'I've got a question for you. Why don't you take that cane and fuck yourself with it.'
'You mad at everyone today or just me?'
'Just you.'
'Maybe I should come back.'
'Maybe you should retire again.'
'I've got a question for you.'
'You said that already.'
'Whose idea was it?'
'Whose idea was what?'
'How does it work exactly? You just go pick out that outfit because you feel like Eva Braun that day. It could be the school mistress or the lady cop but you're feeling a little Aryan, so you say what the hell, I'll go for the swastika today?'
'You did get off on those pictures, Grandpa, didn't you?'
'Or was it him? Did he give you the day's script and say I'll play the Holocaust victim and you'll play the SS?'
'This getting you hot?'
'How did it work?'
'You didn't say May I.'
'Who set the roles? Who said I'll be this and you'll be that?'
'Who said I have to tell you?'
'He was on a case,' William said. 'Remember? He was old, like me. He talked a lot, he was maybe going dotty. But he was on a case. The biggest case of his life-that's what he told you.'
'He told me a lot of things.'
'That's right. A lot of things. But this thing he told you was true. Just like his selling runaway kids, just like his giving that up. He didn't always tell the truth, but he always told the truth to you.'
'So what?'
'Whose idea was it?'
'I don't remember. Maybe it was mine.'
'Yours?'
'Maybe it wasn't.'
'How did it work?'
'I think it was his.'
'He told you how to do it? He said let's play Nazi. He said-'
'Yeah, I almost forgot. Silly me. The customer's always right. Right?'
'Maybe not this customer. This customer had a number tattooed on his arm-sure, you saw it. This customer was in a concentration camp. This customer's family died in a camp. So what was this customer doing asking you to dress up as the family executioner?'
'Who do you think I am-Dr. Ruth? The guy who walked out of here ten minutes ago is wearing my panties. I don't ask them why. I tell them how much. Understand how it works?'
'Yeah. I was just wondering how it worked with him.'
'Sometimes he asked for that. Sometimes he didn't. Sometimes we just talked. At the end, we just talked.'
'At the end?'
'Yeah.'
'At the end, when?' Something had just occurred to him. 'The night he told you about the case-the biggest case of his life? That night?'
'Sure. Who the fuck remembers. Why not.'
Yes, why not.
'He burnt off his numbers,' William said. 'When he got this case he went and burnt off his numbers and when someone asked him why he did it, he said he'd earned it. And then he came to you and he said kick off those boots why don't you and let's chat. I just want to talk now-about things, the weather maybe, the unemployment rate, oh yeah, and this case, did you know it's the biggest one I've ever had-can't tell you what it is, but it is.'
I've earned it.
That's what Jean said, it was becoming clearer now, even if Miss Coutrino-see, he knew her name now- was only half listening, even if he was half wrong, it was becoming clearer.
'Jean comes to you for who knows how long and he positively licks your boots. He pinches runaways off the streets and hits up their parents for payoffs. Then something happens…'
I've earned it.
'He stops. He stops selling kids, he stops playing kneel- to-the-Nazi. He goes and burns his numbers off. Why…?'
I understand, Jean. I do.
'Because he's earned it. Because he's earned the right. Because this case has earned it for him.'
There. He'd put two and two and two together and it sounded suspiciously like six, like it added up. Even she looked impressed now, okay, maybe just curious, about where he was going with all this maybe, and whether or not he was going to throw up on her carpet again. He was a little curious about that himself; even stone sober he felt more than a tinge of nausea here. Maybe it was the smell-the smell of sex, of sweat and semen and crisp dollar bills, or maybe it was this other nagging notion. This strange idea that the closer he got to making sense of all this, the closer he got to Cherry Avenue. This call- me-crazy feeling that getting to the bottom of one was going to land him at the bottom of the other. Again. Okay-call him crazy. He'd answer to it-to Crazy, to Hopeless, to Old Man, to Will. Which is what Rachel used to call him. Only Rachel. He wouldn't mind answering to that at all right now. She could call him Will or Sam or Joe or Tiny Tim. But she wouldn't call him anything because she wouldn't call at all. Because she was dead, possibly, or surrounded by grandchildren, probably, or maybe just sitting next to whoever it was that had finally given her a life. Definitely. Okay, Rachel, this one's for you. Even if you don't want it, even if you won't know about it. It's for you too. The woman, Miss Coutrino, was staring at him. 'Finished?' she said. 'No.' He'd been looking ahead. All this time he'd been looking in the here and now. But he'd gotten it backward. He'd been looking the wrong way. About-face. 'No.' When you looked the other way you saw a bunch of old friends. Sure. There was Santini and Jean and Three Eyes and Mr. Klein. 'No.' And the hospital. The hospital was there too. The one that had taken a walking dead man and tried to make him forget the unforgivable. 'I ought to be saying goodbye,' he said. 'Goodbye.' But I'm saying hello.
TWENTY-ONE
They had a lot in common, William thought. Old age homes and mental hospitals. If he didn't know any better, he'd say they were almost interchangeable. And he didn't know any better. For example, you could put on your gravestone I'd Rather Be Here Than In A Mental Hospital or I'd Rather Be Here Than In An Old Age Home. I'd rather be shut away here than there, than either one of them. People would get your drift, no question.
Though this was, more technically, one wing in a many- winged hospital. And the wings were strikingly different; they didn't belong to the same animal. While one wing was dead and going nowhere-an ostrich wing, say-an- other wing was pumping with energy-a stork wing. He'd walked into that wing first-pediatrics and obstetrics, the pacing of fathers-to-be creating actual breezes. And like spring breezes, they carried the definite odor of hope, of things to come-in this case, talcum, formula, and lots of strong coffee. One whiff and William knew he'd entered the wrong place, that he couldn't be further from where he was going.
'Ward B's that way,' a nurse told him, pointing in the opposite direction, as if he were an extra that had wandered onto the wrong stage, dressed for Greek tragedy in the middle of a chorus from Rodgers and Hammer- stein-the kind where all the actors are doing cartwheels and do-si-dos.
Which brought him to the dead wing. Where there were no cartwheels, no breezes to speak of, and not the faintest sign of hope. You could search every inch of the place, turn it upside down and inside out and you'd never
