He’s studying me. “Go on.”
I slip my hand inside the file, feel cool smooth paper. “We just have to carry out the laws. I mean, if you work for DORLA you can’t be a politician, a civil servant, any of those types, so none of us get to make the laws, we just have to carry them out. Even if they don’t really stick. And—and with Jerry, the law isn’t going to help at all. It’s just a rule we’ve got to do something with if someone breaks it. We—we—everyone has feelings about it. We just need a judge who can’t face following through with the whole business.”
I can’t believe I’ve said all that to a stranger. I just said all that to a lyco.
“Why?” he says.
“Why what?”
“Why do you have to do something with the rules?”
“Instead of ignoring them?” My voice sounds quiet in my own ears. “Look, Kelsey, you just get to share my client. You don’t get to come in here and question my career.”
“No,” he says, just as quietly. “I guess not.”
I look at him again, but he’s looking at my arms, my wrist buried in the file.
The telephone rings, making me jump.
“I—” I make some gestures, grasping air, and turn to the phone. “Excuse me.”
The receiver is chilly against my ear. “Lola?” It’s Josie.
“Speaking.” I keep my eyes down, aimed at my in-tray.
“Lo, I’ve got some good news. You know Marty?”
“Marty?” Do I know Marty? I clutch the phone with both hands.
“We’ve just got a call from the hospital. The doctors said he said something today.”
“He—” I swallow. “He said—?”
“His voice came back, Lo.” Josie sounds a little hoarse. So do I. It’s the news we’ve all been waiting for. “Now, the doctors said it’s not definite, he could have a relapse, or get an infection or something, I don’t know, but—”
She hastens on, and the phone goes loose in my grip. “Ohh…” It’s all I can say. “Ohh…”
“Are you all right?” Kelsey is on his feet, all ready to fetch me a glass of water or open a window for me, and I wave him back into his chair. All I can feel is relief, a great cool wave of relief like a waterfall washing down my back.
“Josie, that’s great,” I manage. “Thanks.” And I set the phone down in its cradle, gently so as not to break it, not to damage the news. My arms are weightless and clumsy, as if a great load had just been taken out of them. A smile is coming out of my mouth, spreading across me.
“Are you all right? Can I get you some coffee or something?” A voice sounds in front of me. I open my eyes and smile at its beautiful owner.
“Coffee,” I say, “would be lovely.”
I sit back and enjoy watching him make it. He leaves the jar out of its box, and I don’t suppose it really matters. He’s even quite tidy, for a man, I reflect cheerfully. I watch him as he frowns with concentration, screwing the top back onto the jar, and then puts it down on the table and forgets about it as he turns his attention to the kettle. He passes me the mug and I wrap my hand around it, hold it against my face. I’m warm.
“Have you had good news?” he says. The idea seems to please him.
“Yes. Yes, I have.” I touch my heated cheek and hold the cup against the other one. “A friend of mine has been in the hospital, but I’ve just heard he’s going to be okay. Or they think so, anyway.”
“Lola, that’s wonderful.” What’s he doing saying my name, I wonder, and then lie back in my chair again. The coffee is as bad as you’d expect cheap instant to be. I’m enjoying it.
“What was wrong with him?” Kelsey says. I think he’s trying to decide whether to look polite or curious.
“A maul.”
“A mall? Like a shopping mall? Was he in an accident?”
I put down my coffee. Really I should know this for what it is, cosseted ignorance, but I’m too relieved to hold it against him. Instead, I grin. “You really haven’t worked here before, have you?” And I move my nails in a clawing motion across my throat.
His eyes widen and he shifts in his chair. He puts his fingernails in his mouth, a gesture that makes him look younger. “Oh,” he says. “Well, I’m sorry.”
