Karras rubbed his temples. He was suddenly dizzy, and his stomach felt fragile as glass. He burped up some liquid, swallowed it, and fell back on the bed. He passed gas. He wiped flop sweat off his forehead. He forced himself to sit up.
“Ah, Jesus.”
Donna Morgan lay behind him, naked under a single sheet. Her lips were chapped from breathing through her mouth. Her breath carried a deep wheeze. Her skin looked grayish in the light.
Karras touched Donna’s shoulder, gave it a gentle shake. “Donna. Donna, honey, wake up.”
“I just got to sleep,” she mumbled. Donna stirred but did not open her eyes.
Karras felt as if he had just gotten to sleep himself. He remembered staring out the window, the feeling of self-disgust at the sight of the false dawn. He had slept two, maybe three hours tops.
“Come on,” he said, “you gotta get up.”
Karras went to the bathroom, ate three more aspirin, swallowed cold water from the spigot until his head ached. He blew blood from his nose into a tissue. He voided his bowels. He took a long shower, came out, and dressed for work. His clothes smelled of cigarettes.
Karras pulled Donna to a sitting position on the bed, sat with her for a while until she stood up. He watched her grasp the door frame for support before entering the bathroom. He waited to hear the shower run.
Karras walked down the hall to the kitchen. Marcus Clay sat on a stool at the counter, reading the sports page.
Clay looked up from the newspaper. “There’s got to be a morning after.”
“Maureen McGovern,” said Karras.
“Good thing you work in a record store. Otherwise all that useful knowledge you got might go to waste.”
Karras poured coffee into a mug. “Thanks for making the extra java.”
“Thank you for leaving the lights on last night.”
“Sorry, man, I forgot.”
“I drove by, saw you through the window lookin’ like the Lucky Leprechaun, dancing some kind of fool dance, decided not to crash your little party just yet. When I came back, I could hear you all makin’ a hell of a racket back there in the bedroom before I even got through the door.”
“Just havin’ a little fun.”
“Sounded fun. What’s she doin’ now, rinsin’ the plaster chips off her forehead?”
“Funny.”
Karras took a sip of coffee and screwed up his face.
Clay said, “Taste like dog shit, huh?”
“Yeah, Marcus, it tastes pretty bad.”
“I kind of figured you’d be lookin’ all rough this morning. Can always tell by the albums you were listenin’ to from the night before. Saw that Whoopdie Doo cover lyin’ over there—”
“Hüsker Dü.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey, Marcus, what are ya gonna do, bust my balls forever?”
“I guess I’m done for now.” Clay got off the stool, rinsed his cup out in the sink. “You are coming to work today, right?”
“Sure.”
Clay head-motioned toward the hall. “Your Donna friend gonna be all right?”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
“I’m not even gonna remind you of your age, ’cause we already been down that road. But that woman back there, she’s a little bit past the prime of her life, you agree?”
“What’s your point?”
“One of these mornings, you keep feedin’ their noses like you do, you’re gonna wake up next to a blue face. You think you feel bad now, how you think you’re gonna feel when you overdose some girl?”
“Shit, man—”
“Shit, nothin’. I’m serious. And while we’re on it, I got word on what Donna’s boyfriend pulled out of that drug car yesterday.”
“What?”
“Cash money. Whole pillowcase full.”
Karras stared into his coffee cup. “Well, she’s not a part of it. She doesn’t even know he took it.”
“She will, though. And I’m gonna tell you again: I don’t want to have a goddamn thing to do with it.”
“I hear you, Marcus.”
“Okay. I’ll be on U Street if you need me.”
“I’ll hit Arlington this morning, call you later on.”
Clay nodded and went to the front door. He touched the doorknob, turned, and looked back at his friend. “Got some ball today, Dimitri. Hoyas play Michigan State at noon in Dayton. Terps goin’ at UNLV tomorrow night around seven.”
Karras glanced over at Clay. “What about the late games from last night?”
“Syracuse over Brown, that wasn’t no surprise. Arkansas-Little Rock advanced. Auburn took Arizona.”
“Kentucky?”
“Put a hurtin’ on Davidson.”
“The Wildcats are always in there, man.”
“You got that right.” Clay opened the door. “You take it light, lover. Hear?”
“Yeah, Marcus. You, too.”
Dimitri Karras and Donna Morgan drove over the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge into Virginia. Donna stared out the window at the Potomac, the sunlight winking off the swells. She kept a hand up to shade her burning eyes, and also to mask her face. Though she could barely breathe through her nose, she could smell the nicotine and beer on her wrinkled clothes. She looked every day her age and a couple of hundred more. She felt like a twenty-dollar whore.
She appreciated that Karras hadn’t tried to engage her in conversation. At least he’d been decent enough for that.
The night before, neither of them had been able to shut their mouths. They couldn’t talk fast enough, couldn’t wait for the other one to finish a sentence before starting in on one of their own. Every statement, every opinion, had seemed so profound. Donna’s jaw ached now from all that talk. She couldn’t remember a word they’d said.
She remembered the sex, though. Even from her current perspective, a sick, pale rider with an awful case of cokeover depression, she could still remember the sex. After the ice cubes they had done it straight and sweaty, and it had been good. Her legs kicked out and her toes got pointed, and when it was done, the two of them had managed to move the bed halfway across the room. Yeah, Karras was still a cock star in the bedroom, but there wasn’t much more to him than that. When Donna thought of Karras, she pictured a beautifully wrapped present with nothing inside the box.
“Donna?”
“Huh?”
“I was talking to Marcus this morning while you were taking a shower.”
“Yeah? What about?”
“Your friend Eddie.”
“What about him?”
Karras breathed out slowly. “Marcus saw Eddie take something out of that burning car yesterday. The car was a drug car, Donna. I got to figure that’s why Eddie booked, left you down on U.”
“A drug car.”
Karras nodded, looked straight ahead. “Kid who got burned up was either a dealer or a runner, one of the two.”
“You saying that Eddie took drugs out of the car?”
“Marcus thought it might have been money.”
Donna felt her heart race. She went into her purse, pushed a crumpled pack of smokes out of the way, found a nearly empty pack, and pulled free a bent cigarette.
Karras pushed the lighter into the dash. “Thought you might want to know.”
Donna thought of Eddie, nervous as he was. How it must have been for him, to do the act and then to live with it last night. Eddie doing something bold like that, it must have been something to see.