Dead West

by Matt Goldman

  I can hear the machine buzz and make clicking noises. I think about Vasily. I trusted him because he didn’t kill Jameson when he could have. He shot Jameson in the leg. He had a clear shot. He had time. He seemed more than comfortable and capable with a gun. But he shot Jameson in the leg. Not the head. Not the torso. And Jameson has a huge torso. I think I was right to trust Vasily. He just got in a lucky punch. Or was it unlucky? Happened to hit me in the wrong spot. The brass knuckles helped, but he was not trying to kill me. If he wanted to kill me he would have brought a gun or a knife. He said he could get a Minnesota’s driver’s license in two hours. He could have gotten a gun in half that time.

  Bad luck. It happens. Like good luck. And I’ve had plenty of that. Like when Brit took the ecstasy and told me she killed Thom. That was good luck. Right place. Right time. You got to take the bad with the good.

  I fall asleep within my sleep. I don’t know for how long. I wake within my sleep, and a doctor tells a nurse not to get too attached to me—my twitches are nothing more than muscle spasms.

  I feel no fear. I’m halfway there, unconscious yet conscious in my cocoon, like I’m in a car waiting in line to cross the border from the United States into Canada. Canada is right in front of me. I can see it. I could get out of my car and walk there in one minute. But you’re not allowed to get out of your car. So I wait and inch closer one car at a time. I want to laugh but can’t. I want to laugh because I think of how Canadians would feel if they knew I likened entering their country to dying. But I would tell them how much I love Canada because I really do and likening death to Canada must be a message from the part of my brain I can’t reach. A message that says death is like going to a place you love.

  The nurse says I’m one lucky son of a gun because I have a private room and only lucky people have private rooms ’cause they have the good health insurance. I want to tell him Ellegaard is the one to thank for that. Ellegaard always takes care of me, like I’m part of his family. And there it is again: luck. I’m so lucky to have Ellegaard as a friend. I’m so lucky to have good health insurance. But luck has to balance out over time. The good with the bad. If Vasily had hit me just a quarter of an inch away from where he did, I’d be fine. If he had swung differently. If I had positioned myself differently. If, if, if. It can’t go your way all the time.

  The nurse says, “Nils, it’s your lucky day. You have some visitors.” He tells the visitors they should talk to me because he’s sure I can hear them. And they should watch my face to see if it twitches because sometimes it does. And they should hold my hand and pay attention because they might feel a slight squeeze. Maybe not but they might. Then the nurse says, “I’m out of here now, Nils. Tawny will be checking on you and I’ll see you tomorrow. You have a good rest of your day, and I’ll let everyone here introduce themselves.”

  It’s quiet for a moment then I hear, “You don’t look so good, Shap.” It’s Ellegaard. He takes my hand. I try to squeeze it but I don’t know if he can feel it. I feel like I can control my body but I can’t. I wonder if I’m already dead. But why would people talk to me if I’m dead?

  I hear sobbing, but it’s not Ellegaard. He’s my stoic Scandinavian. Everyone should have one. If Ellegaard ever cries, he probably rows out to the middle of a lake and cries with the loons. Never in public. No, this crier is Gabriella. She hasn’t said a word, but I can tell it’s her.

  This is weird. I don’t like this part at all. I’m okay in here. I’m not in pain. I’m not afraid. Yeah, I want to see Gabriella again. I want to see Evelyn. But if I don’t, I’m okay to move on or be nothing or whatever. If it doesn’t happen now it’ll happen sometime in the next forty or fifty years and that’s not much more time anyway. Every day is precious, but it was not an enjoyable experience getting in the space I’m in, and now that I’m here I don’t mind it. Do I really want to journey back here again?

  Gabriella says, “Can you feel my hand, Nils?” She squeezes mine, and I try to squeeze hers. Her tone changes. “Ellie, I felt something. I swear.”

  “Shap’s a fighter. He’s hanging in there.”

  “Remember what the doctor said.”

  “Yeah.” Ellegaard pauses. Is he sniffling? Dammit! He’s letting me down. Maybe I should snap out of this coma just to slap him. Ellegaard says, “The doctor said it can be helpful if we tell you stories. I’m going to start by filling you in on what’s happened the last couple days.”

