Thirteen West (23 page)

Tears sprang to her eyes. Why couldn't he want this baby as she did? How could he bear to think of murdering it? Even if she hadn't planned to be pregnant, she wanted the baby. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. In a way it really was his fault, not hers.

She'd been on the pill but it made her sick so he'd measured her for a diaphragm instead. If only he'd told her about the difference in taking the pill and using a diaphragm she never would have gotten into this state. How did he expect her to know you had to leave the damn thing in practically forever? It made her feel dirty to have that thing up there so she'd taken it out right afterwards. Too early by far.

Stupid, he'd said. If he'd just explained everything fully but, no, he threw the package at her and expected her to know everything about using a diaphragm ten minutes later when he'd wanted to fuck.

Well, fuck him!

As she got out of bed Barry mumbled something and turned over so his back was to her. Even in his sleep he turned away. He hadn't wanted her for weeks. That meant he was getting it somewhere else—forget that crap about being on call. He'd never been MOD that much before. Who was it? Some slut of a nurse from the hospital?

Luba put water on for instant coffee. Let's see, he was pretty zonked now and he had been MOD last night, she'd called to check. She knew he'd traded Friday for Monday because Tony Newbold came by the apartment to arrange that. He was going to Frisco for his brother's Monday wedding. Which meant Barry would probably go out tonight to meet her, whoever she was.

It wouldn't be hard to follow him. He'd never figure she'd do that, always thinking she was so dumb. It'd be worth it to see his face when she told him she knew about the woman, where she lived and all. Maybe even who, if she could find out.

I don't care anymore, she assured herself. He's not worth caring about. But I'd sure enjoy bugging him, let him know he isn't fooling me.

* * *

Crawford opened bleary eyes and peered at the clock. Eleven. Must be morning because it wasn't all that dark. Some night. And that redhead. Jesus, he'd never done it before on coke—never even tried the stuff before, hadn't been that available back in
Illinois
. Not in his crowd anyway. Pot had been their shtick.

Cocaine. Not physiologically addicting. You could take the stuff and not get your body hooked on it. Still illegal but the narc boys wouldn't be checking him for coke, who ever wrote a prescription for cocaine. Did they still use it in nasal surgery? He vaguely recalled they used to.

Anyway, some party. The redhead rubbing it on his prick, telling him he'd last forever. He damn near had. But sniffing it had been a thousand times better than the sex and left him so clear-headed, not groggy like with the barbs. No danger of getting caught like with the Demerol, no getting so dependent your body went to hell if you didn't get any.

He sat up and looked at the copper pitcher on the dresser. Two of the little plastic envelopes in there. He'd swiped them last night, picking them up when no one was paying attention. Wonder where
Taylor
got it? Must be easy to find a supplier. There were enough of those little envelopes around last night…white crystals, like snow. …to get him through this last miserable year in this god-awful, miserable place.

* * *

Grace heard the knock on her bedroom door but didn't answer.

"Grace?" her father called through the panels. "Are you ill? I heard you up early this morning."

"I don't feel good," she said, her voice quivering.

"What is it?"

Words stuck in her throat, gagging her.

"Grace? What's the matter with you?"

She didn't answer, lying huddled under the covers.

"Grace? I'm worried about you."

She could taste the bile in her mouth. Her father wouldn't come in. She could die in here and he'd never come in. She'd learned from him after her mother died when she was six that men didn't enter women's bedrooms. Women didn't enter men's, either.

Except at the hospital. Grace retched, nothing coming up from her already emptied stomach—she had vomited off and on all night. She got up unsteadily and opened the door, pushing past her father to hurry down the hall to the bathroom, retching as she went, saliva and mucus dribbling from her mouth onto her nightgown.

When she finished gagging, she rose from her knees and sat on the rim on the bathtub, dropping her hands into her lap. Her fingers encountered slime. She looked down and saw the whitish mucus on her gown and cried out. Frantically, she yanked the nightgown over her head and threw it from her. Dry, tearless sobs burst from her and she flung up her hands as though warding off an unseen attacker. She groped for the knob and fled naked down the hall. Her father stood waiting at her open bedroom door.

"Grace!" he exclaimed.

She saw the shock and horror on his face and fell at his feet, groveling and crying.

"Evil...bad...I'm a bad girl, Papa."

She jerked when the first lash of the belt fell across her bare buttocks. A warmth started deep in her abdomen, chasing away the nausea. She heard the swish of the leather before the second stroke hit her. The exquisite pain made her writhe. She moaned.

Again and again the belt struck her. She began to pant, her father's loud breathing matching hers. The heat inside her grew all consuming and it rose and rose...

"Papa, Papa!" she gasped.

He groaned on a long expiration.

After a time Grace got up from the hall floor. Her father had disappeared. She entered her bedroom, put on a clean gown and crawled back under the covers to fall immediately into the comforting darkness of satiation.

* * *

"What do you mean like before?"
Alma
demanded, staring across the kitchen table at Charlie.

