A chalky taste was on my lips. I asked, “What did you give me?”
“Cyanide.”
“Hawks.”
“Theraflu and a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Don’t know what you’re allergic to, so I’m taking a chance. My guess is that you’re going to need to be on antibiotics for at least a week.”
Bed squeaked a hundred times while I sat up the best I could. Hawks had on nice dungarees and green cowboy boots. Black turtle-neck. Black leather coat on the small table.
My wardrobe was simple: gray boxers and white socks, my socks dirty on the bottom. I reeked like the day before yesterday. Licked around the insides of my mouth. Tart and dry. Tongue felt thick, swollen. My jeans, boots, jacket, backpack, all my clothes were piled up at the foot of the bed.
She said, “You took a serious ass-whooping.”
“I gave better than I took.”
She went on, “This room probably has just as many germs.”
“Probably.”
“Sheets are atrocious. Stained. Wouldn’t doubt if that bed kept you infected.”
“How did I get here?”
“I brought you here. I came from Nashville, got you from the airport. You were unconscious when I got to you. Guess you got in just before the storm hit. You called Konstantin and passed out in the plane from what I know. As sick as you were when I got there, I’m surprised you landed the plane.”
All she said seemed like a dream. The room was stuffy. Wasn’t sure if I was awake yet.
Hawks said, “You doing okay over there?”
“Still breathing.” I nodded. “What time is it?”
“Three thirty in the morning.”
“You’ve been here the whole time?”
“For the most part. The storm was too bad to go anywhere for a long time. Once I got you situated and the winds eased up, I took a chance, came and went, had to get your meds.”
A dry cough came on hard. Nose was stopped up, started running. Bladder was full. Stomach rumbled. All systems woke up and cried for me to get to the bathroom before liftoff. The covers on my legs were heavy, weighed down by my own sweat. I groaned, struggled to get to my feet.
She said, “You’re welcome.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Hawks.”
“You’re one ungrateful bastard.”
“Hawks.”
She folded her arms and took a hard breath. “Should’ve picked up that cyanide.”
A moment later I asked, “Where am I?”
“Alamo Motel.”
“What part of town?”
“Metropolitan Parkway.”
“Safe here?”
“If you call being surrounded by whores, drug dealers, and bottom-feeders safe, yeah.”
“Why here?”
“There was a safe house over at Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts. Good thing we didn’t go there.”
“It get raided?”
“Tornado hit it. Direct hit. Tore the roof off. Ripped down the brick walls.”
“Last night?”
She nodded. “CNN building and the Congress Center, all the windows blown out. Trees down and in the middle of houses. Looking like Cambodia out there. You slept through it all.”
I took a step and almost went down, my legs feeling like wet noodles, embarrassed for a moment.
Hawks stepped closer to me, but I waved her away.
My limp made me have to hold the wall as I moved on to the bathroom. Small space. Shower over the tub, and a toilet. Barely enough room to close the door. I sat and let nature do its thing.
Poison passed through my body. Everything about my insides felt wrong.
Hawks called out, “Everything all right in there?”
“Yeah.”
“Solid or runny?”
“Can I have a moment to myself, please?”
I flushed. Then damned whoever invented one-ply tissue. Then flushed again. Washed my hands and face in the dark. Went back into the other room at a slow, wounded pace. Still dark. Rain steady and hard. Winds blowing like they wanted to rip us up and send us to the other side of Kansas.
I took my iPhone from my bag. Logged on long enough to look in on that house in Powder Springs. Catherine and the kid were home. Didn’t look like there had been any tornado damage, they didn’t look like they were afraid. Saw they were okay. I turned the phone off, put it away.
Then I looked at Hawks. Her long hair, Native American features, and haunting eyes.
She pulled a chair up to the television, motioned for me to sit. I did. She pulled another chair up next to me, took one of my arms, looked it over, did the same with the other. Her hands were warm.
Her touch sent electricity up my arm.