  Gabriella says, “You’ll want to hear this, Nils. So, listen.”

  I’m listening.

  Ellegaard says, “I woke up early the morning after we last talked. No reason. Just got up about 4:00 A.M. and was wide awake. I checked my email and saw what you’d sent me and Gabriella. So I called the first number you asked me to call. LAPD Hollywood division. They sent officers over to Ebben’s right away. They found you unconscious in the living room. You were on the floor, bleeding badly from the head. And your carry-on was there. Wide open and empty. Vasily had transferred the money into something else to carry it out. So your plan worked.”

  It’s strange how, even in my condition, it feels so satisfying to hear that.

  “I also called the second number, the FBI Field Office in Los Angeles. I gave them the tracking information. I don’t know where you found a tracker that looks exactly like a credit card, but it was brilliant to hide it among the gift cards and prepaid credit cards.”

  I want to tell Ellegaard I bought the tracker that looks like a credit card at House of Spies in Hollywood. Jameson told me about it. Said you can buy all sorts of spy-like devices there, and Jameson was right. So when I came up with the idea to bait Vasily into stealing the $5 million, I went to House of Spies and bought the tracker. I paid for it with Vasily’s money. I want to tell Ellegaard this, but I can’t, so he keeps talking.

  Ellegaard says, “Ninety minutes after I called the FBI, they located Vasily and apprehended him. And the best part of the story is Ebben is fine. You were right about Vasily. He wasn’t out to hurt anyone. He’d just gotten himself in over his head and was acting out of desperation. And thanks to you, Nils, that desperation didn’t last long enough for him to hurt Ebben.”

  Gabriella squeezed my hand again and says, “Vasily confessed everything to the FBI.”

  Ellegaard says, “You were right about that, too, Nils. He talked someone into investing 20 million in Thom Burke’s Veins of Gold movie. He didn’t say who that person is, but whoever it is agreed to invest the 20 million because Kate Lennon was in the movie. When Kate Lennon dropped out to be in For the People, the investor wanted his money back. Thom wanted more time to save the project, and Vasily thinks he tried to kill Ebben but accidentally killed Juliana in the process. Same as your theory. Vasily’s investor threatened him, and Vasily tried to intimidate Thom into giving the money back. That’s what the altercation on Thom’s front step was about. That’s why Vasily threatened the For the People production by telling everyone to drop Kate Lennon or else. Your instincts were spot-on, Shap.”

  Gabriella says in a soft tone, as if I can’t hear her, “Should we tell him about yesterday?”

  Yes, I think. You should. I’m quite the captive audience at the moment.

  Ellegaard says, “Vasily’s instincts were right, too. I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, Shap, but when the feds put him on pretrial in front of the magistrate, a gunman entered the courtroom and shot and killed Vasily. No one knows how the guy got a gun past the metal detector. The FBI thinks someone in organized crime had the gun planted inside before Vasily’s court appearance.”

  * * *

  I fell asleep within my sleep and now I can hear again and everyone is gone. But I’m not awake. I’m dreaming. I think I’m dreaming. I’m looking down on myself. The me I see is lying on my ratty couch in the coat factory where I live. It’s not a factory anymore. The machinery is all gone. It still has old awning windows, a worn wooden floor, a high ceiling, and an eyewash station. But I’ve made it into a home with furniture
and a freestanding kitchen of discarded restaurant fixtures: stainless steel counters and shelving and a sink and an industrial refrigerator-freezer.

  The coat factory is where I lived before I moved in with Gabriella. I’m looking down on me lying on my couch, and there’s a knock on the door but the lying-down me can’t get up to answer it. I tell myself, “Get up. Someone’s at the door.” But I can’t. I just lie there with my eyes open. Then the door opens. I look over to see a boy enter. I guess he’s ten years old. He’s African American, wears a Los Angeles Rams football jersey, jeans, and Jack Purcell sneakers. He carries a sack lunch in a brown paper bag.

