“That’s a hill worth the price of…” I paused. I knew we couldn’t afford to part with ten dollars. Reluctantly, I showed him my pearls, where they sat on my collarbone, just under my blouse. “These pearls are worth better than twenty-five dollars,” I said.
“And you’re going to hand them over, Anyway?”
“Uh-huh,” I lied.
Bobby shook his head. “I’d like to see that,” he said. “Tomorrow, then.”
He borrowed a wagon from the Ladies’ Protection and attached Monster to the rig. Then, with Tan’s help, they took a ladder from Rose’s garage, padded it with quilts, and loaded that in the wagon to use as a stretcher.
I insisted on going with him, though the ride nearly undid me. The hills of the city were impossibly steep, and with the roads split in places, we had to zigzag for blocks.
Bobby had thought to bring along his pal William to help lift Rose into the wagon. William rode in back, and every so often Bobby looked over his shoulder and asked, “How ya doin’ back there, buddy? All good?” I expect William nodded, though he never said a word.
I kept my eyes on the road. When Bobby noticed that I clung to the little iron rail of the bench each time the wagon lurched over a bump, my knee and hip knocking against his hip and knee, he said, “Here, put an arm around.” He was struggling to work Monster’s reins, or I expect he would have grabbed me to keep me safe. When I balked, he replied, “You wanna fall and break your head, be my guest.”
“I’m not falling,” I said, and I put my arm around.
I had never so much as touched a boy. His ribs under my hand, his warmth, were a marvel to me. I had to struggle to keep my mind on where we were going. And I swore that if Bobby Del Monte so much as looked at me funny, I’d sock him.
At last the street leveled when we neared the water. We drove along the piers till we arrived at the hospital. With scores of wounded lying in the grass and in the road, no one paid the slightest notice as Bobby pulled up by the last tent of some twenty tents, and he and William slid the ladder under a flap in the bottom of the tent.
As we came in, a doctor, having just finished his rounds, was walking away, giving instructions to a nurse. I was glad to see that Rose had been wrapped in fresh bandages, and with no other nurses about, I snitched several rolls of cotton from a pile while those two scruffy boys made a quick business of lifting Rose, sheets and all.
Watching them jostle her into the wagon—well, I was convinced they’d drop her. I said as much.
“You sure know how to beat the drum, doncha,” Bobby said.
“I’ll do worse, if you—” But he gave me such a stony look, I stopped myself from saying more.
And good that I shut my mouth, for they got her up the killer hills and into the house, on up the stairs to her bedroom. Bobby took over then, settling her gently on the bed, and ever so carefully covering her broken body with the good sheets of the house. I suspected he wasn’t a skunk after all. His pants may have been patched, but they were clean; his nails short and scrubbed.
“Talk to you a second, miss?” he said when we were back downstairs. “I don’t mean to nose into your business.”
“Then don’t,” I suggested quietly, knowing that Tan, Lifang, and Pie were listening on the other side of the kitchen door.
“She needs a nurse,” Bobby said.
“I’m a nurse.”
“ ’Cause at the hospital, I heard the doc say—”
I sighed dramatically. “For godsakes, can you talk any faster?”
“I could, if a person were pleasanter.”
“I’m pleasant. I’m pleasant!”
“Goddamn,” Bobby said. “Well, take this for nothing: That eye of hers? The one all bandaged? It needs to come out. There’s an infection brewing, see, where the bones are broke underneath. I heard the doc say it. He said they don’t expect she’ll make it, so they let the eye stay put.”
I didn’t want to hear it. “Is that all?” I said, nudging him toward the door.
“You don’t exactly strike me as the tendering type,” he added, “nothing on it, miss, just saying—”
“You don’t know me.”
“Nope, I don’t.”
“Nope, you don’t.” I held the front door open so that he and his friend could move along.
Bobby studied the coved ceiling in the foyer, and the chandelier that held a thousand crystal stars. I guessed he was figuring how it was with me and Rose.
“If I had a relation with this kind of fancy rig, I’d call her Ma and get on with it.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t ask for your opinion,” I said.
He looked at me as if I were a tune he couldn’t quite recall. “Vera, huh? That’s your name? I don’t think so. I think I’ll have to call you… Versus. It’s a good word, isn’t it, William? Versus. Means opposite.”
“Ver-sus-sus,” William parroted, missing the joke but comprehending the slight at my expense.
Inside the parlor, Ricky was also listening and the damn bird chirped, “Versus, versus!”
Now Bobby was laughing. “Well, Versus, time to settle accounts.” He held his cap scrunched in his fist, and I could see that the lining was all torn.
This next part, I had prepared for: I handed him a sock stuffed with pennies and dimes that I had stowed ahead of time behind one of the statues by the door. “It’s almost all there,” I said. When he paused, I quickly added, “Tell you what. I’ll throw in a bottle. Here. You drink whiskey, don’t you, sailor?”
Bobby wagged his head, as if he’d heard something terrible about me and had refused to believe it, but now must. “Oh, now, would you look at that,” he
