No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (20 page)

His partner was still armed and dangerous. The scream
would bring him fast enough. I ran like a rabbit. The cannon fired.
And again. I dodged trees and hopped ground-flung branches. Just
before the third shot, I took a dive. Something tore across my arm
and helped throw me down.

I grabbed the spot reflexively. The arm was there,
but it was wet. All that was missing was a little skin off the top,
like a circumcision.

The crip was still screaming, and the one with the
cannon yelled back. "Where you at? Where you at?"

Figuring the shooter was going the other way, I was
up and running. Suddenly I was out of the woods and onto cut grass.
Ahead of me was a road, then more grass, then woods again. It was a
no-man's land, a free-fire zone. Praying that the cripple was
occupying the gunman's time, I went for it. When I hit the woods on
the other side, I collapsed. I crawled into the bushes and lay there
panting. The shock and adrenaline were beginning to wear off.
Breathing hurt. It grew worse, and I realized my ribs were broken.

I tore a piece of my shirt off. Using one hand and my
teeth, I tied the rag around the wound in the arm. The only thing to
do for the ribs, rest them, was not an available option.

When you've gone a certain distance by car and later
back by foot, it's amazing how much farther it is. Maybe getting
kicked around exaggerates the sense of time and distance the same way
cannabis does, but in a less pleasant way. I don't know how long it
took, clambering up rocks, sliding down loose earth into gullies,
stumbling through branches, but it was the longest day of my life as
well as a distinctly nonurban experience.

I found that I couldn't think about progress, about
getting to the top of the next hill or through the gully. All I could
do was take one step at a time. There was a lesson in that, that I
looked forward to forgetting.

Then I was at a road. I could see the park entrance
not fifteen feet away.

I was scared.

It meant going out in the open, where if they found
me would be helpless. I lay in the dirt, to wait for a moment when no
one was around. When the moment did come, I rose, got dizzy and
blacked out.

I don't think I was out long. When I came back, I
dragged myself to a tree and crawled up the trunk. Things started
going black again, but even in the darkness, I could feel the rough
bark. When the dizziness passed, I was still standing. I called
myself a self-pitying wimp. I told myself that there was no need to
descend into pseudo-delirium. I gathered up my self-respect and
stumbled out into the city. I was not so whacked out that I didn't
understand why cabs wouldn't stop. I was bloody, dirty, with my hair
uncombed.

A patrol car cruised by. I waved to them. They waved
back and rolled on.

There was something vaguely familiar about where I
was. It was somewhere near Sandy. She had a phone. And water. I knew
she had water. I wanted water very much.

The closer I got, the harder it was to keep going. My
body was overeager to give up. Not that I blamed it. But I knew that
once down, I was staying down. Even when I entered her building and
buzzed her intercom I knew better than to sit down. I leaned against
the door. I heard her voice, electronically mangled, and croaked mine
back. Falling through the door snapped me awake. I had to grab at it
to keep from crashing. That pulled the muscles across my ribs. It
reminded me to move very carefully. I think I was crying. In the
elevator I couldn't remember the floor. Eight sounded right, but
there was no eight, so I pushed three because it looks like it.

Nor did I know which three it was, just that there
were a lot of them. I was pleased to see she knew I didn't know and
was standing with her door open to show me which it was.

"Do you know it's after one in the morning?"
she said.

I shook my head no and kept on coming.

"Tony," she said.

"Where the fuck was Franco?" I asked her.

"What happened to you?" she asked me.

"Who the hell is this?" her husband
inquired generally.

"Call a doctor," she said. I smiled. It was
the most sensible idea I had heard all day.

"I doubt," the husband said, "that his
name is 'cal1-a-doctor? It's more likely 'anotha-luvva.' "

"This is not the time for this," Sandy said
sensibly. I nodded in agreement.

"
When a strange man arrives in the middle of the
night in disreputable condition, and the two of you clearly know each
other, I think I'm entitled to know who he is."

"Please call a doctor," she said.

"Police," I said, but it came out
"P'lease," and she came to me.

"I'm sure that's not his name," the husband
said again. It was a tasteless moment to be facetious.

"His goddamn name is Tony," she snapped at
him, "now call a doctor. "

"I'm going to have a brandy," he said and
walked away. Sandy started to help me toward the couch. I rested my
bad arm on her shoulder. It burned and ached and I felt the scabbing
break, but it was far too much trouble to change sides.

"Once I'm down," I explained, "I can't
get up."

"That's all right," she said and helped me
to sit. When the ribs are gone, the hardest moves in the world are
the sequences from vertical to prone and back up again. Each move
needs the muscles that pull across the ribs.

"Need help," I said, and she let me use her
as a brace.

The couch felt wonderful. The husband walked back in
with his brandy. The brandy looked wonderful. We had not been
formally introduced, so I felt uncomfortable asking him for some.

Sandy was calling a doctor. "It's an emergency,"
I heard her say. Then very patiently, "Will you please call him
and have him call me?" Then she slammed the phone down. "Damn
answering services."
 
The
husband swirled his brandy. He spoke to her although he was looking
down his nose at me. "Is that the way you like them? A little
rough around the edges, a slight touch of the gutter?"

"Oh shut up," she said. "That son of a
bitch Bemstein has his home phone forwarded to the answering
service."

She dialed again. The service must have picked up
because she slammed the phone down again.

“
Perhaps the emergency room would be more apropos,"
her husband said, "unless there is some reason you would like to
keep him here."

"Where the fuck was Franco?" I asked.

