Pieces of Hate (13 page)

“My God, Marty, what’s become of you? What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Well, I’ve been busy. I have my own company now. It started small. Video games. Back when they were a novelty.”

“Computer stuff. Of course. You were a genius back in school.”

“Well, video games were only the beginning. They’re still the meat of the company, of course. They were just in grocery stores and bus stations when we started, but now they’re everywhere. But we’re doing some work for the Pentagon now — simulators for jets, tanks, ships, subs, you name it. But if you don’t mind, I’m bored with it already because I’ve been doing it for so long. How about you?”

She was telling him about her career in advertising when a short Hispanic woman rushed up to them and said, “Have you gotten your photo forms?”

“Our what?” Marty asked.

“Your photo forms! For the pictures! Your pictures will be put in a souvenir book and you have to tell us what to write beneath them!” She plucked two sheets of paper from a stack cradled in her arm and handed one to Margaret, one to Marty. “We’d prefer that you hand them in before dinner, but by the end of dinner at the very latest!” Then she hurried away.

They looked at one another and laughed, as if they had just been rushed by a talking squirrel.

“What are you going to put under your picture?” he asked.

“I have no idea. I don’t even know if I want my damned picture taken, to tell you the truth.”

“So, Margaret, are you married?”

“No, no. Never got married. How about you?”

“Not now. I was. My wife died two years after we married.”

“Oh I’m sorry.”

“Cancer. It was pretty sudden. But not quick enough for her, I’m afraid. She went through a lot of pain.”

“My sister has cancer,” Margaret said quietly. Then, suddenly, she corrected herself. “Had cancer, I mean.”

She thought of Lynda, of her withered, corpse-like form when Margaret had first seen her in the hospital . . . and of the smiling, hungry woman with hair on her head, the woman she’d become since Margaret had arrived . . . since they’d begun holding hands . . .

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marty said. “I hope she’s better.”

“She is. Much”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I think I know what I’m going to put under my picture.”

“Really? What?”

“I thought about it flying in from Washington. I decided I’d wait until I got here, sort of get the feel of our former classmates. The lay of the land, so to speak. Now that I have, I think I’ll go with it. ‘Very Rich.’ How does that sound?”

She laughed and placed a hand on one of his broad shoulders. “Perfect!”

“Why don’t we go find a couple of chairs and fill out our photo forms?”

They did, laughing and talking the whole time.

“Did you hear somebody from our group had a heart attack in the cocktail lounge?” Marty asked.

“Is that what that was? I heard some commotion. Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe you did.”

“No idea. Did Principal Getz come? Maybe it was him!”

Margaret couldn’t decide what she wanted beneath her picture, but Marty suggested “Skinny, Sexy and Successful.” She didn’t like the idea at first, but he pressed.

“Think of all those horrible things they used to say about you and to you,” he said, placing his hand over hers “Now you’re a successful advertising executive and you look like a movie star. Why not rub it in a little? That’s what I’m doing. I’m not about to stoop to their level and be nasty about it, but I figure they deserve to have it rubbed in just a little. Sort of like a . . . a revenge massage.”

Laughing, she wrote the words down.

“What do you say we stick together tonight, Marty?” she asked. “I think that between the two of us, we can befuddle a lot of very unpleasant people.”

He rose from his chair, took her hand and pulled her up with him, grinning. “I think you’re right.”

Margaret felt a tingle . . . the kind of tingle she hadn’t felt in a long time. In it, there was some of the same giddiness she’d felt when Lynda began to improve. But added to that was the warmth of Marty’s hand in hers, and his smile, and the way his eyes touched her.

It was turning out to be a much more interesting evening than she ever could have anticipated . . .

24

Lynda pressed the call button with her thumb, then lay back on her pillows with both hands resting on her flat stomach. She knew the response would be quick. Her nurse tonight was Derek, a tall and handsome fellow in his thirties who was not only efficient but always eager to make sure her needs were met and she was comfortable. He was friendly and funny and a good enough sport to engage in a little harmless flirting with her now and then, which had somehow put her at ease in her most painful moments.

“What can I do for you, Lynda?” he asked with a smile as he entered the room in his light blue uniform.

“Well, you know, I’ve been feeling so good these last few days . . . but about twenty minutes ago or so, I got really . . . sick to my stomach all of a sudden.”

Derek glanced at the small tan garbage can beside her bed table. It was filled with candy and sandwich wrappers.

“Maybe a little too much junk food?” he asked, arching a brow.

“But I’ve been so hungry lately.”

“I know, and that’s good. But you haven’t been eating for a long time. Your body’s not used to the stuff you’ve been putting into it all of a sudden. Feel like you’re going to vomit?” he asked, reaching into the bed table drawer for the small, beige, kidney-shaped emesis basin.

Lynda propped herself up on an elbow, frowning, and said, “Well, I don’t think so, but . . .”

Derek placed the basin on the mattress beside her just as Lynda’s body convulsed once and her head shot forward.

She vomited generously and forcefully all over his crisp blue uniform with a flat, thick splashing sound.

Suddenly weakened, Lynda flopped back on the pillows, gasping for breath.

Derek tossed the small, unused basin onto the bed table as his uniform dripped onto the tile floor. He said calmly, “That thing wasn’t big enough anyway . . .”

