Half the Blood of Brooklyn

by Charlie Huston

  He leans in.

  —It occur to you, Joe, all these Brooklyn Clans coming to us and to the Coalition, it occur to you to ask why? I mean, what’s up, right? And I’ll skip waiting for an answer you don’t have, because rhetoriality is the last thing we need right now. What’s up is that they’re scared, man. Scared bad. Someone over there, someone’s pushing, grabbing turf, squeezing out the little Clans. Years now, guys like the Docks, they wanted nothing to do with, you know, us Manhattanites. Wasn’t just a matter of no one from the Island wanting to cross the river, they had no interest in coming this way. Now they got no choice. They need allies and they got no choice. And if they’re getting squeezed over the river, if sociopolitical forces are sending these refugees our way, we need to make arrangements now. Or we’ll be sitting in the middle of a humanitarian disaster. By which I mean at least a few hundred new infecteds on the Island, all of them looking for blood. That is the kind of impact our little ecosystem cannot absorb. They have to work with the Clans here. There has to be some organization. Everyone knows it, but there’s still gonna be some jockeying. We’re all gonna get a little bigger. And it’s important no one gets too big. In terms of the ecosphere, that’d totally screw shit up. This Clan we’re in touch with, the Freaks?

  —Freaks. That’s promising.

  —Let’s not start making judgments based on something as flimsy as semantics. Regardless of how they’ve chosen to represent themselves to the world in language, they apparently carry a membership of several dozen. That’s more than enough to cause waves or swing a slight advantage in numbers. They cannot be, you know, disregarded.

  He points the finger at me.

  —So now, I need the head of Society security to do his job and go out to Brooklyn and clean up a little mess that is, when you get right down to it, pretty much his own damn fault, and make sure the Freaks understand that we offer them their best opportunity for seamless integration into Manhattan.

  He drops the finger.

  —As for what you’re up to, well, your private life, Joe, this girl you, I don’t know, take care of, that’s all well and good. From what I hear she brings out a real nurturing side in you. And I guess I’ve heard things aren’t going well with her. I’m sorry about that. God knows the Society is more than sympathetic to anyone with any kind of illness, but, you know, some hit closer to home than others. That, however, is neither, you know, here nor there. There’s a security problem that needs to be tended to. The Society needs you to tend to it. If you can’t tend to it, you need to let me know and we’ll, for lack of a better solution, dissolve this relationship and you can go back to your old status. And all that.

  He leans back.

  I think about all that.

  On my own dime again. No more Terry breathing down my neck. No more sit-downs with Predo. No more taking care of everyone else’s business before my own.

  Yeah.

  And no more easy blood. No more stipend from the Society coffers. Scuffling. Scraping for my own blood, let alone the stuff for Evie’s transfusions. And, sure, no more sit-downs with Predo, but probably seeing him sooner than later. Once I’m out from Society sanction, he’ll be sending his giant to collect me. For accounts past due.

  Rogue.

  Alone.

  God I want it.

  God I want to be alone. Please let me be alone. Leave me alone. Don’t ask me for anything. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to think about anyone else anymore. I’m no good at it.

  I reach out and drop the butt of my Lucky in Terry’s teacup.

  —Where am I going?

  He slides the cup away.

  —Coney Island.

  Coney Island. The far edge of the world. Where the land runs out. Put it on a map, you’d be scrawling Here there be fucking monsters across it.

  I don’t say anything, I don’t have to.

  Terry holds up a hand.

  —Yeah, it’s a bit of a haul. But you’ll have wheels. And company. —Company. So why the fuck do I have to go?

  He picks up his cup, remembers I dropped my smoke in it, frowns.

  —The company is exactly why you’re going, Joe.

  He holds a finger up to signal the waiter who turns his back and continues flirting with the cashier.

  He sets the cup on the table.

  —My own fault for being a dick. There’s karma for you, Joe.

  I look at the clock one last time. If I hurry, I’m pretty sure I can catch the drunk orderly.

  —Why I’m going, man? Company?

  He pushes the cup away.

  —Yeah, company. Well, like I say, their person, the Freaks’, is coming here, but, they’re you know, leery, so, one of ours has to stay with them.

  I rise, lean over the table.

  —Fuck. No.

  —Easy, man.

  —I am not going out there to be tied up and sit in a basement with a bag over my face waiting to find out if it all goes cool so I don’t get my head sawed off. You want a pawn, send one. Hurley’s around here someplace.

  He puts his hand over his heart.

  —Hurley? No, not for this. And you? Sit hostage? No way. Man, that’s like the whole point. They’re sending someone from their hierarchy, Joe. We have to do the same. That’s why you got to go, to make sure she gets back. I can’t rely on Hurley if any, you know, subtlety is called for.

  I stay on my feet.

  —She?

  He glances at his watch.

  —Yeah. And she’s, you know, a valuable asset, so handle with care, right?

  —I don’t appreciate being discussed like I’m property.

  We both look at Lydia.

  Terry rises.

  —Man, I wish I could be in on this. It’s like a brave new world.

  Lydia points at the check and money on the table.

