Ellison Nicodemo turns on the tap and splashes her face with a few handfuls of lukewarm water that stink of rust and chlorine. She imagines the Signalman scowling and telling her, “You look just about near enough to dead, it’s a holy wonder they haven’t already come and carried you away to the boneyard.”
Maybe I am, and they have, and this is Hell.
She screws the top off an almost empty plastic bottle of Listerine Cool Mint and swishes and spits into the stained porcelain bowl, then gets her hands wet again and runs her fingers through her hair in a half-hearted attempt to persuade it to behave.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she whispers to that other her in the mirror. “What do you care what he thinks?” When her reflection doesn’t see fit to answer either question, she spits again, and this time there’s a little blood in her saliva. She washes it down the drain, unlocks the door, and goes back out to face the Signalman. He’s returned to his chair and is staring at the dead TV again.
“This thing with you and the television,” she says, “what’s that all about? Have I missed the end of the world again or what?” She goes to the kitchenette and opens the lid of the blue-and-white forty-eight-quart Coleman chest sitting on the floor by the useless refrigerator. Most of yesterday’s ice has melted, but the beer inside is still cold enough. She takes out a can of National Bohemian and holds it against her forehead and cheeks for a moment.
“You want a beer?” she asks.
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, how you need to shake a leg.”
“You made yourself clear,” says Ellison.
“You know, I can remember when you stayed sober as a judge until noon.”
“Do you want a beer or not?”
And then the Signalman relents, says what the hell, and she takes out a second can and closes the lid of the cooler and goes back to her nest of sheets on the mattress. He takes his can and cracks it open, and she opens hers, and for a few moments they sit quietly drinking the cold Natty Boh, not talking. She finds the Public Enemy T-shirt she wore the night before and pulls it on, hiding her pale breasts and her ribsy abdomen and the strange train-track scars. The shirt is ragged black cotton, much loved, worn so many years now that it’s worn thin and worn entirely through in some spots. Printed on the front is the silhouette of what might or might not be a cop in the crosshairs of a gun.
Finally, it’s Ellison Nicodemo who breaks the silence.
“For a minute there,” she says, “I thought maybe you were going to meetings again,” and the Signalman shakes his head.
“Well, I ain’t, so you can stop worrying your pretty head over that. And I’m not going to lecture you, either, so you can stop fretting about that, as well.”
“What are you doing here?” she asks for the third time.
“Right up front,” he says, “I want you to know that it wasn’t my decision. Truth is, I advised against it. When they brought me your file, when I found out about”—and he motions at her and at the squalor with his beer can—“I told them you were clearly in no shape for active duty. Hell, I told them I doubted you were up to walking and chewing gum at the same time.”
She looks up at him, then looks down at her feet. There’s a dirty Band-Aid wrapped around her left big toe, but she can’t remember how long it’s been there or what it’s covering up. “I quit,” she says. “I was permanently discharged. I have the paperwork in a drawer over there.”
“And we both know that no one’s ever really, truly quit. You know permanent means, on a good day, provisional. And you also know that what Albany wants, Albany gets, and they get it one way or another, by hook or by crook or courtesy a few enhanced interrogation techniques.”
She takes another swallow of beer, and now she’s staring at the dead TV screen, too.
“I’m not good for shit,” she says. “I haven’t been clean in over two years.”
“Yeah. I know. So does the company. They just don’t care. It just doesn’t fucking matter.”
She finishes her Natty Boh, crumples the can, and tosses it at a low heap of empties that has accumulated on the other side of the room, a lopsided aluminum talus slope.
The Signalman frowns and sighs and watches her like a disappointed parent or a heartbroken lover, and the truth is, he’s been a little of both to her. He says, “We don’t have time to dry you out. So you’ll have what you need. I’ve seen to that. You’ll have better than whatever garbage you’ve been shooting. And when it’s done, if you want rehab, you’ll get the best. And if you don’t want rehab, there’ll be no pressure, no guilt-tripping. I’ll bring you right back here and let you get on with—whatever you call this.”
She starts to reach for the cigarette she left in the ashtray, but
