Tears stung her eyes. “You’d better, Buster. Or else!”
When Vanessa’s phone rang after dinner, the number the screen showed wasn’t one she recognized. She said “Hello?” anyway. She was so glad to have bars again, she might even have talked to a political pollster. He wouldn’t have liked what she had to say, but she would have talked.
But it wasn’t a pollster. “Vanessa? This is Kelly. Have you seen the news or anything tonight?”
“No. Why?” Next to talking with her stepmother, a pollster’s bull seemed downright cheery conversation.
Then Kelly said, “Okay—you don’t know. Your father got shot this afternoon.”
“Oh, Jesus! What happened? How bad is it?”
“An armed robber with an AK was holed up in a house and started shooting. Colin got hit in the shoulder. He’s at San Atanasio Memorial—he had surgery. He’ll make it. That’s the main thing. They don’t know how good his left arm will be afterwards, but he will make it.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” Vanessa said. “What happened to the robber?”
“Deceased.” Kelly packed a lot of sour satisfaction into the word.
Vanessa understood that down to the ground. “Good!” she exclaimed.
“I said the same thing when they told me,” Kelly said. “I guess I’m not as civilized as I’d like to be.”
“Screw civilized,” Vanessa answered. “Civilized people don’t shoot cops with assault rifles.” For once in their touchy relationship, they were on the same page.
“I would’ve called you sooner, but I’ve been waiting to get a working line,” Kelly said.
“Yeah, it’s been down all over,” Vanessa said. “I had to go in today to edit some stuff. Double time on Saturday—yeah! But people at work were playing with manual typewriters. An old engineer brought out a slide rule, if you can believe it.”
“I’ve used one a few times when the power just wouldn’t come back on,” Kelly said. “Feels medieval, but it works.”
“If you say so.” Vanessa wasn’t on the same page as Kelly any more.
Her stepmom must have realized as much. “Listen, I’ll let you go,” she said. “I guess I need to call your mother next.”
“Have you ever talked to her before?” Vanessa asked, honestly curious.
“No, but it needs doing, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, probably.” Vanessa might not have been sorry to hear some of her exes had stopped a bullet. If Bronislav stopped one, she’d give three cheers. But her mom didn’t despise her dad the way she despised men she no longer loved. Maybe raising kids together had something to do with it. Or maybe her mom was just more sentimental than she was.
“Then I’d better do it,” Kelly said.
Realizing she was about to hang up, Vanessa quickly asked, “Can Dad have visitors? I should get over there.”
“They let me in to see him. You’re family. They should let you in, too.” Kelly paused. “I guess I’d better tell them to let your mother in, too, if she wants to come. They’re liable to raise a stink unless I say it’s okay.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Vanessa said. “Maybe I’ll see you at the hospital.”
“Yeah. ’Bye.” This time, Kelly did hang up.
“Fuck!” Vanessa said as she set down her phone. You hoped you never got a call like that. Getting it from someone you disliked made it worse, but the Holy Ghost couldn’t have given her that kind of news without rocking her. She went into the kitchen and pulled the bottle of slivovitz off a high cupboard shelf. It tasted like plum-flavored napalm and burned as if it were on the way down. Worse, it was left over from her time with the Serbian freedom fighter, chef, and thief.
At the moment, she didn’t care. She filled a shotglass full and chugged it. It was just as venomous as she remembered. Bronislav could drink it like that without even coughing, but he must have had his gullet copper-plated or something. Vanessa coughed plenty after it went down. She didn’t do this often enough to get used to it, assuming a human body could get used to it.
In a little while, though, the plum brandy put up an invisible shield between her and the bad news. Just as well she didn’t do this very often; she might get to like it too much if she did. Her father had done a lot of drinking after her mother walked out of their marriage. He did seem to have eased off since. Maybe Kelly was good for something, hard to believe as that might be.
You were never further from real misery than one bad break or a few inches. If the dumb shithead with the AK had missed, Dad would have a story to tell for the rest of his life. A few inches the other way and he’d be dead. He got the story this way, but he earned it with his pain.
Vanessa filled the shotglass again. The slivovitz scorched less going down this time. Her nerve endings still had to be stunned, or something. And it definitely did numb her up. That suited her just fine. The less she had to think about the gruesome orgy they always made of the funeral for a cop killed in the line of duty, the happier she was.
“If you’d told me sooner you wanted to go over there,” Jared Watt said to Louise on Monday afternoon, “I would have brought the car and driven you. It wouldn’t have bothered me. I know you were married to him for a long time.”
“It’s all right. I’ll take the bus,” Louise said. Driving her to see her ex in the hospital might not have bothered Jared, but it would have bothered her. Life was crazy enough even when you didn’t try to fit together pieces that weren’t supposed to mix.
Instead of crossing Van Slyke to wait for the bus, she stayed on Reynoso Drive. The bus that stopped at this bench took her east, not south. She went past Hesperus, past the Carrows and the post office and the B of A, past Sword Beach. This part of town felt achingly familiar. She’d come to these places all the time while she lived with Colin. She’d shopped at the Vons past Sword Beach as long as she could afford to drive. Now she went to a smaller market much closer to the condo.
She hadn’t been to San Atanasio Memorial since James Henry was born not long after the eruption. It only seemed a million years ago and in another country, one where almost everything still worked all the time. Inside the hospital, things still did. But you paid a stiff price for that, not only in money but also in health and pain.
She cross the street. An electric eye opened the sliding glass door for her. A young Hispanic woman at the reception desk raised a polite eyebrow when she came up. “I’m Louise Ferguson,” she said. “Which room is Colin Ferguson in, please?”
“He’s in 476,” the receptionist answered. “Please use the stairs. We save the elevators for emergencies.” She pointed. Maybe they were trying to save power. Or maybe not quite everything was sure to work all the time, even here.
Louise dutifully went up the stairs. My exercise for the day, she thought. She found her way to room 476. There was Colin, looking like somebody in a hospital bed. And there, in a chair by the bed, sat a rather wide-shouldered woman whose short, dark-blond hair had some gray streaks in it. That had to be Kelly. Absurdly, Louise was miffed. Her picture of her visit to her ex hadn’t included his current wife.
Kelly’s picture might not have included Louise, either. But no—she wouldn’t have said to come if it hadn’t. Louise stepped into the room. She introduced herself to Kelly, who wouldn’t have been in much doubt about who she was. They cautiously shook hands: life’s little, or not so little, awkwardnesses. Then Louise turned to Colin. “How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m drugged,” he answered matter-of-factly. “I’m still pretty sore. I’m due for another shot before too long.”
“All those years without ever needing a gun…” Louise said.