She said, “Don’t think I want to touch you. You just need some hemming up.”
“My own Florence Nightingale.”
“Do us both a favor and this will be less painful for the both of us.”
“The favor?”
“Speak when spoken to. Keep your trap shut unless you’re answering a question.”
A big black purse was on the table. Darkness had hidden that from me. She opened her bag and took out six or seven cellular phones; sounded like more were inside her bag. I assumed they were clones. She put those phones aside, then took out silk sutures, a straight needle, some xylocaine to numb the area, and betadine to clean the wound before she started sewing me up.
Hawks looked up long enough for me to see her haunting eyes.
She asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“No reason.”
Her scent was subtle, eucalyptus and rosemary mixed with sandalwood and lavender.
She said, “Just because you’re half-naked and we’re in a hotel, don’t get any ideas.”
Again, thunder boomed. Lightning flashed. Winds roared without mercy.
Hawks used the television as her light and focused on fixing me up. She worked without a word, sewed me up in two places, one on each forearm, both taking three stitches, did that without flinching or being squeamish. While she did that I looked at the images on the news. Downtown looked like a war zone. When Hawks was done, she put the chairs back at the table, went over to the window.
I went to the dresser and looked in the scratched mirror, checked out her patchwork.
“Thanks.”
“And one more thing.” She nodded. “I don’t need your charity.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Nobody said you were a charity case.”
“I came up here to tell you that face-to-face. And to bring you back your money. It’s over there with your filthy things. I took out enough for gas money, which was a lot, and I took out enough to pay for the medicine, and I paid for one night at this skanky motel, and I bribed the guy at the airport to hear no evil and see no evil, and . . . oh, and since you cost me two days off work, I took enough for that. I think that just about covers it. The rest of the money is tucked in with the rest of your stuff. We’re even.”
I nodded, not in the mood to argue, not strong enough to reply.
The lady on television was tracking the tempest. Said that the windstorm had crossed through Cobb County into Fulton County. Trees were being ripped up and streets were flooded.
The next round of thunder and lightning sounded like a series of nuclear explosions.
She said, “The Jewell of the South is reporting today.”
I glanced over, saw Jewell Stewark’s face on the television, her hair down and straight, her clothing conservative. No longer Veronica Lake. She looked different in person, looked much better.
I said, “She sounded different in person. Guess that’s her television voice.”
“You know her?”
“Ran into her once.”
“You worked for her?”
I shook my head. “Used to live down here.”
“You stayed in Georgia?”
“For a while.”
“When?”
“Up until last year.”
“I imagined you always lived someplace exotic, Paris or Italy, someplace overseas.”
We silenced ourselves and let Jewell Stewark do the talking.
Landmarks had been damaged. Cabbagetown took a hit. Trees uprooted. Pets were missing.
The winds picked up and lightning flashed as thunder boomed.
Hawks said, “So you lived in the South up until last year.”
“Had a place here.”
“Well, that’s good to know.”
“Had homes in Seattle and right outside of Los Angeles too.”
“And you lived right here in Georgia.”
Hawks turned the television off and that left us in the dark. Guess she was scared all of that would attract the lightning. It was just me, her, and the forces of nature. She went to the dresser. Bottles of medicine were lined up near a Bible. A Bible furnished by the Gideons. For a moment, in my mind, I was back in Detroit, in the basement of a million-dollar home, a hollowed-out Bible at my feet. Hawks tore a disposable thermometer from a strip, opened one, and put it inside my mouth. Had me hold it under my tongue for a minute. Clicked a light on long enough to read the result. Temp was down to a hundred.
“Take your temp every hour. It hits one oh two, it will be time to pack up and go to Grady. Agreed?”
I didn’t answer her. In my mind that meant there was no agreement.
She went on, “You’re a mesomorph, so I think you’ll be okay, but you never know.”
“What’s
mesomorph
mean?”
“Surprised I know a couple of ten-dollar words, are you?”
