South Street (45 page)

“What?” Brown said.

“Are you the next of kin?” The nurse stood in front of him holding a clipboard.

Brown looked at her. “Yes,” he said.

“What’s your relationship to the patient?”

“We drink beer together.”

The nurse sighed. “Where—”

“In an alley. He spit blood.” Brown looked down at his clothes. “He spit blood.”

“His name?”

“Jake,” Brown said.

“Jake what?”

“That’s all I know,” Brown said.

The nurse sighed. “Does he have an address?”

“Is there a doctor in there?”

“The doctors are doing everything they can. Now, do you know your friend’s address?”

“South Street,” Brown said.

“Where on South Street?”

Brown shook his head as if trying to clear it, looked at the nurse as if he had never seen one before. “What?”

“Where does your friend live on South Street?” the nurse said with professional patience.

“He lives in an alley. Beside a garbage can.” Brown’s eyes were hard and angry. The nurse looked at him uneasily. Brown smiled sadly. “The alley is between Fifteenth and Sixteenth.”

“Is it closer to Fifteenth or Sixteenth?”

“It’s closer to Fifteenth,” Brown said.

“Then,” the nurse said precisely, “he lives at Fifteenth and South.” She wrote it down.

“Fine,” Brown said. “That’s fine.”

“You can have a seat in the waiting room,” the nurse said.

“Is there someplace I can clean up?” Brown said, looking down at his chest.

“Down the hall,” the nurse said briskly. “Would you like a towel?”

“Yes,” Brown said, “I would like a towel.” The nurse smiled nervously, took a towel from a shelf, and handed it to him. “Thank you,” Brown said. He went down the hall.

The men’s room was a hard, intense, shiny white, smelling of disinfectant. Brown stared at himself in the mirror above the spotless bowl. Drops of moisture in his hair sparkled like diamonds. Ruby flecks dusted his forehead. His shirtfront was a soggy crimson mass. Brown walked calmly into a toilet stall, knelt before the bowl like a penitent at an altar, and vomited his stomach dry. He stood up and flushed the toilet, went back and bent over the sink, placed his mouth around the spigot, and gulped cold water until he thought he would burst. Then he went back to kneel at the toilet. This time the vomit was almost as clear as water. Brown stood up, opened his pants, and urinated. He waited until the waves raised by the stream of urine had banged themselves to death against the white porcelain before he pulled the flush lever. He stepped back to the sink, stripped off his shirt, washed himself, dried, draped the towel around his shoulders, and went out.

The nurse was waiting for him, clipboard loaded, ball-point leveled. “I forgot to get your name.”

“Brown. Adlai Stevenson Brown.”

“How do you spell that?”

“B, R, O, W, N,” Brown said.

“I know how to spell Brown,” the nurse snapped.

“Don’t be so sure,” Brown told her. “Some folks spells it with an E on the end. Just like some spells fuck P, H, U, Q, U, E, an’ just like—”

“There’s no need to be vulgar,” the nurse said.

“Just like some people,” Brown continued grimly, “insist on dotting the
i
and crossing the
t
in shit.”

“I meant your first name,” the nurse said coldly. Brown ignored her and stared toward the gleaming doors through which Jake had been wheeled. “We’ll let you know when there’s any news,” the nurse said.

“J, O, H, N,” Brown said.

“What?”

“That’s how you spell my first name.”

“But you said your name was Adlai.”

“I just changed it. I don’t know how to spell Adlai. It was my old man’s idea, not mine. He felt guilty because he voted for Eisenhower.” The nurse, clutching her ball-point at port arms, began to edge away from him. “Eisenhower was a prick,” Brown said. The nurse turned ashy. Brown turned and stepped toward the doors marked
NO ADMITTANCE.

“You can’t go in there,” the nurse said.

Brown smiled at her. “Then you don’t have anything to worry about.” He stepped through the white doors into a long corridor, walked down it, peering through the doorways over the tops of flimsy gates that looked like they came from the saloons in TV westerns. Inside the third door he saw Jake stretched out on a table, connected by tubes to bottles of blood, surrounded by white-clad doctors and nurses.

“Perforated?” one of the doctors said.

“Perforated, hell. This one’s guts must look like Swiss cheese.”

A nurse giggled.

From a speaker on the wall a woman’s voice spoke, calm and soothing. “Doctor Warden, Doctor Warden, you are wanted in emergency. Doctor Warden to emergency, stat.”

“Oh, God,” said one of the nurses, “some nut with a carving knife probably wants to hijack us to Cuba.”

