“I’m sorry,” Greg said. “I can’t drive you.”
“Oh, really?” the kid said mildly, like Greg had just told him his favorite food was Italian.
“Yeah, I’m really sorry.” He began slowing down, pulling over to the shoulder. If he rushed he could make it home by midnight, or he could spend the night and make it home mid-morning. He’d give this kid some money, maybe even his phone number, in case the kid got in a bind.
“Why are you slowing down?” the kid asked. He was hunched down, holding his own legs like he was bracing for impact.
“I’m going to let you out,” Greg said. The kid seemed to need things spelled out for him. GJ was never like that; he was quick. Maybe that’s why he was such a good liar. “This is all just a waste of time. I’ve just been wasting time, this whole time. Time, time, time,” he said, laughing, hoping the kid would think he was a batty old man he’d be glad to be rid of. But then he felt something run down his arm, like a pen that wrote fire, and when he looked he saw that instead of flames there was blood. The kid had a knife, something small and sharp, was hacking and slicing at his arm and shoulder like a child playing swords. For a sickening moment Greg let the wheel go, his foot coming off the gas, his whole body attempting to float up up up in the thick sludge of those few seconds, like he was at the bottom of the ocean trying to surface for air. But then the kid cut him from ear to cheek, the fire sweeping across his face now, and Greg brought his foot down hard on the brake. The RV shrieked; the kid lurched sideways into the dashboard. The knife flew out of his hand, hitting the windshield and falling into Greg’s lap, smeared with his own blood. The kid was holding his ear and Greg reached across and pushed the door open, then leaned back and kicked him with both feet, over and over, the kid howling and trying to stop Greg’s feet with his backpack, until finally the kid fell out. Greg rammed the gas and swerved onto the highway, the passenger door swinging wildly and finally slamming closed from the momentum.
The RV wasn’t going fast enough; he had the pedal all the way to the floor but still the world crept by. His face singed and throbbing but his neck tickled by his blood. He looked in the rearview; he looked again and again but he saw nothing. He was sobbing, he realized. Heaving. He saw a sign for a BP and pulled off, but he had to coax his foot to ease up on the pedal. He screeched into one of the two parking spots they had by the convenience store. He watched out the window, scared the kid had followed him, knew where he was. Finally, he felt calm enough to do something about the blood. He mopped his face and arm as best he could with GJ’s sweatpants, then gingerly pulled on the long-sleeved button-down that had been wadded under the dinette. He wanted to hide his flayed arm; he didn’t feel he had the right to bleed in front of the attendant or the customers. The cuts hurt and he was still breathing heavily, but if he could just get to a sink, some soap and some Band-Aids … They had to have some kind of bandage for sale among the bags of hard candy and the sunflower seeds and decks of cards that every gas station seemed to sell. He pushed his door open and half fell out of the RV. His legs felt gummy with adrenaline and he could feel his cheek getting wet with blood again. He put his phone up to that ear to hide the cut. There was an older man pumping gas into his car; a boxy blue minivan pulled to the adjacent pump and seemed to spill children out of its side maw like it was spitting teeth.
“Mm-hmm,” Greg said into his phone. “Sure.” A digital thermometer over the door said it was 95 degrees out; the children’s hair clung to their faces with sweat, but for once Greg felt mercifully cool. He longed to wipe his face but he was afraid that any motion would make him shoot all his blood out like a sprinkler. Once inside, he found the sign for the bathroom at the other end of the store and started making his way there. “Well, we’ll have to see,” he said into his phone. His neck felt wet now; he hoped the collar of his shirt was hiding the gore. His sleeve felt stuck to his arm. He shivered; the air-conditioning in the place was on full blast, humming over him in a breathy, aggressive chant.
“You must buy something,” the attendant said, not even looking up at Greg from the magazine she was reading. Penthouse, was it a Penthouse?
