“Sure,” John said. “Just don’t ask about my sex life.”
The man chuckled. “What ward are you coming off?”
“2D West.”
“And that’s the—”
“The psychiatric ward.”
The man nodded, disinterested. He paid no mind to John’s disfigured face. “Pay grade at time of separation?”
“E-7.”
“MOS?”
“I have ten.”
“Give me the two highest.”
“11 Echo 40, 45 Bravo, Lima, and Zebra.”
“Hey, how do you like that,” the black man said, at once enthused. “I was 11 Echo, too. ‘Clank, clank, I’m a tank.’”
“Hell on fucking wheels, man. We ride in style.”
This time the black man laughed hard. “Give me your C number. I got to make sure it matches the stub.”
“C29541313.”
“Legal first name?”
“John,” John said.
“Not Jonathan?”
“Not Jonathan. John.”
“Middle name?”
“Victor.”
“Last name?”
“Sanders.”
— | — | —
CHAPTER TWELVE
He punched the radio buttons one after another. On one station was a talk show hosted by a botanist. “Root stimulants, such as indolebutyic preparations, exist to increase root-to-soil area ratios, to reduce production time of roots, and to extend the overall mass of the root system itself.” The next station played music that sounded like a sawmill. The next station played reggae. And the next—hip hop. Kurt switched the radio off with a vengeance.
He drove through Annapolis directionlessly. At least the rain had stopped, but the weatherman promised clear skies for the next two or three days, which meant that it would rain again in a few hours. Last night when he’d taken Vicky to the hospital, the doctor had been vague and had not disclosed the seriousness of her injuries. Kurt would return today before his shift, and he hoped he’d get some answers. He hoped she would be all right. And he hoped this time she would press charges.
Meanwhile, he drove dizzily through strange streets. He lit cigarettes and let them burn down in the ashtray. Several times at traffic signals he found himself stopped at green lights. He’d driven first to the Anvil, and informed the manager that Vicky had had an accident and would be out for at least a week but probably more. The manager had muttered some dissatisfaction, to the effect of: “I got a business to run, you know? If she misses more than two days, I’ll fire her.” Kurt had smiled then, assuring that Vicky’s excuse for missing work was legitimate, and he’d raised the possibility that if Vicky lost her job, the Anvil might very well lose their liquor license through some entirely unrelated quirk of fate. After that, Kurt had gone to Glen’s, for what purpose he didn’t quite know. But Glen hadn’t been home.
Lenny Stokes hadn’t been home, either.
The midday sun made him squint. Downtown Annapolis had become a maze, and he was the rat seeking a way out. Buildings and old shops seemed to lean inward at incongruous angles. Streets were very narrow and paved in cobblestone, which made the car ride like a trolley on bad tracks. He turned left on Cornhill Street, passed Harbor Square and the Market House, and suddenly the entire city smelled of salt and fish. Jagged fragments of sunlight lay flat and cold on the Chesapeake as he glimpsed the City Dock in the rearview. As his concentration lapsed further, the city appeared more grim, more abandoned. A girl in a pink shirt stood on a corner selling flowers; she was deathly thin and gazed ahead glassily, as if drugged. Another girl stood mannequin-like in the window of a shop; she stared at him as he drove by, her features bled of color through the glass, but when he looked again, she was gone. Four midshipmen in summer whites loped surreally slow along the sidewalk, their faces bright by nefarious, sun- diced grins. It was all a freeze-frame from a Dali print, to mirror Kurt’s despair. He thought that if there were such things as ghosts, this city was full of them.
He’d frittered enough time here. The drive was only upsetting him, fraying his nerves. He’d hoped a leisurely drive might take his mind off Vicky, but the city’s drear only made her easier to see. Last night’s final glimpse of her made him cringe now, as though lanced in the neck by a needle. She’d been placed immediately on a stretcher and covered to the chin with a shiny white sheet on which warped splotches of scarlet quickly formed and grew. He could picture her face, which somehow seemed very small despite the swelling. One eye remained shut by a seam of black matter; it looked daubed with tar. Her hair lay in strands, caked by blood, and a bruise on her forehead had swelled to the size of an oyster. He knew how foolish he might seem, and how presumptuous, to fend for her now. He was in no position to enact himself as anything more than a concerned friend—but still, he would not allow this to happen again. She had suffered enough. And that reminded him, the Ford now cruising on West Street, toward 154—before checking on her at the hospital, he had something to do first, something he’d wanted for years.
Two cigarettes later, most of 154 was behind him; he’d arrived at his destination unconsciously. Lenny Stokes’s flat-gray Chevelle was now parked in the drive like a dumb, bulky pet.
With dissolving awareness, he walked coolly up the steps to Stokes’s porch, a cigarette stuck between his lips. He gave the front door four solid raps, then lowered his arm.
He waited, as if bored. He could hear his watch tick.
Four more raps, and now his knuckles ached dully. Just as he prepared to knock again, the door opened.
Lenny glared from the open doorway, clad only in jeans. His eyes were fierce and bloodshot; lint flecked his hair. There was a crescent of scabbed blood on his forehead. Somehow, Lenny looked at home with it.
Kurt didn’t waste time. He said, “Hi, Lenny. How ya doin’?” and then slammed his fist squarely into the middle of Lenny’s face. Kurt reveled at the sound of the blow, like the snap of wet leather, and grinned as the transfer of impact sent Stokes reeling backward toward the center of the living room. At the end of the comic journey, he fell and landed on his back, where he lay splayed like a flabbergasted gingerbread man.
Kurt flicked his cigarette over the porch rail; he went casually back to his car. It had been better than he’d hoped, a near-perfect punch in the mouth.
He made a quick stop at the Jiffy for more cigarettes, and was again on his way. Maryland Route 3 appeared as a smooth, tedious stretch of highway, bisected by a treed, unusually wide median. Endless acres of farmland breezed by to the right and left, quartered fields aching to push forth corn, wheat, and tobacco.
The highway wound away, trafficless, silent. Kurt blew past periodic roadside taverns, produce stands, and general stores, all with such speed that he barely noticed them. Farther on, the median widened, elevating to a series of green, brushed hills.
Last night, he’d risked the extra few minutes on the road, and had taken Vicky to Parkview Hospital rather than South County General. The county hospital was a meat house, where cut-it-off-first-ask-questions-later was the medical order of the day. Parkview appeared sparkling and immaculate, just past the turnoff. Kurt parked illegally in a reserved staff space. Inside, he found the charge nurse and conned her into amending visitors’ hours. “Five minutes,” she told him, as if issuing a death threat. “She’s just coming off pain killers. And