“How’s his pressure?”

“Falling slowly.”

“Order more blood.”

“Ulcus veneria
, do you think, doctor?”

“In this old geezer? He hasn’t got it up in years.
Ulcus rodens
, I’d say. Where’s he from?”

“Fifteenth and South,” said a nurse, reading from a chart.

“Fifteenth and South. Definitely a rodent ulcer.”

A nurse giggled.

“Any word from the O.R.?”

“They said it would be a while.”

“We haven’t got a while. How’s the pressure?”

“Falling.”

“Blood?”

“On the way.”

“Must be bleeding like a fountain in there.”

Two men in uniform appeared behind Brown, grasped him by his upper arms. “You’ll have to leave this area, sir,” one of them said.

“How’s his pressure?”

“Ski slope.”

“That’s my friend,” Brown said.

“Yes, sir, we know. But you’ll have to leave.”

“He’s dying,” Brown said. “And they’re making jokes.”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“All right,” Brown said dully. They led him back to the reception area and sat him down in a chair. The nurse regarded him reproachfully.

“I told you you couldn’t go back there.” She looked at the guards. “I think he’ll be all right.”

“Are you sure? He looks pretty weird.”

The nurse looked at Brown sitting braced against the shiny white wall, a white towel draped around his shoulders, a bloody shirt clutched in his hand. “Weird,” the nurse agreed, “but harmless.” The guards went away. Brown started to shiver. “Would you like a blanket?” the nurse asked. Brown said nothing. The nurse took a thin blanket, worn gray and smooth from many washings, and placed it around his shoulders.

Brown looked up at the touch of her hands. “Thank you,” Brown said. The nurse nodded. “They were making jokes,” Brown said. “Sick jokes in lousy Latin.”

“That’s why you’re not supposed to go back there,” the nurse said. She finished wrapping him up. “You speak Latin?”

“No,” Brown said, “but I once played Marc Antony in
Julius Caesar
.” The nurse looked at him sharply. “Friends,” Brown said, “Romans, and countrymen. Lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. So let it be with Caesar. I forgot some.” The nurse swallowed heavily. “Don’t worry,” Brown assured her. “It’s just that I’ve been under a strain. I got blood all over a perfectly good shirt.”

The nurse looked down at him. “You carried him from Fifteenth Street?”

Brown nodded.

“You should have taken him to Graduate Hospital,” she said gently. “It’s closer.”

“Didn’t you know?” Brown said. “South Street’s one way downtown.” The nurse gave him a wary look and left him propped against the wall, shivering.

Vanessa woke from a light doze when Brown opened the door. She stepped into the kitchen, looked at him. “Oh my God!”

“Don’t you like pizza?” Brown said. He closed the door, stripped off his bloody shirt, and threw it in the corner.

“Leroy’s?” Vanessa said calmly.

“What?”

“Whose blood is it?”

“Jake’s,” Brown said. “I found him in the alley. He bled to death.”

“Somebody knife him?”

“No,” Brown said bitterly. “His guts turned to—Swiss cheese.” He walked over and set a bottle of wine on the table.

“What’s that?”

“A bottle of wine. His last bottle. He told the doctor to tell me where to find it. In the alley.”

Vanessa regarded the bottle with distaste. “It’s all yucky.” Brown took the bottle over to the sink and began washing it. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I’ma drink it,” Brown snapped. “What the fuck you think I’ma be doin’ with it?”

“I don’t know what the hell you brought it up here for. Here I am worryin’—”

“If somebody died an’ left you a million dollars, wouldn’t you spend it?”

“That’s sixty-cent rotgut, not a million dollars.”

“It’s moren a million dollars,” Brown said. “It’s all his worldly goods.”

“Are you drunk?” Vanessa demanded.

“Not yet,” Brown said. He cut off the water, dried the bottle.

“You sound drunk.”

Brown looked at her. He twisted the cap off the bottle and took a swig. “I am not drunk,” he said carefully. “But it is none of your fucking business if I am drunk. If I am drunk it is because I want to be drunk or because I need to be drunk. Right now I am going to get drunk because there is not much else I can do right now.”

“I’m sorry,” Vanessa said. Brown smiled, reached out, and squeezed her arm. “Can I have some?” Brown nodded, reached into the cabinet, and took down his two mismatched jelly jars, poured them full. He sat down at the table.

“In Africa,” Brown said, “when someone died they would throw spears at the moon. A missionary told them it didn’t do any good. They told him they knew it didn’t do any good, but they had to do something. So the missionary taught them to give the Last Rites instead.” Brown raised his glass, drank the wine down, and poured the glass full again. “I hope they ate him.”

