Joyce returned to her book, but began to have trouble concentrating on the words, and the next thing she knew, the nurse was shaking her awake, handing her a hospital gown, telling her to put it on.
Groggily, Joyce stumbled out of bed, sun streaming in through the balcony glass door—was it rising, or still setting? She was so confused! She staggered into the bathroom and somehow got into the thin, cotton gown, used the toilet, brushed her teeth and ran a brush through her tangled hair. The face that looked back at her in the bathroom mirror was old and haggard …
… but she stood frozen there for the longest time, staring at herself, seeing the shadow of her parents in her features, wondering if that shadow would be cut away along with the years, studying for a final time the lines and wrinkles she had worked so hard to earn, bidding herself a bittersweet good-bye.
Then she was on her back, on a gurney, wheeled down the hall, watching the overhead lights glide by until she went through double doors and the ceiling became whiter, brighter. She turned to see a blur of monitors and tubes and doctors in white, so many doctors, too many doctors, heads covered with green hats, mouths obscured by white masks, like bandits robbing her stagecoach.
Two of them gently lifted Joyce off the gurney and slid her hospital-gowned body onto a table; she shivered as her bare backside made contact with cold metal. Someone stuck an IV in a vein on the back of her left hand, expertly—no pain.
No gain, she thought.
Then one of the doctors leaned in close over her; she recognized the kind brown eyes and heavy dark eyebrows of Doctor Carver, which seemed to bore through her like laser beams.
“Are you ready, Joyce?” he asked, his words muffled behind the mask. Or was that the effect of the drug she’d just been given?
Joyce nodded and closed her eyes. This will all be over soon, she thought. It’ll all be worth it, she told herself.
“I want you to count back from one hundred,” Dr. Carver was saying; his voice seemed so far away—as if from across that lake….
She began counting: “One hundred … ninety-nine … ninety-eight….”
That was as far as she got.
After the surgery, her first sensation was one of panic. Something was making her cough—which was extremely painful—over and over again. The only way she could explain it to herself, in her semi-unconscious state, was that she was trapped in a basic computer program with a loop: START. COUGH. GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING. START. COUGH. GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING. And she would be in pain for all of eternity! She wanted to scream, but couldn’t open her mouth, couldn’t summon her voice.
Then, inexplicably, her coughing stopped.
And the pain stopped, too, just as inexplicably, and Joyce drifted back into nothingness.
Much later, when she related to the nurse her terrifying experience, Joyce learned that it was Dr. Carver making her cough in order to clear her throat and lungs, and, under the effect of the sodium pentothal, she had diligently obeyed his orders.
After the effects of the anesthesia had worn of, Joyce woke gradually, to find herself back in her room, in her bed, which was elevated so that she was sitting up. She looked down at her body stretched out before her, wrapped in gauze like a mummy, from her feet to her head, and touched her bandaged face, finding little slits for her eyes, nose and mouth.
She ached all over, like she’d been battered with a blunt object. But Hilda showed her how to give herself the pain medication through her IV with a push of a button, and the dull ache she felt went away.
And Joyce—thinking what a lovely, truly lovely woman Hilda was—closed her eyes and slept.
“Well, what do you think?” Dr. Carver asked.
A week had passed since the surgery, and all the bandages and draining tubes had been removed. Joyce stood nude in the examination room, in front of a full-length mirror. A week earlier she had been nervous about baring her body; now she felt confident.
“Amazing,” she murmured, staring back at herself. Granted, here and there her skin was black and blue, and her face seemed a bit swollen, but beyond that, Joyce could see a beautiful young woman emerging. “I can’t believe the difference.”
Standing behind her, Dr. Carver nodded and smiled, obviously proud of his work.
“How much longer before I’m … normal?” she asked, looking at the doctor’s reflection behind hers in the mirror.
“Possibly months for the swelling to go down, completely,” he told her. “But you can leave the clinic in another week, and we’ll transfer you across the lake.”
