was feeling better. I decided that she had. She’d said it, but I hadn’t heard it. I wished I’d asked her to come over and bring me some more ginger ale, but I was too weak to call her back. Not that she would have come over with her fear of getting whatever I had.

Then there I was again, back in dream hell, my mouth full of sand. I was face down in the hot desert. “Get the fuck up boy!” A gang banger kicked me in the ribs with his Nike high-tops. He wore a Chicago Bull’s jersey, and had gold chains dangling around his neck. “Yo, I ought to just cap you right now for what you did, stealing my roll like that. That was cold. My momma could have used that change. I got fo kids could have used that change. I was their only pro-vider.”

“I’m sorry, man,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. Everybody knows they just try to hide it from theirselves. Grab onto my Nikes, I got some things to show you.”

I touched his red shoes and the next thing I knew I was whistling through the air as Air Drug Dealer flew me over housetops, and tree tops, and judging from the roads I saw where we were headed – Carrie’s.

We went right through the walls – into the living room, where Carrie was bent over getting it from behind from a man I did not know. I saw his badged uniform and gun slung over a chair. He still wore his boots and leather pants. “That woman likes cops, don’t she?” he said. “Why’s she hang out with you. You’re just a petty thief. Is that her bad side or is this her bad side?”

“Please, do I have to see this?”

“That girl got some back. And noisy. I bet the neighbors complain.”

“I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“You don’t want to hang around. The officer’s buddy’s on his way over. He called for backup not long ago.”

I threw up.

“She’s a nasty girl. What do you think she’s looking for? A good time? A big stud or true love? Wipe your mouth now. I personally think its true love, but she won’t find it here. We don’t find what we’re looking for here. Life isn’t about that – it isn’t about the finding. You found my roll and you thought you’d found the answer. You didn’t find nothing but a load of trouble.”

“Can we go?”

“Yes, but we ain’t done. We got another stop.”

And I rode back into Hartford on his red heels and we landed on the roof of Miss Broadbent’s house on Ridgefield Street, and we hung upside down looking in the window. I saw her there in bed.

“Does that turn you off?” the demon said. “You don’t find that arousing”

“No,” I said.

“Old people just the same as you and me.”

She was done, but she didn’t look happy. She lay there and cried. She cried and she cried. Her little dog barked and tried to jump up on the bed. She ignored him. She looked lost in her mind.

“I wanted to take you to see my children and my momma, but the man who makes the schedule don’t give a shit about them either. He don’t seem to think their suffering matter.” He whooped me on the side of my head. “But it matters. It do, you little shit, it matters.”

My head was pounding when I awoke. I did not know whether it was day or night. I was spinning.

I saw a specter at the foot of my bed. It was the old man from who I had stolen those fifty dollars. He looked at me somewhat kindly and that surprised me. “Come, young man,” he said. “Take my hand. I have a place to take you.” But we didn’t go anywhere. The room changed though. The paint peeled from the walls. Cobwebs like it was a forgotten attic. I looked at my hands. They were old and veined. The man held up a mirror and it was me, but I was eighty year old, bald, wrinkled. My joints hurt, I was short of breath. I felt tightness in my chest. I looked over at the desk and saw ten pill bottles and saw I was on a medical bed. I felt my penis. I had a catheter in me. By the bed side there was a picture. It was of Carrie, but she didn’t look old. She looked just like she did today. The door opened and I saw two EMTs saunter in.

“He’s cold,” one said, touching me. “Some rigor in the jaw.”

They put electrodes on me. “Asystole. All three leads. What time is it?”

“10:42.”

The other one wrote it down on his pad. “10:42 it is. What a fucking place to end up. No family, I’d guess. I wonder where he keeps his dough? Check under the mattress.”

I tried to move, to wake up to startle them, but I couldn’t. I was dead. Stone cold.

Chapter 34

I heard them come into the room. They hovered over the bed. “Dude, you’re burning up.”

I groaned.

“We’re going to have to take you in.” It was Fred.

“Just take me home,” I said.

“You are home. Do you know what day it is?”

“Tuesday,” I said.

“Man, you are out of it. You didn’t come to work today. Third day in a row. That’s not like you. I thought we were going to find you dead.”

“I told them I was sick.”

“Yeah, two days ago. I could cook a steak on your head. You’ve got puke all the over the floor. I hope you didn’t shit yourself.”

“I’ll get the stair chair,” I heard a voice say.

“You’re going to clean this place up,” the landlord said.

“Maybe when he gets out of the hospital. Can’t you see he’s sick?”