“I thought you was dead,” Vanessa said.

“No,” Brown said. “No, I’m not dead.” He got up and turned out the light. The chair creaked as he sat down again, in the darkness.

“Leroy’s out to get you,” Vanessa said. “Mostly on account a me.”

“Leroy,” Brown said.

“He’ll let you be after I go back to him.” Brown looked at her. “He said he’d kill you. He means it.” Brown threw back his head and laughed. “He will,” Vanessa insisted. “He’s for real.”

“I know,” Brown laughed. “I know he is. It’s just too damn real. People dyin’, an’ killin’ people, an’ runnin’ away from their husbands. It’s just like a goddamn soap opera. Any second now some fool’s gonna come tippin’ in to try an’ sell us some Ivory soap. Only what we need is D-Con.”

“What you need is some sense,” Vanessa snapped.

“If I had any sense I’d a jumped off a bridge a long time ago,” Brown said. He drank some wine. “You know, outside that damn hospital there’s this old watering trough. You know what it says on that fuckin’ horse trough?”

“Maybe ‘No Parking’?” Vanessa said tiredly.

“Not bad,” Brown said. “But what it really says is better. It says”—Brown raised his hand as if he were writing a message on the darkness—“‘A merciful man is merciful to his beast.’ How ’bout that?”

“What’s so great about that?” Vanessa said.

Brown smiled sadly. “Nothin’. Drink your wine.” He emptied his own glass and poured in the rest of the bottle. Vanessa peered at him through the darkness, raised her hand toward the dim outline of his face. Brown pulled his head away.

“People die,” Vanessa said softly.

“Sometimes,” Brown agreed. “And sometimes someone kills them. And sometimes someone lets them die. But they all go sooner or later.”

“So what’s the point—”

“You have to do something,” Brown said. He got up and carried the empty bottle to the window, raised the sash, leaned out into the chilly night. He dropped the bottle. It fell into the darkness, banged against a garbage can, shattered on the cobblestones. Brown pulled himself back inside, closed the window against the cold. “Blood frightens me,” he said.

Vanessa stepped up behind him. “I’ll go back to Leroy tomorrow.”

“You shut the hell up about that.”

“Take your choice,” Vanessa said. “I can leave tomorrow mornin’, or I can stay until Leroy gets around to killin’ you. Might be a whole day’s difference.”

“I’ll take the day,” Brown said.

Vanessa wrapped her arms around him. Brown turned and kissed her, forehead, cheeks. She pressed her face against the cold skin of his chest. Brown laid his hand against the back of her head. For long minutes they stood motionless, then Brown bent his head and kissed her. His hands worked against the bulge of muscle where her shoulders met her neck. Her hands moved to his belt, his to her blouse. They freed each other from their clothes, slow rumblings in the darkness. Brown’s hands beneath her buttocks raised her, lowered her slowly, with straining creaks of muscle, short gasps. She hugged him with her legs, her arms. As he kissed her she tasted salt. Her tongue flicked out, licked at the tears, and suddenly she felt a sudden looseness in the pit of her stomach. She cried out, clutched at him, shuddered, felt her body shaking as if it had a mind of its own, and then she forgot it, forgot herself, went drifting on a dark cloud, almost unconscious. Brown held her so tightly her ribs ached. Suddenly she felt frightened. “Baby?” she whispered.

“Shh,” Brown said. “Shh.”

T
HE REVEREND MR. J
. Peter Sloan awakened in his broad bed and smiled with satisfaction as he regarded the ripe outlines of Sister Fundidia Larson, who lay beside him, invitingly draped with a satin sheet. The Reverend Mr. Sloan sighed as he recalled the details of the seduction of Sister Fundidia. The Reverend Mr. Sloan had taken it slowly, moving from dry martinis to a dry sauterne to a dry brandy and then on to Sister Fundidia, who by that time was rather wet. Mr. Sloan had congratulated himself on once again surpassing Christ’s Last Supper. Having supped, Mr. Sloan had moved on rapidly to the Crucifixion. He had been somewhat astonished by Sister Fundidia’s state of innocence, and a trifle disgusted at the bloody nature of the sacrifice, but he had managed to rise to the occasion. Sister Fundidia had proven quite athletic, and one of Mr. Sloan’s most vivid recollections was of her sitting astride him, spurring on to the Glory River, her breasts bouncing like chocolate volleyballs.