Flamethrower

by Maggie Estep

  “Just have the triage nurse call up to us when you get to the emergency room,” Joanne said, unfazed.

  Between getting stepped on or bitten by horses and occasionally crashing her bike, Ruby was in to see Dr. Parrish at least twice a year with sprains, bites, or minor broken bones. She didn’t have insurance, but Dr. Parrish, a long-time Coney Island fanatic, charged Ruby a reduced rate.

  Ruby closed her phone and rested the back of her head against the seat. She closed her eyes and at some point drifted off, coming to when the car stopped. They were outside New York Hospital, and the driver was staring back at her from the front seat.

  Ruby produced money from her pocket, tipping the woman extravagantly, as was her custom.

  “Sorry I didn’t let you bring your bike,” the driver said penitently.

  “Yeah, me too,” Ruby said.

  “You gonna be all right walking in there by yourself?”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Ruby said.

  She wasn’t fine. This was clear from the triage nurse’s face. Ruby didn’t have to wait long before being ushered onto a gurney and whisked back into the entrails of the emergency room.

  Dr. Parrish didn’t appear until after Ruby had been CAT-scanned and put through a series of monotonous tests involving touching her nose and following a neurologist’s finger with her eyes. She’d been wheeled back behind a curtain and was enjoying the slight buzz of the painkillers they’d finally given her when Doctor Parrish materialized.

  Doctor Parrish was a middle-aged man of medium build. He had kind eyes and a high, intelligent forehead. Ruby found him beautiful.

  “Bad day, huh?” Dr. Parrish said.

  “Not the best,” Ruby agreed.

  She told him what had happened. Sort of. Leaving out a few key details and painting the whole thing as an accident.

  “At least I can go home and go to bed now,” Ruby said.

  “Ruby, we need to admit you for observation,” Doctor Parrish said, using the foreboding we. Ruby was never sure what the we encompassed. We was like they. Whenever Ruby used they, Ed invariably asked, “Who’s they? The Van Patten Family?”

  “I can’t afford a night in the hospital. You know that,” she told the doctor.

  “I’m sorry, Ruby. It’s just a precautionary measure.”

  Ruby knew that he couldn’t advise her to leave.

  “I’ll check on you in the morning,” he said, even though Ruby knew that he knew she wouldn’t be there in the morning. “Try to stay out of trouble, will you?”

  Ruby smiled weakly as Doctor Parrish vanished beyond the curtain.

  The hospital smelled of sickness and cheap sheets, and the glare of overhead fluorescents seemed designed to provoke migraines. All the same, Ruby didn’t hate hospitals the way most people did. They were places where fascinating and brutal things happened in high concentrations. But she couldn’t afford to spend a night there as a sociological experiment. She sat up and put her feet on the floor. After a few minutes, she stood. She noticed she was wearing a hospital gown and, with effort, bent down to look under the stretcher, where she found a bag containing her clothes. She pulled it out and stood back up, getting a head rush in the process. As she dumped the clothes onto the bed, she realized that strangers had stripped her and she didn’t remember it happening. She got dressed then pulled the curtain back. Nurses and orderlies were bustling down a hall lined with stretchers and IV poles. Ruby spotted a bathroom across the hall and went in to fix herself up.

  Her left eye was swollen and bruised, and a big gauze bandage was covering most of her forehead. Someone had pulled her hair back into a ponytail, but there was still blood matted near the hairline. Her lips were dry and chapped, and on her cheek there was a little cut that she didn’t remember seeing before. Ruby washed her hands and patted her face with cold water. She emerged from the bathroom, looked up and down the hall, and then started walking. At the end of the hall, she found a door leading to the stairs. She went down slowly, holding on to the railing. Her head felt heavy on her neck, and she had to concentrate on where she put her feet.

  Ruby reached the lobby and walked to the revolving doors that spat her onto the street.

  The day’s brightness was fading, casting bawdy pink light over the traffic snaking its way down York Avenue. Ruby stood at the curb, waiting for the light to change. Her vision was blurry and she was weak. She leaned against a signpost as she dug her phone out and dialed Ed’s number at the barn. He picked up on the fifth ring.

