I feel a cold sensation in my elbow, then hear, “You’re going to feel a little poke in one, two, three...”
The needle goes in. I catch a lungful of air and just go with it. As the world sinks away I hear Graham say, “I’m not paying your tech.”
I want to tell him to not be so cheap, but I fade away as I feel them roll me to my side.
Two days later and I hobble down to the end of the driveway; wait for Graham to come pick me up.
I look out and see a herd of cattle across the way, grazing and generally not being bothered by the world. Somewhere I hear chickens. The breeze comes up over the rolling hills and splashes along my chest and back. I’m nude from the waist up, save the industrial-sized bandages wrapped around me.
“So anyway,” Marla, the female vet who owns this place says. “Come back in two weeks and I’ll take out the stitches. Beyond that, clean it with soap and water a few times a day. No physical activity besides the bare-minimum; getting in and out of bed and the car. Walking. No running. Try not to stretch while you yawn, reach for things above your head. You know the drill.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, light up a smoke.
Marla sips from her morning eye opener, a bloody mary that I watched her prepare with two raw eggs and half a gallon of vodka, and she continues, “Quit smoking, if you get a fever or if the wound site starts leaking—”
I tune her out. Think about Carla Gabler. I need to go tell her things are squared away and Mickey can rest in peace. Marla, the DUI large animal vet and her idiot tech Ian patched me up. It’s a double-edged sword going under the knife in someone’s basement. If I show up to a hospital with a bullet in my back, the cops tend to ask questions. If I show up on someone’s doorstep who needs a favor, well, that has its own risks. Fortunately, when Graham cut this deal with Marla, it was her first positive experience with the cops.
I see a rooster tail of gravel dust coming down the road and hope to God it’s Graham. I want news about Molly’s recovery, and I want a damn whiskey. I want a lot of whiskey.
This time Carla doesn’t hesitate to open the door when I’m knocking.
“Hello, Richard. Come in. I have sweet tea.” She smiles and seems to know I’ve come for the last time.
“Hi, Carla. Is Absinthe around?” I hold up a new doll I bought her. “It has a change of clothes that came right in the package with it, so I think it’s pretty high falutin’.”
Carla looks at the doll. “It is very pretty. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I look around, but no little girl.
“Her mom took her to a birthday party,” Carla says. “I’m sorry. She’ll be here tomorrow.”
I fake a sad grimace and set the doll down on the table. “Well, nothing can stop her from playing with it tomorrow, eh?”
“Nope. Nothing.” Carla lights a smoke and offers me a seat. Gets me a glass of tea. Sits down across from me. “Well, you’re here for something. Spill it.”
So I tell her. I never found out the details but Mickey is dead. She cries just a little and I let her. She needs it. I’m sure the bulk of those tears had come and gone years ago when she never saw him out of prison. I tell her the rapist died during apprehension and even though it’s not a slow, agonizing death, Mickey’s memory got its justice.
We blab on for a little bit, small talk. She recites a memory or two about her fallen love and I listen. She tells me about how Mickey was nice and sweet and likeable for all the months they were together. Apparently he wasn’t one for bugs of any kind, and went out of his way to step on any that he saw.
“That was his cruel streak,” Carla says. “I was always upset with him for how he would squash those little defenseless bugs. I don’t know why it bothered me so. Maybe because it seemed sometimes that he was...I don’t know, taking out his rage on them.”
“Everyone has something,” I say. “Was he phobic of some kind?”
“No. Just didn’t like bugs.”
“I see.”
“His stepmother—Joann’s birth mom—she got onto him about it all the time. Of course, by the time his dad and stepmom married both he and Joann were in their teens and Mickey I guess butted heads with her a lot. He missed his own mom.”
“He did, huh?”
“Yes.” Carla stood up. “Let me show you my favorite picture of us, okay?”
“Sure.”
She goes to her closet—everyone keeps their treasures in a closet, I guess—and rummages through shoebox after shoebox. “We went on our one vacation together to Las Vegas. It was magical. All the lights and the sights and sounds. You could walk down the Strip at two in the morning and it would be alive with people and going-ons. The food was magnificent and it never ended. But anyways, we drove out to Hoover Dam and some kind stranger offered to take our picture.”
She rummages some more, flipping through stack after stack. “No...no...that was...uh, 2000, I think. No...no...here it is! My favorite!”