“No point in fidgeting about it, it wasn’t you,” I say, and shrug. “And he didn’t die in the end.” I suppose it’s wrong of me to rub it into him like that. I think it’s upsetting him. He’s just so different. He doesn’t turn his head with a flinch like a horse twitching off a fly. I’ve seen that so often, and it’s not what he’s doing. He moves his shoulders to and fro; it’s a fly he’s not shaking off. I don’t want him to suffer, really I don’t, but I have just a little power sitting in my hand, just a little piece that’s dropped into it without warning, and it’s hard not to feel it.
Finally he looks up at me, and the power slips through my fingers. “Does that happen a lot?” he says.
I lay my hands together; my voice is quite light. “It happens to all of us sometimes.”
“Sorry,” he says. His face is talking again. If he was tiptoeing or offering condolences I don’t think I could take it; but this look is much better. He really does look sorry, in an innocent sort of way. It’s almost like a kid offering me a cookie, convinced that it will solve my problems.
I let the air out of my lungs. I’m about to reply when I remember again that Marty is going to be all right, and the smile comes back onto my face and goes through me. I get to my feet, walk across the office. “I think I’m going to visit him,” I say. “You don’t mind, do you? Only we could do this another day, and I’d really like to see him, I haven’t seen him since—since he got hurt, and being that it was my fault and all,” I unhook my coat from the door, “I’d like to see him, even if it means braving his relatives again.”
Kelsey’s also on his feet. “Sure, sure. How are you getting there?”
“How am I—? By bus, why?”
“Well, I could drive you.” He raises an eyebrow, gives me an inquiring look.
“Oh.” I pause in draping my coat over my arm.
“Or are you worried about the planet?”
“Hell no.” I laugh. “I just don’t have a car. Yes, thanks, a lift would be great.”
Getting past reception without being caught leaving before quitting time turns into a little adventure. We pull it off by having Kelsey talk to the girl on the desk—not Josie, some new rookie we haven’t settled yet—while I sneak by, my attention apparently on some papers in my hand. We get the elevator to ourselves and grin at each other in silence, then walk through the downstairs lobby with the guiltless stride of people who have other matters on their minds.
“If there’s anything I’ve learned in an ill-spent life,” I remark as I settle into the seat of his car, “it’s that the best way to avoid getting caught is to look like you’re doing it on purpose.” His car is an old green hatchback, I notice with the critical eye of a woman who can’t afford her own vehicle; it’s clean, except for having muddy wheels. Something knocks my feet as he starts the engine, and I pick it up: a large rubber ball. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?” he says, his eyes on the road.
“This ball.”
“It’s a ball. I use it when I’m visiting very young kids sometimes.”
“Mm. Do you have anatomically correct dolls in the backseat?”
He takes his eyes off the road and looks at me.
I cover my mouth. “Sorry. I don’t know where that came from.”
He looks at me a moment longer, then his mouth twitches and he laughs. “No big deal. At least you said it.”
“Oh, I’m kind of thinking it would have been better if I’d not said it.”
“I don’t know. I reckon you’re better at coming out with things.”
“In the five minutes you’ve known me,” I risk saying. “And I don’t know where you got that idea.”
He grins to himself and looks at the road. Being pleased
by my odd remarks is something he has no business doing, but I’m still too relieved to care. There’s another silence, less tense than the ones in my office. We’re driving past Abbot’s Park, one of my favorites in the daytime. The road around it is a little raised, and the outer circle is ringed with trees. The park turns under my eye as we follow the curve of the road around it.
“Can I ask?” he says.
I take my eyes off the bare, clean branches. “Ask?’
“Your friend. You said it was your fault.”
As I lean my head back against the seat, it comes to me that I haven’t really explained it to anyone. I’ve written reports and justified myself here and there; putting it into words is something else.
“It was, I guess. He’s my trainee. We were out on a—patrol—”
“You may as well say dogcatch. I know that’s what you say.” He doesn’t look at me. His voice is expressionless.
I frown. “It’s no worse a word than bareback.”
He glances at me. “No, you’re right. But that’s not a word I say.”