He leaned back in his chair and smiled. "The way we were," he said.

"Man, I saw that movie, too, way back when," she told him. "No way am I trailing in your dust again. I'm a person. I've got a career."

"Nursing? Catering to nuts?" he laughed.

Alma
jumped to her feet, glaring at his handsome brown face. "You better be joking," she warned. "And it's a piss-poor joke."

Charlie let the chair back down. "Come on, sugar. You rile too easy. All I meant was when we go to living together, I expect a little attention."

"What kind of attention?"

"Sure not what I'm getting now."

"Last time you had me cleaning up your place and washing your clothes and fixing your meals and I wasn't even living there. You knew I was working full time and yet you got pissed if I didn't wait on you like you owned me."

"So you split."

"You bet I did. And I'm not going back unless you stop thinking of me as a thing. It's I—Thou, not I—It."

He rose, frowning. "Stop feeding me predigested psychology like I'm one of your patients."

"You're so hung up on machismo, you could do with a little psychology. That macho stuff is ancient history. I can do anything you can."

"Piss up a rope?" he asked, straight-faced.

"Oh—you're impossible!"
Alma
broke into a reluctant grin.

"But easily satisfied," he said, reaching for her.

* * *

From the day room, Simpson Jones scanned the workers in white uniforms. Two were black men but neither was the one he'd seen in that white girl's room, the one he suspected was an incarnation of Macardit. He knew the Black God had been in there that night. Then he'd seen the man come out, looking as human as anybody. Fooled him once, wouldn't again.

But these were day workers. Macardit only appeared at night so he'd have to be patient and wait for the black man till darkness came again.

"Serpent come," he said softly, almost under his breath. If he was heard, he'd be punished. "Serpent comes. He coils, coils in the bush. He waits, coiled he waits..."

Dolph glanced at the black man they called the Preacher. He was mumbling something about serpents. Snakes. He hated snakes. His mind was getting clearer now, though, and he didn't get scared. This was a hospital. He'd been in one before and remembered some of the people were batty, didn't make any sense what they said.

Pretty soon the tech would come to take him outside for a walk and he could hardly wait. He knew the man with his jacket, Tate, was out there someplace. He'd discovered Tate's room was on this ward and he'd tried to get into the room but the door was locked. All the doors were locked in the day time 'cause everybody was supposed to be down here in the day room or outside with a tech. But now that he knew the right room, he'd get in there sometime, find his jacket and what was in the pocket. It better be there.

* * *

Lew Alinosky threw Timmie up in the air and caught him, smiling at his son's squeals of joy. Playing with the boy, he almost forgot the jealousy churning in him, triggered by Becky's behavior in the bar last night. Making up to that fancy dancy guitar player like she'd known him for years. "Sexy music," she said he played, flirting her eyes at him and pouting when Lew pulled her back to the booth. Then she drank too much and was a sodden lump by the time they got home to bed.

No better than Laura Jean lying unmoving in her bed. Laura Jean was supposed to start ECT tomorrow. He hoped to hell they didn't want him to take her over there when he switched to days. He didn't go for that stuff.

A picture of Uncle Sid slipped into his mind, blotting out the laughing face of his little boy. He lowered Timmie to the floor. Uncle Sid, who sat in the rocker hour after hour, day after day, year after year. Rocked and stared. Grandma had to take him to the bathroom and to the table for meals. He ate what was put in front of him, provided someone put a spoon in his hand. Never smiled. Never frowned. A blank.

"Had his brain operated on," people whispered.

Lobotomy. They didn't do that in this state anymore. "At least he isn't in that terrible place," Grandma would say, meaning the state hospital. "At least he's home with me and I can look after him."

What madness did Uncle Sid have that was worse than a lobotomy?

Lew shook his head to rid himself of the zombie-like vision. The ECT patients looked like Uncle Sid for a while afterwards, till they began remembering things. He'd heard if you gave people shock too many times, though, they got to be like lobotomy patients.

Laura Jean? But she was shut away in her catatonic state so maybe they didn't have any choice. Dr. Jacobs was okay. He cared what happened to the patients. Not like some of the doctors.

Lew could hear Becky singing to herself in the bathroom. Did she remember how he'd shoved her away last night? She'd been on her back snoring by the time he got in bed and he was going to screw her anyway but when he began it seemed like he was doing it with a zombie. He thought of Laura Jean and her nightmares, that everyone now figured were really rapes, and he lost all desire for Becky, rolling off her and pushing her to the far side of the bed.

Would she care if she did remember?

* * *

Naomi Cobb sat hunched over the smooth plastic chair, her gaze darting right and left. They were all around her, whispering, aiming their death rays out of the TV set. Other people sat in the chairs like she did and she wondered if she should warn them of the deadly light pouring from the TV. But then she decided they were dummies left there to fool her into thinking she wasn't the intended victim.

Otherwise, surely they would hear the voices whispering. "Die. Feel your blood boil away and your brain shrivel. Die..."