This wasn’t how Drew had it planned. He didn’t want to confront Christie on the street. He wanted to follow Eric to a quiet place and kill him. Kill him and maybe later he could console Christie, take her away to rest. He would be the shoulder she could cry on. But seeing her he was overcome by unexpected hatred. All those things she said that excited him so much in bed now had other meanings. She had cheated on him, made him into a fool. Made love to Eric while telling him a hundred lies.
“Drew!” Christie shouted, and he hated her even more.
The pistol rose of its own accord. Drew didn’t hear the shot, only saw the young mother convulse. He fired three more times, and Christie was down.
Eric shouted and strained against the thick glass.
The child ran for her mother as Drew leveled the gun at her.
Thomas leaped through the air shouting, “Lily!” and he pulled Mona down, wrapping his skinny body around her.
The policemen were running by then.
Drew realized what he had done, but he couldn’t stop his arm and hand from aiming and firing.
Thomas felt each bullet enter his back. He counted them — one, two, three. And then he heard firecrackers and yelling. The child was the loudest, shouting for her mother.
Then came Eric with that booming voice Thomas remembered from childhood. And then the darkness he’d known since the death of his mother began to brighten. It got lighter and lighter until all there was was light — no details or shadows, just pure light and then nothing at all.
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15
Thomas awoke in a hospital room breathing in mild alcohol vapors and other medicinal scents. He tried to remember what had happened, why he was there, but it didn’t come immediately. His back hurt. That brought on the memory of being shot.
There was a spider tentatively making its way up the eggshell-colored nylon curtain next to the window. Thomas smiled, feeling akin to the gangly arachnid trying to survive in a place where cleanliness meant her demise.
“Are you awake?” a woman’s voice asked.
Thomas looked up and saw that it was Ahn. For some reason this didn’t surprise him.
“Hi,” Thomas said.
“How are you?” she asked.
She put her knitting down and sat forward in the chair, touching the edge of the mattress with her fingertips.
“I’m okay, Ahn,” Thomas said.
The ageless Vietnamese woman frowned and tilted her head. She looked closely at the weathered, battered, and scarred face. Then she drew back in frightened surprise.
“Tommy?”
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Wa l t e r M o s l e y
“Yeah.” The solitary word floated on the music of a life-long apology.
“What’s happened to you?” Fear and guilt clouded her usually impassive face.
“Life, I guess.”
Thomas could see this life imagined in her eyes — the knife wounds and roofless nights, broken bones and empty pockets.
Ahn suffered for him.
“I am so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t cry, Ahn. It’s not so bad. I’m alive.”
The little woman got to her feet and touched his callused hands, hands that were so big compared to his body that they seemed swollen.
“What happened?” Thomas asked.
“You were shot,” she said. “You saved Mona, but that boy shot you in the back trying to kill her.”
“That was the little girl?”
“Yes. The police came and killed him before he could finish killing you.”
It was as if she were talking about some story in a book or on Madeline’s TV, something far away from Thomas.
“And there was a woman?” he half-asked.
“Mona’s mother, Christie,” Ahn said solemnly. “She died on the way to the hospital.”
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said. “He took my cart and shoved it into the door. I tried to stop him.”
“You saved Mona, Tommy. Oh, Tommy, look at you.”
