Mortality Bridge (6 page)

He struck a final open chord and set the guitar aside. She nodded and said, “I think I’m ready.”

Back upstairs he helped her to the bathroom and then removed her slippers and tucked her in and reattached the IVAC monitor and turned it on. The nurse had taught him how. Complicit in their understanding. He got her yet another bottled water and gave her her meds and asked if she wanted anything else. She shook her head and he hugged her and got up and turned down the lights. Just as he was leaving he heard her say, “Did I get the gig?”

“You’ve always had the gig,” he said, and closed the door on their last good day together.

TWO DAYS LATER Dr. Abkagian called. I’m afraid her latest labs show elevated BUN and creatinine. There’s no doubt at this point. There’ll be a kind of domino effect as her systems start to fail. Days at best. I’ve written scrips for morphine and your nurse will. She’ll be comfortable and not in any. I wish I had better news but.

The nurse arrived with morphine and a kind of starched condolence. She recommended certain paperwork be completed before she started pushing opiates. Jemma started sobbing when he approached her with the DNR. Long dry rasping sobs. The paper’s naked meaning undisguisable. She’d been strong till this. Holding out some hope. He held her and talked to her and cried with her and in numb wonder handed her a pen and watched her sign her name to complete the circle he had started with the signing of his own so many years ago. What a perfect son of a bitch you are.

And then the clear morphine push into the IV line. Her pain abated and she slept.

He told the nurse he wanted to be alone with Jem from here on out and asked her to show him how to administer the morphine. She walked him through it next time a dose was due, drawing the solution from the ampoules with a syringe and injecting it into her IV line. He asked her why she didn’t administer it directly and the nurse said, “IV drip lets her have a constant dose. With injection she’d have peaks and valleys. And this solution is too strong for direct injection anyway; it’s concentrated for IV drips.” She pushed the plunger. “One of these every four hours. Too little or too late and she’ll still be in pain. Too much or too soon and she could go into respiratory distress.”

“That would kill her?”

“It would probably just be unnecessarily painful. It’d take about sixty milligrams for a lethal dose.”

“I see.”

She drew up doses for the next two days and left them in the bathroom by the sink. “I noted the nonadministered morphine as wasted,” she said.

Niko nodded. She knew who Niko was of course and thought she knew what he was really asking but she was wrong.

Before she left she told him she was sorry and she wished him well. “You’re very strong,” she said. “But this is never easy.”

After she left Niko went into the bathroom. On the sink a small white sack containing twenty capped syringes drawn with measured doses. He held one to the light. The clear liquid promising passage. He set it back among the others in the sack and left them on the bathroom sink. Then he sat beside Jem’s bed to hold her hand and talk to her and be a presence for her as all else became an absence.

HE DID HIS best to stay beside her every moment but it wasn’t possible. He had to get her meds, go to the bathroom, go downstairs to make quick meals. He hurried through all of these, tripped on the stairs once, burned himself eating. Ignored his phone and turned hers off. Talked to her and told her everything. His brother’s death, the Deal, the shameful farce of his career. Confessed his soul and pled with her and with whatever powers lay outside them both. Apologized and begged forgiveness and offered bargains. Sometimes Jem seemed conscious but he didn’t think that she could hear him. Anyway it was all too little too late, wasn’t it? Easy for you to come clean now, isn’t it, Niko?

He gave her meds and swabbed her IV site and changed the bag and bathed her with a soft washcloth. Fingers tracing hard bone close beneath her thin and bruising skin as if needing to verify what he saw. Once she seemed to be trying to speak but he wasn’t sure. On the evening of the second day after he’d dismissed the nurse he came back upstairs with some barely noticed microwaved dinner on a plate. The moment he walked in he felt the difference in the room. He set the plate down on the floor and hurried to the bed. Her quick strained gasps. He held her hand and said her name. As if calling her back home. Jem, Jem. Jem? Her hand jerked in his and then relaxed. She breathed out calmly like a sigh and released something unseen to the reclaiming world. Niko waited but there was nothing more. The moment come and gone so mildly.

