Pain Management (27 page)

“I’ll need some—”

“Whatever.” The rich lady waved her away. “Is this the man you’re going to use?” she asked.

“No,” Ann said smoothly.

“He doesn’t talk much. Is he yours?”

I didn’t rise to the bait.

“He’s not anybody’s,” Ann told her.

The football game filled the big-screen TV that dominated the glassed-in back porch of the little house set into the side of a hill. I figured it for European pro; it was too early for pre-season NFL.

“Hi, Pop,” Ann greeted the massive man in the recliner. She bent down to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Who’s winning?”

“Not the fans, that’s for damn sure,” the old man snorted.

“Pop used to play,” Ann told me.

“Is that right?”

“That’s right,” he answered. “Played for NYU when it was a national power.” Seeing my slightly raised eyebrows, he went on, “That was before your time, of course. But you could look it up. Hell, I played against Vince Lombardi; that was the caliber of the opposition back then.”

“The game’s changed since—”

“
Changed?
It’s not the same game, son. We didn’t play with all those pads. And the helmets we had, they wouldn’t turn a good slap. You played both ways then, offense and defense. None of this ‘special teams’ crap, either.”

“And no steroids,” Ann put in.

“That’s right, gal,” he said, smiling approvingly. “Annie knows more about the game than ninety-nine percent of the wannabe faggots who lose the rent money every week.”

“People bet their emotions,” I told him, on more familiar ground now.

“They do; that’s a fact,” the old man said. “Especially with pro ball. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. What’s the point betting on men who don’t give a damn themselves?”

“You mean the big salaries?”

“I mean the
guaranteed
salaries. When I played pro, it was a pretty harsh deal. Fifty bucks if you won. And five if you lost.”

“Was that a lot of—?”

“In 1936? That was still the shadow of the Depression. Fifty bucks, that was more than most men could hope to make in a month, and you could earn it in a couple of hard hours.”

“Who’d you play for?”

“Ah, teams you wouldn’t recognize. Not the big leagues.
My
dad did that,” he said proudly. “He played for the Canton Bulldogs, before the NFL. With me, it was all semi-pro. I was just a kid then. I did time with the City Island Skippers. . . . You know where City Island is?”

“Sure. In The Bronx.”

“Ah! You from the City?”

“Born and raised.”

“Good! Best place in the world . . . if you’re young and strong.”

“Doesn’t hurt to be rich and white, either.”

“That doesn’t hurt anywhere, son. I played with the Paterson Panthers, too. Same time as I was playing college ball. Way it worked, you played college on Saturdays, pro on Sundays.”

“Did the coaches know about it?”

His laugh was deep and harsh. “Know about it? Who the hell do you think took us to the games on Sunday? And got paid to do it?”

“I thought they were insane-strict with amateurs back then.”

“Yeah, if your name was Jim Thorpe, the racist hypocrites. The same ones who wouldn’t let Marty Glickman run in the Olympics, mark my words. Nah, they all knew. And they all looked the other way.”

“Did you play pro ball after college?”

“Never finished college,” he said, pride and sadness mixed in his voice. “Once that piece of shit Hitler made his move, well, I was bound and determined to make mine.”

“Pop was a war hero,” Ann said, standing next to him, hand on his soldier, as if daring me to dispute it.

“Shut up, gal,” he said, grinning. “I wasn’t a hero, son. Got a few medals, but they gave those out like cigarettes to bar girls, if you were in on any of the big ones. I started at Normandy and made it all the way up with my unit—what was left of it by then. But I’ll tell you this: wasn’t for guys like me, guys your age, you’d be in a slave-labor camp or gassed by now. You’re a Gypsy, right?”

“Right,” I said. No point in telling this fiercely proud old man that I didn’t have a clue as to what I was. And even less pride in it.

He had small eyes, light blue, set deep into a broad face. I watched his eyes watching me. “You were a soldier yourself, weren’t you?” he asked.

“Not me.”

“You’ve got the look. Maybe you were one of those mercenaries . . . ?”

“I was in Africa. During a war. But I wasn’t serving—”

“I don’t hold with that,” he said, plenty of power still in his barrel chest. “When I went in, I could speak a little high-school French. So they put me in charge of a Senegalese gun crew. Bravest fighting men I ever saw in my life. Didn’t have much use for the damn mortars, I’ll tell you that. Couldn’t
wait
to get nose-to-nose with the krauts. One volley, and they pulled those big damn knives and
charged.
I don’t hold with a white man killing people who aren’t bothering him. Far as I’m concerned, Custer got what he fucking deserved.”

