“You forget how many people there are that get off on this personal fame thing,” his mother said. “You won’t believe the kind of stories they’re out there telling about this. Must’ve been about three thousand witnesses, by the sound. Absolutely disgusting. Feeding on other people’s pain and misery.”
The announcer went on talking and his mother did, too. “Oh: And now she’s complaining because the police didn’t check you for drugs and your blood-alcohol level, for God’s sake. The woman is mad.” Dillon ignored her, looking sideways and squinting hard to focus on the picture of a pretty girl filling up the screen. For a second he got it: Babygirl. It was the first time Dillon remembered Babygirl, sitting in her car beside him at the signal, looking over. But he didn’t remember any accident. Anyway, she must be dead. Everybody said so.
The green ghosts in the squared-off caps were aides; they appeared in the dead of night or even broad daylight, handling parts of him. In the night he looked over and saw the shadow of one of them in the doorway, tilting in sideways but just still. She looked familiar. Not very big. He couldn’t quite see her face, but he didn’t need to; he knew it was Babygirl. Perfectly normal. Because if she was dead she wasn’t tied down to one place anymore, she could go anywhere.
Click: The doctor standing there again, it must be morning. He was the bastard told them to put that damn catheter in Dillon. Showing off for these other people around him — when he asked Dillon questions, Dillon just snarled and shook his bed till it jingled. The doctor got mad and planted his hand on Dillon’s shoulder. “Listen to me, young man. You’re very seriously injured, we’ve been able to perform some extremely delicate repair work, but you’re on the way to doing yourself serious harm. Now, you can either cooperate and start to mend, or we’ll have to keep you knocked out, which could greatly delay your recovery. To put it mildly.” He started to leave, and turned back. “I mean it. One wrong move, and Rip! That’s all she wrote.”
* * * *
Dillon’s buddies Jake and Chuy came to see him, Chuy hanging by the door — Dillon could see people more clearly now. They were pretty embarrassed, they didn’t know what to say. So then, Dillon was a really big deal; they couldn’t stay away. “You saw they got something going alongside the freeway?” Jake said. “Right where it happened? Flowers. Teddy bears. ’Course nobody can stop and stand there.”
“Kind of thrown over,” Chuy said. “Probably put it out at night. Real early morning.”
“Yeah?” Dillon answered, even though his face hurt to talk. “See it on TV, or in person?”
“Oh, we went on over there,” Jake said.
Dillon saw a Game Boy in Jake’s pocket, but Jake didn’t mention it, obviously because Dillon couldn’t move. Jake asked him how the food was.
“What food?” Dillon raised his arm with the IV in it.
The one thing they wanted him to talk about was the girclass="underline" They thought that aspect of it was really hot. They kept mentioning details about it to each other. A nurse stuck her head in, checked Dillon’s chart. “No unauthorized visitors. Out, out!”
As they were leaving Chuy said, “Hey, you heard about the anti-vigil they got going now? Right outside here.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Three girls all Gothed up — you know, black clothes and the black lipstick, and the eyes. Big signs: ‘Free Dillon.’ ”
“One had a skull and crossbones on it,” Chuy said.
“Send them on up,” Dillon said.
Dillon’s mother made her evening run. “Yes, I’ve been up here night and day,” she said into her cell phone; he heard her.
“I understand the mother really got cranked up today,” she said to Dillon, flipping channels to try all the different ten P.M. L.A. news. “Just can’t let it die down normally.”
They’d changed his position, and now Dillon couldn’t quite see the TV screen. But he heard it, all right. “In fact, the victim’s mother is convinced that Dillon Karchner’s actions were deliberate, and she’s lined up several motorists she claims will give sworn statements to that effect.”
“This man is guilty of the murders of my daughter and my grandchild,” a woman’s voice said. “I demand he be arrested and tried for committing a double homicide.”
When the news changed, Dillon saw his mother standing in the center of the floor as if waiting.
“There was a kid in the car?” he said.
“She was eight months pregnant,” his mother said. She rushed over to the bed and clutched Dillon’s free wrist. “Don’t you worry about it; don’t even think about it. Just a real unlucky day all around. Certainly it was a tragedy, and yes, the woman lost her daughter. And I very nearly lost you. But if she doesn’t quit spouting off, I’m going to sue her ass for libel.”
Dillon felt his anger rise. It didn’t have to be like this. “What really happened,” he said, moving his bruised and swollen mouth carefully, “she — came on to me.”
“What?” His mother was electrified, but trying to look calm.
“She did it all. Licking her lips. She’d like, laugh, and hang herself out the window. Showing off the goodies. Asking for it. She was hot.”
“You’re kidding!” His mother’s smile is pinched in a little now.
“I wish I could remember the rest of it,” Dillon said. “Any of the accident.”
“No, you don’t,” his mother said. “Everybody here knows not to talk about it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because we want you to get well, as fast as possible. Put it all behind you. Forget about it.”
Dillon breathed till he calmed down some. “Now, you tell me what happened,” he said.
She did the thirty-second job he expected. One of those nasty rear-enders, she said: truck driver’s doing. No way Dillon could’ve foreseen it. She kissed the side of his head goodnight and went away.
When he was alone and it got quiet, Dillon pulled up his mental pictures of Babygirl again. He tried to bring back all the pieces, every moment just as it had happened. The row of stuffed toys along the rear window for Daddy’s Babygirl. Peeking at him in her mirror, begging and teasing. It was a terrible night, Dillon’s breathing was labored and wheezy — he decided he’d ask his favorite spook to help him if she showed up. But she never appeared.
In the almost-dark a thing hit Dillon’s harness softly and fell on his naked chest, where it lay, itchy, the rest of the night. It had hard points that scratched his chest, especially when he started to sweat, but he couldn’t manage to joggle it off, or reach it to move it away. And it smelled bad, too, sort of rotten.
He was having trouble breathing now, too, his face swollen and his chest, it was puffed out against his belly. He dragged the air in and out through his mouth and heard himself, noisy as an old dog. He was going to suffocate.
“Babygirl?” he called softly. “Hey! How about some help here?” But nothing happened. And then after a while, when he looked up again, she was there, a little too far toward the head of the bed for him to see her well. She just stood there looking down on him for a minute. Babygirl, sure enough, but older, tired-faced, with hollows and dark around the eyes, and he knew she was not going to do him any good.
Next morning when the nurse came in she picked up the scratchy thing and then showed it to him. It was a little stuffed polar bear, its plushy feet and lower half blackened and stiff, and Dillon knew exactly where it came from: He remembered it perfectly, sitting in Babygirl’s rear window between the bluebird and the buffalo.