I cough up some blood. I don’t know whose.
– No doubt.
She looks at the hand on my shoulder, pulls it away.
– You OK?
– No.
She nods.
– OK. Let’s get going.
I push off the wall and we both limp out the door and she stops and looks at the other cell across the basement.
She steps that way.
I don’t.
– Lydia, I need to get out of here.
She looks me over.
– You’ll hold up a little longer.
She walks, holding her belly.
– Fucking arrows. Who uses arrows, Joe? Savages, that’s who. I mean, no disrespect to any native peoples intended, but arrows are for savages. These people are savages. They have the same superstitions as savages. And they treat women like savages. And I’m not leaving these women here to be baby incubators for savages.
– Open that door and untie them and they’re just gonna try and kill you.
I come up behind her.
– You killed their father, Lydia.
She looks at the lock.
– All the more reason that I won’t leave them here, Joe. If that means we carry them out of here hog-tied, then that’s what we’ll do.
She looks at me.
– Do you have anything to get the lock off?
I hand her the axe.
– Try this.
She brings it down on the lock and it tears loose and she pushes the door open and light hits Vendetta and Harm, hanging from the water pipe that runs across the ceiling, nooses tied from their head-scarves knotted around their swollen necks.
Lydia stares at them.
I make for the stairs, glad that something was easy for a change.
– I don’t know how they did it.
I steer Axler’s mom’s Caddy up onto the bridge.
She rubs her forehead.
– They must have hung there forever.
I push the dash lighter in and put a cigarette in my mouth.
– They were tough little tarts. And they knew what they wanted. Want it bad enough and you’ll do anything.
She watches me take the lighter from the dash and use it.
– Fuck you, Joe.
I push the lighter back in its socket and drive.
– Yeah, fuck me.
Over on the horizon, something a little like dawn shows upriver.
I pull to the curb, back on Society turf.
– Where’s this?
– I got things to do. You can keep the car.
Lydia looks out the window.
– No. Absolutely not.
I open my door.
She grabs my arm.
– I thought we talked about this. I thought I was clear about where I stand with this kind of thing.
I pull loose and step out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition.
She comes around from her side and stands in front of me.
– This is not OK. You are not thinking straight. And it’s not even remotely the time to have a debate on the subject. We have to go to Terry and tell him what happened. Regardless of who was to blame, what happened out there was a fiasco and there will be consequences, and we have to begin to prepare for them right now.
I jam the Rebbe’s Defender into her stomach.
– Lydia, get out of my fucking way.
She looks down at the gun.
– Don’t be ridiculous, Joe.
I shoot her.
She goes down on the sidewalk and I scoop her up and stumble into the emergency entrance screaming and we’re mobbed and they pull her from me and I cling to her and someone tells someone to get rid of me and I let them drag me to a little room down the hall past the security desk and a guy tells me I have to be calm and I punch him and he goes down and I limp out of the little room and to the elevators and go up and the night nurse is behind the desk with her wrist in a brace and she looks at me and I look at her and she looks back down at her computer and I walk into the room and there’s my girl.
She comes out of the drugs a little when I’m detaching all the wires and hoses, and looks at me and touches my face.
I put a finger over the end of her trache tube and she smiles and her voice scratches its way out of her throat.
– Hello, handsome.
– Hello.
– You don’t look good.
– Yeah.
– You should go to a hospital.
– I should.
I pull the blankets and sheets away and she winces as I pull out her catheter and air whistles from the trache.
I help her to sit up.
– Sorry.
She covers the end of the tube.
– I’m gonna make a mess now.
– That’s OK.
I go to the closet and find her big leather jacket and tuck her into it.
– We going somewhere?
– Yeah.
She points at the bed table.
– My present, my present. I want to wear it.
I pick up the candy necklace and rip the package open with my teeth and stretch it and put it over her head and around her skinny neck.
She cocks her head and touches it with her fingertips.
– Am I beautiful?
