James Siegel - Epitaph

Especially here on Ward B. William didn't think days mattered much here either. There wasn't a calendar in sight here by the reception desk. No reception in sight either. He had to wait over five minutes till someone showed up. Then someone did-Hispanic, sleepy-looking, very girlish. And male. He didn't walk in so much as sashay, executing a sort of rhumba on his way to the desk. That kind of walk stood out, especially here, especially within the walls of Ward B, which were very unlike the walls in Ward A. The walls in Ward A were yellow and blue and dotted with plastic sunflowers. The walls in Ward B were dull pink and chipped, like bitten-down nails. The male nurse in Ward B had nice nails though, freshly manicured, with just a hint of lavender.

"Yesss…?" he said.

"The thing is…" William said, yes-what was that ever elusive thing? "I need a little information. About a patient who was here a long time ago."

"What kind of information?" He had a breathy voice, no doubt about it-Mae West maybe-or Lizabeth Scott.

"I'm tying up an estate," William said, trotting out a new one, and why not. "We don't have a single living relative here. I was hoping his records might mention someone so we can get this thing taken care of."

"Uh huh. How long ago are we talking about here?"

"Oh, fifty years maybe."

"Are you serious?"

William said that he was-very serious.

The nurse said that he was very too. Very sorry that William had come all the way here thinking they'd still have records from over fifty years ago. Because if he thought they would, he was very mistaken. Very, very mistaken. And have a very nice day.

William said he was very disappointed. Very, very disappointed. Was he sure there were no records of any kind for patients from that time? It was a special program for Holocaust survivors. Maybe he could check with someone else?

"Maybe I could, or maybe I can't," he said. "I don't even know who's around today."

William said his nail polish was unmistakably attrac- tive-what was the color?

"Thank you," he said, brightening considerably. "Purple Passion."

William said he didn't think he'd ever seen a color quite that nice. Nope, never.

"Maybe I can find someone," he said, as he picked up the phone. "Hold on."

A minute later-a minute William spent complimenting the nurse on his choice of shoes and lovely stock- ings-a woman close to sixty walked in. The opened door leaked in the sounds of soft wailing, of what sounded like several heads banging against several bars, of sniffling, and sobbing, and maniacal snickering, the sounds of undistilled human misery. William suddenly wished he was anywhere but here. Back in the hospital maybe, on morphine and talk shows. Not here.

"Yes," said the woman. "What exactly can I do for you?"

William took the story out for another spin around the room. Not a bad story at all, a good, solid story, a story you could depend on in a pinch. A story she wasn't buying for a New York City second.

"Are you a lawyer?" she asked.

"Not exactly," he answered, convinced if he said he was, she was going to make him prove it.

"Then what are you, exactly?"

"A private investigator for the concerned parties." When in doubt, why not try the truth? Pretty close to the truth anyway-the only thing not being the truth being the fact that the concerned parties were, of course, him. Though he certainly was concerned, no doubt about it. Especially when he realized that the truth, in this case, sounded even more like a lie than the lie. At least to her. Who was looking at him, at his seventy-something-year- old him, and probably sizing him up for one of those nice straitjackets. The next thing he was going to tell her was that he was Napoleon and that Josephine was outside waiting in the car.

"First of all," she said, "we don't keep records from that long ago. Second of all, if I did have those records, I wouldn't give them to you. They would be confidential, understand. And besides, I'm not at all sure about you anyway. Sorry."

She exited, back through the electronically opened door into the heart of Ward B, leaving William like a groom before the altar-this close to the honeymoon, and jilted just like that.

But then again, there was always the maid of honor.

Who was staring at him now with what looked like genuine compassion.

William mentioned how nicely his hair was groomed. And what a nice choice in rouge.

The male nurse said: "Look, I have no idea if he can help you, but there was a doctor who practiced here forever. He's retired now, but he still comes in to visit his old patients, okay."

William asked where this doctor lived.

"Real close to here. Five blocks maybe. I don't know if he was here that far back, but you never know, right?"

William said right. And thanks. And what a lovely pocketbook he had.

He gave William the doctor's address.

The doctor lived in a rose-brick town house. Lots of ivy trailing down the walls. Lots of shuttered windows- eight of them. Lots of cat shit by the front door in three, yes, three large litter boxes. William got to know the features of the town house intimately, for he worried that he was just a bit early and didn't want to wake the doctor from the wrong side of the bed. So he stood there like a night watchman, like East Brooklyn again, minus the teal uniform and gun. Of course, he always had the cane now-if push came to shove he could always whack some innocent bystander to death. She would have been in her late twenties now, he thought, almost that, just starting out. If drugs, or a jealous boyfriend, or a hit- and-run driver, or just plain despair hadn't gotten her first. But then, he'd gotten her first, William, the fastest gun in the East, and just maybe the least accurate. It was an accident, sure, but maybe the kind of accident that was just waiting to happen. It was the kind of accident, anyway, where sorry doesn't cut it. Where you have to do penance. His sentence was twenty years of house arrest-self-imposed maybe, but still… Go directly to your room and do not pass Go. And he'd gone-not even a murmur of dissent. And he'd stayed quite a while too, hadn't he, quite a while. But now he was out, in front of a town house searching for signs of life. The doctor's, and his own.

His own was doing fine: pulse there if a little unsteady, ribs mending, arthritis bearable, shoulder remarkably numb. The doctor's was another matter. The town house was like the house in the Night Before Christmas. The not-a-creature-was-stirring-not-even-a-mouse house.

Okay, maybe a creature was stirring after all. A cat was stirring. Gray, mangy, and battle-scarred, it slithered past his cane and trudged up to the doorway like a hungover night prowler looking for a bed. One weak meow at the foot of the door, and the door answered, swinging open to let him in. Then it shut again, pronto.

The doctor was up. And so was William, up the front walk to the stoop where he knocked twice and waited.

The cat had gotten much quicker service, he thought after a minute or so, wondering if a good meow wasn't in order. Then, the door swung open and Dr. Morten, a large man in a blue bathrobe, peered out at him and said he already had a subscription to The Watchtower. Not that he was a Jehovah's Witness or anything, just that he had a lot of trouble saying no to people.

Which turned out to be right on the money. After all, when he realized William wasn't a Jehovah's Witness, or a political canvasser, or an encyclopedia salesman, or the man from the Water Department, he still let him in.

"The hospital sent you, you said?"

Dr. Morten had led him to the kitchen. At least, it looked like the kitchen. Underneath the food-encrusted dishes, the coffee-stained cups, and glutinous-looking silverware, he thought there was a kitchen there. Although it didn't exactly smell like a kitchen; it smelled like a cross between a lavatory and a gym.