Late as it was, it was early for this bar. A few people were drinking, their belongings scattered in front of them, purses, wallets, cigarettes. When Paul established his relationship with Whitelaw to the bartender, he was rewarded with a significant nod. Down at the end of the bar, two women were talking to each other in a manner that disinvited interruption, yet they perked after this exchange. Their dress suggested that they were on their way home from work rather than out for the evening, but before Paul could even order a drink, he found himself accompanied by one of them, a young, dark-eyed, humorous-looking girl with mid-length auburn hair parted casually at the middle. “Next, I buy you a drink,” said Paul.
“As you wish. I can afford it.”
“Really? Then why don’t you buy me a drink?”
“You got credit here, sport.”
“How’d you know that?”
“A little birdy told me.”
Not long afterward, when things seemed to have slowed to a crawl, Paul asked a question whose answer he was not destined to hear. “What’s there to fucking do in this town?”
He woke up in a bathtub full of ice, a row of new stitches like a parade of ants across his abdomen; on a chair beside him, a portable phone rested atop a note: “Call 911 for post-operative care. And remember, your health comes first!” Even before the immediate pain of surgery, he was aware of an odd, sweeping tingling that soon turned into horror. Looking at the faintly puckered slit across his stomach, the neat dimpling of the stitches, he pounced on an oversight of his abductors: Since he didn’t know where he was, how could he tell Emergency? His clothes were neatly folded and the hopsacking jacket, whose wheaty hue had seemed so lighthearted and summery in the Vegas night, was draped carefully on a hanger embossed with “Courtesy Hotel.” Paul climbed out of the tub and dried and dressed himself, sitting down several times in a recliner by the window where he tried to form some impression from his view of telephone wires and languorous side-street traffic. He was on the second floor, he concluded, of an out-of-the-way hotel perhaps called the Courtesy, and, judging by the traffic, well away from any significant artery. Still, there was some reassurance in daylight, but it was short-lived and Paul found himself in misery again. The clock radio went off and Latino music filled the room.
When the macabre mystery of his surgery came sweeping back, he rose and started for the door, a general sickliness sweeping over him, combined with a stab of guilt as he saw himself explaining to Evelyn how he’d been drinking with some girl, but he’d been drugged! Right! Unlike the kidnappers of a dictator or industrialist, his didn’t want money or power. They wanted one of his insides and he didn’t yet know which one, though they hadn’t gotten anything he couldn’t do without because here he was lacing his cordovans, lightheaded with fear, in a dull glare from the window. A shiver began in his colon and rose to the back of his throat. He emitted a small, peculiar sound, like the mewing of a kitten.
Paul opened the door, then turned the lock so it wouldn’t close in case he had to get back inside. The doorknob was wet from his own hand. He started down the stairs, worrying remotely about passing out and gripping the steel railing with both hands. An old cleaning lady holding vacuum cleaner parts watched him from the landing, sizing him up as if he were something she could use.
Once he had attained the lobby, Paul had to sit down even before he could say a word. The desk clerk looked at him indifferently and, after an ensuing quiet, said, “You missed checkout,” pointing at a sign on the counter with a ballpoint pen. Paul declined to state that he didn’t know who’d checked him in and instead just stared without energy at the desk clerk, at the tomato-colored coat, the thin, slicked-back hair, and the horn-rimmed glasses that spanned the man’s cheeks. Reaching across his chest with his right hand, Paul clasped his wallet and pulled it out. The rushing creeps abated at the discovery of his own picture on his driver’s license.
He looked at the desk clerk, held up his driver’s license and said, “This is me. I need an ambulance.”
“Oh?”
“They… they… cut me open.”
“Who’s that?”
“Please—” At which point, he lost consciousness.
When the emergency team asked what happened to Paul, the desk clerk replied distantly, “Somebody went to town on him.”
He did in fact wake up in the hospital, thinking nothing quite brings out the good Samaritan like an unconscious body at the front desk. Simply because most people there were at work, the hospital seemed to peacefully imply that all was normal. And Paul soon learned that the procedure by which he had lost a kidney was one of high professionalism, the wound was clean, and he heard several admiring remarks about the surgery.
Paul could have taken it hard and learned nothing from the experience, but in the end his lesson was one that only people like Sunny Jim Whitelaw could give, people free of confusion and self-doubt who looked at the rest of humanity as perhaps the astronauts do. But Paul’s full control of his fate would not arrive until he figured out what to do with the dead motorcyclist.
At Firestone, the young man with the two-tone goatee who said it would be at least an hour before her snow tires were installed clearly enjoyed making this statement. It was dark, but Evelyn was tired of being cooped up all day at home and wished, even in this terrible weather, she could be out on the ranch. So, instead of waiting around, she walked up to see Natalie, mentally preparing herself to be patient as Natalie seemed more than usually erratic. But the house was empty, so Evelyn headed back downtown, thinking she might get a cup of tea someplace. Then, when she passed a house belonging to the last of her father’s many doctors, Randy DeRozier, the door opened abruptly and Randy leaned his whole good-looking self through, including the great big blue eyes previously approved by the sisters. “Evelyn! How are you?” he called. They’d not spoken since her father’s death, and she was surprised that his look of concern seemed somewhat overlearned, given that he and his wife, Juanita, were friends of the whole Whitelaw family.
“Just fine, Randy.”
“’Cause if you’re not, let me know.”
“Is there something you take for it?”
“Evelyn, come on in for a moment.” He took a tentative step onto the snowy porch. “You need a break from the cold.” There were already globes of cold, hazy light around the streetlamps, and it would be nice to duck in somewhere close by until the car was ready. She could hear tire chains clanking away one street over and the weirdly clear whistle of a train north of town. Hastening into his front hall, she noticed how youthful Dr. Randy was, in college sweats and bare feet. He could have been fifty, but he cultivated a scrubbed, boyish dishevelment. She was less comfortable with the open inspection he gave her while helping with her coat.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said, leading her toward the Poggenpohl futuristic kitchen with its granite counters and deep black double sink. Next to it was a beautiful wet bar, bird’s-eye maple and stainless steel with little circular lights above like the cabin of a yacht.
“Where’s Juanita?” she asked. Juanita was a great girl, an Oklahoman with a powerful contralto voice who reminded Evelyn of tornadoes. On at least two occasions that Evelyn knew of, Juanita had slugged people who richly deserved it, including a fantastically pompous state legislator.