The phone rang. Sandy answered. "Allan,"
she said, "I need you here .... Someone's hurt . . . Allan, I
don't even know if he should be moved .... There's blood and he has
trouble moving .... Yes, Allan . . . thank you . . . I know you don't
. . . I know you need your sleep, but at least I didn't interrupt
your Tai Chi practice; now get your butt over here, please."

She hung up and said, "Doctors!" It was an
expletive. She came to my side and said, "Is there anything I
can do?"

"A drink," I suggested.

"All right, " she said and started to rush
away. I grabbed her hand. "It's not that bad," I told her,
"I'm gonna live."

Realizing that, I began to enjoy the drama of the
situation. She came back from the kitchen with a glass of brandy.
Just like the one her husband liked to swirl. He noticed that too. I
could tell by the way he looked at her that I was getting the private
stock, not the stuff at the front of the liquor shelf for unwelcome
guests.

I couldn't drink in the position I was in and I
couldn't sit up. She put her arm under my head; she lifted me
tenderly and put a cushion under my back to support me.

"What happened?" she asked. I took the
glass from her. The alcohol cleared the clogs from my throat. I
thought about it. What had happened? I had been overambitious. I had
taken on something by myself that needed the police. I had been
careless. I had not had the best of backups. In sum, I had not been
quite bright.

"If you want to be an asshole," I
explained, "you have to pay the price. "

She laughed. I laughed. Laughing hurt; it made the
muscles across the ribs jump. Each "ha' was a jab. Her husband
understood that laughing hurts. So he didn't.

"I better get you a little cleaned up," she
said.

"That is sweet," her husband said. I
agreed.

She ignored him. She went into the kitchen and came
back with a bowl of warm water and some towels. He glowered. I winced
as she began to wipe my face. Our arms tangled as I tried to drink
more brandy.

"Are you going to tell me what happened to you?"
Sandy asked.

"Are you going to tell me who this is?" her
husband asked.

"Would you believe," I said to Sandy, "that
I ran into a jealous husband?"

"Again?" she teased.

Sandy and I laughed again. It hurt again. It hurt her
husband more. I held my side where the ribs were twanging. She rinsed
the towel.

"I insist that you tell me who this person is
and what he is doing here."

"Tony was a friend, is a friend, from some years
back. I suspect he's here now because he's hurt."

"My own place was too far to go," I said.
He was building himself up to something, and I was helping too much,
so I added, "I'm sorry if I intruded; it was the only place I
could think of."

The intercom buzzed and Sandy said, "Would you
get that, please?"

"Come here often?" her husband said to me.

Sandy got up to answer the intercom.

"I don't know what it is," he said to her,
examining me, "but I have the distinct impression that this is
one of your lovers. "

"Please stop it," she said. "Dr.
Bemstein is on his way up."

"I thought he was Allan to you."

"0nly," she said, "when I'm
irritated?"

"Tell me you haven't been to bed with him."

"Who him? Dr. Bemstein? Tony? The grocery boy?
What are you going on about?"

"Let's start with the swarthy one bleeding on
the four-thousand-eight-hundred-dollar couch."

"I'll stop," I said, hearing the price.

"Please don't do this to me now," she said.

"Tell me you haven't been to bed with him,"
he insisted.

Sandy paused, stuck on her weak point, her inability
to tell a direct lie. She knew how to be polite, euphemistic and
evasive, but she had her limitations.

She was saved by the bell.

"Would you get that, please?" she said.

"I would really rather not, " he said,
sipping. "This whole thing is pretty much entirely your problem.
I would rather keep it that way."

She went to the door. Dr. Bemstein came in looking
like Mark Spitz. Does everyone work out these days? And diet? What
happened to the kindly old flabby-looking doctors of yore? The
husband shared the glare, that had been all mine, with the doctor.

"Hiya, Sandy, " he said, kissing her on the
cheek.

"Howdy, Paul," he said with a wave at the
husband, "what's the crisis?"

"Me," I croaked.

Bemstein strolled cheerfully to the couch. Only the
tousled hair and the T-shirt on inside out indicated that he had just
been awakened.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Bemstein
asked me.

"Are you going to tell me about it?" Paul
asked Sandy.

"I'm pretty sure this rib is broken; everything
else is just scratches," I said.

"Tell you what?" Sandy sighed.

"That looks like an awful lot of bleeding just
for scratches, " the doctor said.

"Go on, tell me you haven't been to bed with
him," Paul said.

"Yeah, I guess so," I said, looking over
and realizing I blood was caked from just below the shoulder to the
elbow, "but I think it's just a flesh wound."

He started to poke at it and it hurt.

"With who?" Sandy said.

"Do you remember knock-knock jokes, Doc?" I
said, to distract myself.

"Sure, I do," the doctor replied, starting
to untie the rag.

"Knock, knock," I said.

"Who's there?"

"Our surprise guest, the dirty one," Paul
said, "or the doctor from down the block."

"Owhhh," I said, as he started pulling it
off.

"0whhh who?" the doctor replied.

"There has been no one since we got married,"
Sandy said. "Since we met, in fact. You know that."

"You're being evasive," Paul pointed out.

"Not 'Owhhh who,' " I said, and winced
again.

"I think I better soak it a little before I pull
anymore. Why not 'Owhhh who'? That's the way I remember the game."

"Sorry, my fault, the owh was a real owhh, not
part of the game. I should have said 'fuck'," I said, wincing
again.

The scabs were breaking up and blood was flowing.