Still holding her relinquished hand he let out a horrible long bay like some wounded cornered animal. His heart torn from its mooring. The bay become a sob he leans across the bed to hug her one last time. The heartbreak yield of her.

Now let her go. The clock is ticking, Niko. Let her go. Let her go or never get her back.

He knows it’s true. He knows what must be done. He’d thought that he was ready but how could he be. Who could be ready for this? The grief that sunders him.

No. No. Contain it. You have to contain it. You have to turn your back on it. If you grieve now Jem is truly lost and all your plans mean nothing.

He straightens from the bed. Makes his hand let her hand go. Jemma’s utter stillness so pitiful there. Deep breath. Keep breathing. He steps back from the bed. Breathe. Breathe. Now turn around. Turn away. “I can’t,” he tells the bed. The room. The waiting deep. “I can’t do this.”

Oh yes you can. You know very fucking well you can. You’re the one who put her there. You goddamn well can get her back. Now turn your back on her and start this whole machine or just surrender now and save yourself the trip and live with what you’ve done.

He knows his demon voice is right. He takes a deep and shaky breath and says goodbye to her and shuts the bedroom door and pulls it tight until he hears the gentle click of latch. Soft as if to avoid her waking. Breathe.

Go.

IV.

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY

TAPED TO THE back of Niko’s driver’s license are three old coins and a yellow Post-It with a neatly lettered phone number. Niko has to dial three times before he gets it right. The knot in his throat feels like a fist.

It’s picked up on the first ring. “Delivery,” a woman answers. “How may we help you?”

“I need a ride.”

“Name, please?”

Niko gives his name.

“Password?”

Niko speaks a word not uttered in four thousand years. “We show a carrier is on the way already, sir.”

He thinks about what this might mean. “Not that one. This ride’s for me.”

“One moment.” Incantatory static. Niko feels something in his hand and looks down to see an empty syringe. When did he administer this? How long has he been holding it? He tosses the syringe and it clatters likes some insect across the beveled glass coffee table.

The woman’s voice returns. “The current carrier is all we’re authorized for, sir. We’re very sor—”

“This has been willed,” he says, “where what is willed must be.” A sharp intake of surprise. “Please hold, sir. We have to speak with a supervisor.”

“I’m kind of in a hurry.”

“Yes sir, we understand. Just one moment.” An interminable minute. “We apologize for the wait, sir. This is very unusual, we hope you understand. We’re sending you a driver right away. Our very best.”

“How long?”

“Ten minutes at the most. The first carrier will probably arrive first.”

“I see. All right. Thank you.”

“You’re most welcome. And sir? Sir?”

Niko brings the phone back to his ear. “I’m here.”

“We just wanted to wish you good luck, sir. Good luck and good traveling.”

HARD ABOUT HIM now the empty house lies still. Tick of the old Herschede grandfather clock in the foyer, its snoring Man in the Moon face and deep broad chime that always make him think of early childhood at his grandparents’ house in Florida, which was why he’d bought it in the first place.

The bedroom door beyond the stairs. Jem I pray your pain is gone. I pray you will forgive me. All I’ve done, all I am about to try to do.

Two carriers on the way. Ten minutes at the most. Hurry. Breathe.

CLIMBING FROM THE San Fernando Valley on the San Diego Freeway the Black Taxi crests Mulholland Drive and starts the long descent across the pass and into orange city light. The big car passes through the Friday traffic and drifts right and exits on the Sunset ramp. Eastbound through Bel Aire and Westwood, through Beverly Hills and on the crowded Sunset Strip it eases forward unobserved. All without is crowded light. Massive lighted billboards, club marquees, hotels, and restaurants du jour. None of it reflecting from the metal shape that rolls among them.

ON THE FAR side of the Grecian courtyard with its Japanese rockgarden Niko opens the door to his little studio. Muted overhead light shines down on a quarter million dollars in recording gear. Framed foam wedges and thick gray carpet on the walls. Tiny vocal booth there. The phone booth Jemma called it. In the small control room Niko pauses as he looks through the window into the recording room.

