Please (5 page)

PLEASE By Peter Darbyshire

I MET THE COMA WOMAN at Kennedy's place. I went there to talk to him about a job, but he was throwing a party when I drove up. People were staggering out of his yard and falling down in the street. I drove around them and parked a dozen houses up, then walked back, holding my jacket over my head to protect myself from the rain. Two weeks of it had turned all the lawns into swamps and still it came down, filling the air like static. At the end of Kennedy's driveway, two women were trying to lift a man who was lying face down in the street, his head half-submerged in the overflow from a storm drain. "He's going to drown," one of the women kept saying, but the other was laughing so hard they couldn't even get his face out of the water.

Kennedy was sitting on the swing set in the front yard, smoking a joint with a woman who held an umbrella above them. For some reason he was wearing a housecoat over his jeans and T-shirt. "Hey, glad you could make it," he said and offered me the joint. He kept holding it out to me even after I shook my head.

"I didn't know you were having a party," I said.

"It's to celebrate my new job," he said.

"You didn't invite me," I said.

"I didn't?"

"Wyman told me you had a line on a job. I came here to talk to you about that. I didn't know anything about a party."

"I got a job," Kennedy said. "I don't have anything for you."

Beside him, the woman reached out and took the joint from his hand, then disappeared under the umbrella.

The rain was starting to seep through my jacket, which I was still holding over my head. Kennedy kept on grinning at me, but he had to blink against the rain hitting his eyes. Finally, he said, "Well, the important thing is that you're here now."

WE WENT UP the stairs to his apartment and into the kitchen, where half a dozen men and women were playing cards at the table. They all looked at me for a moment and then went back to staring at their cards. I didn't know any of them. Kennedy took a pair of Heinekens from the fridge and handed me one. "It's all that's left," he apologized.

"Those are mine," said one of the card players, a man with dreadlocks and a beard. He hadn't looked away from his cards.

I turned to Kennedy, but he'd already wandered off into the living room.

"Help yourself," the other man said. He threw out the jack of spades and kept staring at his hand. "I just want you to know they're mine."

THERE WERE ANOTHER dozen or so people in the living room, talking in the corners or dancing in the middle of the room. All the furniture had been pushed to the walls. The music was coming from speakers taped to the ceiling fan with duct tape. The television was on in one corner of the room, showing the aftermath of some bombing somewhere, but the sound was muted. Kennedy and I sat on the couch, beside the coma woman. I thought she was only sleeping at first, but she didn't wake up when I pushed her legs aside, just moaned a little and wrapped her arms tighter around the cushion she was hugging. It looked like she'd been drooling into it heavily for some time.

"That's Mia," Kennedy said. "King brought her."

"King's here?" I looked around the room but I didn't seem to know anyone here. "I think he was the one who stole my Tom Waits tickets."

"He was here," Kennedy said, "but then he had to go work a party somewhere."

"Took them right out of my wallet."

"And he just left her here," Kennedy went on. "Without telling me. What am I supposed to do with her?"

I looked at Mia. She was wearing cheap camouflage pants and a black hooded sweatshirt, but the Swatch on her wrist looked real. "Is she his girlfriend?" I asked.

"I don't know," Kennedy answered. "I thought so at first, but then she kept going on about her dead boyfriend."

"Dead?"

"Electrocuted. Got zapped by a faulty mike."

"He was a singer?"

"I think so," Kennedy said. "Either that or a roadie. She told me, but I can't remember exactly." He shook his head. "She keeps his ashes on her bedside table."

"Now that's love," I said.

"It's certainly something," Kennedy said. He drained half the Heineken in one swallow, then smacked his lips. "King's always leaving his shit here. It's got to stop."

We watched a trio of women dance in the center of the room for a while. Their clothes were all wet, so they'd stripped down to just pants and bras, but even their skin looked cold and white. "Who are these people?" I asked.

"I have no idea," Kennedy said. "They came with some people from the new job. But everyone I knew left a long time ago."

We watched the women for a moment longer, and then I said, "What kind of job is this anyway?"

