by Nancy Rue
I knew what that meant before I even got up the steps.
“Is she—is this guest gone?” I said to the woman coming out of the room with an armful of sheets.
She nodded. I took the steps back down and headed for the breakfast room only half-hoping I’d find her there with a bowl of cereal. I wasn’t one to waste hope.
No Geneveve enjoying a cup of joe. As I hurried back to the van with only thirty minutes to get Bernard hitched up and out to the Bay Front, I couldn’t even conjure up an image of that wasted waif of a woman doing something as normal as sipping morning coffee and checking her email.
Nor could I come up with a vision of me being able to make so much as a dent in the trouble she was in. God wasn’t giving me any new directions, and one thing was clear: Without them, I had absolutely no idea what to do.
I apparently wasn’t much better at the “normal” stuff either. The fifth-grade boys were far more fascinated with grossing the girls out over Bernard’s bodily functions than with my stuff about Osceola in the dungeon, so I just let them snort and squeal about horse poop through the last half of the tour. Back at the stables at the end of my shift at three, my van wouldn’t start until Lonnie gave me a jump, informing me needlessly from beneath his cowboy hat that the thing was a piece of junk. And when I took out my cell phone to call the nursing home, I saw that Bonner had left me another message.
“Think we could have supper together tonight?” it said. “I swear—no lecture. Call me.”
I tapped the phone against my forehead. Supper with Bonner. Same table. Same menu. Same conversation. Mundane. Predictable.
Safe.
I looked at the phone, rather stupidly, I supposed. Did anything I was being Nudged to do say I couldn’t have some security in the midst of it? Something that didn’t have a clutch where a gearshift ought to be? Something that didn’t fray me at the edges?
Maybe this really was about me appreciating what I had and doing something with it. Maybe that was it.
Several seconds passed. Long enough. I poked in Bonner’s number.
Yet even after I promised to meet him at six at the Athena Café—rather than our usual greasy taco place—I couldn’t shake the thought of Ed, eyes glowing with hope in that bed. I had no idea if Geneveve went back to see him, but I had to—even if it was just to tie up the tattered ends of everything that had flapped against me the day before.
The minute I turned the corner and headed for the nurses’ station, I knew I might have missed my chance. Willie stalked out of his room, phone in hand, worry line cutting an abyss between her eyes.
“No disrespect, Doctor,” she said in a voice she didn’t need a phone for, “but I have seen a patient in renal failure before, and that is what is happening here…. Yes, he has a DNR order, but that does not mean we can’t make the man comfortable. Yes, I want Haldol for him, and I want to up his morphine, too…. You would know that if you’d seen him in the last week.”
At that point she saw me and waved me to Ed’s room. I tiptoed in, though there was no need. The room was a cacophony of beeps and blips and the rattle of Ed’s own breathing. I had to pick my way through torn-open plastic bags and discarded parts of things that had been unsuccessfully tried. A gray-permed nurse with red-rimmed eyes was changing the bag on his IV pole and muttering much the same thing Willie was lambasting the doctor with.
“I don’t know if he’ll be able to talk to you,” she said to me. “He’s in a lot of pain.” She shook her head and headed for the door with the empty bag. “Nobody should have to die like this.”
Ed’s face was contorting, although not a sound escaped from him. I was afraid to touch his hand for fear it would burst open—or that I would feel the agony coursing under his skin. To my surprise he touched my hand and struggled to bring me into focus.
“It’s Allison, Ed,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me from yesterday, and it’s okay if you don’t—”
“You’re the angel.”
“Well, all I did was—”
“You brought my Genny Girl.”
“Yeah,” I said.
He nodded and tried to lick his lips, although there was no moisture to do it with. All of the fluids in his body were filling his lungs and drowning him.
“She in trouble again,” he said. “She tried to tell me she weren’t—but I know.”
I wanted to lie and let the poor man pass with some peace. It was obvious he hadn’t had much while he was alive.
“I couldn’t take care of her—her and Dehmun.”
There was that other name again. Dear God—I don’t even know this man’s family. Why am I the one about to watch him die?
“You.”
The sudden strength in his voice startled me. His eyes were bright, and as he opened his face in a smile, he looked like a sixty-year-old ready for a promised new lease on life.
“You’ll take care of them,” he said.
“You mean Geneveve?”
“Both of them. I know you will.” He clenched my hand with the grip of a man who wouldn’t go until he got his promise. “Say you will, Angel. Please.”
“I’ll do what I can, Ed,” I said.
He searched my eyes. I saw in his that it wasn’t good enough. And I felt it in the Nudge that made me put my lips close to his ear.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take the best care of them that I can. I will, Ed.”
“You will,” he said.
His engorged fingers opened, and his eyes sank back into their oldness.
“Ed?” I said.
“Is he gone?”
I jerked my head to see Chief standing behind me. He nodded at the tears on my face that I was only now aware of myself.
“I know,” he said. His voice was thick. “They get to you when you figure out you’re just like them.”