25

Brandon Lyons had not gotten fat and he hadn’t gone bald. He looked, in fact, quite the same way he’d looked the last time Margaret had seen him, which had been graduation day. He’d always had an odd handsomeness about him, but it had been marred by a vague slovenliness and frightful fashion sense. His face, still scattered with a few stray freckles from his youth, had a happy glow to it as he approached Margaret with a drink in hand, and his dark brown hair, as it always had, looked mussed.

“Somebody told me you were Margaret Fuller,” he said.

Marty was busy talking to a few of the jocks who had spent so much time making his life miserable back in school, and Margaret had gone to bar for another Bloody Mary.

“Well, I guess they told you right,” she said, smiling.

He wore a brown sport coat over a blue shirt, with tan slacks and shiny black shoes.

“It’s nice to see you again, Margaret,” he said.

“Is it?”

“Yeah!” he said enthusiastically, his eyes widening. “How are ya, anyway?”

“I’m just fine, Brandon, and you?”

“Oh, I’m doing pretty well. I’ve got a small trucking company outta Tucson. And I’m footloose and fancy free.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means I’m single!”

“You say that as if it might mean something to me.”

“Well . . how about you? Are you married?”

“No. Footloose and fancy free.”

“Well, there you go.”

“There I go where?”

“Well, you know.” He looked her up and down slowly. Spread his arms as if he were about to embrace her, then let them slap to his sides. “I mean, God, Maggie, you’re lookin’ . . . fine!”

“Why, thank you, Brandon. And I must say that you . . .” She looked him up and down in exactly the same way, pausing a moment to take in a thoughtful breath. “. . . are wearing very shiny shoes.” She started to walk away, smiling, with her drink.

“Wait a second, hold it,” he said, hurrying to her side. “Where are you living these days?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Oh, yeah? Hollywood?”

“No. Los Angeles”

“You work in the movies?”

“No, I work with an advertising firm.”

“Really? You make commercials?”

“As far as you know, yes.”

“How long will you be in town?”

She frowned slightly, tilting her head. “Why?”

“Well, you know . . . I thought maybe we could get together, you and me. Have dinner?”

“Why would I want to do that, Brandon?”

“Just . . . because.” He shrugged and laughed, a little nervously. “You know, it’s been a long time. I’d like to get to know you again.”

“You never knew me to begin with, Brandon.”

“Oh, c’mon, Maggie, we were all friends.”

“We were? To which we are you referring?”

“Well, I mean . . . all of us. You know, we went through a lot together.”

“You never went through what I went through, Brandon. We both know that, don’t we?”

“Yeah, I guess people made a few jokes about you and — ”

“A few jokes?”

“Hey, I know we were kind of nasty sometimes.”

She took in a breath to ask another question, to shout it at him this time, but she closed her mouth, stopped herself. She closed her eyes a moment, thinking. Finally, she opened her eyes, smiled, and asked, “Tell me, Brandon, is your cock really as big as everyone used to say it was? I mean, people used to call you Bran-dong because you were supposed to have this huge dick. Was it true. Brandon? Are you that well endowed?”

Brandon’s eyes sparkled as his smile grew and he reached out and took her hand. “Now you’re talkin’,” he said. “Damned right it was true. Every word of it. Anybody who said otherwise was lying, I can tell you. But, I don’t think anybody said otherwise, did they?” He laughed.

Still holding his hand, Margaret said with a smile, “Brandon, no matter how big your prick is or was, it couldn’t come close to the size of the prick that you are, and always have been. And whether or not it’s as big as all those school legends claimed, I hope whatever you’ve got between your legs drops off. I mean, I hope it just . . . drops off!”

His smile crumbled and his hand fell away from hers as he took a surprised step back.

Margaret turned and walked away . . .

26

Having changed into a clean uniform, Derek headed for Lynda’s room again.

After being vomited upon, he’d asked a nurse’s aid to go into room 406 and clean up the mess. Then he’d gone to the desk and told the unit secretary to contact Dr. Plummer and inform him of Lynda’s condition. Then he’d gone to clean up and change.

He walked into room 406, expecting to find Lynda recovered from her rather sudden and violent regurgitation.

The floor beside the bed was clean. A towel had been placed on the bed to cover the mess. The aid, a young Asian woman, Miss Im, was lifting the side rail on the bed. She turned to Derek and said, “I helped her rinse her mouth and washed her face and neck, but I couldn’t change the sheets. She’s just too weak to move.

“Too weak?”

“Well, look at her.”

Miss Im left the room and Derek went to Lynda’s bedside.

She was surprisingly pale as she lay crookedly on the bed, her eyes half-open.

“How’s it going, Lynda?” he asked.

She made a frail sound and shook her head slowly.

Derek checked her blood pressure. It was very low.

He touched his fingers to her wrist to check her pulse, but couldn’t find one. Moving to the other end of the bed, he pulled the blanket back and touched his fingers to her foot to check her petal pulse. It was barely palpable.

Replacing the blanket, he went back to the head of the bed.

“Can you tell me how you’re feeling, Lynda?” he asked.

She turned her head to him slowly and gave him a weak smile. “Not . . . very good. I don’t know why. Things have been . . . so great . . . lately.”

He smiled down at her and patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, things are still great. They’ve just slowed down.”

She chuckled.

Her face was so pale.

Derek left the room and went back to the desk, to the unit secretary. “Did you get Plummer yet?” he asked.

“I paged him. He’s not responding.”

“Page him again. This time, tell him to get here stat. Something’s wrong with Lynda.”

27

“I’d rather stand right here,” Margaret said pleasantly, her right arm, purse tucked tightly high beneath it, linked through Marty’s and his arm holding hers close.