“I’m not going to hurt you, Dolly,” Red said, straining to keep his voice calm. Pain etched his face. “No one is going to hurt you. Now please give me the knife… Just give me the knife, okay?”
No, it was not okay.
Dolly charged her brother-the carving knife raised over her head and a feral roar coming from her throat.
“No, Dolly!” he cried out. “It’s me! It’s Red!”
It was no use. She wasn’t hearing him. She wasn’t seeing him. It was Roy Weems, the trusted family caretaker, who she was seeing. It was the man who had robbed her of her innocence. And she was ready to kill him all over again.
Bud dove for her, wrestling with her, grabbing her by the wrists. The knife clattered harmlessly to the floor. Only now Dolly lunged for the shotgun, fighting Red for it. Clawing him savagely. Raking him and Bud both with her nails. Then all three of them had their hands wrapped around the gun barrel, gasping, moaning, groaning…
Until suddenly it went off with a deafening boom.
And just as suddenly everything in Mitch’s universe became tilted and strange and he didn’t seem to be standing up anymore. The floor. He was lying on the floor.
And now there were rapid footsteps on the staircase and the lieutenant was standing over him, Sig-Sauer in hand.
“No, no, you’re blowing it,” Mitch scolded her. “You were supposed to stay upstairs unless the play broke down.”
“Guess what-it broke down!” she cried out. “Now let’s just hold it, people! Don’t anybody move!”
Only somebody was. Jamie was making a dash for the door. He didn’t get there-the lieutenant was quicker on her feet. She kicked one of his legs out from under him and threw him to the floor. Jamie landed with a thud and lay there. He did not get up.
Somebody else was sobbing. Dolly. It was Dolly. The others were silent.
Now Lieutenant Mitry was kneeling over Mitch. “How are you?” She seemed terribly worried about him for some reason. “Talk at me.”
How was he? He was cold. He was dizzy. Everything seemed to be swirling around him. He’d broken his wrist once when he was ten years old. Fell out of a tree in Stuyvesant Oval. That’s how he was. “I’m just great. Did we get ’em?”
She wasn’t listening to him. She was too busy yelling into her cell phone. “I don’t care if it’s raining. I need an ambulance now.” Mitch couldn’t make out the rest of what she was saying. Something to do with a bleeder.
There was blood. He was lying in a pool of his own blood. He’d been shot, he suddenly realized. Now she was tying a belt around his leg with all her might. He could see the cords in her neck stand out.
“Damn, how did I let you talk me into this?” she fumed at him.
“Simple. If they got away with it you’d never be able to live with yourself.”
“I still might not. And who the hell’s this long, tall brunette you were going on about?”
“Gwyneth. She’s really a bottle blonde.”
The lieutenant showed him her dimples. “That a fact? I had no idea.”
“Stick with me. You’ll learn all kinds of amazing, trivial things.” Mitch felt himself getting even dizzier. He was starting to think he might even pass out. “Lieutenant, I’ve discovered something truly shocking about myself.”
“Which is what?”
“I’m really, really good at this.”
“Uh-hunh.”
“No, I mean it. I was calm. I was cool. I was, dare I say it, macho.”
“You just keep telling yourself that, macho man. It’ll dull the pain.”
“Will you take care of Clemmie for me?”
“Not a problem. Anything else?”
“Tapioca.”
Her face was very close to his now. “You said what?”
“I want a large bowl of warm tapioca. Tell Sheila Enman, will you?”
The lieutenant’s features were starting to get fuzzy. And then Mitch couldn’t make out her face anymore. It was Maisie’s face he was seeing now. His beloved Maisie. She was right there next to him, reaching out to him, beckoning him to join her. Smiling, Mitch held his hand out to her. She gripped it, her hand warm and strong, just as he remembered it.
Together, the two of them went far, far away.
Mitch woke up in a hospital bed with an immense bandage wrapped around his leg and a pair of Hideki Irabu’s used sweat socks stuffed in his mouth. It was daylight. The sun was shining. And he was not alone.
“Welcome to Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in historic New London, Connecticut,” Lieutenant Mitry said to him briskly. She was seated at the foot of his bed, dressed in a crisp white shirt and gray flannel slacks. The woman looked bright and efficient and way more alert than Mitch felt. “You’ve been out for something like sixteen hours. The bullet hit an artery so you lost a lot of blood. Straight up, another fifteen minutes and you might not have made it. But you’re okay. No broken bones. You took it in the meatiest part of your thigh. Lot of meat there. Whole lot of meat there. In fact, the doctor said-”
“Okay, you’ve made your point about the meat, Desiree,” interjected the lady seated next to her. She was a roundish little old lady in a faded sweatshirt that was emblazoned with the bygone slogan: E.R.A.-Y.E.S. There seemed to be a great deal of cat hair on this sweatshirt.
“Who are you?” Mitch croaked at her. There was nothing in his mouth after all. He was simply thirsty. He had never been so thirsty.
“Give it up for my girl Bella Tillis,” said the lieutenant.
“I am a huge fan of your work, Mr. Berger,” Bella exclaimed. “Although I must tell you I still disagree strongly with your negative assessment of The Truman Show. I felt that its message about the pernicious pervasiveness of modern media far outweighed the inherent plot weaknesses.”
Mitch groaned inwardly. I am not in any hospital in New London. I have died and gone to film critics’ hell. “Bella, we’ve met before, haven’t we?” he asked, peering at her.
Bella stuck her lower lip out at him. “I don’t believe so, no.”
“You ever live in Stuyvesant Town?”
“No, never.”
“Wait, I know-you were my Uncle Sid’s first wife, am I right?”
“No, dear, you’re not.”
“We’re related,” Mitch insisted. “I’m positive we’re related.”
“Can I get you anything?” Lieutenant Mitry asked him.
“Water, please.”
There was a carafe on the credenza next to his bed. She got up and poured some. Mitch could feel his pulse quicken as she stood there close to him. His gaze held hers when she handed him the styrofoam cup, her own eyes growing large and shiny behind her horn-rimmed glasses.
“What’s up with that Band-Aid on your arm?” he asked her after a long drink. “Were you wounded?”
“No, no. Just donated some blood, that’s all.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Well, you needed it.”
“You mean you donated your blood to me?”
“What I said, wow man.”
“You mean your blood is coursing through my veins at this very moment?”
The lieutenant cocked her head at him curiously. “Why are you making such a big deal about it?”
“Because it means we’re members of the same tribe now.”
“Get out of here-that’s kid stuff.”
“It most certainly is not. It’s a time-honored truism that dates all the way back to Broken Arrow.”
“Man, if you’re about to start in on old movies again I am way out of here.”
Now he became aware that someone else was standing in the doorway.
“You’re awake,” this someone said.
Mitch’s jaw dropped. “Lacy, what on earth are you doing here?”