  —Is that what you’re leaving for a tip? You know what someone makes in the service industry, Terry? There’s no minimum wage, no health benefits, no pension plan. You ever waited tables?

  Terry digs in his pocket.

  —My bad. My bad.

  I rub my forehead, look at Terry.

  —It has to be tonight?

  —Yeah. See, these aggressors I’m talking about, imperialists really, they’re kind of everywhere out there from what we hear.

  —Great.

  Lydia puts her hands in the pockets of her Carhartt jacket.

  —Except on Friday night. So if we don’t want to mess with them we go now.

  Why couldn’t it have been Hurley?

  —It’s political. Not that I’m saying any decision isn’t political, but in this case it’s more so. Every time you put one of those things in your mouth and light it and inhale and then blow the smoke for other people to breathe, that’s a political decision.

  With Hurley I could have smoked without getting this shit.

  —And don’t look at me like that. Just because it can’t affect me or you, that doesn’t make it OK. We may be afflicted, we may have been infected with a disease that’s enabled us at the same time that it’s disenabled us, but we have to remember that we live in the same world as everyone else. That’s the biggest danger I see to the Society charter. The fact that we need blood to survive, that’s going to be a huge psychological hurdle for non-Vyral people to clear, but the psychological impact of that need on the Vyrally impaired is as big an obstacle. I see it all the time, the drinking of blood, the fact that it comes from uninfected humans makes it very easy to begin seeing the uninfected as somehow less real than us. We can’t afford that kind of, elitism isn’t the word, but that kind of superiority to creep into our thinking. Smoking, just freely spewing your secondhand smoke around to kill people, that’s political, Joe, whether you want to accept the fact or not.

  I offer the pack to Lydia again.

  —So you want one or not?

  She slumps back in her seat.

  —Just keep your window down, OK, I hate the smell of the fucking things and I
don’t want their stink all over the van.

  I light up.

  —Sure, window down, of course. I mean, where the hell am I gonna throw the butts if the window’s not down?

  She looks out her own window.

  —Karma, Joe, it’s gonna shit all over you one day.

  —And it’s been so good to me up till now.

  —Without you even knowing it.

  —Whatever.

  I park the Econoline and open the door.

  Lydia looks at the sign on the storefront and shakes her head.

  —No. No, you will not be drinking and driving.

  I step out of the van.

  —Keep your panties on, it’s not for me.

  At Beth Israel, I find my orderly and give him his pint of Gilbey’s and he uses his passkey in the elevator and takes me up to Evie’s floor. The night nurse rises behind her desk as we approach, a hand reaching for the phone, but the orderly goes to her and slips her the twenty bucks I gave him and she turns down the hall and walks into the bathroom.

  The orderly takes a hit off his pint.

  —Five minutes.

  I go into Evie’s room. Curtains are drawn around her bed and the old lady’s. I duck under hers.

  She looks like hell.

  I look at the bags in her IV stand. Straight fluids in one. And a morphine drip. She must have cramped badly after the chemo. She must have dry heaved for a couple hours and been unable to sleep. A trache tube juts from her throat. That’s new.

  I think about the night we met.

  I think about putting a hand over the end of the tube.

  I touch the scabs that have grown over the part of my ear the Count didn’t rip off my head and think about peeling them away and leaning over the bed and pressing the wound to Evie’s lips and finding out what kind of girl she really is.

  What kind of man I am.

  I take the chart from the foot of her bed and look at it. It means nothing to me. I put it back. I put a hand in my jacket pocket and take out the candy necklace from Solomon’s store. I put it on the bedside table and leave, not having the guts to do anything that might help her.

  The night nurse is at her station. I stop in front of her. She smells like a different brand of disinfectant than the one they use to clean everything in here.

  —Why the trache tube?

  She doesn’t take her eyes from the screen of her computer, just raises her hand and rubs her fingers against her thumb. I grab her wrist. With a squeeze and a twist and a pull I could mash her radius and ulna and tear her hand from her arm and drop it in her lap and walk out with her screams as a sound track.

  She looks at my fingers wrapped around her wrist.

  —You’ll have to let go of me, sir.

  This isn’t her fault. Evie being sick has nothing to do with her. She’s just trying to get by.

  I squeeze.

  She gasps.

  I haul her up out of her chair.

  —The fucking hole in her neck, why’s it there?

  She puts her hand over mine, plucks at my fingers, stops, pats my wrist as if to calm me.

  —The herpes lesions have spread into her throat. There was severe esophagitis and swelling.

  I let her go and she drops into her chair, cradling her left wrist, staring at the dark ring of bruises around it.

  I drop a fifty on her desk. Think about it. Pick it up and put it back in my pocket and leave.

  Lydia looks up from the map she’s spread over the dashboard as I climb in the van.

  I point at it.

  —I want to get there fast.

  She traces a line with her fingernail.

  —FDR to the BQE.

  I grind the ignition and the engine catches.

  She raps a knuckle on the plywood wall that seals off the windowless rear of the van.

  —If there’s an emergency, don’t try to race back for me. Just park and wait out the sun in the back.

  I look out the windshield up at the hospital, and turn in my seat and punch a hole in the plywood and heave and it crashes into the back of the van, leaving it wide open to any light that might pour in through the windshield.

