Casual. No big deal. Like we’re roommates sharing a duplex, Billy thinks. We could be sitcom people. The Existential Couple. He tells her he’s also had enough for now, although he thinks he wouldn’t mind going back for more Red another time.
He locks the Jensens’ apartment and they go back to Billy’s. After the popcorn, neither of them wants dinner. They watch the news and eat pudding cups instead. ‘Total junk food a-thon,’ Alice says. ‘My mother—’
‘Don’t start,’ Billy tells her.
The assassination of Joel Allen is no longer the lead story. There’s been a gas explosion in Senatobia, across the border in Mississippi, three dead and two more badly injured. Also, the turnpike west of Red Bluff has been temporarily closed because of flooding.
‘How long are you going to stay here?’ Alice asks.
Billy has been mulling this over himself. If the people looking for him – local cops, FBI, possibly Nick’s hardballs – think he’s gone to ground in the city, they may think he’ll stay hidden for five or six days, maybe a week. He needs to stay on Pearson Street long enough to make them believe that he slipped out right after the shot after all. If Alice doesn’t complicate things by running away, that is.
‘Four more days. Maybe five. Can you do that, Alice?’ Is it the first time he’s used her name? He can’t remember.
‘I saw how much that pill cost,’ she says. ‘If I stay, can we call it square?’
She might be deking him, but he doesn’t think so. She has wounds to lick, and she’s decided he’s not dangerous. At least not to her. Although she did lock the bathroom door when she was putting on her clothes, so there’s still a trust issue. If he tries to persuade himself otherwise he’d be kidding himself.
‘Yes,’ Billy says. ‘We can call it square.’
12
They have their first fight at ten-thirty that night. It’s over who’s going to sleep in the bed and who’s going to sleep on the couch. Billy insists that she take the bed, says he’ll be fine on the couch.
‘That’s sexist.’
‘Sleeping on the couch is sexist? Are you kidding me?’
‘Being a manly man is sexist. You’re too long for it. Your feet will hang out on the floor.’
‘I’ll put them here.’ He pats the arm of the couch.
‘Then all the blood will run out of your legs and they’ll go to sleep.’
‘You were …’ He hesitates, looking for the right word. ‘… attacked. You need to rest. You need sleep.’
‘You want the couch because you think if I’m out here in the living room, I can run away. Which I’m not going to do. We’ve got a deal.’
Yes, Billy thinks, and if she keeps to it, we need to talk about how she’s going to handle the questions once I’m gone. He wonders if Alice knows what Stockholm Syndrome is. If she doesn’t, he’ll have to explain it.
‘We’ll flip a coin.’ He takes a quarter out of his pocket.
Alice holds out her hand. ‘I’ll flip it. I don’t trust you, you’re a criminal.’
That makes him laugh. She doesn’t, but at least she smiles a little. Billy thinks it would be a good one if she really let it go.
He hands her the quarter. She tells him to call it in the air, then flips it like someone with experience. He calls tails (he always calls tails, learned it from Taco) and tails it is.
‘You take the bed,’ Billy says, and she doesn’t argue. In fact, she looks relieved. She’s still walking very carefully.
She closes the bedroom door. The light beneath goes out. Billy takes off his shoes, pants, and shirt, and lies down on the couch. He reaches behind him and turns out the lamp.
Very quietly, from the other room, she calls, ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ he calls back. ‘Alice.’
CHAPTER 15
1
Billy’s back in Fallujah and the baby shoe is gone.
He and Pill and Taco and Albie Stark are behind an overturned taxi, the rest of the Nine behind a burned-out bakery truck. Albie is lying with his head in Taco’s lap while Pill tries to patch him up, which is a fucking joke, all the doctors in the Mayo Clinic couldn’t patch him up. Tac’s lap is a pond of blood.
It’s nothing, just clipped me, Albie said when the hajis ambushed them and the four of them ducked behind the overturned Corolla. His hand was pressed against the side of his neck, but he was smiling. Then the blood began spurting through his fingers and he started gasping.
Heavy fire is pouring at them from a house two down from the corner, there are muj in the upstairs windows and more on the roof, bullets going ponk ponk ponk into the taxi’s undercarriage. Tac has called in air support and he shouts to the others behind the bakery truck that a gunship is inbound, a couple of Hellfire missiles will shut those fucks up, two minutes, maybe four, and Pill’s on his knees with his dusty ass up and his hands pressed to the side of Albie’s neck, but the claret keeps flowing, a fresh squirt with every beat of Albie’s heart, and Billy sees the truth in Taco’s wide eyes.
George, Donk, Johnny, Bigfoot, and Klew are returning fire from behind the truck because they can see that those guys on the roof have almost got the angle on Billy and the others behind the taxi; it’s scant cover and lethal geometry. Maybe they can hold out until the Cobra arrives with the Hellfires, maybe not.
Billy looks around for the baby shoe, thinking he might have lost it just a minute ago, thinking it might be close, thinking if he can grab it everything will be magically okay, it’ll be like singing ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,’ but it’s not close and he knew it wouldn’t be close but looking means he doesn’t have to look at Albie, who is now breathing his final rasping gasping breaths, trying to take in all the world he can before he leaves it, and Billy wonders what he’s seeing and what he will see when he makes it to the other side, pearly gates and golden shores or just black nothing, and Johnny Capps is yelling from behind the truck, yelling Leave him, leave him, leave him and get back here, but they won’t leave him because you don’t do that, you leave none behind, that was Drill Sergeant Uppington’s biggest fucking rule, and the shoe isn’t there, the shoe is nowhere, he lost it and their luck went with it, and Albie’s going, almost gone, those terrible gasps for breath, and there’s a hole in his boot and Billy realizes it’s bleeding, he got shot in the fucking fo—
2
Billy bolts up so fast he almost falls off the couch. It’s Pearson Street, not Fallujah, and that’s not Albie Stark gasping for breath.
He hurries into the bedroom and finds Alice sitting up in bed with one hand grasping her throat, horribly like Albie when Albie at first thought the bullet just clipped him. Her eyes are wide and full of panic.
‘Wash …’ Whoop! ‘… cloth!’ Whoop!
He goes into the bathroom and gets one. Wets it down without waiting for the tap to run warm, comes back and drapes it over her face, glad to cover eyes so wide they look ready to fall out of their sockets and dangle on her cheeks.
She keeps gasping.
He sings the first line of ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ to her.
Whoop! Whoop! is his answer.
‘Give it back to me, Alice! Sing! It’ll open you up! If you go down to the woods today …’
‘If you … go down … to the woods today …’ A gasp after every two or three words.
‘You’re sure of a big surprise.’
Under the washcloth, Alice shakes her head. He grasps her shoulder, the bruised one, knowing he’s hurting her but doing it anyway. Anything to get through to her. ‘All in one breath, you’re sure of a big surprise.’
‘You’re sure … big surprise.’ Whoop!