  “Yes,” he said, sounding cold and businesslike even though he must have known it was Ruby calling.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “What,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m busy.”

  “Oh.” She waited for Ed to say something more.

  “Where’ve you been all day?”

  “You’ll never believe what happened to me.”

  “Why not?” His voice was ice.

  “What’s wrong, Ed?”

  “I’m not gonna make it home tonight.”

  “What? Why? Is Juan okay?”

  “Juan’s okay. I just won’t be coming home.”

  To Ruby’s horror, Ed hung up on her.

  She stared at the phone.

  Horns honked, pedestrians cursed, and the sky darkened. Ruby dialed Ed’s number again. It rang eight times then went to voice mail. She clicked her phone shut and sat down, right on the curb of the busy avenue. She fumbled for the cigarette pack in her back pocket and lit up.

  “Are you all right?”

  Ruby looked up and saw an elderly woman peering at her.

  “No,” Ruby said frankly.

  “I’m sorry. Can I help?”

  “Probably not,” Ruby told the woman. She smiled but was pretty sure it came out as a hideous grimace.

  “Let me get some help,” the woman said.

  Ruby watched the woman gesticulate at a nearby traffic cop.

  “I’m fine, ma’am,” Ruby protested. “Really, I’m just having a bad moment but I’m not ill.” Ruby stood up. The last thing she wanted was the attention of a cop.

  “But, my dear, you look awful. Did they just let you out of the hospital? They shouldn’t have.”

  “They didn’t,” Ruby confessed. “I couldn’t stand to stay in there any longer. I left.” Ruby wasn’t sure why she was being so frank.

  “I understand,” the woman nodded, “but you really shouldn’t be sitting on the sidewalk in your condition. Something terrible will happen.” There was toughness in the woman’s steel-colored eyes.

  Ruby slowly stood up.

  “Why don’t you come with me? I live only a few blocks away.” The woman had taken Ruby’s elbow.

  “Thank you, that’s very kind,” Ruby said. “But I need to go home.”

  “Let me help you get a cab then,” the woman said. “Do you need cab fare?”

  Ruby felt like laughing. Or crying.

  “Thank you, I’ve got money.”

  Ruby steadied herself against a lamppost as the older woman hailed her a cab.

  “You’re sure you’re all right, dear?” the woman asked as Ruby got in.

  “Yes, thank you, you’ve cheered me up.” Ruby offered the woman her brightest smile.

  The woman smiled back and gave a little wave as the cab pulled away. It was one of those rare but exquisite New York moments.

  The cabbie was a skinny, compulsively well-groomed man in his twenties. He had pictures of Jesus taped along the dashboard. He winced but didn’t complain when Ruby told him she was going to Coney Island. She didn’t have the energy to apologize for making him drive to Brooklyn. She rested her head against the back of the seat and dozed on and off through the forty-minute drive. She tipped the cabbie over-generously. He thanked her without moving his lips.

  Ruby let herself into the apartment. Ed wasn’t there, and the cats didn’t even deign to emerge from their sleeping places to greet her. She went into the
bathroom to wash up and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked like total shit. Felt like it too. She was, she reflected, morbidly alone.

  Ruby came out of the bathroom and went to look at the answering machine. No one had called. I am morbidly alone, Ruby thought again. She figured if she kept thinking this ridiculous phrase over and over, it would become so funny she wouldn’t feel alone anymore. She tangentially thought of an article she’d read years earlier about the singer Carnie Wilson, who had been morbidly obese and had radical surgery to shrink her stomach. “I am so fat I could die,” the singer had said before having her stomach surgically reduced to the size of a peanut.

  Ruby picked up the phone and dialed Ed, but both his cell and office phones went to voice mail. She tried Jody with the same result. She then plodded into the kitchen and mechanically prepared the cats’ dinner. The furry sociopaths emerged from their hiding places. As they ate, Ruby sat at the kitchen table and stared at them.