“Oh.” I push my hair off my face. I should answer this, only I can’t think of anything to say, so I carry on. “Well, he’d messed up before, so I told him we had to go by the book. And that meant that when we ran into a group of bad lunes, he wasn’t carrying his tranquilizer gun, because we’re not supposed to use them except in a real crisis. So”—I speak quietly—“they attacked him, and he didn’t have his gun out. And they mauled him.”
There’s a moment of quiet before he replies, only the noise of the engine. “Is that what you were drowning out when I met you that night in the bar?” he says.
I close my eyes, trying not to feel disappointed. I had no reason to expect him to say something comforting. “That was it. Mostly.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty.” This isn’t said in a consoling tone, it’s said deadpan.
I make a very quiet noise, turn to stare out of the window. We’re past Abbot’s Park.
“You shouldn’t.” His tone is flat, yet for some reason it doesn’t match the drabness of the streets. “Of course it was your fault. Nobody could go through life doing what you do and make no mistakes. Look at that scar on your arm.”
“I—” I make a gesture, push against the air. “Maybe I should walk.”
“I’m not trying to insult you. Please calm down.” He actually says please, like he was asking for something. I keep my head turned away, fighting what he’s just said.
He talked about my arm. He remembers the scar there. Oh, God. Ten years, ten years of long sleeves and keeping my arm to my side if I wear a pretty dress, one misjudged moment when I was a girl of eighteen and now I have a great worm dug into my flesh that’ll never go away. That’s what he remembers about me.
He doesn’t even sound too upset. “Lola, I don’t mean you’re to blame, all I was saying was that your job’s dangerous. If you hunt lunes, people are going to get hurt. It’s not your fault if it happens sometimes. You were just—”
He trails off and his mouth chews itself.
“—within the margin of error,” I finish for him softly.
“Yeah.”
I hang my head. I’m sulking like a child; that must be what it looks like from the outside. It’s just too hard to pull myself together.
“But he’s going to be all right,” Paul Kelsey says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, he is.”
“Are you all right? Look, I didn’t mean to offend you.” He taps the steering wheel, making an ironic mouth. “I just think aloud sometimes.” He shrugs. “Ask anyone.”
“You think aloud? In your job?”
“Well, no. Off duty.”
“So you’re—off duty?” I say the phrase carefully. It’s what he said about coming on to me in the bar. It weighs in my mouth, heavy with potential and danger.
He turns his head, looks at me. I can’t read his face, I don’t know his face, there’s nothing I know about him. I have to find some way of reading his face—
The car swerves, jolting me out of my panic. Some careless driver cut across him—he’s only just seen it.
I look away. The moment’s past; we’re safe again. “Didn’t know I’d be dicing with death when I accepted this lift,” I tell him. It’s an easy thing to say.
He shrugs. “What can I say? I’m just a bad driver. No help for it.” He steadies the car. “Look, I didn’t mean to offend you, what I said about—”
“Kelsey,” I say. “Spade. Hole. Digging. Stop.”
He smiles. The truth is, it’s a few minutes since he said it, and once the shock’s worn off, I feel almost good about it. It’s a change from struggling against all the well-meant lies about how it wasn’t my fault. It’s almost peaceful. Like the buzz in your mouth after the first burn of a spice wears off.
This does not, however, prepare me for the fact that when we get to St. Veronica’s, he doesn’t drop me off in the parking lot but escorts me all the way inside. We’re halfway down the corridor and he’s still there, shoes squeaking on the shiny linoleum. I keep almost asking him why he’s following me, and then not doing it.
“I’m here to see Sean Martin,” I tell the receptionist. “Can you tell me what ward he’s on?”
“Visiting doesn’t start for another half hour,” she says, without looking up from her computer. Kelsey looks around, looking for somewhere to sit, I think, and I undergo a brief conflict. I could sit down with him, or I could get in to see Marty. It won’t be hard to force my way in. The thought makes me lose strength, because he’ll see me for what I am, a non, I’ll turn from a person to a frozen-skinned freak in front of his eyes. It’s a bad idea. So I decide to do it, already angry with him for judging me.