“I’m good for twenty dollars’ gas and a couple lotto tickets once I get out,” he said. He’d left his wallet in the RV again but he’d figure that out after he got cleaned up. He wanted to kiss the attendant for not giving a shit about him, for not looking up to take him in. For once he was glad not to be acknowledged.
The bathroom was only a bit more spacious than the shower in the RV, with a single bulb blaring out over the mirror. He looked half-bearded with blood, but the cut was already congealing in places, attempting to close itself. Greg blotted at it with a blossom of wet toilet paper that quickly became pink. He folded a few squares into a bandage and stuck that directly to the cut, stanching what remained of the blood so he could concentrate on his arm. He peeled the shirt slowly down. His arm didn’t so much hurt as it glittered with pain. There were nicks and slashes from his shoulder to his wrist, and a few longer or deeper gashes along his biceps. One looked like a lipless mouth, helpless against its pulse of blood. It was goddamned freezing cold, Greg’s whole body in a spasm of shivering. His cell phone was on the sink ledge and it fell in a clatter. He could hear a voice saying Hello? Hello? You there? It sounded like Deb’s voice, and Greg reached to pick up the phone but fell to his knees instead, smashing his nose on the sink and then crumpling down to take a nap, which seemed like the only thing to do in this cold evil dungeon painted with his own blood.
“You were in shock,” the doctor was saying. “You should thank your lucky stars those kids found you when they did.”
Greg was propped up with pillows that felt filled with air, collapsing and collapsing and doing nothing to help relieve the flat pain in his ass. He’d been lying in this position awhile, he gathered. His right arm was cocooned in white bandages; his jaw ached under its own bandage.
“Kids?”
“Right,” the doctor said. He was in green scrubs, which made Greg think he wasn’t a real doctor, not yet; real doctors had white coats. “Are you ready to tell us what happened?”
Greg looked around. It was only him and the doctor in the room. There was no us that he could see. He remembered the boy’s warm hand on his arm, the faded blue in his eyes, the way he’d finally fallen out of the car with a thud Greg remembered hearing even over the traffic.
“You should see the other guy,” Greg said, and tried to smile.
The doctor didn’t smile back. He looked tired, with dry lips and thick dark lines under his eyes. His shirt was wrinkled, like he’d slept in it. “Well, aside from being stabbed,” the doctor said, the word stabbed ringing in Greg’s ears like a gunshot, “it looks like you recently had a heart attack. Did you know that?”
Greg tried to remember. All he could think of was how he’d left his body for a second, just one tiny second, while he was on the floor with Marie. How he left it again when the kid cut him. How everything felt off, like he was watching life through a lens. How he never fully caught his breath.
“It was a small one, but you’ll have another one very soon if you aren’t careful.” Greg hung his head, rubbed the back of his neck. He really was exhausted; his ravaged blubber graveyard of a body wasn’t doing him any favors. The doctor took a deep breath. “Also, your liver is slightly engorged and your blood pressure is too high. Your blood alcohol was approaching the legal limit and the EMTs said your pockets were filled with wrappers. You’re not a young man,” he said, coming closer to Greg’s bedside. “If the stabbing didn’t kill you, your lifestyle is well on its way.”
Greg had tipped a small bottle of whiskey into his sweet tea that morning; that was true. It wasn’t like he was taking shots. It took longer to think through the wrappers, remember exactly what they could have been. They were probably from the KFC and Pizza Hut. Then he remembered the plastic bag of Hostess cupcakes he’d been keeping in his duffel and replenishing when he could. And the candy bars h
e lined the glove compartment with. He held them one by one in front of the air-conditioning vents to bring their melty bodies back up to solids, peeled the wrappers off with the usual difficulty, like how it must feel to skin a rabbit. And the LifeSavers he kept on hand, to mask the whiskey. And the tiny snack-size bags of Fritos when he needed some salt, which was a lot lately, what with all the sweating. There was also the refrigerated storage bench in the dinette, which he’d stuffed with hot dogs and bologna and bricks of sliced cheese. Hawaiian rolls and cheesecakes. Most of it was gone now, eaten on the drive; Greg ferreting out the next victim at each stop for gas, or when Marie scuttled away from him the morning he drove to his father’s, or after he left his father’s, when he felt so hungry that he ate until he threw up, a soup of tacos and hot dogs and yeasty rolls pouring out of him into the empty King’s bag. Or in the early hours of the parking lot outside the strip club, when the sky was the color of dust on a bureau, when he hadn’t been hungry at all but felt so trapped between the nothing he’d driven away from and the nothing before him that he’d eaten an entire cheesecake with his fingers, which was truly the best way to eat anything, and then washed it down with a four-ounce bottle of rum, not even enough to get one of Deb’s porcelain dolls tipsy. He’d gone to the strip club to distract himself. To hide from the bench. Eat only when you’re hungry, the diets all said. Okay. Okay, okay. Greg ate when he was hungry.
