Seeing Red

by Dana Dratch

  When I had the time.

  “Man, you are the only person I know so tapped out that crooks are now breaking in to leave stuff,” Nick said.

  “Should we call the cops?” I asked.

  “I don’t think he’s got a record. Plus, I’m pretty sure they don’t make handcuffs that small.”

  “Yeah, but he’d have the world’s cutest mug shot,” I said, studying the tiny sleeping stranger, who suddenly puckered his mouth and made suckling motions. “Seriously, somebody’s got to be missing him.”

  “Somebody actually thought he’d be better off here,” Nick countered.

  That stopped us both cold.

  “So we should find out who he is and what’s going on before we return him,” I said, thinking out loud.

  “And in the meantime, we—and whoever left him here—will know he’s safe,” Nick said.

  “If we don’t get arrested for kidnapping. Why do I think that’s the same thing you said when you guys found Lucy?”

  Hearing her name, Lucy looked up expectantly. Nick grabbed a bone-shaped treat out of the big mason jar on the counter and offered it to her. She dropped to the floor and held it delicately between her two front paws, crunching contentedly.

  “She’d been abandoned,” he said softly, wiping his hand on his pajama bottoms. “She was foraging out of trash cans in an alley. This little guy was left warm and dry in a safe place.”

  “A locked kitchen that smells like cookies?”

  “Works for me,” he said, grabbing two tollhouses from a nearby rack and tossing one at me.

  “He must be loved,” I said between bites. “Not only did they beat out those dead bolts to get him in here, but that car seat looks expensive. And he’s got that rosy, healthy, chubby-baby thing going.”

  “So if his family left him here, we’re not kidnapping him,” Nick reasoned. “We’re just babysitting.”

  “Some babysitter I am. I’m eating cookies for breakfast.”

  Chapter 3

  Since I had to go into DC to meet with an editor—and Nick didn’t have to deliver the cookies until this afternoon—he got the first shift of babysitting duty.

  Better him than me.

  I was in bumper-to-bumper traffic when my cell rang. I pulled it out and checked the number: the very editor I was heading to meet. I prayed she wasn’t canceling the assignment and hit TALK.

  “Hello, this is Alex Vlodnachek.”

  “Alex, this is Maya. There’s been a change of plans.”

  My heart sank. I really needed the money from this gig. Fixing and reinforcing the doors on the house had put a serious dent in my wallet. Which was one of the reasons I was still driving a grimy, blue station wagon with “slut” carved on one side and “bitch” on the other, along with a nice big X etched on the hood. Another long story.

  As a freelancer, you never knew when your paychecks were going to show up. Or dry up. So I had a few months’ worth of mortgage payments squirreled away in savings. And I wanted to keep it that way.

  “We want you to meet Marty,” she said finally.

  “Meet Marty?”

  “Hmm, yes,” she said, already sounding bored with this conversation. Or distracted. Which, in a newsroom, could signal the presence of anything from a hangnail to a hand grenade. Or, more likely, someone had just arrived with food.

  I went into salesmanship mode—an aspect of my new career that I truly hated. “Well, of course, I’d love to meet Marty,” I said heartily, simultaneously wondering Who’s Marty?

  “Oh good, I’m glad I don’t have to read you in on that part of it, then,” she said, sounding vaguely relieved.

  “So, should I meet you guys at the paper at nine?” I asked, fingers crossed.

  “No, St. Edna’s. And if you have any questions, just give me a call.” And with that, she hung up.

  OK, so instead of going to a newspaper conference room, I was heading to a hospital. One that was about ten miles in the opposite direction. But, hey, at least they hadn’t canceled.

  After an off-ramp detour, two gas stations, and three sets of directions, I was pretty sure I was, literally, on the right road. And when I picked up a trail of little blue HOSPITAL signs, I followed them like bread crumbs. As I passed a guy in a hospital gown tethered to an IV shuffling down the side of the road puffing on a cigarette, I figured I must be close.