“What?” I said.
But his eyes moved to the monitor, at the same moment I realized the blips and beeps were now humming a straight line. Willie and the other nurse pushed open the door and stopped when Chief put his hand up.
“Let him be,” he said. “He deserves to rest.”
I left the room so Chief could be alone with his friend, but I couldn’t leave the building yet. The nurse with the perm—Janice, her nametag said—brought me a cup of water and offered me a chair. Willie was busy coldly informing the doctor on the phone that her patient didn’t need that Haldol after all. When she hung up, she patted me on the shoulder.
“He’s gone on to a better place now,” she said.
I looked up to answer, but the words had been meant for Chief, who was closing Ed’s door as if he didn’t want to disturb his newfound sleep. Chief looked at Willie, but he didn’t appear convinced about the better place.
“There’s no number here to notify somebody,” Janice said from the counter. She flipped through the pages of a file and glanced, wet-eyed, at Willie.
“I know,” Willie said. “He told me this morning that an angel brought his daughter to see him last night.” She grunted. “Ain’t no angel gonna touch that girl.”
“At least he died thinking she’d been here.” I got up and put the cup on the counter. “I need to go.”
It was no surprise that Chief followed me outside to my van. Nor did I have to guess how much he’d heard of what I said to Ed. It was all there in his eagle gaze.
I stopped at the van door, and looked back at him. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not an angel.”
“Don’t believe in them. How bad off is the daughter?”
“She’s beyond what I can do for her, that’s for sure.” I dug in my bag for my keys.
“So why’d you promise to take care of her and her kid?”
I stopped digging. “Kid? What kid?”
“Ed said she h
ad a son. I never saw him myself.”
“FIP probably has him. One would hope anyway.”
I gave up on the bag and patted the pockets of my uniform pants. Chief continued to watch me until the sick feeling in the pit of my chest turned to irritation.
“What?” I said.
“I’m just wondering what you’re planning to do.”
“Okay, I promised the old man I’d do what I could—”
“And that is?”
“What are you, the promise police?”
“No. Whatever it is, I’ll help.”
I stopped patting myself down for my car keys and stared.
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
He waited, eyes still. His intensity was riveting.
“I guess I’ll start by finding Geneveve again and tell her he’s passed. The first thing I need to do is find my keys.”
“Try the ignition.”
I followed his gaze through the driver’s side window, where I could see the wooden cross keychain dangling like a lure.
“Bummer,” I said. “I keep leaving them there, hoping somebody’ll steal this thing and take it off my hands.”
“I don’t see that happening,” Chief said. He was surveying Scott’s paint job, but he didn’t ask.
“I’ll notify her,” I said again. “I don’t know what to do after that.”
“Here’s my number, in case you think of anything.” He pressed a card into my hand and strode away. “I’ll make some calls,” he said over his shoulder.
To whom? I wondered.
But he was already striding toward his Road King, and I didn’t call after him. It was annoying the way he made me think I should do things I wouldn’t have considered doing ten minutes before.
Or was he the one putting that idea in my head?
No matter. I knew where to find Geneveve. When I told her the old man had died, it might be incentive for her to clean up her act, and she could take care of herself.
And her son.
I stuffed the card in my pocket and started the van in two tries. I could only focus on one catastrophe at a time.
I was all the way to West King Street before I remembered I was supposed to meet Bonner for supper. What state of mind had I been in when I’d agreed to that? Obviously not the same one that had me cruising the bars at dusk, looking for my favorite prostitute.
The only one I found was the woman I’d bribed the night before. She was at what must have been her usual spot in front of Titus Tattoos, smoking a cigarette that should have been put out seven puffs ago. Her lips moved soundlessly as she gazed at the lettering on the side of the van. When I leaned out the driver’s side window, her eyes flitted hopefully to me, and then died again.
“Hi,” I said. “Remember me? From last night?”
She pulled in her chin.
“I paid you to find Geneveve for me.”
Hope sprung anew, and she came toward me with a decided lean to her gait. I looked around for spare change—since I’d literally spent my whole wad on her the night before. I just remembered my emergency $10 stash in the ashtray when she reached the window.
“You need me to fin’ her again?” she said.
“Yes—well, no.” I looked at my watch. It was almost six, and Bonner at least deserved an explanation.
I folded the ten-dollar bill in her full view. “I need you to give her a message for me.”
She nodded, eyeing it hungrily.
“You need to tell her—”
“Uh-huh.”
This wasn’t going to work. She was fixated on the cash, and probably what it could bring her. From the way her hand shook as she reached for it, she needed whatever it was soon.
“What’s your name?” I said.
Her eyes left the money and went into suspicious slits. “You a cop?”
“Are you serious?” I said. “I’m just a friend of Geneveve’s. You obviously are too. What’s your name?”
“Mercedes. What you want me to tell her?”
I sighed and stuck the bill out the window. “Her daddy passed away today.”
