Charlie Huston - Caught Stealing

– Hen, I have to go out for a while. I’m leaving water and the phone right here and a note in case you forget where to call me, OK?

– Yeah, right.

– Henry?

– Yeah?

– What did I just say?

Oh,fuck, a quiz.

– Henry!

– What?

– What did I say?

– Water, note,call you.

– I’ll be back late, so just sleep, OK?

– No problem.

I feel her get up off the bed. I hear her grabbing keys and her bag. I hear the front door open and close and I hear her locking up. Then I hear her walking away down the hall.

I drift.

I wake.

I drift.

Henry, that’s me. I’m at Yvonne’s. She’s at work. I’m supposed to sleep. No problem. Sandbags fall on my head. I shake them off.

– Hey, baby, how’s Bud?

But no one is there to answer.

I wake up curled on my right side. The bed seems harder than it should be and that’s because it’s a futon instead of my mattress. There’s a morning kind of light coming in through the shades, a small digital clock next to the futon reads 11:48A.M. Next to the clock is a phone and, leaning against that, is a note:

Hen, I had to go to work. Sorry. Try to sleep and don’t move around. I took care of everything I could. I’ll be back in the morning sometime early. Call me at the bar if you need me. Y.

Well, it’s morning now. And that’s when I realize that the warm thing curled against my back must be Yvonne and the smaller warm thing curled against my stomach is Bud.

He’s asleep. His left front leg is stuck straight out from his body, wrapped in a hard cast. Some of the hair on his head has been shaved away and he has a few stitches and a big scab on his snout. He breathes slowly and regularly, and when I shift, he moves a little to press his body against mine. I look over my left shoulder at Yvonne, who is pressed against my back. She’s not under the covers and all she’s wearing is an oversizeKnicks jersey. Number thirty-three, Patrick Ewing. She loves that guy, cried the day theKnicks traded him.

I try to twist around to face her and the sudden flame in my side serves as a reminder that I was busy being tortured about twenty-four hours ago. I gasp at the burst of pain and tears spill out of my eyes. Yvonne’s eyes flip open and she gives me a grim little smile.

– Morning, sleepyhead.Ready for a doctor?

After I blacked out, she got me inside and tried to call 911. Apparently, I managed to convince her that was a bad idea and she did the best job she couldrebandaging me. She took Bud to a vet with emergency service, left him, and came home to check on me, but all I did was sleep. Eventually she went to work, and when she came home early this morning, she was able to pick up Bud. She told the vet Bud was hit by a car; he told her to be more careful and gave her some little kitty painkillers for him. The stitches are the dissolving kind, but he’s stuck with the cast for at least a few weeks. So all in all, it’s not such a bad morning.Especially the part about still being alive. But Yvonne’s patience with my loose-lips-sink-ships attitude is wearing thin and she wants some answers about what the hell is going on. Welcome to the club.

In the end we make a deal. I’m lying on the bed and Yvonne gently pulls the bandage away from my side.

– You know, I never went to college like you, Henry, but me? I’d say you’re pretty fucked up. So, now that you’re not all delirious with pain, I thought I might be able to get you to a doctor or something.

I grit my teeth as she wipes more blood away from the wound.

– No.

– Fuck you, Hank. Unless you have a better idea, I’m calling 911 and getting an ambulance over here before you ruin my bed with your fucking blood.

She stands and heads for the phone.

– Baby, wait.

– Don’t “baby” me, Hank.

She has the phone in her hand, waiting.

She’s right. I do need a doctor. I tell her the number to call.

Yvonne has her loft set up with her studio at one end and the living area at the other. Everything is open except for the curtained-off bathroom in one corner. In the middle she has a little kitchen built around an enormous antique oak table. She uses the table for counter space and dining, it bears innumerable burns and scars from both. She found it abandoned on the street a couple years back and me and some guys from the bar helped her to get it up here. We had to take the legs off and Wayne, this ex-marshal from the bar, tore his groin muscle getting it up the last flight. Yvonne sanded it down and refinished it, then promptly began abusing the hell out of it. I’m facedown on it right now because it’s the brightest spot in the room and Dr. Bob wanted as much light as possible to stitch up my side.

This is service above and beyond the call of duty even for the doc. A morning house call to sew up mysteriously brutal wounds on a surly and unforthcoming patient is not covered in the Hippocraticoath. However, ministering to the sick all measures that are required is. For that matter, there’s something in there about respecting the privacy of the patient, and the doc is doing a particularly good job on that one. Which makes a lot of sense, seeing as he’s made it clear he doesn’t want anyone to ever know he was here doing this.

– What I don’t want is some emergency room doctor asking for the name of the butcher who sutured you rather than sending you to the hospital. I don’t want to suddenly start receiving calls from lawyers regarding malpractice charges. I don’t want your buddies popping up at my door in the middle of the night with bullets they need taken out of their guts. I also don’t happen to want you slowly bleeding to death as you wander around the city.

He punctuates each statement by pulling the knots tight on each suture. He gave me a shot of Novocain, so all I feel are little tugs against the skin.A wild improvement over Red’s technique.

He applies a dressing and helps me to sit up.

– You were lucky the surgery was healing so well. I could probably take out the rest of the staples, but we may as well leave them in. You might need them. The real risk is infection. I’m going to give you some penicillin. Other than that, you need rest and pain management. You’ve already flunked out on getting rest. So what do you have for pain?

– Vicodin.

– Uh-huh. Take them. That thing is going to hurt like hell. Clean the wound once a day. Get some Advil for the swelling. Have the sutures and staples removed next week.

– Right. Thanks.Anything else?

He’s packing his stuff away. Yvonne grabs his coat from the bed and brings it over.

– Anything else. Yeah. Call the cops and stop fucking around. Whoever did this to you needs to be lockedup.Before they hurt someone who cares about their life.

I try to give him money.Bad call.

I’m sitting at the table now instead of lying on it, fingering a deep knife scar in the oak grain and watching Yvonne in herKnicks jersey while she makes me a waffle. She’s doing a great job of not asking questions, but the way she clunks down the waffle plate on the table in front of me is a good indication that the levee will soon break.

I tear into that waffle. She makes great waffles, warms up the real maple syrup and everything. Besides which, I really don’t want to see her sitting across the table from me, drinking her coffee and rolling up a Drum cigarette.Waiting. I finish the waffle and the half grapefruit she cut for me and my water and the O.J. and, man, was I hungry. I look at the empty plates and close my eyes for a second. I want to stay here. I want waffles three times a day and the smell of her cigarettes and the sound of her kiln roaring, firing a new piece, and Bud sleeping on her too-hard futon and just to stay here. I open my eyes, push back from the table and look at Yvonne. She’s leaning back in her chair, feet up on the table, staring across the room out one of the windows that looks toward the Hudson. Her jersey has slipped up her thigh just enough for me to see that she has no underwear on andI feel a little horny all of a sudden. She takes a sip of coffee and drags on the cigarette. I make a little throat-clearing noise and she turns her head slowly to look at me and hear what I have to say.