Reed Coleman - Hurt machine

“What do you mean?”

“I went to the High Line Bistro. On an EMT’s salary, you couldn’t afford an appetizer and a bowl of chowder in that joint. Their least expensive wine was sixty bucks. Coffee is seven bucks a pop. It’s not the kind of place people in uniforms go to. But Alta and Maya traveled over there from the other side of Manhattan for a quick lunch? I don’t buy it. And under careful questioning, some of the witnesses said that Alta and Maya were arguing when they came in. About what? It’s just weird, Carm. It doesn’t feel right. I don’t think they were there about lunch.”

“Then what for?” she asked.

“That’s the million dollar question. What the hell were they doing there?”

I think I had something else to say, but suddenly I was lightheaded. No, it was more than that. I was dizzy and my vision got hazy around the edges. My heart was beating its way out of my chest and up into my throat. My head, now impossibly heavy, fell back over the top of the chair. I could feel myself soaking through my shirt. I was nauseous as hell.

“Moe! Moe!” I heard someone calling my name, but from somewhere far far away. “Moe, are you all right? You look gray.” I felt a hand touch my face, my neck. “You’re clammy. I’m going to call 911.”

“No! No. Get me to the bathroom,” I slurred, holding my leaden arms out. “I’ll be okay.”

I was up, but not for long. My legs were deboned and demuscled. I remember feeling myself dropping. I don’t remember landing. It must have been a hell of a fall.

I stopped at my condo for another shower and a change of clothing before heading over to see Detective Jean Jacques Fuqua. Neither the shower nor the new clothing made me feel like a new man. I was past the age when feeling like a new man was possible. The best I could hope for was feeling like a retread and recently even that had become a pipe dream. I no longer got just tired. That ship done sailed. These days my exhaustion was profound as a Russian novel. Exhaustion for me was now a whole other state of being and last night had taken more out of me than I had to give. I wasn’t sure if this new state of being was simply my body giving me a preview of what I’d feel like once chemo and radiation kicked in or if it was preparing me for death. Death, I thought, had all sorts of potential for unpleasantness, especially if I was wrong about all those many things I didn’t believe in. What if the face of God was a sneering one and he was the type to say I told you so? What if he was just a universal hurt machine? Man, in either case, I was fucked.

Even last night as I lay on Carmella’s bathroom floor, I knew I wasn’t quite dead. I couldn’t imagine the departed could taste their own vomit or feel as though their kishkas were being torn apart from the inside out. Nope. I was pretty sure that sort of unpleasantness was reserved for the living, but as poorly as I felt, it was much better than I had at the kitchen table. The nausea was gone and my vision was no longer blurred at the edges. My view of the base of the toilet was crystal clear. I was weak, but my arms were no longer leaden and my legs seemed like they might once again support my full weight. I hadn’t been foolish enough to test them out. I was content to just lie there and enjoy the coolness of the tiles.

Eventually, I got around to showering and rinsing my mouth. There wasn’t enough mouthwash left in Carm’s medicine cabinet to fully rid me of that awful taste. There probably wasn’t enough in all of East New York to do that. I was feeling much better when I spit the last of the mouthwash into the sink, but the exhaustion had set in. It was the exhaustion, along with some other less savory symptoms, that had forced me to go to my doctor in the first place. I looked at myself in the mirror. I’d been doing that a lot lately. I looked old. I noticed my hand on my abdomen and turned away. I wrapped two big bath towels around me, and asked Carmella if I could lie down on the couch and just shut my eyes for a few minutes. A few minutes turned into a long deep sleep of forgotten dreams.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was just sending the tips of its fingers over the east end of Long Island. The birds were in full throat-the birds in Brooklyn sing like any other birds, except maybe a little louder, in order to be heard. The apartment itself was quiet and I found my clothes on the chair next to the couch. Carm had washed my shirt, briefs, and socks. She’d pressed my suit and sprayed it with that stuff that was supposed to pull the stink out of fabric. It had worked well enough. In a book or movie, I would have tiptoed to look in on Israel. I just left. I’d had enough pain for the time being.

Catching a cab on Atlantic Avenue at that hour had turned out to be easier than I thought it might be. The cabbie dropped me off in front of the Kythira Cafe. I could scarcely believe my eyes: my car was still there and there was no parking ticket wedged under the wiper blade. It’s something of a miracle to park your car on the street overnight in New York City without it getting towed or ticketed. I had a friend who worked in the city budget office who told me the city took in like five hundred million dollars a year from parking violations and towing fees. Nice, huh? Talk about predatory practices. Lions and crocodiles could take lessons from New York City meter maids.

Now more than the sun’s fingertips hovered in the cloudless blue skies over the County of Kings and the pain in my gut was back at the level I’d grown accustomed to. But there was no getting around it, last night had scared the shit out of me. I was afraid: mouth-dry, hands-shaking afraid. I’d felt many things since walking out of my oncologist’s office. Mostly anger. I suppose I accepted the diagnosis and filed the reality of it away somewhere. It was one thing to think about dying in the abstract, which is what I had been doing to hold it at bay. The holding my abdomen, the silent deals with the tumor, the waiting until after Sarah’s wedding to begin treatment: it was a kind of denial. The fact was I hadn’t faced it, not really. Last night changed that. There was going to be a lot of pain and suffering. Not all of it would be mine. I was glad Sarah had Paul and that she wouldn’t be here to watch me suffer in close-up. I was thinking about Sarah when I parked the car on Mermaid.

Fuqua actually smiled at me when I walked over to his desk.

“You are a stubborn man, Moe Prager.”

“I prefer persistent.”

He gestured to an empty chair. “Sit. What may I do for you on this glorious day?”

“I’d like to see Alta Conseco’s apartment or where her personal effects are stored.”

“ Porquoi? Why?”

“A feeling.”

“A feeling? What sort of feeling?”

“Did you pay any attention to the witness statements from the High Line Bistro?” I asked.

“Of course. You are referring to the alleged argument?”

It was my turn to smile at him. “Exactly.”

“It is my understanding from the detectives and the fire department investigators who interviewed both my victim and Maya Watson that they refused to discuss any aspect of that day other than to say they were there for lunch. And when I interviewed the Watson woman after my vic was killed, she once again refused to discuss the matter and denied there had been an argument. She stated only that she and Conseco were there for lunch.”

“Bullshit!”

“I agree. Bullshit. But if Watson did not cooperate after her friend and partner was murdered, she will not cooperate now.”

“Maybe not.”

“There is that persistence again, Mr. Prager. How will you get the Watson woman to talk with you?”

“Good question.”

“I am a detective. I am full of good questions.”