“Nothing about you surprises me.”
“It means you’re athletic, solid, and strong. Gain and lose weight easily.”
“Mesomorph.”
“Worth a few points playing Scrabble. Eighteen with no double- or triple-letter scores.”
I limped to the bathroom, came back, and crashed on the squeaky bed. Mattress was as soft as a slab of concrete. Hawks sat in the wooden chair. Crossed her legs, her hands on the knee of her dungarees, a sigh etched in her face. She leaned back into the darkness, became that silhouette once again. Every now and then the sky rumbled and lit up and I had a better view of her.
We stared at each other for a while, her green eyes magnetic and haunting.
I said, “Sometimes.”
“Sometimes what?”
“It gets to me. Sometimes. Only when I stop and think about it.”
“Now was that so hard to say?”
“Did this job down in Tampa. Took out a few men with sledgehammers.”
“That rapper? You did that job? Good Lord, that was you?”
I nodded.
Hawks made a nasty face. “That was plain old disgusting.”
“That was the one that got to me.”
“Talk about some nasty work. They had that on the news for weeks.”
“That’s the one that stuck with me.”
She shook her head, took a deep breath, slapped her thighs. “Want to talk about it?”
“No. Just answering your question.”
I limped to the bathroom again, came back, and crashed on the slab of concrete.
I told Hawks, “Sorry I didn’t call you.”
There was no reply.
She asked, “Will you need anything else?”
“Food. Water. B.C. Powder.”
“You’ll need more drugs. I can get a prescription called in.”
“Just tell me what I owe you, Hawks.”
“Doing this for Konstantin, not for you.”
“For Konstantin.”
“And I wanted to bring you back your money. I’m not a charity case.”
“You drove up in a thunderstorm to tell me that?”
“I called you and you didn’t answer your dang phone.”
“You told me not to answer your calls.”
“So now you can do whatever I ask you to do?”
“I can.”
“Good. Go to hell. Could you do that for me? Don’t see you moving.”
“Give me the directions.”
“Jerk.”
“Stop being cheeky about everything.”
“And
cheeky
means what exactly?”
“Stop being rude. You’re pissed off, I get it. You’re vexed at your old man. He abandoned you. I didn’t call you. Don’t take it out on me. Now let it go. Move on. Or leave. Let it go or leave me alone.”
Hawks huffed. “You’re a real jerk, Gideon. The jerk of all jerks. A worthless jerk.”
She quieted, leg bouncing at an easy pace. Don’t think she was paying attention. Her body language told me that she had drifted, was processing a thousand thoughts. Moans. Grunts. In the room next door, a sex therapist and her client cursed and called out for Jesus, tried to bang a hole in the wall, the headboard hammering at an uneven rhythm, like he was fucking her in Morse code.
“Because the heathens next door are unloading their wagons, don’t get any ideas.”
“Not getting any ideas, Hawks.”
“And stop looking at me.”
“Hawks, you can stop looking at me too.”
“I’m not looking at you.”
I asked, “Then how do you know if I’m looking at you?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter. Those memories are no good.”
“I didn’t say they were good.”
“Oh, it wasn’t good?”
I took a breath. “It was good.”
“Not good enough to make you want to pick up the phone.”
“Hawks.”
“You were a mistake.”
Hawks picked up her newspaper again; it rustled as she snapped open the pages, now done arguing. I closed my eyes again, my stomach calming down, the pain easing up, the medicine settling in.
Darkness pulled at me. I struggled, a tug-of-war with consciousness. Darkness won.
Twenty
the stranger beside me
Antigua Yacht Club.
She snapped at her husband,
“It’s a yes-or-no question.”
Matthew walked away, went across the room, again putting the television on CNN.
She followed him across the room. “Did you sleep with that bitch?”
Matthew went back on the patio, hands on the rail, staring at lush hills and yachts.
She stormed inside the bathroom, turned on the shower, hands in her hair, her head down.