Michael’s so invested in this drama that only now does he realize someone’s talking to him. He turns.
“Excuse me,” a girl says. “I need help.”
The voice is meek. She’s eight or nine years old. Her school uniform cardigan drips blood.
“Help,” she says. “I’m bleeding.”
“Where are your parents?” Michael asks, but the girl says “help” again, and keeps on saying it, “help, I’m bleeding,” as Michael kneels for a closer look. The blood, he now sees, spills from a nickel-sized wound in the girl’s neck, though the wound is expanding, and steam appears to be rising off it. When the girl speaks, blood drips from her mouth.
Michael’s yelling for a doctor. He’s tearing at his shirtsleeve to use as a tourniquet. He’s relieved to see a man in a suit moving with urgency their way. But as the man gets closer, it becomes apparent that he too is bleeding, spouting thin, dark streams from his forehead, and he too is saying “help.” Now a woman approaches, her intestines unraveling onto the pavement and trailing behind her like a long, pink tail. And here’s a teenage boy with half his torso blown off, and another with a head wound, bobbing and falling, sending brain matter everywhere, and Michael’s suddenly surrounded by even more victims: all gushing, all dying, all hobbling toward him. He’s screaming in the helmet and no one can hear him; he’s screaming, and he’s trying to rip off his shirtsleeve, and to rip off his helmet, when, in an instant, they all disappear.
A banner unfurls from between two trees. It reads: 28,407 americans were killed by gun violence this year.
9.
Broder enters the bodega, hood up, hands in pockets, touching the gun. The bodega smells like cat litter. A woman scratches lotto tickets on the glass top of the ice cream case. Another has a dozen items bundled in her arms: garbage bags, protein bars, various soups and beans, three bottles of seltzer. No shopping baskets in sight. A can of cream of mushroom falls from bundle to floor. Broder picks up the item. He places it on the counter.
“Thank you,” says the woman. She eyes the dented can, decides it’s still good. A tattoo across her clavicle says Stay Gold in backward mirror script.
The store clerk spits sunflower seeds into a plastic cup. He wears one of those unlicensed New York Yankees caps where the logo’s in a slightly wrong font. His teeth are incredibly white and he seems to take pleasure in showing them off, taking seeds one at a time, cracking with his central incisors. Broder can’t stand the sound.
“You take cards?” the woman says.
“Visa and Master,” the clerk says, and spits.
He puts another seed between his teeth. The woman opens her purse. Broder eyes its interior: cash and change, two MetroCards. There was sixty dollars in Ricky’s wallet. It won’t last Broder long. He touches the gun again and looks up to see his own warped face in the security mirror. His nose is thread-veined and bulbous. He sees the security camera hanging from the ceiling, sees the top of his own head on the security TV behind the counter. The woman pays and puts away her purse.
Broder buys cigarettes and a stale bagel. The cigarettes cost sixteen dollars. The bagel’s ninety-five cents. He sits in Washington Square Park and eats it plain. Pigeons peck around his feet. He removes a baggie, turns it inside out, licks the faint remaining powder. He opens and closes the clasp of the bracelet he slipped from Ricky’s wrist. Broder’s teeth go numb.
10.
Wendy reinflates the air mattress. Michael can tell she’s annoyed that he’s not doing it himself. It’s like when he gets the flu. She’ll make soup and watch any movie he wants, but her sympathy lasts twenty-four hours. By the next day she’s mad that he hasn’t recovered.
They haven’t discussed buying a new bed. It’s one thing to expense the occasional taxi, but he can’t buy a bed on the company card. Wendy must be aware of their debt by this point, but Michael’s been given temporary reprieve; now’s not the time to bring it up.
In silence, they stretch a sheet over the air mattress, slide the duvet into its cover. Michael thinks this should be an Olympic game, like synchronized swimming, the German judge docking points for sloppy corners. He used to narrate, like he was calling the event for ABC Sports. Or he’d crawl inside the duvet cover, light the flashlight on his phone, and pretend to be exploring a cave. He used to be able to make Wendy laugh.
Wendy suggests they order pizza, a peace pipe of sorts, conforming to neither person’s vision of guiltless consumption. Michael lets her choose toppings.
They watch the news and eat in bed. Michael eats most of the crust and cheese. Wendy picks at kalamata olives with a fork. Hurricane Marie has left thousands on the Gulf Coast without power. The National Guard stormed the FSU Hillel. When the smoke cleared, twelve people, including the rabbi and two other hostages, were dead.
“Jesus,” Wendy says.
Ricky’s murder is addressed after the first commercial break. Devor, it seems, turned himself in, and has since been released. In a taped press conference, he pledges his innocence and vows to assist with the investigation.
“What do you think?” asks Wendy.
Michael’s been thinking about Ricky’s sure thing investment. He’s been wondering why Ricky over all the other people at the party. Newscasters speculate that he was randomly chosen, an anonymous banker with the bad luck of wrong