  And I was right. At the next big intersection, there it was: St. Edna’s Medical Center. It was massive. Kinda like the health-care version of a shopping mall on steroids. Spread over acres with dozens of wings and parking lots everywhere.

  I still had no idea who the mysterious Marty was, where we were supposed to meet—or whether Marty was a man or a woman. I didn’t even know Marty’s last name.

  But, hey, if reporters had all the answers up front, we couldn’t call it “news.”

  I reasoned that if there had been some kind of blood-soaked emergency, Marty wouldn’t be taking a meeting. So I skipped the E.R. portico in favor of the hospital’s main entrance and snagged a spot only a few rows from the front door. On the end of an aisle next to a small tree, “bitch” would be hidden by the black SUV to my right, but “slut” would be on full display.

  Nick had volunteered a couple of times to cover the words (and the X) with a can of Krylon. At first, I was afraid it would make my already-ancient station wagon look like it should be up on blocks in someone’s overgrown backyard. But with the glances and comments I was getting from potential clients, family members, and total strangers—not to mention my neighbors—I had to admit, I was warming to the idea. Even if he couldn’t match the paint.

  I figured whoever Marty was, I could have him (or her) paged to meet me in the cafeteria. So I strolled up to the front desk.

  “Hi,” I said to a twentysomething African American guy in navy scrubs who was manning several large phone panels and a computer terminal. “I need to have someone paged.”

  “In-patient, out-patient, or staff?” he asked, without even looking up.

  Dr. Marty? Nurse Marty? Marty the comfort dog?

  “In-patient,” I said, hoping I’d guessed correctly. At one-in-three, my odds weren’t great. But I had to start somewhere.

  “Down the hallway to the right, take your first right—and follow the green line to the nurses’ station. If the patient isn’t critical or in ICU, they’ll help you out.”

  “And where’s the cafeteria?”

  “Come back up here and keep going down that hallway,” he said, pointing left. “Then just keep walking until you smell scorched breakfast potatoes and rubber eggs.”

  “Sounds delicious.”

  “It smells better than it tastes. Trust me, stick with the ice cream. Or the Jell-O.”

  “Will do. And thanks.”

  * * *

  When I got to the nurses’ station, it was bedlam.

  “Justin, call security!” a short, squat brunette nurse yelled from behind a centralized desk, cradling a phone in one hand. “The old guy got loose again!”

  “Again? Are you sure?” a lanky blond nurse hollered as he sprinted down the hall and into one of the rooms. He reappeared seconds later, looking perplexed. “Hey, I told Dr. Bell last time we should chain him to the bed.”

  “He’s supposed to walk,” the first nurse said. “He’s just not supposed to walk out.”

  “Don’t tell me, tell Bell. He is gonna kill us. Did you page the cafeteria?”

  “No, because this is my first shift, and I’m a damn candy striper,” she said. “Of course I paged the cafeteria. Right after I checked the supply closet and the meditation garden. He’s gone, Justin. G-O-N-E gone. And I’m on hold for security.”

  “That means he’s getting liquor or smokes,” Justin said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Flip a coin.”

  “Uh, I hate to interrupt, but I’m here for Marty,” I said softly to the female nurse.

  “Hang on, Justin!” she yelled, slamming down the phone. “Do you have him?” s
he asked frantically. “Do you know where he is?”

  “He isn’t attached to an IV by any chance, is he?” I asked, flashing back to the lone figure ambling down the side of the road.

  “Only for the last twenty-four hours. He kept getting dehydrated. And someone thought it might keep him near his room,” she said, giving Justin some serious side-eye. “Where is he?”

  “Uh, he’s fine. He’s just getting some air. But I can get him back to his room, if that would help.”

  “Honey, you have no idea how much that would help. The hours are lousy, and the pay is worse, but I need this job.”

  I knew the feeling.

  Chapter 4

  Marty hadn’t moved much from where I’d seen him earlier. Now he was sitting on a tree stump, sucking on a cigarette for all he was worth. Still attached to the IV.