“This is a business matter,” I say hard enough to drag her eyes off the screen, and put my DORLA card in front of her face.
She looks at the card, and then at me. Her smoothly powdered face unsettles, shows itself. If she were luning, she’d be pacing the cage, baring her teeth and worrying the bars. “I’ll phone you through,” she mutters.
This is the hospital Leo was born in. The two of us pass the labor ward, and indeed, I see the man who delivered him, the elegant Dr. Parkinson, sauntering down the corridor. He looks even sleeker without his green paper hat.
“Dr. Parkinson,” I hail him.
“Good morning, Ms….” He looks at me, trying to place me.
“Galley, May Galley. You delivered my nephew last month.”
“Ah yes.” He looks genuinely pleased. “Have you named him yet?”
“Leo.”
“A good name, that. I had an uncle called Leo.” His smile is impressive. Strong teeth, well-kept skin, assurance. He looks like my father, like my father’s friends. The relaxed, nourished look, the look of people who don’t worry about paying their rent, people who walk down the streets and watch other people defer to them. Or hate them for what they have. It’s still regard of a sort.
It’s a look I never had. A year ago, before that stupid ruinous night, before Leo’s conception and her husband’s desertion, Becca used to look like that. Looking at the man who delivered my nephew somehow brings home to me how the gloss has faded from Becca’s skin.
“He’s a bonny boy,” I say.
“Excellent,” says Parkinson, looking at his watch.
I make the excuse to keep walking before he can do it.
“That man doesn’t appreciate my nephew,” I whisper to Kelsey. For some reason I don’t try to fathom, this is only half a joke.
“May?” says Kelsey.
“Yes?” I respond automatically.
“I thought you said your name was Lola.”
“Oh…” I shrug. “May’s my middle name. My family call me May.”
“How come?”
“Just do. It says Lola May on my birth certificate. They called me Lola at the creches.” I say the word “creches” almost without a flinch.
“Creches?”
For a
social worker, he’s not very well informed. “DORLA creches.”
“Oh.” He nods to himself. I tense, waiting for him to go awkward, sympathetic, but instead he just takes it on board. I guess he hasn’t heard the stories. Or else he’s seen worse.
“You know, for a social worker, you’re not very well informed.”
“For a lawyer, you’re not very diplomatic,” he bats back at me.
“I’m not a lawyer, I haven’t the training.”
“Fair enough.”
Being rude to him doesn’t seem to get a rise, and for a moment I have the urge to be ruder. Probably I’m curious, or I just want someone to take things out on. Then we get to Marty’s floor. I clutch my hands together as we reach the ward door.
There are rows of beds in here, all with curtains hanging around them, off-cuts of some cheap printed fabric on metal frames. I can feel the thinness of the mattresses from where I’m standing. Falling back a little, I hang closer to Paul Kelsey. To my annoyance, and also unsettlement, I feel his hand on my arm in a brief touch. “It’s okay,” he mouths at me.
I scowl at him, clear my throat. “Thank you, Mr. Kelsey,” I say in as stern a voice as I can produce.
“I’ll wait,” he says.
I see the bed, Marty’s bed. Kelsey sits himself down a little distance from it, and I unclasp my hands, and walk toward it to pull back the curtain.
There he lies. Marty turns his head at the scrape of curtain ring on rail, and his eyes widen a bit at the sight of me, surprised. I look at him. I can’t get my face to move. Bandages, a drip, hospital sheets. They’ve trussed his throat, buried it under white cloth. They’ve pinned a bag of water to his arm, and laid him flat on an ironed white bed with salt water going drop by drop into the pale fragile flesh inside his elbow.
I stand and watch this, and I have to reconcile it with the expressions on Marty’s face. He isn’t looking at the end of the world, there are no burning cities or toppled towers in what he sees. He looks so ordinary. A little look of surprise to see me, and then his face crinkles up in a smile. It’s a young smile, rather gauche, not quite relaxed and full of hope that life may yet turn out well.
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