  The boy says, “Shap? What’s going on? Why didn’t you answer the door?”

  The lying-down me can’t answer. It’s frustrating, like watching a movie when you want to scream at the screen and tell a character they’re being an idiot. If they’d just make a different choice, the conflict would resolve itself. The choice I wanted the lying-down me to make was to wake up. But he (aka I) would not.

  The boy says, “Oh man, Shap. You look like shit, my friend. Good thing I showed up.” The boy reaches into his lunch bag and pulls out a roll of gauze and a bandage scissors. He says, “I know just the thing to make you feel better. I’ll wrap you from head to toe in gauze and then you’ll be a mummy and you can walk around and scare people and damn, that will be funny. Ha! What do you think, Shap? Want to be a mummy?”

  The me who is looking down says, “Would I be a mummy forever or just for a little while so I can scare people?” But the boy can’t hear the me who is looking down. And the me who is lying down won’t talk. He’s such an idiot! I want to throw a bucket of water on his face. He’s just lying there. So damn frustrating. Then the scene in the coat factory fades to dark and credits roll just like in a movie. The credits are just names but they don’t say what jobs the names have. They’re all my relatives. My grandparents and great-grandparents and great-aunts and -uncles. All dead. Then the credits end and everything is dark.

  * * *

  I’m back where I was with Ellegaard and Gabriella. I can’t see but I can hear. My parents are there with my brother and sister. They’re a mess. Always making a big deal about nothing, my family. So much drama.

  My little brother, Marty, cries his way through a story about how when we were kids I said I’d sell him my BMX bike for twenty dollars thinking no way he would pay twenty dollars for my BMX bike because he didn’t have twenty dollars. Marty was only eight and he always spent his money as soon as he got it. But he said okay he’d buy it and told me he’d have the money the next day. And the next day he gave me a twenty-dollar bill, and I asked where he got it. He told me it was none of my business. I accused him of stealing it from my stash of cash which I kept inside a copy of Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

  I’d hollowed out the middle of the book, page by page, so it looked like a regular book when you picked it up. Only when you opened it could you see the middle part of each page had been cut out. I hadn’t told anyone about my hollowed-out The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood but Marty must have discovered it and that’s where he got the twenty dollars. But I had no idea how much money I’d kept in the book so I couldn’t prove he stole it and I begrudgingly agreed to sell Marty my bike.

  Now Marty’s blubbering his eyes out admitting he did steal the twenty dollars from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. Yeah, now he feels bad about it. When I’m in a coma. What the hell took so long? I want to calculate the interest on twenty dollars over thirty years but I don’t know how and even if I did I can’t communicate.

  My mind is so active. I wonder why I hadn’t seen the irony of me having money and Marty having none so he stole some from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which was about taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. And I wonder if not being able to prove Marty stole the money motivated me to go into law enforcement. No. That’s ridiculous. And at the same time I think about how strange it is that family stuff just keeps bubbling up. It never stops. Even when one guy’s in a coma. Not a big incentive to wake up.

  My mother takes one hand and my father takes the other and they tell me they love me and Marty and my sister do the same and then they’re gone.

  46

  I hear a machine beep a steady beep and figure it must be my heart rate but other than that it’s quiet. A few minutes ago some nurses replenished my IV and bathed me. The wet sponge felt cool and one nurse said I had gooseflesh and that might mean something or it might not. Then they turned me on my side and propped some pillows behind me to keep me there.

  I can tell it’s night. I don’t know how but I can. I think that means no more visitors but then I must be wrong because I hear, “Shap, you son of a bitch. You wake the hell up right now.” It’s Jameson. He says, “The only reason you took this case was to bring me to California because you thought it would help me get my shit together.”

  That’s not true, I want to tell him. I would have taken the case anyway. I thought it would be easy work for easy money and this is my fault for not letting go when I could and should have. I want to explain this but I can’t.

  Jameson says, “I know more about comas than a person should know. I’ve cared for hundreds of people in comas. And I know some can hear and some can’t. I’ve talked to the doctors and nurses and they think you can hear. So does Gabriella. Ellegaard isn’t sure but that’s Ellegaard, always taking the conservative approach. So I asked Nikki to get me in after visiting hours so I could have some time alone with you because you and me have some talking to do.”

