by Barry, Mike
Driving, Williams saw all of it again but it was like seeing it for the first time. Metropolitan Hospital adjoined East Harlem and rather than ducking right for the East River Drive, heading toward the Triborough Bridge and home, he stayed on First Avenue up to 125th, seeing all of it. At about 110th the junkies became visible in clumps rather than as isolated, staggering forms. They stretched out on pavements, huddled in doorways, a few of them were weaving across First Avenue in the midst of traffic. Williams rolled up all the windows.
“Why are you going this way?” his wife said and Williams gave her one sidelong glance and in his eyes she saw the answer and said nothing else. He kept the car at an even fifteen for the progressive lighting, looking at what was going on. He had seen it a thousand times but he had never seen it before. At 125th, finally, he cut east to the bridge approach. Traffic was sparse. He took the Impala up to forty. Twenty-two payments left on the thing, as he recalled. Five hundred down and one hundred a month for the rest of your life. The car was a piece of shit. That was the way the system worked. His side ached.
“Wulff’s right,” he said.
“I know,” his wife said, “you’ve said that already.”
So he had. He had said it to her several times, passionately from the hospital bed when he had started to put all the pieces together. He was embarrassed. He should have known better than to have thought that she had forgotten. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it just occurred to me again.”
“All right.”
“He was always right. It’s all shit.”
“Does it make any difference to us?”
“I don’t know,” Williams said, holding the wheel steady as they headed into the filth toward Queens. He threw a quarter into the exact change slot, barely halting. “I just don’t know if anything makes any difference.”
“You have to go on,” his wife said. Unconsciously she looked down at herself. She was six months pregnant now. She looked up again. “You do have to go on.”
“For what?” David Williams said. “To what?” and the car sailed on into Queens, little foul clouds from Flushing Bay drifting toward them, the stupendous and brutal skyline of that evil city to the east and Williams, hunching his head into his shoulders didn’t know: he didn’t know. He didn’t know.
His wife leaned against him.
Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, western, and romance genres. Discover more today:
www.prologuebooks.com
This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com
Copyright © 1974 by Mike Barry
All rights reserved.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4239-2
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4239-8
Cover art © 123rf.com/Frank Romeo