  I had to pull a U-ey at the next light (legal) to get around to his side of the road. As I rolled up, he was stamping out one butt and firing up his next one. The man was a smokestack. I didn’t know whether to be impressed by his tenacity or alarmed by the grip of his habit. With the next couple of mortgage payments in mind, I opted for friendly-but-neutral.

  I pulled off on the shoulder next to him and threw open the passenger-side door. The one that said “bitch.”

  “Are you Marty?” I hollered over the traffic.

  “Who . . . wants . . . to know?” he challenged, between drags. He punctuated the question with a wet, phlegmy cough.

  “I’m Alex Vlodnachek,” I yelled. “I was supposed to meet you at the hospital. Maya sent me.”

  He got up off the stump and shuffled over, IV rack in tow. When he made it to the car, he put one hand on the doorframe, leaning heavily.

  “Vlod the Impaler? Hey, nice to meet you, kid. Really liked the piece you did on Coleman & Walters. I met Everett Coleman a couple of times. Total weasel.” With that, he let loose with another long, wet cough. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, popped the cigarette in, and took a long drag.

  Cars whipped by, announcing their seventy-mile-an-hour recklessness with staccato horn blasts. Like I couldn’t feel the Chevy rock every time one of them roared past.

  “Look, why don’t I give you a ride back to St. Edna’s and we can talk. We could go to the cafeteria or sit out in the garden, if that’s better.”

  “Don’t get me started on the cafeteria. Is there a burger joint around here? We could hit the drive-thru. I’d kill for a bacon cheeseburger and some onion rings. And a large chocolate shake.”

  “Uh, it’s not even ten a.m. And shouldn’t you be getting back? They’re kind of freaked out that you left.”

  “So the warden knows I went over the wall?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Which one of ’em was it?”

  “Short, plump brunette and tall, skinny blond guy with a scraggly five o’clock shadow. Both in green scrubs.”

  “Arlene and Justin. Arlene’s the worst. That woman’s got eyes in the back of her head. A cross between the Hydra and a German field marshal.”

  “They’re worried they’re gonna get fired.”

  “Oh hell, she’s supporting three kids on that job,” Marty said, finally climbing into the car. “Little one’s gonna cost a fortune in orthodontia. Huge overbite. I’ve seen the pictures. Looks just like a beaver.”

  “So you want to go back?”

  “For the time being.” He grabbed the IV pole, chucked it into the backseat, and pulled the door shut with a heavy thunk. He rolled down the window, flicked out some ash, and took another long drag. “But you owe me a bacon cheeseburger.”

  “That’s a deal.” I figured my chances of smuggling food in were a lot better than his of getting out again. Especially with Arlene and Justin on the case.

  “So what exactly are you in for?”

  “Ten-thousand-mile tune-up. And I’m getting a new knee. Titanium joint. I keep asking what they’ll give me for the old one as a trade-in.” He laughed, and it turned into another cough.

  I was thinking they should have been less worried about his knee and more concerned with his lungs. But I don’t have an MD after my name.

  “Look, kid, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but someone wrote something nasty on the side of your car.”

  “It’s French for ‘Uber.’ So how are you connected to Aunt Margie?” I asked, checking the mirror and pulling smoothly back into traffic.

  Aunt Margie was the advice columnist for the Washington Sentinel. Whether you were a teenager with a crush on your mom’s hot best friend or a grandma who secretly hated one of your grown kids, everybody wanted commonsense coaching from Aunt Margie. From her tone and the thumbnail photo that ran alongside her column, I’d always pictured her as a classic screen dame straight out of a 1940s screwball comedy—a cross between Auntie Mame, Eve Arden, and Rosalind Russell. And DC could be divided into two camps: those who admitted to reading Aunt Margie every morning, and those who were lying.

  So imagine my surprise when I’d gotten a phone call last week from one of the Sentinel’s editors informing me that Aunt Margie was going on a six-week holiday and asking if I wanted the gig.

  At the time, I felt like I was on the ledge of a forty-story building looking straight down. Aunt Margie was leaving some pretty big stilettos to fill. Even temporarily.

  As a freelancer, though, I’d learned you never say “no” right away. Not if you want to make the mortgage.

