Desperate Measures

Pittman stood across from the hospital for quite a while. The building was soot gray. The mid-April day had been warm, but as the sun descended behind skyscrapers, cool shadows made Pittman cross his arms and hug himself.

This was the same hospital where Jeremy had died. Pittman had come to the corner across from the Emergency entrance, the same corner where he had often stood late at night after visiting Jeremy. From this corner, he had been able to see the window of Jeremy’s room on the tenth floor. Gazing up through the darkness for several hours, he had prayed that Jeremy wouldn’t be wakened by the need to vomit because of his chemotherapy.

Amid the din of traffic, Pittman now heard a siren. An ambulance veered from the busy street and rushed to a stop beneath the portal at the Emergency entrance. Attendants leapt out and urgently removed a patient on a gurney. Pedestrians glanced toward the commotion but kept walking swiftly onward.

Pittman swallowed, squinted up toward what he still thought of as Jeremy’s window, and turned away. Jonathan Millgate was in that hospital, in the adult intensive-care ward that was just down the sixth-floor hallway from the children’s intensive-care ward, where Jeremy had died. Pittman shook his head. He couldn’t tolerate going into the hospital, couldn’t make himself go up to that floor, couldn’t bear exposing himself to the torment on the faces of people waiting to hear about their loved ones. It would be all he could do not to imagine that he was one of them, not to sit down with them and wait as if for news of Jeremy.

It would be far too much.

So he went home. Rather than take a taxi, he walked. He needed to fill the time. As dusk increasingly chilled him, he stopped for several drinks-to fill the time. The elevator to his third-floor apartment creaked and wheezed. He locked himself in his apartment, heard laughter from a television show vibrate through thin walls from the apartment next to him, and had another drink.

To fill the time.

He sat in darkness. He imagined what it would have been like if Jeremy had lived. With basketball playoffs approaching, he would have spent the coming Saturday afternoon playing one-on-one with Jeremy. Afterward they’d have gone for pizza and a movie, or maybe to Tower Records-whatever they wanted to do. The future would have been theirs.

Pittman wept.

He turned on the kitchen light, opened the drawer where he’d put the.45, and took out the pistol.

Vaguely conscious that the time was 8:00 P.M., because the sitcom next door had ended and another was starting, he continued to stare at the.45. His eyes became like the lenses of a microscope, focusing intensely on the gleaming blue metal, magnifying the trigger, the hammer, the opening in the barrel from which the bullet would…

The next thing he was aware of, a new sound disturbed him, the smooth deep voice of a man who spoke in formal cadences. The voice came from the apartment next door. The voice was…

A television news announcer? Frowning, Pittman turned his gaze from the.45 and fixed it on the stove’s mechanical clock. Its numbers whirred, 10:03 becoming 10:04. Pittman frowned harder. He had so absorbed himself in the gun that he hadn’t been conscious of so much time passing. Hand trembling, he set down the.45. The news announcer on the television next door had said something about Jonathan Millgate.

12

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Matt.” The heavy man, an Italian, had gray hair protruding from the bottom of his Yankees baseball cap. He wore a Yankees baseball jersey as well, and he held a ladle with which he’d been stirring a large steaming pot of what smelled like chicken-noodle soup as Pittman came into the diner.

The place was narrow, with Formica-topped tables along one side, a counter along the other. The overhead fluorescent lights made Pittman blink after the darkness of the street. It was almost 11:00 P.M. AS Pittman sat at the counter, he nodded to the only other customer, a black man drinking a cup of coffee at one of the tables.

“You been sick?” the cook asked. “Is that why you haven’t been in?”

“Everybody keeps saying… Do I look sick?”

“Or permanently hungover. Look at how loose your clothes are. How much weight have you lost? Ten, fifteen pounds? And judging from them bags under your eyes, I’d say you haven’t been sleeping much, either.”

Pittman didn’t answer.

“What’ll it be for tonight?”

“To start with, a favor.”

The cook appeared not to have heard as he stirred the soup.

“I wonder if you could store this for me.”

“What?” The cook glanced at the counter in front of Pittman and sounded relieved. “That box?”

Pittman nodded. The box had once held computer paper. Now it concealed the.45 and its container of ammunition. He had stuffed the box with shredded newspaper so that the gun wouldn’t shift and make a thunking noise when the box was tilted. He had sealed the box many times with tape.

“Just a place to store this,” Pittman said. “I’ll even pay you for…”

“No need,” the cook said. “What’s in it? How come you can’t keep it at your place? There’s nothing funny about this, is there?”

“Nah. It’s just a gun.”

“A gun?”

Pittman smiled at his apparent joke. “I’ve been working on a book. This is a copy of the printout and the computer discs. I’m paranoid about fires. I’d ask my girlfriend to help, but she and I just had a fight. I want to keep a duplicate of this material someplace besides my apartment.”

“Yeah? A book? What’s it about?”

“Suicide. Let me have some of that soup, will you?”

Pittman prepared to eat his first meal in thirty-six hours.

13

He’d packed the gun and left it with the cook at the diner because his experience of losing time while he stared at the weapon had taught him there was every chance he might shoot himself before he made good on his promise to work for Burt Forsyth until the Chronicle died. The effort of getting through this particular day, the bitterness and emptiness he had felt, had been so intense that he couldn’t be certain of his resolve to keep himself alive for eight more days. This way, in the event of overwhelming despair, he would have a chance of regaining control by the time he reached the diner, got the box, and went to his apartment.

For now, he had to do what Burt Forsyth intended-to distract himself. Jonathan Millgate meant nothing to him. Pittman’s career meant nothing. The Chronicle meant nothing. But Burt Forsyth did. In honor of Jeremy, Pittman felt compelled to keep the promise he had made. For eight more days.

Despite his reluctance, he went back to the hospital. This time, he took a taxi. Not because he was in a hurry. After all, he still had a great deal of time to fill and would have preferred to walk. But to get to the hospital, he would have had to pass through several neighborhoods that became dangerous at this hour. He found it bitterly ironic that in doing his best to postpone his death for eight more days, he had to be extra careful about not dying in the meanwhile.

He returned to the hospital because of the television announcer’s reference to Millgate. Through the thin walls of his apartment, he had listened to the news report. Pittman’s expectation was that Millgate had died and a brief summary of his public-service career was being provided. Burt Forsyth would be annoyed about that-Millgate dying before Pittman finished the obituary in time for tomorrow morning’s edition of the newspaper. But the TV news story had not been about Millgate’s death. To the contrary, Millgate was still in intensive care, as the