“You stupid bitch,” Buzz yelled from the belly of the furnace, his tone just short of regretful. “You think Nadia doesn’t know every goddamn thing that happens at that clinic?”
“Get me out of here,” Spider hollered, enraged and terrified, his body futilely trying to convulse within its minute confines. Dirt and rust and soot and some twigs from the nest fell into his eyes.
“I bring you into Limbo,” Buzz yelled, not caring if Spider could hear him over the screaming. “And this is how you repay me.”
Spider tried to push himself off of the ladder, but nothing happened. Pieces of the nest fell into his mouth and he began to spit and choke.
“I bring you to meet the freaks,” Buzz yelled, “and you do business with the enemy? You give that fucking doctor exactly what he needs. And then you hide the fucking money from me?”
At the height of his frenzy, Spider was granted the single moment of clarity in a life so twisted by violence and bad luck that it could culminate only in this kind of demise. He used the moment to make a request.
“Buzz,” he yelled. “Don’t do it this way. Help me come down and you can cut my throat.”
Buzz stayed silent for a minute, letting the Spider think he was mulling the option. Then he laughed and yelled up the stack.
“Can’t do it, Spider. I want you to think about what you’ve done while you’re drying out up there. You know, I might’ve even understood if you’d thrown in with Nadia and the last clinic and that fucking madness. But to choose that asshole Peck. You’re a real disappointment to me, Spider. And I want you to really understand what you’ve thrown away. Should take you three, four days to dehydrate—”
“The boys won’t let you do this,” Spider screamed.
“As far as the boys are concerned,” Buzz said, “you’re headed south to scout things out for us.”
“But they’ll hear me.”
“The boys won’t be back till sometime tomorrow,” Buzz said. “By then, without any water and with all that soot and shit in your lungs and throat, you won’t sound like much more than a bird that got stuck in the stack somewhere.”
The words yanked Spider back into his panic and he began to holler again, something about Limbo being bullshit, and Buzz, a fool and a liar. And then the yelling degenerated into a kind of scatological prayer, made of equal parts terror and rage, and losing meaning as it progressed.
The big man pulled himself out of the furnace, stood, and pushed the door closed. He could still hear the screaming, but now it was muffled, the words indistinct. Taking hold of the gear wheel, he began to turn it like a skipper steering his ship through a chaotic sea. When he heard the furnace door lock, he left his hands on the wheel for a moment and let his body slump, suddenly exhausted. And he thought, once again, about the obligations of the patriarch.
9
Sweeney used the stairs rather than the elevator. He took them two at a time. It was a grand staircase that wrapped itself around the elevator’s well, and he ran the last third of it. He had no idea why he was running. Not a clue why he was heading for the third floor, taking the stairs because he didn’t want to announce his approach with elevator noise.
He found them in 306. Four nurses, Romeo the janitor, one of the EMTs who had carted Danny from the airport, and a young guy in green surgical scrubs and a John Deere cap. Each was seated on the end of a bed, back to the bed’s occupant, leaning over a tray table that was covered with playing cards and money.
They all looked up as he stepped into the room but no one spoke until Romeo said, “You got to show fifty to sit in.”
Sweeney stared at him. The vague island accent was gone and in its place was an overdone street drawl, something from an early ’70s movie.
“Who’s he?” the guy in the scrubs asked and one of the nurses said, “He’s Ernesto’s replacement.”
The male nurse said, “His son’s down on one.”
Sweeney felt like they were watching him through a one-way mirror.
“Ernesto’s such a little shithead,” said a girl who looked too young to be up this late.
“Well c’mon in, for Christ sake,” said Romeo, “now you’re up here.”
Sweeney stayed where he was.
He saw Romeo look at the guy in the scrubs. Then the EMT said, “You here to play?”
“What’s the game?” Sweeney asked.
“There’s only one game at the Clinic,” said Romeo. “You know Limbo?”
Sweeney shook his head and everyone went quiet again until the guy in the scrubs crossed the room with his hand out.
“I’m Dr. Tannenbaum,” he said. “This looks awful to you, I’m sure—”
“Man didn’t say that,” Romeo interrupted. “Did you, Sweeney?”
Tannenbaum went on. “It’s really not as bad as it looks. Honestly, the game is in keeping with the mission of the Peck.”
“Listen to this guy,” said the EMT, mimicking. “Mission of the Peck.”
Tannenbaum ignored him. “We play for the patients. When the game is on, really, we become the patient. It’s an inclusive activity. We envision them wakeful.” He gestured toward a bed behind him. “Until you walked in that door, I was Mrs. Oliphant.”
Romeo had enough and said, “Yeah, and it’s Mrs. Oliphant’s turn to deal. So we got to know, did you come to play?”
There was no mistaking the question for anything but a threat.
“Not tonight,” Sweeney said.
The young nurse let herself ask, “Are you going to tell Dr. Peck?”
Before Sweeney could answer, Romeo said, “Now that’s just a stupid question, Debbie,” the sass a little too theatrical. “’Course he’s not gonna tell.”
“Just don’t bring the game to my son’s room,” Sweeney said and waited a beat before leaving the ward.
He took the elevator down to his apartment and grabbed The Big Book of Logic Problems. He carried the book back up to the drug vault and spent the rest of the night trying to work out the puzzle of the Chinese triplets.
SOMETIME BEFORE DAWN Sweeney put his head down on the counter and dozed off. He was woken just before seven by the first-shift druggist, a pale and lanky woman named Adele. They both made bad first impressions. He was asleep his first night on the job. And she struck him as yet another person who thrived on suppressing chronic anger. He decided not to linger in the vault. But before he could get out the door, she handed him an envelope from the in-box. It was sealed and his name was written across the front.
“Someone must have dropped it off,” Adele said, “while you were napping.”
He stuffed the envelope in his back pocket and left without a word.
He bought a pecan muffin and a coffee in the cafeteria, took them down to his room, and watched the morning news while he ate his breakfast. There was something comforting about listening to the catalog of the previous night’s horrors on a black and white television.
When he’d finished the muffin, he got up and rummaged around the apartment until he found a pencil in a kitchen drawer. The only other things in the drawer were a ball of wrapping twine and a bottle opener. He moved back into the living room and rotated the TV channel. It was an odd sensation, tuning the set manually, finding only a handful of stations, and watching how the reception varied from one show to the next. When he came to Limbo, he sat back down on the couch and drained the last of his coffee.
He opened the book of logic problems and began to write a to-do list on the inside back cover. He needed to stock the apartment with some groceries, open a checking account at a local bank, buy some new sheets — his old ones were for a double bed. He needed to call Dr. Lawton and remind him to forward the rest of Danny’s files. He wanted to get to the mall and pick up some new Limbo pajamas. And he had to have the phone turned on.