The last time he’d seen GJ, that rainy Christmas Eve, he was down sixty pounds. He’d been on the no-carb plan, had even started walking the trails that wound behind his house. He was excited for GJ to see him, the new him. But none of it had mattered. And now he had gained that sixty back, plus another forty—a hundred pounds in a matter of months. At any moment it felt like the ground underneath him would bow and snap, no longer able to support such an enormous blob, and he’d tumble, flailing, into the fireball center of the earth. He didn’t need this doctor with his toned arms and haggard face to tell him he was killing himself. Greg is becoming chubby. His father didn’t say a thing in response. Not a thing.
“I used to steal food,” Greg said. “My mother never ate. I think she thought it made people look weak. I’d go to my friend’s house and while he was in the bathroom or watching television I’d shove food down my pants or under my shirt. Then I’d hide it under my bed so I could eat it at night when my mom was asleep. I even kept a bag of dry rice under there, just in case. I got fat and then my mom stopped even pretending to make dinner. So I stole food from the grocery store. We had one a couple blocks away and I’d go in and buy coffee or flowers, make it seem like an errand for my mother, but really I’d be walking out with my pockets stuffed with candy or those little wheels of cheese. Sometimes I’d take it into the bathroom they had and eat it all there, so I wouldn’t have to walk out with it.” He was crying now, a real mess, he could almost see himself in the doctor’s eyes. Stubbled chins. Fleshy pectorals. Barrel of belly under the gown. Tears that were more grease than salt. His pale, pale feet, sticking out of the blanket like plucked chickens.
The doctor put his hand on Greg’s shoulder. “Eating is an essential part of the human experience.” He patted Greg lightly. “But everything in moderation. Including beating yourself up.”
Greg nodded. His tears were stinging the cut on his cheek and he wanted them to stop, but they flowed endlessly on.
“What if I told you my own mother said I’d burn in hell with all the rest of the faggots?” the doctor asked. His eyes looked too dry and the word faggots rang out like a second gunshot.
“I’d tell you your mother needed help,” Greg said. “And not to listen to her.”
The doctor nodded. “There you go.” He leaned over to check Greg’s bandages, pulling the one on his cheek out so he could look at the cut. “I’m going to have a nurse come in and re-dress this. In the meantime, is there anyone you’d like me to call?” the doctor asked. “Your wife? Your family?”
“My son,” Greg said. He could barely get the words out; the tears were choking him, bursting from his face.
“Write his number down,” the doctor said, and Greg did, with his left hand, the numbers looking like someone had bent each into shape from a paper clip, even though he knew there wasn’t much of a point. GJ’s phone had been off for weeks. The doctor walked quickly out and soon the nurse came in, tending to Greg’s face with a gentle purpose that made him cry all over again.
“When you’ve suffered an attack, it’s normal to cry a lot,” she said. Had it been an attack, what he’d experienced with the kid? It had felt like a misunderstanding, something that went just a bit too far. Then his cheek and biceps sang out together, a shriek from a bullhorn, and he remembered he was not the one with the knife. “Then you’ll feel rage,” the nurse was saying. “Then, probably, you’ll be depressed for a little while.” Her hands smelled like rosemary and garlic, and Greg wanted to tell her she was describing his whole life. She taped a wedge of cotton just under his eye. “This will catch your tears, like a little hammock.”
