The Lost Get-Back Boogie

“Do you want your drink?”

“I’d rather go to the hospital. You don’t mind, do you?” “No.”

“It’ll take me just a minute to dress.”

A few moments later she came back downstairs in a pair of corduroys and a wool shirt with a mackinaw under her arm. Her blue scarf was tied under her chin, and the flush in her face and the strands of black hair on her cheeks gave her the appearance of a young girl on her way to a nighttime ice-skating party.

I closed the door on her side of the Plymouth and put the ignition wires back together to start the engine. Her breath was steaming, and I could see her breasts rise and fall under the heavy mackinaw.

“If Buddy’s not at the room, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been by and gone back home,” I said as I drove slowly up the street.

“The head sister will know if he’s been there.”

“There’s another thing to think about, too. He might just talk to the doctor downstairs and go to sleep in the truck out on the street.”

“Just drive us there, Iry.”

We didn’t get past the receptionist’s desk. Frank Riordan was in intensive care, no one was allowed to see him, and the only persons in his family who had been at the hospital were Melvin and Pearl, and they had gone across the street to the all-night cafe.

“How’s he doing?” I said.

“You’ll have to ask the doctor when he comes down,” the receptionist said.

“When does he come down?”

“I don’t know. Are you a member of the family?”

“Where’s that little Irish nun that used to work here?”

“Sir?”

“There was an Irish sister that used to work on the second floor.”

“I don’t know who you mean.”

I walked outside with Beth toward the automobile. The snow had stopped blowing, and there was just a hint of blue light beyond the mountains in the east. The thin shale of ice over the gravel in the parking lot cracked under our feet.

“You want to go back home?” I said.

“No. Call Mrs. Riordan.”

“I don’t think we should do that.”

“She’s not sleeping tonight. One of the boys will answer the phone, anyway.”

“Beth, let it slide for tonight.”

“A phone call isn’t a lot to ask, is it?”

I put her in the Plymouth, started the engine, turned on the heater, and walked across the street to the cafe to use the public phone outside. My fingers were stiff with cold, and I had trouble dialing the numbers and depositing the coins for a toll call. Through the lighted window of the cafe I could see Melvin and Pearl drinking coffee in front of their empty plates.

Buddy’s little brother, Joe, answered the phone and said that Buddy hadn’t gotten back yet from the hospital, and no, there was no light on in his cabin, and no, sir, he would have seen the headlights if the pickup had come down the road.

I walked back across the street to the automobile and sat down heavily behind the steering wheel.

“Where do you want to go now, kiddo?” I said.

She shook her head quietly and looked straight ahead at the dark line of mountains. Her face was drained of emotion now, and her hands lay open in her lap. I put my arm briefly around her shoulders, and we drove back in silence to her house.