  It wasn’t that late, but Ruby was that tired. She went into the bedroom and crawled into bed fully clothed. She pulled the sheet up over her head.

  10. MACHINERY

  When Ruby woke, it was still dark but everything seemed bright. She got out of bed slowly wobbling as she took her first steps. She put a hand to her head and touched the bandage. It felt crusty. She hobbled into the bathroom and saw that her eye was swollen and blue. What’s more, she was still morbidly alone. She considered jumping out the window. It was only two flights down though. She’d damage herself only enough to make life rotten and difficult.

  Ruby went into the kitchen and avoided thinking as she brewed coffee, fed the cats, and downed eight ibuprofen tablets. She pictured the pills eating through the lining of her empty stomach.

  As she sipped her coffee, Ruby gazed out at the subway platform. Its metal lines glowed against the still dark sky. As a kid she’d imagined the subway was limitless, that she could get on and stay on, traveling through various states and countries to the very end of the world, where she would get out and sit with her legs dangling over the edge.

  Ruby poured a second cup of coffee then went to sit at the computer. She was hoping for e-mail from Jane. Or any piece of good news. There was one note from her friend Elizabeth, asking if Ruby wanted to have dinner sometime. There were half a dozen offers for painkillers and Asian escort services, but that was it. No Jane. Ruby trolled around online, read a little bit of that day’s New York Times, then went to craigslist and looked at bikes for sale. The last thing she needed was another bike, but she couldn’t help looking. Thankfully, there was nothing tempting. Ruby was about to quit her browser when she started feeling extremely sick to her stomach. She got up and went into the bathroom. She vomited bile into the toilet. There was a reddish hue to the vomit, but it was probably just dye from the ibuprofen. She hoped.

  Ruby didn’t feel much better after the sun came up. Her stomach had settled and she’d eaten some Cheerios, but she felt paralyzed. She wanted to call Ed but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d started speculating about where he’d spent the night. She pictured him on the narrow cot in the tack room then pictured him in a big fluffy bed with some random buxom vixen. This thought made her nauseous all over again, and she was trying to make herself think something less harrowing when the phone rang. She picked it up, hoping it was Ed or at least her boss Bob, explaining himself.

  “Yes?”

  “Ruby?”

  “Yeah?” It wasn’t Ed. Or Bob.

  “This is Tobias.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Sorry, I had to go.”

  “GO?”

  “I’ll explain eventually.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just wanted to let you know I’m all right.”

  “Yeah, I was losing sleep over it.”

  “Well you don’t have to be snotty.”

  “Yes, I do. I have to go now,” Ruby said. She hung up.

  She was angry from head to toe. She picked the phone back up and dialed her boss’s number.

  It rang twice before Bob picked up, sounding irritated.

  “Yeah?”

  “Bob, it’s Ruby.”

  “Yes,” Bob said in a dead voice.

  “Should I come into work?”

  “No, Ruby, you shouldn’t. You’re fired,” he said before hanging up in her ear.

  “That went well,” Ruby said aloud, for the benefit of the cats and the dead people. She always figured her dead friends and family were watching on some level, though if she really thought about it, dead people probably had better things to do than tune into her frequency on a regular basis.

  When things got particularly shitty on the inside, Ruby forced herself to look good on the outside. She opened the closet and started pulling things off hangers. A crazy flouncy red and white polka dot dress that made her look like a child hooker, a cotton pin-striped Agnes B. suit that made her look like William Burroughs. She selected a vaguely hippie-ish mauve button-down shirt and a pair of lightweight black cotton pants. She put these on but didn’t feel even remotely better, and now Cat and Aloisius, Ed’s cats, had decided to take up a vigil on the bed. Both were staring at her. Glaring at her. Accusatorily, she was sure.

  Ruby felt insane.

  She put keys, wallet, and Fireballs into her canvas messenger bag and left the apartment. Ramirez’s door was open, but neither he nor Elsie was in the kitchen. Which was just as well.

