“He wasn’t foaming at the mouth or anything,” Colley says.
“Where’d you leave him?”
He can’t tell the doctor he left the dog in the woods because then the doctor will want to know what he was doing in the woods and which woods and so on. “By the side of the road,” he says. “I got out of the truck to stretch a bit and the dog attacked me.”
“Side of the road where?” the doctor says.
“Few miles from here.”
“Because if he’s licensed, he’ll have had his rabies shot, you see.”
“Yeah,” Colley says.
“If I were you, I’d call the police...”
“Well, I’m just passing through...”
“Because even if the dog isn’t licensed, once they find him they can cut off the head and test the brain.”
“Well, I don’t think he had rabies,” Colley says. “He wasn’t foaming.”
“It’s up to you,” the doctor says. “But I’d call the police if I were you. It’d be worth the peace of mind. Rabies is not a pleasant disease.”
“Well, thank you, maybe I will,” Colley says.
“Or I can phone for you, if you like.”
“That’d be fine,” Colley says. “I’d appreciate that.”
“A few miles up the road, you said? Was that north or south?”
“South,” Colley says.
“If the dog should prove to be rabid, how can I reach you?”
“I’m at 1217 Kruger Avenue,” Colley says. “In the Bronx.”
“1217 Kruger,” the doctor says, writing.
“Yes,” Colley says. He knows there is a Kruger Avenue in the Bronx, but he has never been there. He suddenly realizes that he has given the doctor the name of the man who made his life miserable in prison. Kruger. The Kraut.
“How much is that, Doctor?” Colley asks.
“Twenty-five dollars,” the doctor says.
Colley pays him, and shakes hands with him, and leaves the office.
Behind him, he can hear the doctor’s children playing in the back yard.
He is sure he has rabies.
As he drives the pickup north, he begins to imagine he has all the symptoms the doctor talked about. He begins to believe that his hyped-up, slowed-down condition is a result of the dog biting him. He cannot remember feeling this way before the dog rushed out of the woods and bit him, this feeling of running in place though he is running forward as fast as he can, this sense of impending doom. Apprehension is what the doctor called it. Restlessness and apprehension. He does not remember that this all began the moment Jeanine pulled the red Pinto into the parking lot in front of the diner. The holdup seems centuries ago. He is centuries old and he has rabies and he will go into convulsions at the slightest stimulus and suffer delirium and maniacal attacks. If there is any way he does not want to die, it is from rabies. If he has any choice in the matter, he will choose even death by drowning over rabies. Rabies has got to be the dumbest way in the world to die.
He is suddenly ravenously hungry. The hunger attacks him like another pain, he thinks at first it may be a symptom the doctor forgot to mention. Except for the lecture on rabies, he likes the way that doctor handled himself. He admires professionalism, and the doctor was a real pro. Things were different, these were different times, they’d probably go out and play a few games of tennis together, have a beer afterwards. Jesus, he is starving hungry, he wants a hamburger and a cold beer. He begins looking for a place to eat, but all he can find is a drugstore in a roadside shopping center, with signs in the window advertising specials like eggs with bacon, toast and coffee for 99¢. This is Sunday, he hopes the lunch counter is open. The way he feels, he is going to eat the gear shift if he doesn’t get some real food soon.
The day has turned hot and humid; he takes off the wool plaid jacket and throws it onto the seat of the truck. He isn’t worried about his bandaged arm being seen; there is no law against getting bit by a dog. He has put the Smith & Wesson in the glove compartment and he leaves it there now, and hitches up his belt when he gets out of the truck, and then walks casually toward the drugstore. He would not walk this casually if he had not killed a man last night. He is exaggerating everything. He does not know why. He is sure it’s because he has rabies.
The drugstore is one of those places that sell everything from desk lamps to inflatable whales for swimming pools. He pities a poor guy coming in here to have a prescription filled cause he’d never find where they keep the drugs. Behind the lunch counter there’s a waitress wearing black slacks and a pale-blue blouse. Colley thinks of Jill in the diner, the way she came on with that truck driver, dumb fuck with a button on his hat. She’ll probably be talking about the holdup for the rest of her life. Tell her children and her grandchildren about it. At the far end of the counter there’s an old guy wearing a fedora on the back of his head. He is sucking his teeth and mumbling to himself. The waitress comes over to Colley.
“Hi,” she says. She is a girl in her twenties, black hair pulled back in a ponytail, brown eyes, full figure.
Colley figures she’s Italian; with that coloring it’s eight-to-five she isn’t Irish. He feels a little bit safer thinking she’s Italian. He’s about to get something to eat, and he’s alone here in the drugstore with just an Italian waitress, an old guy sucking his teeth, and a cashier sitting there at the checkout counter. The drugstore has a checkout counter like a supermarket, it’s really a supermarket in disguise. The drugstore goes into a phone booth, takes off all its clothes, and out flies a supermarket.
“Hi,” Colley says. “I’d like a hamburger and a cold beer.”
“You can get the hamburger, but all we’ve got is soft drinks.”
“Okay, a Coke then. Put everything you got on the burger, okay?”
“Well, what’d you want?” the waitress says.
“Relish and a slice of tomato and some onions and pickles, everything you got.”
“Are you pregnant or something?” the girl asks, and smiles.
“No, I got rabies,” Colley says, and returns the smile.
At the end of the counter the old man says, “Everybody’s got something wrong with them. There’s nobody in the world has nothing wrong with them.”
The girl taps her temple, indicating the old man is nuts. Colley nods. She goes over to where the hamburger patties are, and puts one on the griddle and then goes to draw his Coke. Colley is thinking he should hide the crew cut. The cops are sure to have questioned Jeanine, and she is sure to have told them who he is and how she cut his hair early this morning. He doesn’t expect there’s been any big television flash about the diner holdup, that’ll wait till the six o’clock news tonight, if it gets on the air at all. There’s maybe been radio news about it, but he’s not worried about that because you can’t show what a man looks like on a radio broadcast. What he’s afraid of is that Jeanine has told the Jersey cops about him and they have contacted the New York cops, who have sent pictures to the toll collectors at the bridges and tunnels. So he takes a sip of Coke, and while his hamburger is cooking he gets up and wanders around the drugstore, looking for something he can put on his head. He finds a billed cap that looks like the kind of hat his brother Albert used to wear when they went fishing together. That was when they first moved to the Bronx. Albert used to take him out to City Island, and they used to go fishing. The cap is blue, it looks just like the hat Albert used to wear. He tries it on, and then takes it back to the counter with him.
“Where do I pay for this?” he asks the waitress.