“Pop . . .” Ann said, putting a hand on his arm.

“Ah, she’s always worried about my blood pressure, aren’t you, gal?”

“I just don’t want you to get all excited over nothing. B.B. wasn’t a mercenary, that’s all he was trying to tell you.”

“B.B.?” he asked me.

“That’s what it says on the birth certificate,” I told him, truthfully.

The old man sat in silence for a minute. Then he turned to Ann and looked a silent question at her, his glance including me in a way I didn’t understand.

“We’re going to do it, Pop,” she told him, her eyes shining.

The old man took a deep breath. “I watched her go,” he said, his once-concrete body shuddering at the memory. “That fucking Fentanyl patch, that was supposed to take all her pain. Well, it
didn’t.
And my wife, she was the strongest woman—the strongest
person
—I ever knew. She wasn’t afraid of a thing on this earth. All she ever cared about, right down to the end, was what was going to happen to
me
after she was gone. She was . . . she was
screaming,
and they wouldn’t give her any more medication, the slimy little . . . I got my hands on one of them once. Shook him like a goddamned rag doll until his eyeballs clicked. So they gave
me
a shot. Told me I was lucky they didn’t put me in jail. Watching Sherry like she was, I thought my heart was going to snap right in my chest. And then Annie came. With the right stuff. And when my Sherry went out, she went with a smile on her face. You understand what I’m telling you, son?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you do. I hope you’re not fooled by this damn cane I have to use to get around with now. Whatever my little Annie wants, she’s got, long as I’m alive. And when I’m gone, she gets—”

“Shut up, Pop,” Ann said, punching him on the arm hard enough to make a lesser man wince.

The old man just chuckled. “You sure I can’t come along?”

“No, Pop. But you’re in the plan, I promise.”

“Honey, think about it, all right? I can drive. I can pull a trigger. Maybe not like I could, but good enough. What difference would jail make to me now? Be about the same as here, way I see it. They’d have a TV there, I could watch the games. You’d still come and visit. Food’s food. And ever since my Sherry left, I don’t care nothing about . . .”

“Jail’s not like that,” I told him. “Not anymore.” Gently, so he’d know I wasn’t being disrespectful.

He gave me a long, hard look. Nodded. “I see Sherry every night, before I go to bed,” the old man said softly. “She’s smiling. At peace. I know she’s waiting for me.”

Ann was silent for the first half-hour of the drive back. “You never asked me,” she said, suddenly. “About Pop.”

“What’s to ask?”

“If he’s my real father, or . . .”

“He’s your real father,” I told her. “Biology’s got nothing to do with things like that.”

“You have . . . ?”

“Family, too? Yeah. Back home.”

“You miss them?”

“You going to miss
him
when he’s gone?”

The mobile home hadn’t been mobile for decades. It lurched on its cracked concrete slab as if held in place by the endless guy-wires running from it to the ground. Maybe it had been painted green, once. Now it was impossible to tell. Driving up the rutted dirt road, obeying the signs that said “5 Miles Per Hour!!!” in self-defense, I had mentally placed the trailer about midway up the prestige scale in that particular park. The whole place looked like an insane breeding farm for kids, dogs, and satellite dishes.

Ann said, “We’re right up the road,” into her cell phone.

When we approached the door, it opened before she could knock.

“About time!” a tall, wasp-waisted woman with shoulder-length, improbably red hair yelled at Ann, grabbing her in a hug hard enough for me to hear the air pop out.

“I told you we’d be here,” Ann said, as soon as she could get her breath.

“This him?” the redhead asked.

“B. B. Hazard, meet SueEllen Hathaway.”

“Hmmm . . .” she said. “What’d you look like before you had your face rearranged?”

“I was so good-looking, women used to give me presents.”

“Is that right?” she said, flashing a grin. Her teeth were way too perfect for a trailer-park diet.

“Yeah. But the clinic always had a cure for it.”

“I’ll just bet,” she said, laughing. Then, over her shoulder to Ann: “And, honey, that’s SueEllen Fennell now.”

“You went back to your maiden name?” Ann asked her.

