The Last Bender, Chapter 41

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

          “What about the guy in the car?” Helen asked from the curtain.

          “What about him?”   I asked back.

          “He’ll attract flies, won’t he?”

          “She’s right,” said Linda from the bathroom. “They’ll be lookin’ for him.”

          “They already are,” Helen said. “Look.”

          A black sedan eased into the parking lot and drove up and down the lanes systematically. It was like watching snow. Every now and then the car stopped. It turned down the lane where mine was parked.

          “Who are they anyway?”   Helen asked.

          “Who the fuck knows.”

          Linda came out of the bathroom in a tank top and boxer shorts. She threw her clothes on top of a pile of Helen’s and joined us at the window. She said, “If those two in the marsh were DOD it’ll be the dagger or the sword for them.”

          “We used the sword,” I said.

          My car was obscured by a van on the left and a tail-finned boat on the right. The sedan cruised right by it.

          “That mother missed it,” Helen said softly. She punched my shoulder, smiled and said a little louder, “He missed it!  See that Jack? You are the luckiest ticker taper in town.”

          The car turned right, drove down the next lane and then left the parking lot.

          I stretched out on the bed and shut my eyes. I was so exhausted and still I couldn’t sleep. The past week roared through my head, express on the local track. Linda and Helen crawled in next to me. I had the distinct feeling, as the express train exploded into unexplored portions of the tunnel, that they were kissing. Finally I sank into a dreamless sleep.

          The first shot woke me up; the barrage jolted my heart and I hit the floor. Linda and Helen had their backs to the wall. I crept to the window and looked out. The black sedan was idling behind my car and two men stood over the trunk, emptying their pistols into it. Then they tossed something in the rear seat and drove off. The car erupted into a fireball. All over the parking lot, car alarms went off. Soon there were distant sirens. As I watched my car burn, all I could think was that I wouldn’t need to replace the clutch. “They’re gone,” I said.

          “I’d better make coffee,” Helen said. She gathered up some clothes from the various mounds, smelling each piece before putting it on. Linda sat on the bed in her boxer shorts. She pulled off the tank top and scratched her back. I asked her what was up and she just shook her head. “I dunno. Yesterday the world was one way, today it’s another. I wanna go away Jack. Get out of police work, out of Inania.”

          “We could always go to Champa, join a rebel army.”  

          Helen asked from the kitchen, “You guys want toast?”

          Did I want toast or not? Did Linda? The air was pink and yellow, like Evalyn’s jammies, rose and egg yolk on the dingy piles of clothes, Linda’s long back reddening beneath her fingernails, the pale line of scars on her thighs like old fences, her sad face lightening as if to say, Yes, I want toast, and everything was still and normal till we heard the sound. I don’t know what sound, just that it came between you guys want some toast and the deafening splatter of bullets, smoke and metal flying. I pulled Linda to the floor. Everyone shot and shot the door to pieces. When it was done, there was nothing but smoke and dust, and we were choking on the ash and sulfur and blistered paint smell. And a moment later, footsteps and screams.              

          Helen stood in the door, swinging her gun one way and the next, panting, eyes popped. Linda lay barking on the floor, her chest heaving up and down. She kicked her feet and groaned, gripping her belly, no no no… oh god.

          “Where is it?”   I said, feeling for the hole. Blood soaked into the carpet. She was spitting it up and choking. She held her guts in with her arm. I rubbed her head, “It’s going to be all right,” I said. We got her on the bed and covered her with a blanket, shoving a pillow against her stomach. Her eyes flashed fear. It came in spasms. She’d breathe heavily and seem to calm down and her face would go kind of slack and then, it came, the fireball, the memory, and she’d erupt, and go into a ball. “I’m dying Jack, please help me, oh god, somebody help me, oh god, oh god oh god oh god….”

          “We’ve got to get her out of here,” I said. Helen ran back and forth from the window. A fire engine was putting out my car and cops poured into the parking lot. Bystanders pointed this way and that. Soon they’d be upstairs.        

          “Let’s get her to my car,” she said. “We’ll take the back stairs. You hide out in the garbage area with her and I’ll drive up.”

          “O.K. We’ll take to her to Five Joints. I know a guy who can keep quiet.”

          We dressed and then wrapped Linda up in the blankets and carried her downstairs into a back area by some dumpsters. She was bleeding heavily. I talked to her to keep her awake. I told her things, stories were the only thing in the world that could keep her alive, my breath her breath, just the one belief, that she should live. Helen drove up slowly in a little lime green compact. Stuffing her into the car was loud and bad.  

          Helen eased us out of the mess and then drove ninety miles an hour, blasting the horn and riding the shoulders all the way to Five Joints. Even there, with its hardened arteries, she managed to make time against the crowd, once actually firing her gun in the air to clear the street.  She jerked onto the sidewalk in front of the hospital. It was so early people were still asleep. They jumped up at the sound of the wheels, brushed themselves off and gave us dirty looks.

          Linda had passed out and gone into shock. Blood covered everything in the back. It was all over her face and arms. We got to the seventh floor. Dr. Perry drank a cup of coffee in the operating room, watching someone scrub up. We crashed through the doors and lay her on the table. She had a sort of seizure then, clawing the air with bloody hands. “Who is she?” he asked, tearing off the blankets and examining the wound.

          “Linda Malone. You know her.”

          “Linda,” he said. “Nurse, get blood for this one and tell Judy to scrub. I’ll do what I can Jack. Who’s she?” he asked, looking suspiciously at Helen.

          “Helen Stark. She’s my friend. MetroHomicide.”

          “I know all about it,” he said, scrubbing up. “Get outta here for now. O.K. Let’s go. It’s sausage time.”