The Kind One (28 page)

I tried to get back to the memory of my mother with the broom, but it was all gone now, as if it had escaped back out the window with the bird.

I’d heard that when women got abortions it was like torture and they screamed like damned souls and I was straining my ears for any sign of that but, except for the cooing of the pigeons and the crinkling of the cellophane that the girl removed from one of the lollipops, everything was quiet as a tomb.

At last the door opened and Polly came out. She beamed at us.

“Susannah? We’re ready for you now.”

Susannah put down her magazine and left the sofa.

“What about Darla?” I said.

“She’s doing just fine, honey. It’s all over. She’s resting now. She’ll be out soon.”

I tried reading one of the magazines, but the world it described of movie stars and politicians and sports heroes and kings and queens seemed unreal and boring. I went over to the window. The pigeons, heads bobbing, walked away from me down the ledge. Traffic noise floated up. The building across the street was being increasingly lit up by the rising sun.

I had one of my headaches, for the first time in a while. I went out to a water fountain in the hallway, but then discovered I hadn’t brought my aspirins. I was about to drink some water anyway, but only the barest trickle was coming out. I thought of all the germy horrible mouths that must have been down there. I hesitated.

“Danny?”

Darla was standing just outside the chiropractor’s office, leaning against the door frame.

“I thought you’d left,” she said. “Without me.”

I hurried down the hallway to her.

“Course not. How do you feel?”

“Like shit.”

She looked like it too. We walked slowly toward the elevator. She seemed a little woozy. Then she put her hand over her mouth.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“I saw a ladies’ room. Down this way.”

We started moving fast. We got to the ladies’ room and she tried the door. It was locked. She rattled the glass doorknob and wailed: “Oh fuck!” Then she leaned over and threw up.

I watched her helplessly as spasm followed spasm. The elevator opened, and two well-dressed guys with briefcases came out. They stopped and gaped at the sight of the beautiful vomiting girl.

“Get the fuck outa here!” I yelled.

They looked scared, and headed the other way.

Darla seemed through now. I handed her my handkerchief, and she wiped her mouth off.

“You okay?” I said. “You wanna go back and see Dr. Brunder?”

“You kidding me? Just get me outa here.”

We took the elevator down. It was already hot, even down at the bottom of the shady canyon between the tall buildings. As I helped her in the car, she winced and sucked her breath in.

“You okay?”

“Quit asking me that.”

I got in the car and drove her out of downtown. She curled up in the seat with her back to me. I was wondering what Dr. Brunder had done to her. I saw other people in their cars on their way to work and I envied them because their faces seemed normal and calm like this was just another morning and their lives weren’t all screwed up and everything wasn’t falling apart.

“It hurts,” said Darla in a small, tight voice, and then I saw the blood. It was very red against the black leather of the seat. It was like somebody had tossed a bucket of it on Darla’s lap.

Darla sat up and took off her sunglasses and looked at her lap and then looked at me.

“Oh God!” she screamed. “Am I dying?”

   WE WEREN’T FAR from Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. I drove up Vermont honking my horn and running red lights then turned left on Fountain and went a couple of blocks and we were there.

By now, Darla’s head was lolling around and her eyes were rolling up and showing white. “I’ll be right back,” I said, but she didn’t answer me; she’d passed out or was on the verge of it. I jumped out of the car and ran inside the hospital, yelling for help. Two orderlies grabbed a stretcher on wheels and rolled it out. A Polly-sized nurse lumbered along behind them.

A black Pontiac had pulled up behind my Packard. Two guys were inside. They watched as the nurse and the orderlies got Darla out of the car and on the stretcher. Their white uniforms got splotched by Darla’s blood; it occurred to me people in their line of work should dress in red. As they trundled her inside, the nurse asked me what had happened to her. I figured the best thing for Darla was just to tell the truth.

Darla disappeared behind swinging double doors. The nurse wouldn’t let me go with her. I realized I was shaking all over; I tried to stop myself, but couldn’t.

The two guys from the Pontiac came in. Both squat, blubbery-lipped, and ugly. They walked up to me like they knew me.

“What’s going on?” said one of them.

