get in Illinois, dig up your birth certificate. Birth certificate. You got that?”
“Walter, I can’t.”
“You can’t?” He lowered his voice. “You don’t mean you really are fifteen years old? Goddamn you if you lied to me—”
“Don’t you goddamn me, Walter, I am twenty-three and you know it.”
“All right, as soon as you hit Illinois, you dig up a birth certificate to prove it. Otherwise I’m on the hook. If you don’t dig up a birth certificate, they’re going to soak me with the Mann Act and statutory rape and God only knows what. They claim you’re fifteen years old. I don’t know where they got that fifteen stuff. Did you tell them anything like that?”
Vera Sue burst into laughter. Her laughter was a wonderful sound like a nightingale chorusing out in the moonlight. “I was only kidding the cop. He was such a square.”
“You picked a great lie to tell him.”
“It was just a joke.”
“It was some joke. He came in here and scared the bejesus out of me with that fifteen story. Is that how you found I was knocked out in the hospital? Did the cop tell you?”
“Yes. But did you know there’s someone else checking on you too?”
“Who?”
“A private cop. From Kansas City, I think. Anyway he’s going around asking all kinds of questions and showing your picture.”
“There really is such a guy? I thought the cop was stringing me.”
“Well, you were wrong, Walter. This fellow talked to me quite a while, wanting to know different things about you and showing me this picture he had of you. Listen, Walter, when did you have the scar taken off your face?”
“Scar taken off my face? I never had a scar on my face.”
“I saw it.”
“What are you talking about? Where?”
“On your left cheek, high up. A fair-sized scar.”
“That proves they’re looking for somebody else, not me. I never had such a scar, never in my life.”
“But Walter, it looked just like you, I recognized you right off. The only difference was the scar. And it described you, down to the last detail, even your blood type, O-negative.”
“Goddamn it, you fell for something, some kind of racket. You know why I’m sure? Because nobody knew I had O-negative blood, not even me, until I lit in this hospital.”
“Well, this guy knew it. Anyway, I’m coming over there. If you think I am going to pay no attention to five thousand dollars floating around, you’re crazy. I got my bus ticket, and if you shut up, I may catch my bus.”
“Wait a minute, what’s this about five thousand dollars?”
“This private peeper from Kansas City told me there was five thousand dollars in it if you turned out to be ‘completely acceptable,’ whatever that means. I asked him, but he either didn’t know or put on the clam. Anyway, I’m coming over to see if I can get a piece of that five thousand for baby.”
“You must have got real chummy with this fellow from Kansas City.”
“Oh, we had a couple of short beers. I found out that was enough to make him windy.”
“Listen, Vera Sue, you go to Illinois and get that birth certificate.”
“Nothing doing. I’ll be sitting on the edge of your bed in a couple of hours.”
He thought they would come and take the telephone away as soon as he hung up, but no one came. It seemed like time was turning into forever as he lay there with the stuff they had been shooting into him beginning to wear off so that his arm felt like a balloon full of pain. His head seemed to be trying to split itself. He wished he was out of the hospital. He wondered how it would go if he would roll out of the bed and let himself down on the floor real easy and crawl on the floor into the hall and out of the place. It wouldn’t work, of course, but a man could wish.
He lay back, breathing heavily, his head feeling as though it was rolling over and over down a hill. A private detective from Kansas City, how did you figure that one? If D. C. Roebuck had had insurance, then the man might be an insurance company investigator engaged in getting the goods on him. The idea worried him. An insurance detective could be worse than the police. A damn insurance company, he thought, didn’t care how much it spent as long as it was trying to get out of paying a claim.
Sweat had come out on him while he was talking on the telephone to Vera Sue and since, and he was wet with it. He was in bad shape. Being so helpless brought tears of rage to his eyes. Here he was like a mouse with its tail caught in the trap, he reflected, and all the cats walking around smacking lips. One cat, two cats, three cats. The city policeman, the Kansas City sherlock, and now Vera Sue, trying to cut herself in on a reward at his expense...
He did not remember going to sleep, but he awakened when the doctor came in. He felt very weak and shaky.
“Doc, you sure stayed away long enough.”
“I was invited to leave, remember?”
“Ah, Doc, don’t be an old woman. You know, I don’t feel so hot.”
“What’s the matter? The arm hurt?”
“The arm, the head, all over. I feel like one big sore ball, Doc, you want to know the truth.”
The thermometer went into his mouth again, feeling like an icicle, while the doctor counted his pulse. “You have some temperature. What happened with that telephone call to upset you this way?”
“Nothing, Doc, that I know of.”
They brought in a transparent canopy and set it up on the bed with him inside, then wheeled in a cylinder that had gauges on it and a tube running under the canopy. They hooked up the thing, and stood watching the gauges while the tube hissed close to his nose. “Doc, what is this thing?”
“An oxygen tent.”
“That’s what they put on guys who are dying, ain’t it? Take it away. I’m afraid of the thing.”
“We probably won’t be that lucky with you.”
The morning sun was splintering into his eyes. The way the sunlight was hitting the oxygen tent canopy he could see very little in the room. Finally he realized someone was sitting by the bed. A nurse, he thought, sitting there like an albino crow waiting for him to die. “Nurse, I got to piss.”
There was a giggle. The corner of the oxygen tent was lifted and Vera Sue looked in at him. “Hello, Walter.”
She kissed him. He kissed her back. Her mouth was warm and moist, tasting of spearmint.
“Jesus, honey, what I said there a minute ago. I thought you were the nurse.”
“It was kind of funny, Walter.”
“She’s an old crow, always sticking her cold thermometer in my ass.”
“Walter, I been sitting here a long time. They told me not to wake you—they said I could sit in here, but I should let you sleep. I told them a lie. I said I was your wife.”
“I wondered how you got in.”
“Walter...I couldn’t go to Illinois. I couldn’t make myself do it. You know something, after I talked to you on the telephone, I missed my bus sitting there trying to make myself go to Illinois like you wanted, but I just couldn’t.”
“Baby, I knew you wouldn’t, so you can stop kidding around.”
She kissed him and held him close. Her moist mouth moved all over his. “I’m glad you’re not mad. Walter, I wish I could get in bed with you right now.”
“That would be something. I bet this oxygen stuff would go flying all over, and somebody would come in to see what was wrecking the joint.”
“I wouldn’t give a damn if they did.”
A nurse came in with two glasses of orange juice, one for him and one for Mrs. Harsh, she said. The nurse was a different one, a large plain woman.
“Walter, is she the nurse you were talking about?”
“No, but she gives you an idea.” He lay back holding his orange juice. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. You got no