“To the resort, you mean?”
“Yes. It’s a restful setting for recovery, for physical and emotional therapy.”
“What sort of emotional therapy?”
“Counselors will be working with you. You’ll be reading, listening to music, watching videos, in a sort of home-study follow-up to your intensive training at Simmons. In about a month and a half, you’ll join the general population at Chestnut.”
That sounded like a prisoner getting out of solitary confinement.
“You’ll interact with other guests of the resort,” Carver was saying, “many of whom are not part of our program, just average citizens getting away from it all.”
“What’s the purpose of that? If I’ve recovered, physically, and completed the courses—”
“You need to meet and relate to people … strangers … as Joy Lerner. It’s a sort of practice period, before you’re thrown into the challenging work environment ahead. To give you a chance to get used to the new you … to become the new you.”
“Oh, I’m already used to the new me.” She smiled back at herself in the mirror, then frowned; her face felt like it might crack. Fingers of both hands went to her cheeks. “This is so tight,” she complained. “Like a rubber mask!”
The doctor nodded again. “That feeling will go away in time,” he explained. “Also, you may experience some numbness, as well, but that, too, will fade as the nerve endings grow back.” Then he added, “Any other concerns?”
She cocked her head, still staring at the young woman in the mirror. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought she could look so gorgeous. She had the figure of a Playmate of the Month, better than when she’d really been young.
“No,” she said, then, “Yes! Every now and then I get a sharp pain here, and here.” She pointed to both sides of her pelvis.
“Ah,” Dr. Carver said. “That’s nothing to worry about, Joyce. I performed a oophorectomy.”
“Excuse me?”
“Took your ovaries out.”
Joyce’s mouth fell open. “You did what?”
“While I was doing the tummy-tuck, I was right there, so what the heck—I removed them.”
What the heck?
She turned to face him, eyes wide, too shocked to speak.
He shrugged. “You weren’t using them anymore,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Well, I know,” she replied, shock now turning to anger, “but … Christ … Stan … is there anything else I’m missing?”
He laughed at that, but she hadn’t said it to be funny.
“No, of course not,” he assured her.
Suddenly she felt self-conscious about her nudity, and reached for her white terry-cloth robe and put it on.
“Ovarian cancer is one of the worst kinds of cancer a woman can contract,” Dr. Carver told her. “In the early stage, it has no symptoms, and by the time you suspect something is wrong, it’s too late.” His voice took on concern. “I wanted to spare you that.”
Joyce’s anger faded. “Well, I guess it will be nice not having that worry hanging over me,” she agreed. And he was correct she was no longer using her ovaries: They’d stopped producing eggs a year ago. So losing them really didn’t matter.
Dr. Carver patted her terry-clothed shoulder. “You run along now,” he said, as if talking to a child. “It’s about time for your dinner.”
“When can I have solid food?” she asked. She was gettin
g tired of the broth, Jell-O and apple juice that was her necessary post-surgery regimen. Not that it mattered; even the smallest amount of food filled her up. She didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.
Which was good.
Dr. Carver had explained that the best way to stay young was to limit calorie intake to almost starvation mode, thus limiting the number of times a cell renews itself, which causes aging.
“You know,” Joyce said, happily, “I don’t think I’m going to have any trouble keeping my weight down.”
The doctor, exiting through the examination door, looked back. “I’m sure you won’t, Joyce,” he said with a tiny smile. “Not after I stapled your stomach.”
And he left her, standing in her terry-cloth robe, mouth hanging open.
Playmate of the Month.
Staples and all.
INTERIM
“BEYOND THE SEA”
(Bobby Darin, #6 Billboard , 1960)
Palm trees, beach, mountains—what was heaven to the tourists could be hell for Ben McRae, and sometimes he roused, deep in the night, in the predawn morning hours, after dreaming of Viet Nam, only to find himself on a sandy slope with scrubby grass and thinking he was fucking back there!