  And the money was good. Obscenely good. But who was I to be giving advice? My life was a mess. From one month to the next, I didn’t know if I could even pay my bills. And except for weekly lectures, my own mother wasn’t speaking to me.

  I didn’t know which would be worse: if no one took me seriously or if someone actually did.

  But Aunt Margie herself offered me a lifeline. Or, more accurately, training wheels. Maya informed me that I would select and answer the letters, but before they were published, Aunt Margie would read and edit my answers. Heavily, if necessary. Because, according to Maya, she wanted her responses to reflect “that sparkling perspective that was uniquely Aunt Margie.”

  I’d always read her column. But the past week I’d read little else. The Sentinel’s digital archives went back about twenty years. I didn’t just scan every Aunt Margie column I could get my hands on—I studied them. Tore them apart. Dissected them—not just for word choice, cadence, and tone—but to see exactly how her mind worked. Even under that microscope, Aunt Margie didn’t disappoint. The woman was a marvel. Smart, sassy, succinct, sometimes sarcastic—and so very practical.

  I’d discovered her in elementary school, right alongside the comics. And while I never actually wrote in, she helped me navigate junior high and high school. Not to mention my first newspaper job. Which, ironically, was a lot like high school.

  “I’m Aunt Margie.”

  “Huh?” Red taillights flashed ahead of me, and I slammed on the brakes. We both lurched forward hard. “I’m sorry—you’re what?”

  “Hey, nobody wants to get their personal advice from a middle-aged guy with two divorces under his belt, ink stains on his cuffs, and a taste for the good single-malt he can’t afford. So ‘Marty’ became ‘Margie.’ And poof, here we are thirty years later.”

  My head was spinning. It might have been fumes from the stop-and-go traffic. It could have been the fog of cigarette smoke. Or the fact that one of the cherished girl-power icons of my young adulthood was sitting in my passenger seat sporting an overgrowth of ear hair, an open-backed hospital gown over khakis, and black Crocks with socks.

  Margie wasn’t a glamorous, well-preserved modern-day incarnation of Eve Arden or Rosalind Russell. Marty looked like a gnome. Short with sparse, wispy white hair, a beachball-sized belly, and a cancer stick continuously clutched in his right hand.

  It was like finding out that Santa wasn’t real. If you’d believed in Santa for twenty-plus years. And consulted him regularly for advice.

  “
And I gotta say, I discovered I have a knack for it,” he said. “Margie’s a good old broad. The more I got to know her, the better the writing got.”

  “But you’re Margie?” I said slowly, not totally comprehending. Maybe Margie was a real person—a friend, a neighbor, his actual aunt—and he just polished up the prose?

  “Look, kid, what you’ve got to understand is that Margie is an attitude. A character. A way of looking at the world. None of us is really Margie. We just let her take over our brains for a little while. And let me tell you, the old gal’s good people. She won’t let you down.”

  I was beginning to wonder if his knee was the only thing Marty’s doctors were evaluating. Luckily, we were back at St. Edna’s. And I was even more relieved than the first time I’d found the place.

  Chapter 5

  When I pulled into my driveway three hours later, there was a white county van at the curb. I could hear Nick shouting from inside the house.

  The baby!

  Had one of the neighbors called social services? Were they taking the little guy before we could find out who he was or where he was from? What if we couldn’t get him home to his family?

  This was my fault! I should have stayed home. I never should have saddled Nick with this alone. What was I thinking?

  I ran up the walk, nearly colliding with a chubby guy with heavily gelled dark hair and thick, black-framed glasses lugging a big black-leather shoulder tote.

  “You’re a blackmailing, bribe-taking little roach!” Nick hollered, running down the walkway in bare feet, waving a large wooden spoon.

  The guy turned, tapped his clipboard, and smiled. “I hope you can calm him down. I’d hate to add assault charges to what he’s already facing.”

  “This isn’t over, Simmons!” Nick shouted from behind me.

  For his part, Simmons skipped the sidewalk and waddled quickly down the lawn. I looked at the van. Was our little guy in there?