  Lydia picks up a scrap of wood, looks at it, sticks it in my face.

  —What the fuck, Pitt? What the fuck?

  I put the van in gear.

  —Incentive to get this shit done before sunrise.

  I pull from the curb, running a red light, speeding toward the FDR.

  —What are you looking for?

  We’ve cleared the eastern end of the Manhattan Bridge and I’m taking us through the insane series of ramps and loops that will put us on the BQE.

  —I’m looking for signs.

  Lydia takes her foot off the dash, leans over and looks at my face.

  —No you’re not.

  I point out the windshield.

  —The assholes that designed this shit wanted to kill us. I’m trying to find the signs that’ll keep us from plowing into something made of concrete.

  She leans back and puts her feet up.

  —You’re looking for an ambush.

  I tighten my fingers on the wheel.

  —No, I’m not.

  She crosses her ankles.

  —You’re looking for a bunch of savage infecteds in loincloths. You’re looking for zombie parachutists. You’re looking for dragons. You’re in the wilderness and you’re scared the lions, tigers and bears are going to eat you.

  I stop scanning the edges of the road and overhanging tree branches and overpasses and cars that pull up alongside us. I stop looking at any of the places I’ve been looking at, searching for ambushes.

  —I’m just driving.

  She taps the toe of her Doc Martens on the windshield.

  —You ever been off of the Island? Before, I mean.

  —I was born in the Bronx.

  —You’re such a New Yorker, never been anywhere. I traveled. I did a semester in Europe, in Italy. Went everywhere. And I’m from the West Coast. When I came out here I took a whole month to drive crosscountry. Been to Canada. Costa Rica. Mexico. Hawaii when I was a kid. Been to fucking Disney World. Most disgusting place on earth. Consumerism at its worst.

  I chain another smoke.

  —That radio work?

  —Sure.

  I toss the spent butt out the window.

  —Mind playing something on it?

  —What do you want to hear?

  —Something that isn’t you.

  She flips the bird at me and clicks the radio and settles the dial on some college station that’s playing some chick with an acoustic guitar.

  Pet the Cat music, Evie calls it.

  —This OK?

  —If it includes you shutting up, it’s OK.

  She nods, draws a little spiral in the dust on the dash.

  —How’s she doing, your friend?

  I reach over and spin the dial and put it on a jazz station and turn it up. Coltrane plays “Stardust.”

  Lydia ruffles her short hair.

  —Just that you never asked about HIV again after that one time and I didn’t know if you’d been able to get her some new meds. And stopping at the hospital just made me wonder?

  —She’s fine.

  —If she’s in the hospital, she isn’t fine. I told you before, I know people in the treatment community. One of the Lesbian Gay and Other Gendered Alliance members was a hospice worker. If she needs care, we could arrange something.

  —She doesn’t need care.

  —Hospital’s not the place for someone who’s really sick. They don’t give a shit. Fucking HMOs, it’s all about the bottom line. Get them in and get them out. Free up the beds for another pile of dollars. She could be at home, if she’s that bad.

  We grind into traffic merging from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and start crawling through Red Hook.

  —She’s not staying in the hospital. She’s gonna be fine.

  Lydia tugs on her rainbow-enameled ear cuff.


  —You’re not thinking about doing something to make her fine, are you, Joe?

  I lean on the horn, cut the wheel and drive up on the shoulder, peel around a line of cars and jump back in the lane beyond the jam and put the pedal down.

  Lydia adjusts the strap of her seat belt.

  —Just as a reminder, infecting someone, on purpose, that’s a severe abuse of the Society charter. An execution offense. You get the sun for that.

  Greenwood Cemetery appears on our left. I know its name the same way I know the names of anything off the Island; I’ve read about it. It’s a hell of a lot bigger than on the map.

  Lydia looks at it as we drive past.

  —And there’s the moral issue. Do you have the right to infect anyone? Even if you think it might save their life, do you have the right to make that choice for them? Personally, I don’t think anyone has the right to make any decision for anyone.

  The cemetery disappears behind us. The road is open. We bend right onto the Belt Parkway

  toward the bay, the decommissioned docks on one side, Owl’s Head Park on the other.

  —And, of course, you never even know if it will work. I mean, I’ve never tried to infect anyone, but I know the survival rate is below fifty percent. And it’s a horrible death.

  On the POW/MIA Memorial Parkway

  , long span and towers of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge ahead, a right turn and we’d be heading west.

  Solomon’s hogleg digs into my back. The Docks Boss’ .44 weighs my left jacket pocket. A round from that in Lydia’s side, lean over and open her door and push her out and take the ramp onto the bridge. See something else.

  Lydia puts a finger on the radio dial, takes it off.

  —Just acting like you don’t care, Joe, that doesn’t change anything. And it won’t change how you feel if you fuck up and do something cruel and stupid. Something irrevocable.

  Kill Lydia and drive away and see something else. Something new.

  The first part has its appeal.

  The rest of it? Ask me, there’s probably nothing out there worth seeing. Nothing better than a dying girl with no hair.