"Huh?" Raines glanced up at her, biting into his dripping burger.
"She-him. Woman one night, man the next, depending on the mood," she said.
"Oh. Like you." He reached for the dish of mayonnaise.
"Goddamn it." West shoved her plate away.
"I must be about to start."
Raines stopped chewing, rolling his eyes. He knew what that meant. The first twangs on electric guitars shattered the din, and sticks beat-beat and beat-beat-beat. Cymbals crashed and crashed as Axel snaked his foot around Jon's ankle and thought about Brazil for the millionth time this day.
W Packer was thinking about Brazil, too, as the editor earned Dufus out the back door, like a small, squirming football, headed for the same Japanese maple. Dufus had to go in the same place, get used to it, and be able to find his smells. It didn't matter that the tree was in the hinterlands and that it had started to rain. Packer dropped his wife's wall-eyed dog in the same bald spot next to the same gnarled root. Packer was out of breath, watching Dufus curtsey to the Queen.
"Why don't you lift your leg like a man," Packer muttered as bulging eyes watched him, speckled pink nose twitching.
"Sissy," Packer said.
The worn-out editor's pager had vibrated earlier this evening while he was mowing the grass on his vacation- day. It had been Panesa, calling to tell him that the mayor had admitted that even he wouldn't drive downtown at night right now! Jesus living God, this was unbelievable.
Surely the paper was well on its way to winning a Pulitzer for a series that made a difference in society, one that changed history.
Why the hell did this wait to happen when Packer was out of the newsroom? He'd been there thirty-two years. The moment he decided to put life in perspective, ward off that heart attack perched outside the window of his existence, Andy Brazil showed up.
Now it was run-through-the-yard time to get Dufus's bowels wound up that they might unleash what, in Packer's mind, should have been a humiliation to any creature, except maybe a small domestic cat. Dufus would not chase Packer, or come, and this was not new. The editor sat on the back porch steps while his wife's dog chewed mulch until it was time to drop his niggling gifts. Packer sighed and got up. He walked back into the air-conditioned house, Dufus on his heels.
"There's my good little boy," Mildred cooed as the dog hopped and licked until she picked him up and rocked him in loving arms.
"Don't mention it," Packer said, falling into his recliner chair, flicking on television.
He was still sitting there hours later, eating chicken nuggets, and dipping them in Roger's barbecue sauce. He loudly dug into a big bag of chips, swiping them in sauce, too. After several Coronas with lime, he had forgotten about the window and the heart attack perched beyond it. Mildred was watching Home for the Holidays, again, because she thought it was their life. Go figure. In the first place, Packer did not play the organ and she did not wear a wig or smoke, and they did not live in a small town. Their daughter had never gotten fired, at least not from an art gallery. That was one place she had never worked, probably because she was color blind. Nor was their son gay that Packer knew of or cared to know of, and any intimations to the contrary by his wife went into the Bermuda Triangle of their marital news hole. The editor didn't listen and the story didn't run. The End.
Packer pointed the remote control with authority. The volume went up, the ubiquitous Webb staring at the camera in a way that Packer knew meant trouble.
"Shit," Packer said, hitting a lever on his chair, cranking himself up.
"In a rare, if not shocking, moment of candor today," Webb said with his sincere expression, "Mayor Charles Search said that because of the Black Widow serial killings, hotel and restaurant business has dropped more than twenty percent, and he himself would not feel safe driving downtown at night. Mayor Search implored Charlotte's citizens to help police catch a killer who has ruthlessly murdered five…"
Packer was already dialing the phone, bag of potato chips falling out of his lap, scattering over the rug.
'. an individual the FBI has profiled as a sexual psychopath, a serial killer who will not stop. " Webb went on.
"Are you listening to this?" Packer exclaimed when Panesa picked up his phone.
"I'm taping it," he said in a homicidal tone Packer rarely heard.
"This has got to stop."
Brazil never watched television because his mother monopolized the one at home, and he did not frequent Charlotte's many sports bars, where there were big screens in every corner. He knew nothing about what had been on the eleven o'clock news this Thursday night, and no one paged him or bothered to find him. All was peaceful as he ran on the Davidson track in complete darkness, close to midnight, no sound but the rhythm of his breathing and falling feet. As pleased as he was about his amazing nonstop journalistic home runs, he could not say that he was happy.
Other people were getting a lot of the same stuff he was. Webb, for example, and no matter how informative or compassionate the story, the bottom line was the scoop. Brazil, of late, was scooping no one, if the truth be told. It just seemed he was because what he wrote routinely ended up on the front page and changed public opinion and seemed to rattle a lot of cages. Brazil would have been satisfied to spend the rest of his days writing pieces that did just this and nothing else. Prizes didn't matter much, really. But he was realistic.
If he didn't beat everybody to the quote, the revelation, or the crime scene, one of these days he might not get paid any more to write.
At which point, he could become a cop, he supposed, and this turned his mind to West again, sailing him off firm ground into a dark, tangled, painful thicket that hurt and frustrated him the more he tried to fight his way out of it. He ran harder, bending around goal posts, passing empty bleachers filled with the memories of games, mostly lost, during fall nights when he had usually been studying or walking the frosty campus beneath stars he tried to describe as no one ever had. He would tuck his chin into his hooded sweatshirt, heading to the library or a hidden corner of the student lounge, to work on a term paper or poetry, not wanting couples he passed to notice him.
Even if West hadn't wanted to play tennis, there was no need for her to have been rude about it unless she hated him. Forget it. Her voice saying those heartless words followed him as he ran harder, lungs beginning to burn, catching fire around the edges as his legs reached farther, and sweat left a trail of scattered spots. He tried to outrun the voice and the person who owned it, anger flinging him through the night, and past the fifty yard line. Legs wobbled as he slowed. Brazil fell into cool, damp grass. He lay on his back, panting, heart thundering, and he had a premonition that he was going to die.
Vy Virginia West felt like it. She lay in bed, lights out, a hot water bottle held close as contractions prepared her for birth for no good cause. Ever since she was fourteen, she'd gone into labor once a month, some episodes worse than others. On occasion, the pain was debilitating enough to send her home from school, a date, or work, lying about what was wrong as she gulped Midol. After a sullen Raines, the paramedic, had dropped her off, she'd taken four Motrin, a little too late. Hadn't Dr. Bourgeois told her to take two hundred milligrams of ibuprofen four times a day three days before trouble started so it could be prevented, and don't cut yourself or get a nosebleed, Virginia? West, as usual, had gotten too busy to bother with anything so mundane, so trivial, as her health. Niles recognized the cyclical emergency and responded, curling around his owner's neck and head, keeping her warm. He was pleased she wasn't going anywhere and he didn't have to share their bed.
Chief Judy Hammer was having morbid premonitions and was bedside, too, in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) of Carolinas Medical Center, where Seth's condition was serious and on the wrong side of getting better. Hammer was in shock, dressed in gown, mask and gloves, sitting by his bed. High dose penicillin, clindamycin, and immunic globulin dripped into her husband's veins in an effort to counter necrotizing fasciitis (NF). It was a rare infection, and associated with systemic infection, and a fulminant course, according to Hammer's personal observations and the notes she had been taking every time Dr. Cabel, the infectious disease doctor, spoke.