Not at all certain I was being addressed till a hand touched me lightly and withdrew.
'Baby Girl Teller? Shawna.'
'I'm sorry?'
'Last night sometime.' Rich aroma of coffee from his breath. 'I was here till eight, so it had to be sometime after that. Nurses still in report, I won't know for a while. None of us ever thought she'd last that long, of course. Amazing how hard these kids struggle, isn't it?'
I realized a hand had been extended. Found and took it. Another pause as he noticed my groping.
'Sorry.' Faint suggestion of good bourbon beneath the coffee? 'Bob Skinner. Have a restaurant over on Adams coming up on ten years now. Can't cook a lick myself, I'd be eating fish sticks and Stouffer's most nights otherwise, but from the first, no reason to it, good people walked in my front door looking for work. They run the place. I have sense enough to get out of the way and let them.'
I told him who I was.
'Notfromhere.'
'Not a hell of a lot of us are. Even those of us for whom it's home.'
'I know what you mean. I came down twelve years ago for the music. Celebration trip, I told myself: I'd just graduated from City College with a master's in philosophy. What the hell you gonna do with something like that, a degree in philosophy? Might as well train to be a shepherd. When the others went back, I stayed on. My Polish grandmother had left me money smuggled out of Germany. I used it to open the restaurant. Damned thing took off-who'd have ever thought it? You have a son or daughter in there?'
I shook my head. 'Just walking by.'
'Feeling your way, so to speak.' He must have smiled at that. I know I did. 'Baby Girl Teller's the third one to die this week. Something they call nee. Dead bowel. IC bleeds get a lot of the others. Kind of like a stroke. That's what took Baby Boy Gutierrez, both the Williams twins, Baby Raincrow. Mario, that's Baby Raincrow, he'd been with us almost three months.
'Top of that, you've got drug babies, chronic hearts, all these syndromes with password names, Down and Tet and the like. Or short rib syndrome, like what Baby Patel had. Diptak, his name was. Always made me thinlc Tiktok of Oz. Chest wall never develops past what's there at birth. Just growing up kills you. You squeeze yourself to death.'
Automatic doors opened. Someone smelling of apples emerged.
'Hey. Sandy.'
'Morning, Bob. You ever go home?'
'Sure I do. Break time?'
'You bet.'
'Catch as catch can, huh?'
'Better believe it. This day could go down the tubes fast, any moment. Twenty-seven-week triplets on the board.'
'So I heard.'
With a discreet ding, the elevator sighed open.
'Later, Bob.'
'Give the kids a hug for me, Sandy. Rich get over his cold?'
'For now, anyway.'
'Woman's a hero,' Skinner said as the doors shut. 'Her ten-year-old's some kind of musical genius, been giving concerts since she was six, had to have a special cello made for her. Four-year-old's a cystic. Sandy's always been torn between the two of them, what they need. Husband can't handle it at all. Either he's gone completely, out of the picture for months at a time, or he's there bringing her flowers one moment, beating on her the next. Then every day she comes in to worry over these kids. Buy you a coffee?'
We descended together to the lobby, where I'd been heading all along. In the cafeteria Skinner pushed my cup across a table sticky with God knows what. We go suddenly into free fall, you could stand on it and be okay.
'Sugar? Cream?'
'I'm fine.'
I sat back dipping in and out of nearby conversations. Lawyers with briefcases of resdess papers just to our right, cops with crackling radios also nearby, one of them a rookie being talked through a written report, man with a catch in his voice asking How can you do this to me, Thelma, don't you know I'd do anything for you? don't you? as the woman stood and walked away.
'So,' Skinner said. 'You don't have a kid in NI, what were you doing up there?'
'Told you. I got off on the wrong floor.'
'Maybe you were meant to.'
Uh-oh, I thought, here it comes. One of those guys who's got it all figured out. Next thing I knew he'd be witnessing to me, wanting to know what church I attended, inviting me to his.
'What about you?' I said.
'Me?'
'Son? daughter? grandchild?'
'No, nothing like that, nothing at all. Not even married-not any longer, anyway. Truth is…' He trailed off. 'Name's Lew, right?'
'Right.'
'Well, truth is I'm sterile, Lew. Susie, my wife, she had some considerable trouble with that. She foughtit, but itfinally got on top of her. Can't say I blame her all that much. Up in Minnesota last I heard, living with some student half her age.
'I'm a veteran. Korea-you remember all that? Gave half a lung to the cause of democracy. TB. Tilings didn't go quite the way they were supposed to. Squirreled out awhile there too, afterward, in the hospital. Sequelae, the docs like to call it. Code for somebody screwed up. So for a few years there I was a frequent flyer as far as hospitals go. Hung out on the wards a lot. ER's, too- that's some-thing'll definitely change the way you see the world. Then one day I walked by the nursery. There was this kid in a crib just inside that I'd have sworn was watching me. Even held up his arm that jerky way they do, pointing it at me. So I started going by every few hours, and you know? it was like he was always glad to see me. He'd hold up that shaky arm and smile. Like he'd been waiting. Later I found out his name was Daniel. Mom was barely fifteen, no prenatal care. Came in to have him, then no one ever saw her again. Nurses named him. One of them finally took him home with her. Great world, huh?'
The one we have, anyway. Late and soon, getting and spending, laying waste our powers. All that.
'Boys need a refill?' a waitress asked.
'No thanks.' One cup and I already had a buzz on.
'I'll have half a cup more if you don't mind, ma'am.'
She poured and walked away, shoes slapping at the floor. House slippers with the backs caved in, no doubt, latest fashion in American footwear.
'I live four blocks from here,' my companion said, 'over by the river, in this tiny little house made out of cypress and set up on cement blocks. Onion plants growing from behind the switchplates and electric outlets. Least bit of wind, windows rattle like dry peas in a pod. Every morning I get up and come see my kids. Come back every afternoon, again at night. Maybe they know I'm here, like Daniel did. Maybe that way they know someone cares, at least.'
I remembered what he'd said about the nurse, Sandy. 'Kind of a hero yourself.'
'Nah. I've seen heroes.'
He was quiet for a while.
'You wanta walk?'
We did. Back out into the lobby, onto Prytania. I heard the sound of heavy traffic from St. Charles a block away, smelled garlic from a restaurant across the street. A delivery truck of some kind pulled in hard, brakes groaning. Snatches of conversation again-
'Man does that to my girl, he ain't safe nowhere!'
'Hell of a day.'