“What’s going on with what?”

“The broad. Darla. What’s the matter with her?”

“What’s it to you?”

“We work for Seitz,” the other said. “Like you. So what’s up with the broad?”

“You guys must be the assholes in the red Buick.”

“We’re in a black Pontiac, moron.”

I walked away.

“Hey!” said the first guy. “Where you going?”

I ignored him. They followed me. I found a phone booth and called Bud. He came walking in fast ten minutes later, with Nucky and Willie hurrying along with him.

“Where is she?” he said.

“They took her through there,” and I pointed toward the swinging doors.

Bud headed that way.

“I don’t think we’re allowed back there,” I said.

“Fuck that,” and he shoved through the doors. Nucky and Willie and I were right behind him.

We moved down a short hallway then into a room with a lot of beds with curtains around them. Bud went over to the first bed and jerked the curtains back. A nurse was putting a thermometer in the mouth of an old lady. They stared at us in surprise and horror like they thought we were about to murder them.

“Who are you?” said the nurse. “What do you want?”

“Sorry,” muttered Bud, “I’m looking for somebody,” then the nurse with Darla’s blood on her uniform came running up.

“You’re not allowed back here!
Not allowed!
”

“I’m allowed any fucking place I wanna go, you fat cunt! You know how much dough I give this joint?”

“Nurse! Nurse! Everything’s all right. I’ll take care of it.”

A middle-aged doctor came walking up. He was short, with broad shoulders, an unnaturally large head, and a handsome mass of wavy, prematurely gray hair. He looked familiar.

“Dr. Swan,” said Bud. He seemed relieved to see him. He even shook his hand.

“Good morning, Mr. Seitz. I know why you’re here. I recognized your friend as soon as they brought her in. I saw her sing once at your club. She was unforgettable.”

“Yeah, doc, that’s great, but how’s she doing?”

“Dr. Zamsky has located the source of the bleeding and stopped it. You remember Bernie Zamsky, don’t you? She couldn’t be in better hands.”

“So she’s gonna be okay?”

“Barring infection, which is always a risk in this kind of case, she ought to be just fine.”

Bud let loose a big sigh. “Thank God, doc. That’s great news. See that she gets anything she needs. The best of everything.”

Dr. Swan was looking at me curiously. “Don’t I know you?”

Bud laughed, and clapped me on the shoulder.

“That’s Danny, doc. Remember? He got beat up by them guys at Ocean Park last year.”

“Danny. Of course. Well, you’ve certainly changed. What a tremendous recovery.”

“That’s ’cause of the great doctoring you guys gave him. So when can I see her?”

“It shouldn’t be too long. Why don’t you wait in the lobby? I’ll come get you when it’s time.”

Out in the lobby, I filled Bud in on what had happened with Darla.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “I’ve sent girls to this Brunder guy before and there hadn’t ever been no problems. Then when I send him over a girl I really give a shit about, he carves her up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”

“You want me and Willie to pay him a visit?” said Nucky.

“Yeah,” said Willie. “We’ll get you a fucking refund.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Bud.

I watched Willie and Nucky strut their way out the door.

“What are they gonna do to him? Throw him out the window?”

Bud laughed. “I gotta be careful these days, Danny. They’ll throw me in the sleazer for spitting on the sidewalk. Nah, they’ll just do like Willie said. Get a refund.”

He took out a Kleenex and wiped his hands off.

“I hate hospitals. Full of fucking germs.”

“You really give money to this place?”

“Sure. Jews make the best damn doctors in the world. A joint like this makes you proud to be a Jew. I give money to a lot of Jewish stuff. The Jewish Home for the Aged. The Hamburger Home for Young Women. Things like that.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, you see, I ain’t a total crumb.”

I saw my shadows in the red Buick/black Pontiac standing on the other side of the lobby, smoking and casting sheepish looks in our direction.

“Who are those guys?” I said.