It only lasted for a moment or two, but they were bad moments, and his waking scream would echo down the beach and across the rippling water, as if trying to be heard across that vast sea, beyond which lay that nasty little country that had taken so much from him.
Otherwise, beachfront Santa Monica was proving a good new location for the homeless man. The wide, white beach and the nearly constant sunshiny days, the steady influx of tourists and relaxing locals, made for perfect pickings. The park-like strip high above the beach had public restrooms and plentiful benches, and the cops only did a once-a-week sweep, which was easy enough to duck.
The place had its dark side, sure—and any day of the week a cop, particularly one of those SMPD Harbor Patrol clowns, could yank your ass in for an overnight. But as long as you weren’t one of these blatantly slovenly homeless drifters, or some pier rat working a nickel-and-dime hustle, or hooking (more males than females down here—tricks and trade), you could do just fine.
Ben’s method was not to wear his welcome out in any one place—he alternated between Main Street, with its dozens of trendy shops and art galleries, and Montana Avenue, which ran a little more to restaurants; and the mall, Santa Monica Place, always tricky, as well as the Third Street Promenade, with some shops but more night clubs, movie theaters and restaurants.
Best of all, of course, was the Pier itself, with its classic carousel and arcades and restaurants and fishin’-off-the-side. The full-scale amusement park, with its Ferris wheel and roller coaster, provided a perfect panhandler’s crowd. People throwing their money away are always ready with a little spare change and loose guilt.
Weekends were particularly choice. He’d wander the pier, and in the amusement park—no admission—he could linger around the fringes of the Sea Dragon, the Rock and Roll, the bumper cars. Since he wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool alkie, he would take up the offer of, “I won’t give you money, but I will buy you a hot dog.” Nothing like a Chicago dog, California style—unless it was the spicy chicken or the Mexican food or those homemade potato chips soaked in salt and vinegar….
Those public bathrooms sure did come in handy.
Ben sat on a bench in the park-like strip, straights walking along, heading toward the Pier, drawn by the thousands of multicolored lights of the amusement park, the nine-story Ferris wheel and the five-story Roller Coaster in particular giving off a gaudy come-hither glow. He never tired of looking at this all-American light show—it reminded him of the Fourth of July, it reminded him of the Missouri State Fair.
Life was good. He had never dreamed he’d get a second chance. But when that awful auto accident started giving him bad dreams again, he had abandoned the block near the Kafer Building and headed for newer, sandier pastures. He had heard that the Santa Monica beachfront was as much a playground for the homeless as it was for the “gainfully employed.”
And they hadn’t lied.
Tonight—it was midnight, and he’d made out good, bummed a hot dog and had twenty-some in change and dollar bills in his jeans—was as close to heaven as a homeless man could imagine. The hot dry wind, the Santa Ana blowing in off the mountains, was soothing, pleasant, not like the humid Missouri summers of his youth; the smog was clearing off and the sky was a deep blue and the stars were giving the amusement-park lights a run for the money.
“Ben?” a male voice said.
Ben turned. Standing beside him, a hand on the back of the bench, was a blond kid of twenty-five or so, with a buzz cut and a blue T-shirt and black jeans; five nine, maybe, with a muscular build and a roundish baby face that seemed very young despite dark glasses. Midnight and sunglasses—what was he, some soap opera star wanting a B.J.? What the fuck kind of lowlife did he think Ben was?
Ben frowned up at him. “Do I know you, son?”
“No. You talked to my boss, though—Lieutenant Anderson?”
LAPD. Shit.
“Mind if I sit, Ben?”
“No … free country. Look, I ain’t no vagrant. I’m waiting to hear on a dishwashing job.”
The young cop held his hand out. “Detective Clemens, Ben.”
Warily, Ben shook it. Firm. Maybe too firm.
The young cop continued: “But call me Ed. And I’m not here to hassle you about your … chosen lifestyle.”
