Joseph Kanon - Stardust

“Take your hand off me,” Bunny said, a stage line, haughty, then he switched, unexpectedly breezy, almost malicious. “Come and see.”

Inside there were more people in white coats, attendants in loose pajama-like uniforms.

“Is this a hospital?”

“It’s a private facility. For people who can’t manage on their own.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s been coming along nicely,” Bunny said, Laraine Day for a second. “But today we’ve had a little setback, I’m afraid. Still, since you’ve come all this way.”

A man holding a clipboard looked up, concerned, but Bunny made a little hand motion that seemed to vouch for Ben. They walked down a hall of polished Mexican tile.

“He’ll be sleeping. So just a look today. I suppose you wanted to talk, have a heart-to-heart about the brother, but that’ll have to wait.”

“Is something wrong. I’m not trying to-”

Bunny turned. “What are you trying to do? Just in here.”

He opened the door to a large bright room facing the sea, what must have been the master bedroom in the old house. It was not a hospital room. There were reading chairs and tables with books and magazines, a small dining area, an ordinary bed, but Ben noticed a pull cord next to a nightstand covered with pill boxes and medicines. MacDonald was lying half propped up, his face away from the light pouring in from the terrace. His bare shoulders and the top of his chest were visible over the sheet, but one of the shoulders ended in a stump, the arm gone. The other arm was lying out on the sheet, the wrist wrapped in a white bandage.

“This is Jack,” Bunny said.

“What happened?” Ben said, almost a whisper.

“He can’t hear,” Bunny said, a normal voice. “They gave him something earlier.” He looked down at the bandage. “He gets sad sometimes. Oh, you mean the arm. A grenade. They took it off over there-New Guinea. God knows what the place must have been like. Probably some tent. Butchers. Next. Anyway, not Cedars, but maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference. It was shattered. You knew he was a pianist?”

“At Universal,” Ben said quietly. “An arranger.”

“Helpful, aren’t they, those files? Not just an arranger. A pianist.” He was looking down at him now. “The lightest touch. Chopin, especially. Like night sounds. He was very gifted.” He touched the sleeping man’s hair. “Of course, there’s nothing we can do about the hand now. He can use that to get around,” he said, nodding to a corner where a prosthetic arm rested on an end table, “but not for the piano. The face, though-there’s a surgeon at UCLA who’s been doing wonders with grafts, so we might get that back.” Ben now saw that the side of his face away from the window was a blotch, what must be a burn scar from the same explosion. “He was so good-looking.” He brushed the hair back again, a sleeping child.

“I’m sorry.”

Bunny took his hand away. “Yes. But there’s no bottom to sorry, is there? Down and down. So one of us has to keep things going. It’s just-I wish he didn’t get so sad sometimes.”

There was a knock on the door, then a white coat halfway through.

“Mr. Jenkins? Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, noticing Ben.

“No, it’s all right. Please. Dr. Owen. You wanted to see me.”

“It’s just that-” He glanced again at Ben, uneasy. “It’s just, we can’t take the responsibility.”

“I’ll take the responsibility.”

“We can’t be with him all the time.”

“I know. And accidents will happen.” He looked at the doctor. “But not again. I’ll talk to him. He has to be more careful, that’s all.”

“But Mr. Jenkins, we can’t-” He looked to the terrace. “We can’t be building fences on the balconies. We’re not a-”

“I’ll talk to him,” Bunny said firmly. “All these medicines, you have to be extra careful. So disorienting. But thank you for everything,” he said, coming over, as if he were seeing someone out after a party. “The stitches. It seemed like a nasty cut.”

“Yes, nasty. Mr. Jenkins-”

“He may need a little extra help at meals for a while. You know, with both arms not really- There won’t be any problem with that, will there?”

The doctor faced him down, a moment, then looked away. “No, there shouldn’t be a problem. Mr. Jenkins-”

“I’ll talk to him. I know this will be a warning to him. To be more careful.”

“Yes, a warning,” the doctor said, a last shot, then nodded to Ben and left.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said.

“So you said. So everybody says. Well, they would if they knew. But no one does, except you. The Grand Inquisitor. So let me ask you something. What would you do? Leave him to rot in that Veterans Hospital, everyone walking around on crutches, missing this, missing that, bedpans and people leaking-imagine living there, all the time, looking at who you are, all those people like you. Sad? You might as well-” He stopped and reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

“Is that allowed?”

“Darling, I don’t give a shit. It’s my nickel. Nickel. Thousands. And not even a fucking ashtray. All right, let’s go out there. Better for him, anyway. And no doubt you’ll want to chat, now that you’re here. About that wonderful brother of yours.” He looked at the bed. “Sometimes I think they can hear when they’re under. They come to looking like they know everything.” They were moving out onto the balcony. “Or maybe he’ll look surprised. That he’s here. Until the next time. They’re right, you know. They shouldn’t have to worry about this- give the place a bad name. He’s right about these, too,” he said, touching the balcony wall. “Why not just slip right over? Quite a drop. No, he had to do it that way, all messy and- So maybe he didn’t really mean it. Not finally, anyway. If you really mean it, why not jump? Easier. Yours did.”

“Danny didn’t jump.”

“No, he tripped,” he said, sarcastic, then looked up. “Oh, Jack gave him a push, is that it? With his good arm, no doubt. Really, even you-”

“He lived there. At the Cherokee.”

“For a while. I thought it would be better for him. But he kept running into people.”

“Danny, you mean.”

“Mm. Old comrades. I wasn’t having that.”

“Tell me. Please.”

Bunny looked over at him, then put out the cigarette on the rail.

“You put him there?” Ben said.

“I had to get him out of the hospital. I couldn’t face it. All those boys, trying to come back. Clomping around. They’d fall sometimes and they’d have to wait for someone to pick them up. You could see it in their faces, what it did to them. It was making him worse, being there. So I hired somebody to be with him. Found a place.”

“Why didn’t you bring him home?”

“Home. Where have you been living?” He caught himself and looked away, toward the Pacific. “You don’t know how it is, do you? That really wouldn’t have been on. Sharing. There’s a certain standard you have to keep up here. Not startle the horses. Unless you’re a set dresser, something like that.” He turned to Ben. “And I’m not. So I found him a place. One of the contract players used to live there-”

“Who?” Ben said, thinking of the lists he’d gone through.

“Does it matter? The boy who played the gunner on Dick Marshall’s bombing raid. Dick Marshall,” he said, partly to himself. “That’s the war we gave them. Not the one in there. Well, why not? Dick killing Japs-you’d pay to see that. Who’d pay to see this?” He took a breath. “ Any way, he was at the Cherokee for a while, and I knew about the phone there. That was essential, having the phone, but still private, not the Roosevelt or something, so I moved him in, with Robert to look after him. And I think he liked it. So much better than the hospital. Like being on your own, in a way. That was before the leg got better, so he was still in a wheelchair, but even so. Not as-sad.”