He thanked her. “Just doing my job,” she said, but it felt beyond that; it felt like everyone but him knew he was a child. She left and he was alone. He realized he wasn’t even sure what hospital he was at—one in Orlando, or one farther north? He looked around for a clue, a pad of paper or a pamphlet, but there was nothing. He thought of Deb, how he’d have to call her and explain the cuts and gashes, how he hadn’t spoken to her in what felt like a lifetime. She was peace; she was silence and order. But he hadn’t missed her all that much. Maybe that was a good sign; it meant they were content together and didn’t need constant contact to remain that way. Or maybe it meant another thing, something he felt too old to consider. He felt worn almost to death, as craggy and empty as a cave.
The doctor came back in, wearing a different set of scrubs now, less wrinkled and with a logo over the heart. HealthCentral, it said. Ocoee, FL. So he was back in central Florida.
“He didn’t pick up, so I left a message,” the doctor said. “I told him how to reach me and what room you’re in. I can try again on my next break, if you want.”
“You got his voice mail?” Greg asked. He hadn’t gotten GJ’s voice mail since the first week he’d gone missing. After that it had told him the number wasn’t available and hung up on him.
“Right,” the doctor said.
“Where’s my cell phone?” Greg asked. He looked around but didn’t see his clothes anywhere, his wallet, nothing of his.
“Ah,” the doctor said. “I believe it’s at the desk with some of your other things, but the nurses told me it got a bit wet.”
It had clattered into the sink at the BP, Greg remembered.
“It might not be in the best shape,” the doctor went on. “But I can bring you a phone to use.”
“Can I just have my things?” Greg asked. “And where is my RV?”
“Hmm. I’d imagine it’s either still at the gas station or it’s been towed.”
“Shit.”
“I’ll ask around. The cops usually show up after a few hours to take statements, so you could ask them about it at that point, too.” The doctor looked at his watch, impatient to move on, and Greg waved him off. “I’ll be back later,” he said, the door swinging shut behind him.
A voice mail. So GJ’s phone was back on? A male nurse brought him a phone to use, plugging it into the wall by his bed and standing too close as Greg dialed.
“Hello?” A woman’s annoyed voice.
“Um.” Greg’s voice was thick and pebbled. He cleared his throat. “May I please speak to GJ?”
“Ain’t no GJ here,” the voice said. She sucked her teeth. Greg could hear what sounded like a television in the background, a game show, maybe, a large crowd screaming and clapping.
“What about Greg? Or Gregory?” It felt strange, saying his own name into the phone. Asking if Greg was there. The nurse pulled his blanket tight, tucking it underneath him, like he was a sarcophagus.
“Ain’t here
,” the voice said.
“Not there right now? Or not there at all?” Greg felt that underwater feeling again, like he was trying to kick to the surface but had misjudged the timing and wouldn’t make it. He kicked free from the blankets, sat on the edge of the bed.
“Mr. Reinart,” the nurse said, warning edging his voice. He pushed lightly on Greg’s shoulders, careful not to push on his wounds. Greg pushed back; sometimes his considerable heft worked in his favor.
“Ain’t. Here,” the voice said again. Greg could hear another television now, this one with the rigid timbre of a female news anchor’s voice. A bar, the woman was at a bar, somewhere with competing televisions, somewhere open in the daytime.
“Who is this?” Greg asked. He held the nurse at bay with his foot so he could pull the IV out of his arm. The electrodes were easier, but their wires got tangled as he pulled them from under his shirt, and he dropped the receiver in the chaos. When he picked it back up, the dial tone rang out. It had felt like he was trapped in the Bermuda Triangle of central Florida, pulled in the wrong directions again and again by some unseen force. But now there was finally an answer on the other end of the line.
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