“Always do, child. Always come back here, too. This address makes it a lot easier for my lawyers to squeeze the max out of my exes.”

“Don’t they make you sign a pre-nup?” I asked her.

The redhead fired a killer smile at me, instantly shifted to a sexy pout, put her hands behind her back, bowed her head, thrust her hips a little forward, said, “Oh, baby, you don’t
love
me at all, do you? Not one little bit, you don’t! You just like what I . . . do for you. Like I’m some mangy whore, after your money. I mean, who’s in charge, Daddy? All this,” she whispered, cupping my balls like she was testing them for weight, “or those nasty little lawyers? Don’t they work for
you,
sweetheart?”

I laughed. Couldn’t help myself.

“It’s not
funny,
” she said, still mock-pouting. She turned and walked off. The back pockets on her jeans danced. I could see where a rich old man wouldn’t have a chance.

Ann plopped down on a sagging bile-yellow couch, patted the spot next to her. I took a seat. The redhead perched on the arm of a chair, crossing her ridiculously long legs. She was wearing white spike heels . . . like putting whipped cream on coconut cake.

We’d been touring around for days, and I thought I had it figured out by then. “Who was it for you?” I asked her.

“My brother,” she said, no hesitation. “My little brother Rex. They named him right. He was a king. My mother wasn’t worth crap, and my father made
her
look like a goddess. I took care of Rex from the time he was born. Anything he ever needed, anything he ever wanted, I got it for him. I was his big sister, and I could do anything. I did all
kinds
of things to be able to do that. Never bothered me. Rex was my precious.

“When he got sick, I could see it in his eyes. ‘Big Sister, you got to fix this for me.’ And, Christ knows, I tried. I looked for the Devil to sell him my soul. But he wasn’t around. Or maybe he figured mine wasn’t worth it, I don’t know. Rex was always a delicate little boy. He wasn’t much for standing pain. When it came, he . . . I died a thousand times every time he . . . hurt. His pain was so real to me, I could feel its . . . texture, like a piece of cloth against my skin.

“And the pain, it took everything from him. It . . . degraded him. He had no dignity. They wouldn’t give him what he needed. Kept telling me what the ‘dose’ was supposed to be—like he was a fucking gas tank and they were reading a gauge to know when he was full!

“Well, Big Sister, she knows how to play
that.
I got him what he needed, right to the end. ‘You always watch out for me, SueEllen,’ that’s what he said, just before he left. And I been snake-mean ever since. It just sucked all the honey out of my heart. Before it . . . happened, I never thought about much. I was a party girl. Just having fun. And taking care of Rex. After he went, I got to thinking. How many other boys there were, dying like that. No dignity. So I looked around until I found Ann.”

“Without all the money you put up, we’d never have been able to—”

“Oh no you don’t, missy,” the redhead snapped at her. “I am in on this. That is what you
promised.
I want to do it with my own hands this time.”

“I said—”

“I don’t
care
what you said. If you just came for financing, you came to the wrong place, this time. You want my money, you got to take my body, too. How’s that for a twist?” she laughed, looking at me.

I gave her a neutral half-smile, kept my mouth shut.

The redhead kept her green eyes on me. “Ann thinks she’s been around. And she has. But not around men. Me, I have. Plenty. And I’m not dumb enough to think every ex-con’s a tough guy.”

“I didn’t say I was—”

“Which?”

“Either.”

“Oh, you been in prison, baby. Or someplace bad. What I want to know is, did it make
you
bad?”

“Some say I was born bad.”

“And SueEllen Fennell says nobody’s born bad. That’s one of those Christian lies. Nothing but a damn fund-raiser. Answer my question.”

“Ask Ann,” I told her. “I’m going for a walk.”

The trailer park wasn’t designed for tourists. I found the DMZ between the whites and the Mexicans—a ditch filled with something liquid. I sat down on the bank, in a spot from where I could keep an eye on SueEllen’s trailer, slitted my eyes against the sun, and breathed shallow. After a while, my mind drifted to where it always goes when I need to figure something out.

When I came around, my watch said it was almost an hour later. And the math I’d been doing kept coming out to the same total, no matter how many times I added it up.

“Some of those ‘gatekeeper’ nurses, they’d be happier working at Dachau,” the emaciated man in the wheelchair told me. “When they see you coming, they look for the pain in your eyes. It gets them excited, the dirty little degenerates.”