Walter Mosley - Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

“Anything,” I told him. “Just stop talking to me.”

It took a good forty-five minutes to get the police and ambulance attendants out of my house. Perry asked four times if I wanted Jude to stay.

“Yes,” I said for the last time. “He’s a family friend.”

When they were finally gone I asked Jude to go get me a glass of water while I called Neelo Brown’s private line. Neelo asked me if I could get down to his offices and I told him that Jude would take me.

After that things happened in a kind of jumble. I took the pistol out of my purse and told Jude that we’d walk out to his car together. He didn’t seem bothered by the gun or the possibility of meeting my attacker again. This brought to mind Theon calling him dangerous.

Jude drove a dark blue Cadillac.

I was sitting next to him drifting in and out of awareness. While driving Jude asked me questions.

“You sure you don’t know who attacked you, Deb?” he asked at one point.

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Because you know you don’t have to be afraid.”

“No? Why not? I mean, the police wouldn’t be able to protect me day and night.”

“I’d take care of you.”

“You? Come on, Jude. That guy wasn’t as big as Richard Ness but he was a foot taller than you.”

“Don’t let my size fool you,” he said. “I can take care of myself.”

I fell asleep for a period there. When I woke up we were close to the clinic.

“Did you love Theon?” I remember Jude asking the question when my eyes were closed.

“Sometimes. Did you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did. Very much.”

When I opened my eyes again I was in a bed in a private room at Neelo’s clinic. The pudgy young doctor was shining a small flashlight into my right eye.

“How you feeling, Aunt Deb?” he asked when I looked directly at him.

“Like somebody dropped a ton of bricks on me and then jumped up and down on them.”

“I think you have a concussion but it’s mild. You’re going to have to rest for a day or two. Do you want me to call anyone?”

“Lana Leer,” I said. “Her number’s in my red phone. Maybe she could come talk to me later on.”

The ocean was a big part of my imagined experience after the beating. I was drifting across the surface a thousand miles from land in a field of seaweed as large as a continent. The floating vegetation kept me buoyant, breathing. The sun was hot and unrelenting. Now and again the air-conditioning came on in the room. The cool breeze made me feel as if I were dunking my head in the water below.

There was a deep concussive sound coming up out of the water. It vibrated through my body, making me laugh and shudder.

The sun wouldn’t stop beating down and the waters undulated. I tried to remember why I was there but there was no memory, nothing before the forever ocean and nothing beyond it either.

“Deb? Deb?”

It didn’t sound like my name. It wasn’t real. It was made up on the spur of the moment and stuck.

“Deb, are you awake?”

I felt flattened and dead, like a fish washed up on the shore then dried out by the sun.

I opened my dry fish eyes and saw Lana sitting on a chair beside the hospital bed. She was wearing a peach-colored dress and a cream fabric hat that flared around the edges like something out of the Roaring Twenties.

“Hi.”

“Hey, Deb. How are you, hon?”

“I feel it all the way down between my toes.”

“You look pretty good. The swelling went down.”

“What day is it?” I asked.

“Tuesday afternoon. You been sleepin’ a day and a half.”

I tried to rise and failed. My head spun and my intestines felt loose and watery.

“Help me sit up, Lana.”

She did this. I managed to get my back against the bars at the head of the bed, feeling that if I leaned to the side I’d fall over and tumble to the floor.

“Neel called me and told me you were here,” Lana said. “I called that creepy guy Dardanelle and told him to keep on doin’ what he was doin’ while you rested.”

“What’d he say?”

“He asked who was gonna give the eulogy and I told him you.”

I was breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. My thoughts kept flitting off in tangents about Coco Manetti and my brother — Cornell.

“Deb?”

“Call me Sandy, will ya, Lana? Sandy’s my name. She’s the woman I want to be.” These words invigorated me.

“Okay... Sandy.”

“You remember the name of that wardrobe and makeup woman?” I asked, then, “The one who used to be in the life but went to work for that movie studio?”

“Bertha. Bertha Renoir.”

“Yeah. Could you figure out how to get in touch with her and tell her that I need to talk? You can give her the red phone number.”

“You bet.”

Lana told me how they replaced my character in Linda Love’s film with this girl out of Georgia — named Georgia Peaches — who was four inches shorter and three shades lighter than I. She also had a thick accent even when she was moaning during sex.

Lana left after we had a good laugh and I almost felt strong enough to stand.

I was wanting a book to read when the door opened and a nurse came in. She was short and Korean, stern faced but still pretty in her light blue uniform.

“There’s a policeman here to see you, Mrs. Pinkney,” she said. “Dr. Brown asked me to ask you if you wanted to see him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lieutenant Mendelson.”

“Perry,” I said to myself, imagining a road in front of me that broke off into so many pathways that it seemed like a fan.

“Mrs. Pinkney?” the nurse said.

“Yes. Send him in.”

For a moment the young woman stared at me, as if questioning my ability to make a decision.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know him quite well and I know how to take care of myself.”

Time moved in ripples between the young woman’s departure and when Perry Mendelson knocked on the door. I thought about calling my mother but Theon’s voice interrupted, telling me that family was the quickest route to demolition. I wondered about Rash Vineland and if he’d called over the last two days. And then there was the stone in my passway, Coco Manetti, who seemed to hate me for some reason I couldn’t quite grasp.

“Come in,” I said to the closed door.

Perry Mendelson was wearing a tan suit and medium blue shirt with a dusky orange tie. There were little clocks on the tie here and there, and there were other shapes, something like yellow commas. It was one of the ugliest ties I’d ever seen and for some reason this enhanced the fondness I felt for the cop.

“How are you?” he asked, approaching the bed.

I nodded and said, “Have a seat.”

We were silent a moment there, like short-term lovers who had decided, each on their own, that the relationship would never work.

“You’ve been having a pretty hard time of it lately, huh?” the policeman said.

“Yeah.”

“Have you remembered anything else about the man who attacked you?”

“No. Nothing.”

“But you’re sure it wasn’t Lyon.”

“Why do you keep asking that? Jude was a friend of my husband’s. He’s just a mild little man. I can’t imagine him hurting anybody.”

“So you really don’t know,” he said, as if he were having a separate discussion with another me in a different time and place.

“Know what?”

“Your husband’s friend is deeply involved with organized crime here in L.A.”

“That’s ridiculous. What would he be doing with people like Ness?”

“Ness is just a wannabe enforcer,” Perry said. “He’s nothing compared to Lyon.”

“Jude? What could he possibly do that’s so bad?”