"It's a broker kind of thing," he said.

"What do you know about being a broker?" I asked.

"It's not what you know," he said, "it's what you act like you know."

He finished the Heineken and dropped the bottle to the floor, then he got up and started dancing with the women. They opened their circle just enough that he could get in but they didn't speak to him. He didn't seem to mind.

I got up and went into the kitchen. The card players were all half-undressed now, a pile of clothes on one side of the table. I tried to find my shoes. They weren't where I had left them. "I think someone took my shoes," I said.

"What exactly are you trying to say?" the man with the dreadlocks asked, looking at me.

I went back to searching for my shoes in the muddy pile without answering him. I was still looking for them when Kennedy dragged Mia into the kitchen. She was still unconscious. "Do me a favour, man," he said, shoving her at me. "Take her with you."

She was boneless, arms and legs flopping, eyes rolling sightlessly. I pushed her right back. "She's not mine, I don't want her."

"You brought your car, though. You can take her in that."

For the next few seconds we bounced her back and forth between us, the card players watching silently, until her head slammed into my jaw. I caught her in my arms before she hit the floor, but only just. Then Kennedy pushed us out the door, and we fell down the stairs. My head hit the rail, and everything slid to one side for a moment. When it came back, I was lying on the wet ground outside. Far above my head, the moon glowed through the clouds.

When I sat up, there was wet newspaper clinging to my arms and legs. I tried pulling it off but it only came away in little strips. I pushed myself to my feet and started off toward the street. The woman with the umbrella was still pushing herself back and forth on the swing set, watching me now. I remembered Mia and went back for her. She was lying face down in the muck, still unconscious. Her head rolled like her neck was broken when I picked her up, but her breathing was regular at least. I carried her to my car and dropped her on the hood while I looked for my keys. The rain really came down then, knocking me sideways while I unlocked the doors. I jammed Mia into the passenger seat and covered her with an old blanket I kept in the back. I had no idea what I was going to do with her.

When I walked around to the driver's side, I noticed an old couple standing a few cars down, watching me. They were wearing dark jogging suits with reflective stripes and shining white running shoes, and their hair was plastered to their heads, like they'd been out in the rain all night. When they saw me looking at them, they slowly jogged away, glancing back over their shoulders every now and then.

I got in the car and started it. "Hotel California" was playing on the radio, and I reached for the tuning knob before I remembered it had broken off last week. I slammed my hand into the radio until it stopped, then sat there for a long moment, watching the windshield fog up from my breath. Our wet clothes made the car smell like some animal.

The clock in the dashboard said it was one in the morning. What were those people doing running in the rain at one in the morning?

I DROVE BLINDLY around the streets for maybe five minutes, shivering and watching my skin turn white from the street lamps. I didn't know where to go.

"Maybe I should just take you to a hospital," I said to Mia. "What do you think of that?" She didn't answer, didn't even move under the blanket.

I looked out the window, at the dark houses surrounding us. We were in a neighbourhood I'd never seen before. Quiet little houses from the fifties, old trees, children's bicycles left in the front yards. No garbage in sight anywhere. I had no idea where I was.

"There must be a hospital around here somewhere," I said.

I STOPPED AT a 7-Eleven for directions. It took forever to get from the car to the doors, the rain beating down on me the whole time like a million tiny fists.

It was as spotless as a commercial inside, everything in neat rows on the shelves, air freshener instead of air. The only sign of life was a thin trail of brownish water leading to the coffeepot. Behind the counter, a man of about forty or so was eating a potato chips and flipping channels on a miniature television set. I saw the same bombing scene I'd seen at Kennedy's place, before he switched it to the end of 2001.

"I need to find a hospital," I told him, counting out pocket change for a coffee.

"It's not that bad," he said. "All you need is a bandage."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

He touched his lips and pointed at me but didn't say anything.

I raised a hand to my mouth and watery blood ran down my fingers. There was a small gash in my lower lip. "Jesus," I said. "When did that happen?"

