and loops that will put us on the BQE.
– I’m looking for signs.
Lydia takes her foot off the dash, leans over and looks at my face.
– No you’re not.
I point out the windshield.
– The assholes that designed this shit wanted to kill us. I’m trying to find the signs that’ll keep us from plowing into something made of concrete.
She leans back and puts her feet up.
– You’re looking for an ambush.
I tighten my fingers on the wheel.
– No, I’m not.
She crosses her ankles.
– You’re looking for a bunch of savage infecteds in loincloths. You’re looking for zombie parachutists. You’re looking for dragons. You’re in the wilderness and you’re scared the lions, tigers and bears are going to eat you.
I stop scanning the edges of the road and overhanging tree branches and overpasses and cars that pull up alongside us. I stop looking at any of the places I’ve been looking at, searching for ambushes.
– I’m just driving.
She taps the toe of her Doc Martens on the windshield.
– You ever been off of the Island? Before, I mean.
– I was born in the Bronx.
– You’re such a New Yorker, never been anywhere. I traveled. I did a semester in Europe, in Italy. Went everywhere. And I’m from the West Coast. When I came out here I took a whole month to drive crosscountry. Been to Canada. Costa Rica. Mexico. Hawaii when I was a kid. Been to fucking Disney World. Most disgusting place on earth. Consumerism at its worst.
I chain another smoke.
– That radio work?
– Sure.
I toss the spent butt out the window.
– Mind playing something on it?
– What do you want to hear?
– Something that isn’t you.
She flips the bird at me and clicks the radio and settles the dial on some college station that’s playing some chick with an acoustic guitar.
Pet the Cat music, Evie calls it.
– This OK?
– If it includes you shutting up, it’s OK.
She nods, draws a little spiral in the dust on the dash.
– How’s she doing, your friend?
I reach over and spin the dial and put it on a jazz station and turn it up. Coltrane plays “Stardust.”
Lydia ruffles her short hair.
– Just that you never asked about HIV again after that one time and I didn’t know if you’d been able to get her some new meds. And stopping at the hospital just made me wonder?
– She’s fine.
– If she’s in the hospital, she isn’t fine. I told you before, I know people in the treatment community. One of the Lesbian Gay and Other Gendered Alliance members was a hospice worker. If she needs care, we could arrange something.
– She doesn’t need care.
– Hospital’s not the place for someone who’s really sick. They don’t give a shit. Fucking HMOs, it’s all about the bottom line. Get them in and get them out. Free up the beds for another pile of dollars. She could be at home, if she’s that bad.
We grind into traffic merging from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and start crawling through Red Hook.
– She’s not staying in the hospital. She’s gonna be fine.
Lydia tugs on her rainbow-enameled ear cuff.
– You’re not thinking about doing something to
I lean on the horn, cut the wheel and drive up on the shoulder, peel around a line of cars and jump back in the lane beyond the jam and put the pedal down.
Lydia adjusts the strap of her seat belt.
– Just as a reminder, infecting someone, on purpose, that’s a severe abuse of the Society charter. An execution offense. You get the sun for that.
Greenwood Cemetery appears on our left. I know its name the same way I know the names of anything off the Island; I’ve read about it. It’s a hell of a lot bigger than on the map.
Lydia looks at it as we drive past.
– And there’s the moral issue. Do you have the right to infect anyone? Even if you think it might save their life, do you have the right to make that choice for them? Personally, I don’t think anyone has the right to make any decision for anyone.
The cemetery disappears behind us. The road is open. We bend right onto the Belt Parkway toward the bay, the decommissioned docks on one side, Owl’s Head Park on the other.
– And, of course, you never even know if it will work. I mean, I’ve never tried to infect anyone, but I know the survival rate is below fifty percent. And it’s a horrible death.
On the POW/MIA Memorial Parkway, long span and towers of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge ahead, a right turn and we’d be heading west.
Solomon’s hogleg digs into my back. The Docks Boss’.44 weighs my left jacket pocket. A round from that in Lydia’s side, lean over and open her door and push her out and take the ramp onto the bridge. See something else.
Lydia puts a finger on the radio dial, takes it off.
– Just acting like you don’t care, Joe, that doesn’t change anything. And it won’t change how you feel if you fuck up and do something cruel and stupid. Something irrevocable.
Kill Lydia and drive away and see something else. Something new.
The first part has its appeal.
The rest of it? Ask me, there’s probably nothing out there worth seeing. Nothing better than a dying girl with no hair.
The bridge slips away and we’re on Leif Erikson Drive. The ocean on our right. I look at it. I’ve never seen it from this close.
Lydia stares.
– I flew over it. I flew over the whole damn thing. Twice. Imagine. And I’ll never do it again.
She leans her forehead against her window.
– Fucking Vyrus.
I glance at her.
– Still talking to Sela?
The muscles in the back of her neck jump.
– Sometimes. She’s Coalition now, but she’s still a friend.
I look at the road, arcing onto Shore Parkway, away from the water.
– She’s fucking the girl.
She turns from the window.
– I know.
I fish a smoke from my pocket.
She looks at the map in her lap, points.
– Cropsey Ave.
