Judy slumped in a chair in the hospital waiting room and stared at the stale blood on her palms. She felt sick to her stomach. She couldn't get all the blood off when she'd washed. It had dried to black and caked in the lines and creases of her palms, limning each wrinkle with a line as fine as a sable brush's. Her lifeline was painted with the blood of her best friend.
Judy stuck her hands between her legs so she wouldn't look at them anymore. It didn't help. Mary's blood stained her snowpants, from where she had cradled her in the snow. Judy looked around the room for distraction. A TV was on, mounted high in a corner of the empty waiting room, which was reserved for surgeries. The volume was turned off on the TV, but Judy could see it was a never-ending update on the blizzard. The snow fell on the TV screen just as it fell outside. A reporter interviewed a bureaucrat in a tie and a ski hat. Then the screen showed a picture of huge dump trucks salting the highway.
Judy couldn't focus on the screen. Her thoughts kept returning to Mary. Lying on the ground, bleeding. She was in surgery now. They were doing everything they could, a doctor had told her, as had one of the nurses, an older woman. Everybody was doing everything they could, Judy kept telling herself over and over, like a mantra. She would repeat it to Mary's parents and her twin when they came. But the DiNunzios were old, and Judy worried they couldn't take a shock like this.
Judy tried to settle down. She'd have to have it together if she was going to see the DiNunzios. She eased back into the chair and crossed her legs, avoiding the stain on her pants. She laced her fingers together, then folded her arms. She would have called her parents but they were traveling again. Judy looked around the room. Her gaze had nowhere to rest.
Judy caught sight of the TV and sat bolt upright in disbelief. The screen said SPECIAL REPORT above a photo of Marta, superimposed against the offices of Rosato & Associates. There was a photo of blood smeared on the elevator at the office, then two quick photos of the security guards in the building. What? What was happening? Judy couldn't believe what she was seeing.
A TV anchorwoman came back on. Her lip-sticked mouth was moving but no words came out. The TV was on mute. Judy leapt from her chair and hurried to the TV. She was tall enough to reach it but she couldn't find the buttons. Where was the volume control? She yanked a chair under the TV and clambered up on it.
Up close, the anchorwoman's face was flat and large, the colors the ersatz hues of television. Her eyes were the blue of sapphires, her lips a supersaturated pink. She kept talking silently, opening and closing her mouth. Judy looked everywhere on the TV console. Where was the volume?
Film of Marta came on, talking in front of the Criminal Justice Center. Behind her was its modern stained glass. It must be file footage from the Steere trial. Judy was panic-stricken. Had something happened to Marta? Was she shot, too, like Mary? What about the security guards? Judy searched frantically for the TV buttons. No controls. She groped the console. Cool, seamless plastic. Fuck! Where was it?
'Where's the volume?' Judy shouted, though she knew the floor was empty. There hadn't even been a receptionist at the desk when she came up to the floor. 'HEY!' she shouted. No one came running but she didn't want to leave the TV. Maybe it was remote-controlled. Judy twisted on the chair and scanned the room for the remote. The coffee tables, the end tables, and the seats were bare.
On the TV screen, Mayor Walker was giving some sort of press conference. His face looked grave behind the microphones and a podium with the city seal. To his left stood his chief of staff, looking equally somber. At the top of the screen it said LIVE. What were they saying? Did it have to do with Marta? With Mary?
Judy spotted a small plastic panel under the screen and hit it to see if it would pop open. It didn't. She hit it again but the panel still wouldn't open. She hit it harder, pounding with her fist until the lid came up. Tiny dials protruded from a recessed compartment, and Judy twisted them back and forth with bloodstained fingers. The fake colors on the TV switched from flesh tones to hot orange, from royal blue to black. Judy still couldn't hear the TV. Where was the fucking volume?
On the screen, the police inspector was being interviewed, standing in front of the Roundhouse in the snow. What was going on? A commercial came on. The news report was over. No! Was someone shooting them all? Who was behind this? Steere? Judy couldn't let him. She'd fight back. She needed to hear. She hit the TV panel until the lid broke off, then pounded it harder, cracking it into sharp plastic shards, straight through the fucking panel. Smashing it, destroying it, obliterating it. Killing all the phony colors with the force of her might and her will and her pain. Raging until her hand was covered with blood and finally it was her own.
* * *
Judy sat in her chair with her hand packed and bandaged with gauze. She'd taken three stitches and refused a sedative. She'd scrubbed her snowpants and washed her face and hands. A nurse had brought her an antibacterial soap and it had taken off most of the blood on her good hand. She felt drained, her emotions spent. She watched the scene around her with an odd detachment.
Bennie Rosato had arrived, in jeans and a sweater, her large face un-madeup and drawn. She made sure Judy was okay, then sat trying to comfort Mary's mother, an elderly, birdlike woman with teased hair. The mother sobbed as she sat with Mary's father, a short, bald man whose laborer's body had gone soft. His eyes were red- rimmed, but he was comforting his wife.
With them sat Mary's sister, Angie. Angie was Mary's identical twin. Her hair, though shorter, was the same dirty blond, and her eyes were as brown and large as Mary's. Her mouth was a perfect match, full and broad. Judy liked looking at Angie. It was as if Mary were in the waiting room, whole and healthy again.
Angie was speaking in low tones to her parents and to Bennie. The four of them sat huddled close together, a nervous, weepy circle. Judy couldn't hear from where she was sitting, but she watched Angie's lips move like the anchorwoman's on TV. The DiNunzios were on mute, in two dimensions. Everything around Judy seemed distant. She wanted to keep it that way. Let Bennie comfort Mary's parents, she would know what to say. Judy had to figure out what to
31
Marta dashed down the snowy dune behind Steere's house and ran toward the left side of the house. The security lights blasted her with light as soon as she reached their invisible ambit. She picked up the pace, sprinting beside her leaping shadow, spraying snow with each bound past the house's back entrance. As tempted as she was to follow Alix into the mansion, it was too risky. Lights were going on inside, and Marta needed to see what was happening.
She made it to the shadow of the side wall and turned the corner. The security lights blinked off. It was dark again. Marta leaned against the house, breathing hard. Her ribs speared her insides. She hadn't exercised this much all last year. Wind and snow gusted off the ocean and whipped through Marta's hair. Her eyes stung with snow and salt and she clung to the rough shakes of the wall, blinking. Snow buried her gloved fingers and stuck to the wooden shakes in splotches. Snowdrifts reached to her knees.
She had to keep moving. Marta inhaled deeply, steeling herself for the familiar rib pain, and ran through the snowdrifts alongside the house, sliding a hand along the wall so she wouldn't fall. The windows were high and light