“What do you want?”
“You gave a statement a couple months ago. That accident. That woman who was run down right in front of you?”
“I told you guys everything I saw. Everything I know.”
The young cop twitched a smile; street-lamp light danced in the blank black lenses of the sunglasses. “Well, Ben, you said you worked that block, that we could always find you there, but then you up and disappear. You shoulda told us you were movin’ on. In fact, we told you, give us a call, if you left the area.”
“No, you said if I left town. Santa Monica is not leavin’ town.”
“Well, it sorta is, but let’s not sweat the small stuff. The point is, Ben, we have reason to believe that Rachel Wilson—that’s the woman who was run down, Ben—may have been murdered.”
“Oh.”
“You see, Ben, if this were just a hit-and-run, that would be one thing. Oh, that’s serious enough, don’t get me wrong. But if it’s homicide—if she was run down intentionally—then that’s something real serious.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
He stared at Ben with the blank lenses. “You saw it. Do you think the hit-and-run driver’s actions were consistent with a hit-and-run, or could it have been murder?”
“I don’t know. Why talk to me? Who cares about my opinion?”
“Ben, I care about your opinion.”
Ben shifted nervously on the wooden bench. “Can we walk and talk, mister? You got a cop sign hangin’ around your neck— people I know, they see me sittin’, talkin’ to the fuzz, I could get a bad name. A snitch or something.”
A faintly amused smile formed on the baby face. “Why, is there something you could snitch about, Ben?”
“I see more illegal shit than a Mafia boss.”
“Okay. All right. Then let’s just walk on down the beach.”
Ben held up a palm in “stop” fashion. “Don’t walk close to me. I don’t want to look gay.”
That made the young cop laugh. “Okay. Let’s head down the stairs. Talk on the beach.”
This time of night, middle of the week, the beach was fairly empty. A few homeless types like Ben were camped out, in the glow of the stars and the pier. The homeless man and the young cop walked toward the beckoning lights. The young cop kept his distance, working his voice up over the rolling tide.
“You testify, there could be dough in it,” the cop said. He did look like a soap opera actor, or those Baywatch people, who weren’t film
ing here, anymore. Word was they headed to Hawaii.
“Money?”
“The woman who was run down, she was a successful businesswoman. If someone murdered her, we want to know why. We want to know who.”
Ben shrugged as he shuffled along the sand. “I got a look at the guy. Some.”
“Can you still remember him?”
“I think.”
Muffled music from the pier drifted toward them; the Beach Boys singing “Good Vibrations.”
The lights of the pier flickered on the black lenses. “Could you sit down with our sketch artist?”
“Yeah. She sure was a pretty girl. Red dress. She was nice to me. Not everybody’s nice to me.”
“They should be, Ben. I understand you’re a vet.”
“How’d you know?”
“You mentioned it to the lieutenant…. I admire that. I was in the Marines but I never saw any action. Too young. Too young for friggin’ Desert Storm, let alone Viet Nam.”
Shuffling, kicking up sand, Ben glanced out at the sea, starlight shimmering on its deep blue. “You didn’t miss nothin.’ ”
“What exactly did you see that afternoon, Ben? I’m not asking you to make anything up. We just want the truth.”
“Well … it didn’t really occur to me at the time. But looking back—I think he sped up.”
The cop stopped and so did Ben.
Urgently, the cop said, “Like he was trying to hit her.”
Ben nodded. “Yeah—and he did the coldest fuckin’ thing, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Turned his wipers on. To wash the blood away. Never slowed. Never missed a damn beat.”
“Jesus … did you get the license?”
“I told your boss I looked at the back of the car, but I don’t remember the license plate. I was … I was kind of fucked up.”
“Drunk?”
“No, that’s not it. I liked that girl. She was nice to me. She just gave me a goddamn twenty! I mean, I worked all day today, and barely got more than that.”
“So you were upset.”
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