"I wouldn't know," he said, turning back to the television. "But the bandages are in the third aisle, middle top shelf."

"I don't have time for that," I said. "I've got a woman in a coma outside."

He gave me the directions, but only after I paid for the coffee.

THE HOSPITAL'S emergency room smelled like soap. The place was nearly empty when I carried Mia inside, just one couple and their kids sitting in a circle in the corner. The parents glanced up at us, then went back to praying quietly. The kids stared at the floor the whole time.

I dropped Mia into a chair at the nurses' station and waited. Behind the glass wall in front of me, three nurses were talking about their various ex-husbands. It sounded like the same guy to me. I was still waiting for them to figure this out when one of them came over and asked, "What's the problem?"

"No problem," I said. "I just want to drop her off." We both looked at Mia. A string of drool slowly slipped from her chin to her chest.

"Has she been drinking?" the nurse asked.

"I'm not really sure," I said.

The nurse looked back at me. "You're not really sure? Now what does that mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "I found her. I thought maybe I could leave her here."

"Sure, we'll just have to fill out the paperwork for that," the nurse said. She smiled at the other nurses when she said it, and I couldn't tell if she was joking or not. She had me go through Mia's pockets, but all I could find was a piece of paper with an address written on it. Five Crossings. I couldn't find her ID anywhere.

The nurse entered my name and address on a form, then took us down the hall to another room. What seemed like hours later, an old, red-faced doctor finally came in. He glanced at Mia and then washed his hands in the sink.

"You the father or the boyfriend?" he asked.

"Neither," I said. "I've only just met her." I couldn't take my eyes off the garbage can in the corner. It was full of bloody bandages. I wondered what had gone on in there before we'd arrived.

"She been drinking?" the doctor asked.

"That's what the nurse figured."

He shone a light in Mia's eyes and felt her pulse for a moment. "You have pieces of newspaper stuck all over you," he told me through a yawn.

"Yes, I know that," I said.

"You also have no shoes on," he pointed out.

"I know that, too, thanks."

"Well, she'll probably be all right," he said, dropping Mia's hand. "She just needs to sleep it off. Now let's have a look at that lip and we can get you two on your way."

"I want to leave her here, though," I said.

"You can't do that," he said. "There's really nothing wrong with her."

"But I don't want her."

"This isn't the pound."

IT WAS STILL RAINING when I took Mia back to the car. I dropped her in the passenger seat and sat there for a moment, wondering what to do next. I looked at the piece of paper with the address again, then searched for the map in the glove compartment. I had to sort through a mess of candy wrappers, condoms, Wake-Ups, a bag of chips I couldn't remember buying, and the registration papers - so faded and water-stained I couldn't even read them any more - before I found it. Crossings Street was at the farthest edge of the city, an area I'd never been to before.

"King had better be there," I told Mia, then started up the car.

WHEN I FINALLY found Crossings Street, it was only a half-built subdivision. A few of the houses were finished, but most were still empty frames. You could have seen the stars through them, if you could actually see the stars anywhere around here.

Five Crossings was one of the biggest houses I'd ever seen. Two long stories of swirling stone and glass walls rising up out of a muddy lot. Practically a mansion.

I parked the car on the empty street, under a street lamp that kept turning on and off, and carried Mia to the door. I knocked but no one answered. I thought about leaving her on the doorstep. Then I tried the door. It was open. No alarms went off. I stepped inside. For a moment, I thought I'd walked into a church. It was dark inside, but there was enough light from the street lamp that I could see the place was empty, just one cavernous room after another. But the walls. The walls were covered with giant murals of angels falling from white clouds, toward buildings in ruins beneath them. It was only when I walked into the next room and saw the murals there - Charles Manson, Margaret Thatcher, Burt Reynolds, all dancing together around a bonfire - that I realized it was all spray paint. Graffiti.

I dragged Mia through two living rooms and into the kitchen. There were no appliances in here, just empty spaces in the walls. It didn't look like anybody had ever lived here. There was no sound but our breathing.