  The machine that beeps keeps beeping. “Listen. The way I figure it, you and me are now even. No way you would have survived that arrow wound if I hadn’t been chasing you around changing your bandages and making sure you took your antibiotics. See, you got this disease, Shap, where you just got to do what you do like a shark has to keep swimming or some shit like that. But I was there to make sure you got healthy while you kept moving.

  “Then I fall apart when those kids got shot and I was there and watched a bunch of ’em die and saw their parents get turned into zombies when the life drained out of them, too. So you took care of me. Even though I was a pain in the ass and had to wallow in my shit for a while you would take me out to ball games and to dinner and I’d just sit there and do nothing, kind of like what you’re doing now. But you didn’t give up on me and brought me to Los Angeles and I never would’ve reconnected with Nikki if you hadn’t done that. I needed the push, Shap. I needed the push.”

  God, I wish I could talk to Jameson. But he’s been so quiet over the last year, listening to him ramble is nice. Makes me want to hug him. I wish I could do that, too.

  He says, “Something about Nikki you know. Maybe ’cause we were secret friends for five years and she helped me love books and classrooms and I helped her adapt to America. I don’t know. Having a secret friend you can count on no matter what is pretty fucking special. You and me, we kind of got that. At least I think we do.”

  I think we do, too, Jameson. I know we do.

  “It’s like what you have with Ellegaard and Gabriella. It goes way back, real deep. But you and me, we kind of had it right away. We didn’t need all them years for it to ferment and get good and powerful.

  “I made a mistake letting Nikki get away. You fixed it by bringing me back to her. You didn’t even know you were doing it but you did. I’m never letting her go again, just like you’re never letting Gabriella go. So you know what I’m talking about when I say I’m not letting go of you so get the hell out of that coma, Shap. It’s up to you. I’ve seen it. Some people, they just keep hanging on till they get strong enough. Other people, they just don’t got the fight in ’em so they let go. Nothing wrong with that if it’s their time, but brother, it ain’t your time. Not even close.”

  I feel Jameson take my hand. I concentrate and press as hard as I can. Give it everything I have.

  Jameson says, “Well, I didn’t expect you to wake u
p right this minute. These things take time. Weeks. Maybe months. Maybe longer. A little squeeze of the hand would have been nice, but you got to go at your own pace.”

  Someone else steps into the room and says, “How are you two doing?” It’s Dr. Li.

  Jameson says, “Tell Nils what we’re going to do when he wakes up. Go ahead. He needs to hear it from you.”

  I hear footsteps, then Dr. Li speaks almost in a whisper, but I can hear her clearly. Her head must be close to mine. She says, “Shap, Jameson and I and my son are going to Minnesota with you.”

  Jameson says, “Tell him why.”

  I want to tell Jameson there’s no need. I get it. But I can’t so I just lie there and listen.

  “Jameson and I are going to get married in Minnesota, Nils. And you’re going to be Jameson’s best man. And then me and my son are going to live there with Jameson. That might seem odd to you, but I love Jameson and would like to live in a quieter place. And my son’s had a rough time in middle school and wants a fresh start where no one knows him. He’s very excited for the snow and to cheer for the Minnesota Vikings.”

  I want to say if he thinks middle school is hard, wait until he’s a Vikings fan. It’s so fraught with anxiety and disappointment it’s like being in middle school for the rest of your life.

  Jameson says, “Yeah, Nils. We’re all moving to Minnesota even though you chose Ellegaard to be your best man and you probably got me slated to be usher or some bullshit like that. Tell you what, I’ll be your usher, but I insist on carrying a flashlight with an orange cone on the end ’cause that’s what ushers should have.”

  I want to tell Jameson nothing would make me happier than him seating guests at my wedding while wielding a flashlight with an orange cone on the end. I want to tell him yes, absolutely do that, and then see the surprise on his face when he learns there’s only thirty-five people at my wedding and there’s no need for an usher. That would be fun.