Kem Nunn - Chance

“Is there any way you could find out?”

“You think I should ask?”

“Clearly you have some connection to this place.”

“ I have no connection to anything, except you. You’d have to ask her about that.”

“Give me a fucking break.”

“I’d like to,” she said. “I really would.”

“And which her are we talking about, Jackie Black?”

“Listen to me,” she said. “There’s ones could swallow her with a glass of water.”

“Christ I’m tired of this,” he said finally. “Aren’t you?”

“The beat goes on.”

“Why were you there, Jaclyn? Why were you with that guy?”

“I told you,” she said.

“Right. So why was she there?”

“Let’s just say we like to pilfer a john now and then.”

“Both of you?”

“She’s a bad influence. What can I tell you? Drives him fucking nuts.”

“And how about Jaclyn? Is she in on it too?”

“Aw… your special lady friend.”

Chance was inclined to slap her but stayed his hand. There had been enough of that.

“Jaclyn can do the numbers. She’s good at that.”

“And take a beating now and then.”

“Oh, we all take those.”

“And that guy we ran from?”

“One of the Romanians who brings in the girls. There used to be two of them but I’m guessing maybe you know some  thing about that. I mean, if not, why were you even there?”

He declined the gambit, putting forth his own instead—now that they were back in the world with all of its unpleasantries. “And how about Gayland Parks?” he asked, in what must have seemed to her as a bolt from the blue. “What was he, a mark, a client, someone you pilfered?”

She stepped away as from an electrical shock. “Whoa…” she said, “look at you! Tou-fucking-ché!” She retrieved the sheet that had fallen, retreating to the bed, where she drew up her legs and rested her forehead upon her knees, a bit of the dramatic posturing that she was so good at.

Chance stood watching.

“That’s what you meant… coming clean, doing time… and you at the place…”

Chance said nothing.

“The fuck, man?”

“I got to his computer. I saw some of his reports.”

She stared at him a good long while. “You know what?” she said. “You shouldn’t even tell me that. Does he know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know what he knows.”

“And you stand there asking if he’s behind this other… Really?” Her voice trailed away. Chance waited. “Well…” she said finally. “You’re fucked, is what I think.” She had begun to rock back and forth on the bed in the manner of a deranged street dweller. “We’re kind of both fucked,” she added, “but he at least likes me.”

“Did he like Jane too? Did he fall in love? Did he bring her home? Maybe he found out she could do the numbers, or knew the business… And how about Myra Cohen, while we’re on the subject?…”

“Stop it,” she said. She reached out suddenly to take him by the wrist, surprising him once more with her strength even after all they’d been through. “We’ve been made, buddy. Don’t ask me how.”

“How?”

“That’s rich. He’s got fucking eyes, is how. He’s hooked up. I’ve told you he can get things done. Now you’re seeing what he can do.”

“Is he still in the hospital?”

“He was there for two nights and they sent him home but I haven’t seen him. He’s called but I didn’t return.” Chance made to pull away but she held on tight. “You are a good person,” she said yet again. “I can’t imagine how you got to his computer or what if anything you had to do with that goat fuck in the alley…” She paused but kept hold of his arm and for a moment was something like amused. “I’m saying that ’cause if I didn’t you’d probably fucking tell me. Don’t. Never cop to anything and never talk to a cop. First rule, for Christ’s sake, and if you’ve got a magic rabbit someplace you better go find him and you better hope he’s still your pal. Is this making sense? Am I getting through?”

“Help me find my sock,” Chance said.

She was still on the bed when he’d finished dressing. She’d taken what he guessed to be the last of the beers from the hotel minibar and was sipping from the can, staring out into the unpleasant light, toward that place where the Oakland airport shimmered in the distance.

“You’ll be all right?” he asked.

“Would that be a joke?”

But he was still trying to process, to place everything she had given him into some kind of real-world perspective, given her state, given his, given every other fucking thing…

“Listen to me,” she said once more. “If I can find anything out I will and I will give you a call. But don’t call me.”

“Righto.”

“I would go with you if I could.”

“Probably not the best of ideas.”

“You know what I mean,” she told him and he guessed that he did.

“Thanks anyway,” he said, then thought of something that had not occurred to him till just now, though well it might. “I thought you had gone off to see your daughter,” he said. “I thought that’s where you were.”

“Really? And here I thought you were looking for me .”

“I was looking for cameras.”

“What did I just tell you?” she asked.

“And your daughter?”

“Let’s not.”

“All right.”

“I’m sorry, buddy.”

“Two farmers meet on a road.” He’d stopped in the doorway and was looking back at her in the bad light. “One farmer has a pig that he is holding up to eat the leaves of a tree. The second farmer takes this in, asks the first guy what he’s doing. The first farmer says, ‘I’m feeding my pig.’ The second farmer says that must take a lot of time. The first farmer says, ‘What’s time to a pig?’ ”

She gave him a long look. “Would this be the kind of thing you generally charge your patients for?”

“To tell you the truth… I don’t really see that many people, as patients.”

She gave it a beat. “Wow. Let me think…”

“Yes, they scare the shit out of me.”

She said nothing to that.

“Think about the story.”

“And that’s it?”

“It’s all I’ve got,” he told her. “The room is on my card. I’ll tell them you’re going to sign for it on your way out.”

“I really am sorry.”

“Me too.”

He closed the door behind him. Within minutes he had gained the freeway, heading north then west, the great span of the Bay Bridge groaning beneath the weight of midday traffic, cars stacked four abreast for as far as the eye could see, a harsh metallic rainbow run to the spires of the city it had so often pleased him to call his own.

He arrived at the hospital shortly before the lunch hour, availing himself once more of staff parking but not bothering with the white coat. He was not feeling much like a doctor, or anything else for that matter, reduced by things as they were to little more than some bit of exposed nerve, passing like a shade through familiar corridors as if seeing them for the first time, returning straightway to the emergency care wing where he was just in time to find them spilling from one of the waiting rooms in varying states of rage and panic. They were all there, his soon-to-be ex-wife together with her support team, a small gaggle of soon-to-be ex-relatives and former friends, the dyslexic personal trainer among them. Chance, the only son of deceased parents, was quite alone in the face of their onslaught. If he had been hoping for a friendly face anywhere within hailing distance he was shit out of luck, having already been informed at the nurses’ station by a Hispanic orderly of no more than twelve that it was Gooley’s day off.