CHAPTER THREE
AFTER THE ACCIDENT—DIRECTLY after—there was only pain. When I think back on that time, I see a cold, dark hole. I think, for a while, I still had a job. I know there was someplace I went in the morning, without kisses. Without coffee. I don’t remember exactly where I was, but it rained a lot. At least, I think I remember a lot of rain. All my world was very gray.
I would sit at the hospital, with the man who had been my husband. Who was then still my husband.
I would sit with him and I would lift his half-dead hand and I would talk to it and to him. I knew it was useless, but I did it anyway. If I hadn’t had him to talk to, I would have been alone. I wasn’t ready for that.
It was not a private hospital room. The money was all gone by then, and the bills were piling up more quickly than I could even count. So, in the hospital, my husband had a roommate. The roommate was tall and effete, with long-fingered hands and remarkably long hair. The man’s wife was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, have still ever seen, with dark, kohl-rimmed eyes. I’ll always remember the slash of deep red lipstick in her waxen face on those days. Those early days. She wore worry and fear like a cloak.
In the days I sat with my comatose husband behind the curtains drawn around his bed, I gathered that the tall, effete man’s name was Julian and that he was in desperate need of some expensive surgery that the couple couldn’t afford. Their desperation was palpable and stemmed from the fact that they had been bilked out of a great deal of money by an art dealer. Julian was an artist, and proceeds from his work had been withheld. Had this not occurred, the surgery could have been afforded and their future altered. Assured. It was all, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
They could not have known I listened. They would have been too self-involved to even think about there being anyone beyond the curtains that surrounded my comatose husband most of every day. They would not have known I was there, praying at my husband’s bedside at a time when I still had a God to pray to. But in between praying and talking softly to my husband who could not, in any case, understand, I would listen to their hushed discussions. It passed the time.
Over a period of days, while Julian became ever more delicate and haggard, the two of them hatched a plot. They would hire someone to kill the person who had done them such an injustice. In doing so, their funds would be released back to them and the surgery could go on. That was their thinking. But the wife, Clara, couldn’t find anyone to do the deed. Over the course of the days I listened, she reported that she had made discreet inquiries but, in truth, she didn’t even know where to begin. Who does, when you think about it? What “nice” people know where to look to hire someone when they need someone killed? It’s just not generally a middle-class activity. That’s not a bad thing.
“You couldn’t find anyone?” The rain on the window was a live thing that day. You could hear it beating rhythmically on the glass, some dark jazz tattoo. It didn’t drown out the desperation in Julian’s voice, though. I could hear that desperation from across the room, louder even than the sounds the words themselves made.
“I’m sure there’s someone out there, but I don’t know where to look.” I heard something dire in her voice and I peeked out from a join in the curtain. Her eyes looked smokier than ever. Twin pools of despair. “Think about it,” she said to him. “Even asking the wrong person could land me in jail.”
“But, surely, for ten thousand dollars we can find someone willing to put a bullet into him.”
“It’s not the money, Julian.” Their voices were hushed, their tones low, but the polished linoleum carried the words to me on ghost hands. “Like I said, I don’t know where to look.”
“I’ll do it.” My own voice surprised me, and they looked surprised, too, seeing me step out from behind the curtain in that way. My voice had a disused sound, like I hadn’t spoken in a while. Maybe I had not.
Their heads swiveled towards me in a single motion. It was as though neither of them had ever seen me before, though by then Julian and my husband had been roommates for weeks.
“Where did you come from?” she said.
I pointed back at the curtained area. “My husband is in a coma. I sit with him sometimes. I … I’ve been listening. For a while. For days. I know your story.”
“And you said you’ll …” Clara was searching but she didn’t find the words she was looking for. I helped her out.
“The man. Who took the money from you. He needs to be dead. You can’t find anyone to do it. I have nothing more to lose.” I indicated my nearly dead husband and thought about the child they could not see. The house. The dreams. The life. I said it again: “I have nothing more to lose. And I need money. Ten thousand dollars?”
They both nodded, without speech.
“All right, well, I need that, too. Tell me what you want done.” I thought about it for a few minutes more, but that was enough. And then, “Tell me what you need
