‘I’m going to stay with you. Don’t even think about arguing with me.’
He doesn’t. ‘I’d like to be out of here by six. Seven at the latest. So get some sleep.’
3
‘And did you?’ Bucky asks. ‘Get some sleep?’
‘A little. Not much. I doubt if he got any. I didn’t know how bad it was, how deep the bullet went in.’
‘I’m guessing it perforated his intestines. Maybe his stomach.’
‘Could you have found him a doctor? If I’d called you?’
Bucky thinks it over. ‘No, but I could have reached out to someone who might have been able to reach out to someone else on short notice. Someone of a medical persuasion.’
‘Would Billy have known that?’
Bucky shrugs. ‘He knows I have a lot of connections in different fields.’
‘Then why wouldn’t he at least have let me try it?’
‘Maybe he didn’t want to,’ Bucky says. ‘Maybe, Alice, he just wanted to get you here and be done.’
4
They leave the hotel at six-thirty. Billy is able to walk to the car unassisted. He says that with a couple more of Alice’s Tylenol onboard, the pain is pretty manageable. Alice wants to believe it and can’t. He’s walking with a limp, hand pressed to his left side. He gets into the passenger seat with the slow, almost glassy care of an old man with arthritic hips. She starts the engine and gets the heater going against the morning chill, then hurries back inside to get another four hundred dollars from the ATM. She snags a trolley for their luggage and trundles it out to the car.
‘Let’s roll,’ he says, trying to buckle his seatbelt. ‘Fuck, I can’t get this.’
She does it for him, and then they roll.
It’s Route 27 to the Long Island Expressway and the LIE to I-95. The traffic gets progressively heavier on the Expressway, and Alice drives sitting bolt upright, hands clutching the wheel at ten and two, nervous about the river of cars passing on both her left and right. She’s only had a driver’s license for slightly over three years and she’s never driven in traffic like this. In her mind she sees half a dozen accidents waiting to happen because of her inexperience. In the worst, they are killed instantly in a four-car pile-up. In the second-worst, they survive but the responding police discover that her companion has a bullet in his gut.
‘Take the next exit,’ Billy says. ‘We’ll switch. I’m going to drive us through the metro area, then across New Jersey. Once we’re in PA, you can take over. You’ll be fine.’
‘Can you?’
‘Absolutely.’ The strained grin she doesn’t like appears. His face is damp again, sweat running in little rivulets, and his cheeks are flushed. Can he have a fever-induced infection already? Alice doesn’t know, but she knows Tylenol won’t stop it if he does. ‘If we’re lucky, I may even be able to do it in relative comfort.’
Alice changes lanes to line up with the exit. Someone honks and she jumps. Her heart skips in her chest. The traffic is insane.
‘That was their bad,’ Billy says. ‘Tailgating son of a bitch. Probably a Yankee fan. There – see that sign? That’s what we want.’
The sign shows a hand-waving truck driver jumping back and forth over a sixteen-wheeler outlined in pink neon. Below it, also in pink neon: HAPPY JACK’S TRUCK STOP.
‘Saw it on our way out. On a better day, before Marge perforated me.’
‘We have almost a full tank of gas, Billy.’
‘Gas isn’t what we want. Pull around back. And put this in your purse.’ From under the seat he takes Marge’s Smith & Wesson ACP.
‘I don’t want it.’ This is absolutely true. She never wants to touch another gun in her life.
‘I get that but take it anyway. It’s not loaded. The chances that you even have to show it are about one in a hundred.’
She takes it, drops it in her purse, and drives around to where she sees dozens of ranked long-haul trucks, most of them grumbling quietly.
‘No lot lizards. They must be sleeping in.’
‘What are lot lizards? Whores? Truck-stop whores?’
‘Yes.’
‘Charming.’
‘You need to stroll around those trucks, kind of like you were shopping back at those malls where you bought your clothes. Because shopping is what you’re doing.’
‘Won’t they think I’m a lizard?’
This time it’s not the grin but the smile she’s come to love. He scans her blue jeans, her parka, and most of all her face, which is innocent of makeup. ‘Not a chance. I want you to hunt for a truck with the visor turned down. There’ll be something green on it, like a piece of paper or celluloid. Or maybe some ribbon on the doorhandle. If the trucker is in the cab, you step up and knock on his window. With me?’
‘Yes.’
‘If the driver doesn’t just wave you off, if he rolls down his window, you say that you’re on a long trip, like coast to coast long, and your boyfriend is having back spasms. Tell him you’re doing most of the driving and you were hoping to find some pain med stronger than aspirin or Tylenol for him and some stimulants stronger than coffee or Monster Energy for you. Got it?’
Now she understands the two visits to the ATM.
‘I’m hoping for OxyContin but Percs or Vikes would be okay. If it’s Oxy, tell him you’ll pay ten for tens or eighty for eighties.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Ten bucks for ten milligram tablets, eighty for eighty milligrams – the greenies. If he tries to jack you up to double that …’ Billy shifts in his seat and grimaces. ‘Tell him to take a hike. Speed for you. Adderall is good, Provigil maybe even better. Got it?’
Alice nods. ‘I need to go inside and pee first. I’m pretty nervous.’
Billy nods and closes his eyes. ‘Lock up, right? I’m in no shape to fight off a carjacker.’
She pees, picks up some snacks and drinks in the store, then goes out and starts walking around the trucks out back. Someone wolf-whistles after her. She ignores it. She’s looking for a turned-down visor with something green on it, or a ribbon blowing from a doorhandle. What she finds, just as she’s about to give up, is a rumbling Peterbilt with a green Jesus stuck to the dashboard. She’s scared, thinks the man behind the wheel will probably either laugh at her or give her a you’re crazy look, but Billy is in pain and she’ll do anything for him.
She steps up and knocks. The window rolls down. It’s a Scandahoovian-looking dude with straw-blond hair and a big old jelly-belly. His eyes are ice blue. He looks at her with no expression. ‘If you’re looking for help, honey, call Triple-A.’
She tells him about the back spasms and the long drive and says she can pay if it’s not too much.
‘How do I know you’re not a cop?’
The question is so unexpected she laughs, and that’s the convincer. They dicker. She ends up parting with five hundred of the eight hundred dollars for ten ten-milligram Oxys, one eighty (what Billy called a greenie), and a dozen orange Adderall tabs. She’s pretty sure he jacked her up most righteously, but Alice doesn’t care. She runs back to the Mitsubishi with a smile. Part of it is relief. Part of it is a sense of accomplishment: her first drug deal. Maybe she really is turning outlaw.
Billy’s dozing with his head back and his chin pointing at the windshield. His face has thinned out. Some of the stubble on his cheeks is gray. He opens his eyes when she knocks on the window and leans over to unlock the doors, wincing as he does it. He has to push on the steering wheel to get straight in his seat again and she thinks he won’t be able to drive them two miles, let alone across New York and New Jersey in heavy traffic.
‘Did you score?’ he asks as she slides in behind the wheel.
She opens the handkerchief into which she folded the pills. He looks and says it’s good, she did well. It makes her happy.
‘Did you have to show the gun?’
She shakes her head.
‘Didn’t think you would.’ He takes the greenie. ‘I’ll save the rest for later.’