Too loud. Too fast.
I had come back. All the way back.
My chest aching with the effort, I reached the top of the Vallejo Steps, where elderly Chinese in gymsuits did t’ai chi exercises far below. Their slow, graceful motions were dizzying. I looked down the steep flights. No way I could make the long descent. Try for the street above.
I stooped over a drinking fountain on the walk but couldn’t get my head low enough to drink. I wet my face with one palm, a welcome coolness. My hand came away pink with blood.
Nearby stood a grocery cart heaped with clothes and bottles and metal and cardboard. I came upon its owner several yards beyond, supine and snoring in juniper bushes, a wine bottle protruding from a paper bag beside him. He was unremarkable in every respect. Except one: Cait’s quilt was wrapped around him.
I prodded him with my foot. Again, harder. He groaned and rolled onto one side. I bent and tried to pull the quilt away—and nearly blacked out from the effort.
“Wake up,” I growled.
He groaned and looked up blearily, did a startled second take.
“I want my quilt.”
His watery eyes shifted from my face to the hole in my coat. “You’re dead.”
“Hand it over,” I said, with all the menace I could muster. “And help me up to the street.”
The double message didn’t threaten him. Even if it had, I realized, he could have escaped me easily.
“I’ll pay,” I said. “Ten bucks.”
“You don’t have . . .” Looking guilty, he stopped.
I checked my pockets. Empty. Things were getting blurry again. I unfastened my belt, pried loose one of the last gold eagles, held it out. He exchanged the quilt for it, eyeing the belt.
The blacktop spun. My mind was taken suddenly with images of Hope and Susy.
“Fella, about my girls . . .”
“Huh?”
“I’ve come back.”
I don’t know whether he edged away or just looked like he wanted to. By then little was clear. I hugged the quilt to me. Cait, I thought. Oh God, Cait.
“Get me to them,” I muttered.
Beds are bolted to the floor in San Francisco Central’s seclusion rooms. Bedding is minimal—self-strangling being a fairly serious no-no—and I couldn’t have my quilt just yet, though they assured me it was being held. I asked for it each time somebody came to unlock the bathroom.
It wasn’t what you’d call cheery. No windows. No TV. No sharp instruments, including pencils and pens. The walls held only fingernail line drawings: two sketches of genitalia, one perfect swastika. If you weren’t already crazy, the place might nudge you closer.
On the other hand, my daily ten mils of Haldol kept me pretty groggy. With the quilt, everything would have been fine.
The bum evidently had a sense of honor. He’d taken my money belt but left the quilt and called an ambulance. At Medical Intensive Care my behavior—including, apparently, extensive descriptions of nineteenth-century life—was judged to be out of synch with consensus reality. Hence the funny room, with somebody looking in every fifteen minutes.
“What’s the deal?” I asked an orderly.
“Fifty-one fifty, pal,” he said. “Gotta do your time.”
Section 5150 of the Welfare and Institutions Code permitted holding me for psychiatric observation up to seventy-two hours. An evaluation would determine if I were gravely disabled, perhaps a menace.
I waited.
Meanwhile, the big surprise was that although my chest was cut and bruised, there was no entry wound. I sought an explanation. Nurses patronized me and orderlies looked at me like I was, well, crazy.
Finally a guy about my age showed up, a shrink named Sjoberg. His friendly eyes and soft-spoken manner reminded me a little of Harry. That was probably why, like an idiot, I spilled everything. God knew, I needed to talk.
Sjoberg listened intently, nodded encouragingly. I talked and talked—and finally asked what he made of it. He smiled and said he’d defer “deep diagnosis” pending continued observation.
Which brought the abrupt realization that so long as I told the truth I wasn’t going anywhere. Except maybe to the looney ward in a state hospital.
“Look, doc,” I said. “Let’s just say I was out there in fantasyland, okay?”
He looked at me with new interest. “Go on.”
I told him of my daughters, my job at the Chronicle, the divorce. You’ve been through a lot,” he said. I guess so.”
He started to rise.
“Can you tell me what happened to my chest?”
“I’ll check with Medical,” he said, and went off to phone. “Do you own a watch?” he asked when he returned.
“Sure.” I reached instinctively for my breast pocket. “Big pocket watch.”
“It’s still in your coat,” said Sjoberg. “Badly smashed. If a bullet struck there as you claimed, it might have been deflected by the metal casing.” He looked at me. “Which would explain the furrow on your cheek.”
“No, that happened months ago.”
His expression changed. Uh-oh. Three giant steps backward.
“Well, something happened,” Sjoberg said.
Brilliant, I thought. “May I have the watch?”
“In due time.” He chuckled at his pun.
Not funny. It had saved my life. I wanted it repaired. After Sjoberg left I said, “Well, little brother, you paid me back in full.”
I looked at the door. Nobody observing. Which was fortunate. Since I was talking to Andy.
My condition was diagnosed as “adjustment reaction,” a catchall category for inexplicable behavior on the part of accident victims and other traumatized types expected to recover over time. Not bad company, really.
My energy returned as the headaches and vertigo diminished. Sjoberg cut the Haldol and let me read paperbacks, probably testing me with vicarious violence. I devoured John D. MacDonald and Robert Parker. Great stuff, totally unavailable in the previous century. I ran in place, did sit-ups and push-ups, and thought of how I’d approach Hope and Susy. I tried