“Rent’s due today.”

“He’ll pay you. How long has he lived here?”

“Three years.”

“Don’t you know this man’s a recognized hero. He’s good for it, right now he’s sick so back the fuck off.”

I felt his hand on my wrist. “You are tacking out. Are you in any pain?”

“No, I’ve just got a headache. What are you doing here? I told them I was sick.”

“Don’t you remember what I said? This is the third day you’ve been out. The supervisors sent me over here to check on your. Your phone is off the hook.”

I vaguely remember them lifting me out of bed and into the stair chair. “Just don’t hurl on me.”

They carried me down the narrow stairs and out to the ambulance. I looked up at the dirty ceiling as we went to the hospital. I could hear the sirens, felt the bumps in the road. They had an oxygen mask over my face. I heard Higgins’s voice, and felt a sharp stick in my arm, then felt a coldness running into me. I heard the crackle of a radio a voice saying, “Go ahead hospital’s on.” And then the words, “Burning up, heart rate 172, BP 80/30, running saline wide open.”

Looking at the ceiling, I saw the faces of my patients, my escorts looking at me shaking their heads. I’ve done the best I could I thought. I never meant to hurt anyone. I never meant to cause harm.

I woke up three days later in a hospital bed with two IVs still running into me, and a gaggle of medical students staring at me while a doctor was droning on about staphylococcus something or other. It seems I had gotten an infection in my bloodstream that had almost killed me.

There were flowers and a Teddy Bear from my mom and little sister. Fred and Tom came by and left me some porno magazines hidden inside People magazine covers. Nothing from Carrie.

I had to stay for ten days while the IV antibiotics did their work. I was able to go outside in my hospital pajamas, hauling an IV pole around. I’d sit out on the benches and smoke. If ambulances were in the loading area, the crews would come over and talk to me.

I was emaciated. All the muscle I’d built up looked worn away. People probably thought I had HIV, TB and diseases not yet discovered. The doctor said the staph infection I had was a common disease everyone had on their body, it was just when it got in the blood stream it became virulent. Plus some strains were very resistant to drugs. If they hadn’t found me, I would have for certain died.

The whole experience was very humbling for me. I had a vague memory of being summoned to a very bright place and kneeling before a big walnut desk where a man in a three piece suit and a trimmed white beard asked me if I thought I deserved another chance.

And I had just cried, cried like a baby. And he just snickered at me like I was nothing.

Along about the sixth day of my stay, I broke down and called Carrie.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “I thought you skipped town.”

“I’m in the hospital,” I said. “I got an infection and almost died.”

“What kind of infection?”

“A blood infection. Its staphylococcus.”

“Can it spread to someone else?”
“Yeah, but not easily. If I had given it to you, you’d be sick already. I mean, they don’t need to wear masks and stuff. I just got a high fever and was delirious, but I’m better now. I just have to keep getting IV drugs for another four days.”

“You’re okay?”

“Yeah, I should be out by Saturday. They said I need to rest for another week, then should be well enough to go back to work.”

“That’s good.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m all right. It’s been busy at work.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too. You sure you’re okay?”

“Well, I’m just tired, but I’m okay.”

“You don’t want me to come visit you, do you?”

“No, that’s fine. I don’t like people seeing me sick and feeling sorry for me. We can get together when I’m better.”

“You’ll call me and tell you when you’re coming home?”

“I will.”

“Okay, I’m sorry you were sick, but I’m glad you’re better. I was worried I hadn’t heard from you.”

“Carrie?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to tell you that I am sorry if I have not treated you right.”

“Huh?”

I was fighting back the tears. “I just wanted you to know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I know you and I have had our fights, and I want to apologize if I haven’t been everything I should have been.”

“That’s all right. I’m not the perfect girlfriend. I can be a bitch.”

“I know.”

“What?”

“I mean, I just wanted to say, I will be better in the future. Getting sick has taught me what is important, and I aim to do right by you.”

“That’s so sweet.”

“I love you,” I said.

There was silence.

I waited.

“I love you, too,” she said, and I thought I heard real sweetness in her voice.

I was determined to turn over a new leaf, to seize the chance to be good, to make the most of my new lease. I wanted to be deserving.