  Ruby walked the three blocks to the lot where her robin’s egg blue Mustang lived. It usually took her a few days to build up the courage to drive, but she had to get her bike out of Tobias’s house, and she felt compelled to do it now. She didn’t want anything of herself left behind there, wanted to be free and clear of Tobias, Jody, all of it.

  Emilio was on a chaise longue on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot. He was wearing sunglasses and on his chest was a sign reading PARK HERE. The sign wasn’t visible until you stood right near him, so it probably wasn’t doing much to drum up business.

  “Emilio,” Ruby said, looking down at him.

  Emilio was apparently sound asleep. Ruby’s voice startled him, and he nearly fell off his chair.

  “Huh?” He looked at Ruby. His short black hair was sticking up, and his light brown skin had a red, sunburned hue.

  “I’m the girl with the 1974 Mustang,” Ruby said. Emilio looked as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Ruby? Blue Mustang?” She scanned the lot and saw her car parked in a far corner, wedged behind some nondescript vehicles. “There,” Ruby said, pointing to her car.

  “Oh!” Emilio got to his feet. “Sorry, lady, I was sleeping. What happened to your head?” He motioned at Ruby’s bandage.

  “Fell off my bike,” Ruby said. “That’s why I’m driving today.”

  Emilio shook his head as though bike riding was some thoroughly insane pursuit. When he suddenly realized how much work it would take to get the Mustang out, he lectured Ruby about giving him a few hours’ notice before coming to get her car.

  Ruby tried to look apologetic.

  She nosed the Mustang out of the lot and saw that Emilio was back on his chaise longue, eyes closed.

  She got onto the Belt Parkway and considered praying even though her only sense of religion was a vague paganism investing all things with small gods. By the time she reached Tobias’s dead-end street, Ruby was almost calm from focusing so hard on the road. She pulled the Mustang up onto the patch of dirt in front of Tobias’s house.

  The sky was slate gray, and half a dozen gulls circled overhead. Ruby got out and knocked on Tobias’s door. She wouldn’t have been shocked if Tobias had suddenly rematerialized there in his house. There was no answer though. She tried the door, and it opened, unlocked as she’d left it.

  “Hello?” Ruby called out, not expecting an answer.

  “Who the hell are you?” a voice asked.

  Ruby jumped halfway out of her skin then flipped around and
saw a man sitting on a chair beside the door. He was holding a gun.

  “Who are you?” Ruby asked, heart pumping.

  “I asked first,” the man said. He grinned a little. His teeth were large and crooked. He had sandy hair, a few days’ beard, and dark eyes. He pointed the gun at Ruby.

  “I’m Ruby Murphy.” Ruby tried to sound calm.

  “And what business do you have here?”

  “My bike is here.” Ruby motioned at her bike leaning against the wall near where the guy was sitting.

  “Where’s Tobias, Ruby Murphy?”

  “Last time I saw him he was right there.” Ruby motioned toward the kitchen. “I have no idea where he is now. I just came to get my bike.”

  “And the wife?”

  “What wife?”

  “Tobias’s wife. Where is she?”

  “She’s missing too,” Ruby said.

  “You think they reconciled and rode off into the sunset?”

  “No idea.”

  “You’re not much help, are you?”

  “I’m sorry.” Ruby silently vowed that if she lived through this, she would lead a safe and dull life ever after.

  “So what the hell are you doing here?” Gun Guy wanted to know. He wouldn’t have looked threatening if it weren’t for the gun. He was probably in his early forties. A decent-looking guy if you went in for the scruffy, crazy type. “And what happened to your head?” he asked.

  “Fell off my bike.”

  “Oh. That one?” The guy motioned at Ruby’s brown bike.

  “No. My racing bike.” Ruby was starting to almost enjoy her ongoing fib about a bike accident. She was ready to embellish. it further. Maybe say she’d actually been racing her bike when she’d crashed.

  He wasn’t that interested though. “You’re friends with Tobias?” he asked.

  “More with his wife. Jody. She asked me to stop by and say hello to him.”

  “I thought you just told me she was missing too.”