“Got it,” she said, and snatched the money from my hand. She was gone before I could put the van in drive. That was the biggest waste of ten bucks on record.
The Athena Café was on Cathedral Place, only two and a half blocks from my house, so I parked the van in my garage, exchanged my uniform for crop pants and a tee, and put my hair in a bun while I walked up St. George Street—praying all the way that I wouldn’t run into India. She’d tell me I could have at least added some earrings.
I so did not need to send Bonner the wrong message by dressing up for him. I was wary enough because he’d chosen a restaurant several levels pricier than our usual haunts. That meant he wasn’t planning for us to go dutch, which meant he considered this a date.
I finished arranging the bun by the time I got to the Episcopal church. Her two-trim spires were already silhouettes, and the faux gas lamps were winking on around the Plaza de la Constitucion, the long rectangular park between Cathedral Place and King Street to the north and south, Charlotte and St. George to the east and west. Across the street the dauntless Roman Catholic cathedral fronted the plaza in Spanish dignity.
The day had lost its afternoon mugginess, and the early diners who had discriminating taste were making their way to the cafés and bistros on the cathedral side, where the dinner menus offered dishes the main crowd couldn’t pronounce. They would be on their way to Harry’s Seafood Bar and Grille, right after they finished up at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum and checked it off their to-see list.
As I crossed King and cut a diagonal across the park, I made my customary conscious effort not to let my gaze touch the First National Bank of St. Augustine building on the corner. I had nothing against the bank—at least, not anymore than I did any other financial institution. It was the offices that occupied the rest of the 1928 edifice that I took issue with. The less often I had to read the gold letters “Chamberlain Enterprises,” the less often I found myself feeling mean as a snake.
I tried to focus instead on the park itself, reciting part of my tour spiel to myself. The plaza has been the gathering place for St. Augustine’s citizens since the city’s founding in 1565 … although these days not many people gathered there.
Probably, I thought, because none of the benches had backs on them. Tourists would sit just long enough to unfold their maps and get their bearings before they ambled on. The only comfortable places to sit were in the gazebo in the center of the park, and those were usually occupied by the homeless. Even now, while one man slept curled up on said bench, another man parked a bike laden with what looked like everything he owned, dug a ball out of his belongings, and stood on the steps of the gazebo to throw it for his dog.
I knew that dog. He was the same one I saw sleeping by the Dumpster on West King. I’d always wondered why men without roofs over their heads always had dogs when they could barely feed themselves. Remembering that scene, I understood, and it ached in me.
That must have shown on my face when I walked into the Athena and blinked through the semidarkness for Bonner, because his own was fixed with concern when he waved me to a table by the window.
“You okay?” he said as I dropped into the chair across from him.
“Yeah, just … weird day.”
“Seems like they’ve all been a little weird for you lately.”
“Don’t start with me, Bonner,” I said.
“Not starting. Just saying. You eaten here before?”
I let him get away with that none-too-subtle change of subject and looked around at the decor, made up largely of arrangements of grapes and exotic olive oil bottles. “I don’t think so. Funny how you can live in a town all your life and never see half the
things in it.” I sniffed the air, which was thick with garlic and oregano. “It’s nothing if not authentic.”
“Yeah, the proprietor’s been yelling at somebody in the kitchen in Greek ever since I got here.” Bonner grinned. “But never let it be forgotten that you are in the South. They serve grits with everything.”
I looked at the menu, just to humor him. I actually couldn’t imagine myself eating. The list of kebabs was so accusing, in fact, that I folded the paper and said, “Recommend something I can pronounce. I’m not that hungry.”
“The spinach pie is stupid-good. Fresh feta in a puffed pastry.”
“Sure.”
Outside the window a duo of Harleys grumbled up and backed into side-by-side parking places just across from us along the edge of the plaza. I stretched my neck to check out the homeless guy in the gazebo, who snoozed on. How could he sleep with that rumble? And really, had there always been this many motorcycles in town? It was like I was seeing my city with somebody else’s eyes.
“Allison?”
I jerked back to Bonner.
“Sorry,” I said. “I got distracted.”
“Harleys.”
I shrugged.
“That’s okay,” he said. “The last girl I went out with texted on her cell phone all the way through dinner.”
I relaxed into a smile. “You went on a date, Bonner? Talk to me.”
“A couple of them, actually. It didn’t turn into anything.”
Rats.
“So—client? Somebody you met at a realtors’ conference?”
“A girl you went to high school with, as a matter of fact.”
“No kidding. Who?” Not that I would remember. That was twenty-five years ago, and I’d worked hard to forget anything associated with that period. Even now, I squirmed slightly in the seat.
“You too cold here?” Bonner said. “The air-conditioning vent is right over your head—”
“Bonner,” I said. “Your date?”
“Elizabeth Doyle. Used to be Fenwick. She said she knew who you were.” He gave me half a grin. “I bet you were pretty hard to miss. She said you were always cool with the underdogs.”