“Them? That’s Freddie Kornblum on the left. The other guy’s his brother Mousie. They call him that ’cause of the way he eats. Kinda nibbles his food real fast, like a mouse. I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel when I got dumb cocksuckers like the Kornblum brothers working for me, but I ain’t got no choice. All my best guys is getting killed or going over to work for my enemies. That’s why I’m lucky I got you. When you called me up and told me about Darla, I felt like my balls had turned into lead and they was dropping right through the fucking floor. I’m so stuck on that broad it ain’t even funny. But I can see now everything’s gonna be okay. You handled things real good, Danny. You took care of Darla. I can always count on you.”

Now he put his hand on my shoulder.

“Hey, you look beat. Why don’t you go on home. Get a little shut-eye. Take the rest of the day off.”

I was reluctant to leave Darla.

“I’ll be glad to stick around, Bud. Keep you company.”

“Beat it, kid,” he said, taking out a Kleenex to wipe his fingers off after touching me. “That’s an order.”

My car looked like a crime scene. I drove into the nearest gas station. The owner, looking disgusted, said it was gonna cost me. I said fine. While they cleaned up the car I drank a Coke, and watched the traffic go by.

   THE NEXT MORNING I went to a building in the shape of a flower pot on Melrose Avenue that sold plants and flowers. I bought a bouquet of white and red and yellow snapdragons, then went to the hospital.

Nucky Williams was out in the hallway guarding Darla’s room. He grinned at the flowers.

“Aw, how’d you know it was my birthday?”

I reached for the doorknob. He stepped in between the door and me. His mashed-in face and flat chicken eyes were just a few inches away.

“Get outa my way, Nucky.”

But he didn’t budge.

“All us guys been trying to figure out what your secret is. You got one of them foot-long peckers? Or maybe it’s just that Darla’s hot for gimps. What do you say, Limpy? If I was to shoot myself in the foot, would Darla let me fuck her too?”

I grabbed his right shoulder with my right hand and forearmed him out of the way. He pretended to stumble and be afraid.

“Easy there, Danny! Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me!”

Darla looked up from a magazine as I came in. She was lying in bed in a white hospital gown with her blue-eyed, red-bowed lamb beside her. She smiled faintly.

“Hi, Danny.”

“Hi. How you feeling?”

She shrugged. I handed her the flowers. She sniffed them dutifully.

“They’re nice. Thanks.”

“They’re snapdragons.”

“I like snapdragons.”

The room was filled with flowers, red roses mostly. It was big and airy, with nice furniture, and watercolors of sailboats and sunsets and misty mountain ranges on the wall. I dropped my hat on a gleaming mahogany table.

“This is a pretty ritzy room for a hospital,” I said.

“You know who stayed in this room?”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt?”

“Clark Gable.”

“Yeah? When?”

“Last summer. He got his gallbladder taken out.”

“No kidding.”

“This nurse told me about it. And she said this other nurse was such a big fan of Clark Gable that she didn’t throw his gallbladder away like she was supposed to.”

“What did she do with it?”

“She put it in a jar filled with formaldehyde. She keeps it in a drawer at home. Every now and then she takes it out of the drawer just to look at it.”

“Jesus. What a nut.”

“Yeah.”

We both laughed a little. Then it became quiet. The room smelled like roses and disinfectant. Darla looked at the lamb. Plucked at the red bow around its neck. Her eyes filled up with tears.

“Darla?”

I sat down on the bed and she leaned into me and I put my arms around her and she began to cry.

“It was so awful,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“He gave me laughing gas. I don’t know why they call it that. I didn’t laugh. The light from the window started spinning around. It got smaller and smaller till it was just this teensy little point of light, and I knew that when that little bit of light disappeared, I would disappear, and I ripped the mask off. The doctor said, ‘Calm down, you stupid girl,’ and he put the mask back on and he held it there. And then it was like I went on this trip through the universe, and this voice was telling me that everything you’ve ever been told is a pack of lies. And the voice was saying,
look
, this is how things really are! And it was like I was passing from one hell to another, from hell to hell to hell to hell. And everything was hopelessness and pain. Anger and evil. And then it was like I was falling into a giant volcano. I saw the lava below me, it was red and bubbling, and I could feel the heat and my skin started burning, then I heard the doctor say, ‘You can stop squirming, you stupid girl, I’m done now.’”