Chapter Thirty -Five

I had been saving money over the course of the last year. Call it my rainy day fund, I feared that a time would come when I would need cash and not have any, and that crisis would precipitate me toward even more dangerous thieving. Who knows? In desperation, I might even throw a ski mask over my head and run into a bank with a toy gun, or knock a Brink’s truck driver over the head with an oxygen cylinder, or paint my face black and wear a ninja outfit and try cat burglary. I was worried that the bad seed in me would spread and multiply, traveling throughout my body like a metastized cancer -- all to feed my habit-- to keep my girl in style-- to keep me in her good graces, in the fire of her bed.

My self-control was precarious. I saw the cops knocking me to the ground, a German Shepard tugging at my leg, as the cop kneeled on my back and wrenched my arms around behind me and cuffed me. They would throw me roughly into the back of the squad car as the film crew from Cops caught my pathetic desperate tough guy loser what the fuck happened to me look. If I was lucky, they’d get a good shot of my tattoo and then the whole world would see his smiling Virginia Slims smoking wussy laugh. They’d put me in the cell. It would be cold. All I’d have was a thin yellow plastic paper blanket that contained no warmth at all. I’d be there shivering. All I’d get to eat was the Burger King meal they’d deliver twice a day, a cold cheeseburger, small fries, and a small coke. My arm would swell up from where they’d grabbed me. I’d ask for medical help. The paramedic would come and check me out, pressing against my arm. I’d wince, and then he’d say, it doesn’t look broken, just bruised. You’ll be all right. They’d close the door back up. I’d hear them laughing about how prisoners were always trying to get to the hospital so they wouldn’t have to spend the long weekend in the can.

No one would come bail me out. My mom wouldn’t have the money. Not that I would use my phone call on her, I’d try to keep my situation from her. I’d foolishly call Carrie instead. She would answer the phone, and said, “Tim? Tim who? I know no one by that name” and hang up. I could call Fred, but he’d have heard I was in, and know from the caller ID, it was me calling and just wouldn’t answer because bailing me out would mean no date and fuck money for him that weekend. I knew he had no reserves. Plus what was I even thinking, they’d set my bail to high anyway. They’d look at me, and think, that boy knows what’s waiting for him in the pen. He doesn’t want to be anyone’s wife. He’s going to be a flight risk for sure.

My trial would be short, a bored public defender and a busy judge. Down goes the gavel. Off I go to jail. My choice there will be simple. Wear my hair in braids and affect a lisp, and resign myself to being someone’s girlie bitch or else just be a complete psycho. First guy who tries to make me blow him, I bit his dick off. Course I’ll probably get AIDS, but at least I’ll have some dignity. Don’t go near him, he’s a crazy motherfucker. He done chomped on Big Smoke, like he was a Hannibal Lector. They’d make me wear an iron mask, and pretty FBI agents would come visit me for help in uncovering all their most psycho cases. That was the best case scenario. I figured I’d probably end up like that guy who proposed to Miss Broadbent, dying of consumption in the state pen, being buried in a potter’s field, except I wouldn’t be leaving a grieving fiancé. Carrie wouldn’t think twice about me. She’d find someone else stupid enough to be her lap dog, and take her out to eat all the time. Tim who?

As insurance against desperation, once I had paid off the garage, I started to put $50 a week into a savings account. I had dipped into it only twice, during dry thieving spells, but replenished it later. On one occasion when I struck another lode with a dead drug dealer, I made an $800 deposit. I had run the balance up to nearly $3,000. However, being sick again and missing nearly three weeks of work, in addition to accumulating some serious medical bills put a hurt on me. I tried to apply for worker’s compensation on the grounds that I had caught the fever on the job, but they just laughed at me. My claims were rejected. Prove it, they seemed to say. Well, I couldn’t.

Tom who was big in the union, told me to forget about it. “This fight has been fought and lost before. It’s best to just not even try. There’s a guy from downstate got hepatitis, and he needs a liver transplant now. He was carrying a guy down the stairs and that guy had diarrhea on him. His arms were all scratched up from clearing shrubbery and the shit got on his arms. The guy had hepatitis and died a few weeks later. He filed a case. They rejected it. And he’s got three kids. Wrenching your shoulder carrying someone down the stairs -- that you can prove. Getting shit on or bled on, and catching hepatitis or AIDS, you’re out of luck. The insurance companies don’t give a shit. Anything to save them money.”

The thing of the health care system was here we were working our tails off, taking people to the hospital, many for nothing serious at all, and to pay, they would just wipe out their state card like it a Visa or MasterCard – only the card never came due for them. We on the other hand, worked hard just to pay our bills, and if it wasn’t one person, it was another, getting sick, going out of work, and being stuck with bills an honest person would have trouble paying. Jan Dempsey got breast cancer, lost her house. Jason Roberts woke up one morning with his legs paralyzed, and almost died as the disease spread to his chest before it was stopped. Even the smallest medical problem put a hurt on a person. And we had insurance. What was the point in working? You had to just hope you stayed healthy.