They stand arrayed along one wall like dusty weapons in an ancient armory. Fender, Gibson, Ibañez. Sunburst, lacquer, mother of pearl. Sixstring, twelvestring, doubleneck, bass. Last in line the Dobro rests gleaming like a new dime. Polished steel distorts the studio around it, warps the reflection of Niko’s hand reaching past it to grab its hardshell case that leans against the wall behind it. The womanshape dull with dust.

Niko opens the case. Gray plush lining. He opens the little storage compartment. Metal slide, strap, picks and strings. He sets a hand against the plush as if in benediction. A moment only. Hurry.

He grabs the Dobro by the neck and fits it in the case and shuts the latches one two three.

IN THE LIVING room he leans the case against the black Italian couch. He sets a hand upon the case and glances up the stairs. The sense of Jemma up there still.

His thumbs jerk with sudden pricking.

Motor rumble coming up the lengthy driveway.

On his neck the locket burns.

The engine cuts off and a parking brake zips and a car door opens and then closes with a solid heavy sound. Don’t make em like that anymore.

Niko goes to stand behind the door.

Heavy footsteps up the cobbled walk.

He leans his cheek against the door and shuts his eyes. What waits on the other side. Deep breath. Don’t resist. Useless fighting here and now. This is just an errand boy, a messenger. It has no authority. Your true arena waits somewhere not any where at all.

Leaden knock of knucklebone on wood against his cheek. Niko jumps back and is about to open the door when a man in a tailored chauffeur’s uniform walks through it. Thin, pale, whitehaired, Nordic, nearly albino, smooth androgynous face bony as a Siamese cat. Niko backs up several steps. The driver touches the glossy bill of his cap with cold politeness. Its shadow falls across his eyes, always falls across his eyes.

Both men look upstairs.

From a jacket pocket the driver removes a small mason jar with a twopiece lid and a white jacquard silk kerchief. He glances at Niko and then glides past him. At the foot of the staircase he touches the vase on the newel in a lingering way that is somehow lewd. He grins a pale poisonbottle grin and glides up the carpeted stairs and down the hall.

Niko follows. At the top of the stairs the driver heads down the hallway and enters the bedroom without opening the door and Niko stops. What can he do? All this is writ and in its unfolding is a thing already done. Wait. Breathe. He clenches his fists and heads back down the stairs.

By the time he picks up the guitar case the driver is gliding back downstairs, obscuring with the kerchief a faintly glowing black-tipped feather now within the small glass jar. The driver wipes the jar mouth with his kerchief and returns it and the jar to his jacket pocket where it leaves no bulge.

Approaching Niko the driver looks from the guitar case to the depressed syringe on the glasstopped coffee table and grins insinuatingly and touches again the glossy bill of his cap and makes to go past Niko.

“Wait.” Niko grabs the driver’s arm and the driver stops and looks at Niko’s clutching hand. Jaundiced eyes narrow and every plant in the house withers and dies.

Their gazes meet and Niko feels the churning horror ever waiting past the cliff edge of cognition. Some day you will sail beyond that precipice, that gaze tells Niko, and I will be there when you do.

Niko drops his hand from the tailored sleeve in sudden vertigo. “You’re forgetting something.” He sets down the guitar case and pulls out his wallet and takes out his driver’s license and removes one of the three ancient coins taped to the back and holds it out.

The driver looks surprised. He holds his narrow hand palmup and Niko drops the coin into it, careful not to touch him this time. The driver holds the small bronze lepton to the light and grins a deathshead grin and flips the coin into the air, flicking it with a yellowed thumbnail to make it ring. The coin does not fall back down.

The driver touches his cap once more and leaves through the front door.

Heavy metal of car door closing, deep gargle of welltuned V-12 engine. Niko goes to the door to look at what sits idling in the circular drive. And shakes his head. Of course. In other times in other places it has been a reed boat, a palanquin, a chariot, a coach, a train.

Bugeyed headlamps glowing as it pulls out from the curb, polished glossy black but unmarred by reflections from the lighted drive, an immaculate 1933 Franklin Model 173 seven-passenger sedan with a gold-on-black California classic vanity plate reading 2L84U glides like a stalking jaguar around the marble fountain and passes among oblivious statues along the winding landscaped drive and slides like oil through the locked iron gate and out into the narcotic Hollywood night.