The hospital was willing to put me on a repayment plan if I gave them $1000 right off the top. I decided to just pay it all at once. I had been through that payment with interest route and did not want to go there again. I figured I would just start from scratch, hope that luck worked in my favor. After I emptied my account, I had just $50 to my name. I went in and signed up on the schedule sixteen hour days five days a week, and two twelve hour days on another two. Those were my Carrie nights, and I knew she wasn’t going to go for Taco Belle.

I was worried the thieving,which I had sworn off, was going to start back in earnest. I just had to hope I was strong.

“40 Bilings Road for the high fever,” Dispatch said.

Billings Road was the Ellsworth, one of my most fertile lifting grounds. Rich old people living in fine apartments with Persian rugs and antiques, and cash spread randomly about on tables and dressers like pennies were spread out on mine. Their wallets and purses were often stuffed with fifties and hundreds while I had only crumpled ones in my billfold. The only problem was there was usually a nurse there who had called, but she was usually too busy writing up the medical information to notice or even suspect an angel of mercy might grab a quick bill off the bureau or riffle a purse. Sometimes a cop was there if they had called 911 and the local ambulance had been unavailable, but having a cop there added another layer of protection. Who would even think of stealing with a cop right there?

Sure enough, there was a money clip on the table by the door, along with a stack of New York Times. Tom attended the patient, the nurse wrote on the chart, the cop watched the pretty newscaster talking about an accident on the highway. I put the clip in my pocket. I didn’t count it but I figured it was good for a couple nights of dinners. I was surprised at how easily I had lifted it.

The man was delirious with a fever of 104 and had urinated on himself. The nurse said he had no family to speak of, and they would probably be moving him to the nursing unit when he was discharged from the hospital. He was ninety years old. From the pictures on the wall, I could see he had traveled the world, Japan, Europe, Africa. He had no doubt given to charities all his life. Maybe his leaving that money out, well, maybe that money was meant for me. I was a charity case.

Tom wanted to just put him on the stretcher, soiled pants and all, but I insisted we take his pants off and put them in a plastic bag that we brought with us. “He’ll be more comfortable,” this way,” I said, “Not having to lay in wet clothes till the hospital can change him.”

“That’s a good idea,” the nurse said.

Tom just rolled his eyes at me. “Mr. Compassion,” he whispered somewhat derisively. “Mr. Shit.”

“Just doing my job,” I said.

I counted it at the hospital. $143. The clip was monogrammed, and I was sure it could fetch a pretty penny at a pawn shop, but probably was more in sentimental value alone to its owner. I went back to his hospital room, and found his clothes bag, and put the now moneyless clip in the pocket of his soiled pants.

I guessed I wasn’t half bad.

But I was.

There was a crowd in the waiting room, watching the TV. I couldn’t see what was going on, there were so many people. What I did see was a wallet bulging out of the back pocket of a man in a suit, one of the hospital executives. I felt someone bump me from behind and in the moment I brushed against the man, and muttered, “hey, watch out,” to one man and “excuse me” to the other. I found I had his wallet in my hand, then quickly secreted it my in my jacket under my left arm. He didn’t seem to notice. I moved to the periphery of the crowd. I could now hear the newscast and see a part of the picture. “The resignation of the Governor is a stunning development – the result of an ongoing federal corruption investigation into bribes and other illegal activities in the state’s highest office.”

“What a fucking asshole, I always knew he was a crook.”

“Stealing from poor folks, the same as voted him in. That’s disgraceful.”

“What goes around, comes around. I always said he was a crook.”

I headed out the door, walked across the street, and went into the rest room. I counted my haul. Five hundred seventy-two dollars. What kind of person besides a drug dealer carries around that kind of cash? I thought. The president of the hospital. I thought well maybe this is money he stole from me. Maybe they overcharged me. Maybe this was meant for payback. I was sort of a Robin Hood for myself.

Robin Hood. That was a joke. These people saved my life and so what if they overcharged me. They also took care of a lot of people who could never pay them back. And maybe they overpaid their President, but they had a lot of other nice people who worked there. And there I sat in the rest room, a rat just like the fucking governor. What goes around comes around. I wondered when the bill was going to come due for me? When would they knock on my door?

Chapters Thirty-Six to Forty-Five