Shoot the Moon (23 page)

Goodman is exhausted, physically spent from carrying his daughter and emotionally drained from worrying about her, and he collapses onto a chair. Carmen attends to Kelly, removing her shoes, loosening her clothing, asking her if there’s anything she needs.

“Can I have a drink of water?” is all Kelly asks.

Carmen looks at Goodman, who nods. Fluids are good, he’s been told: They hasten the replenishment process. He watches as Carmen pours Kelly a glass of water and finds a straw - something that Goodman didn’t even know he had - so that Kelly can drink from the glass without having to lift her head. Watching this, Goodman is overwhelmed by the sheer tenderness of the act, and he’s forced to look away, so that his tears won’t give him away again.

Later that evening, the three of them sit on the bed and eat leftover veal stew, this time over noodles. Kelly eats very little, but Goodman tells himself not to worry, that that’s probably to be expected. Pop-Tart is delighted.

After dinner, Goodman tells Kelly he’s going to lower the lights and let her go to sleep. She looks paler than ever, but she still manages to smile. “Not yet, Daddy?”

“Why not?”

“I need some more of our story.”

The Ballerina Princess (Continued)

So it came to pass that the Ballerina Princess had the Great Unfair Test, the one that really hurt. But with the brave and loyal Prince Larus at her side, and the Keeper of the Numbers at her head, the Ballerina Princess was wonderful. She said “Ouch!” and cried the tiniest bit, which was good, because otherwise the doctor might not have known she was still awake.

And when the test was over, the Ballerina Princess allowed the Keeper of the Numbers to carry her to the top floor of his castle and place her on the royal bed,

“You didn’t put me on the bed,” Kelly reminds him. “Carmen did. With the help of his friend Lady Carmen.

“The beauteous Lady Carmen,” Kelly corrects him again, the beauteous Lady Carmen, that is.

And all that evening, the Ballerina Princess was required to keep her head very still, lest her crystal crown fall off and shatter, causing seven hours of bad luck. And she decided that the best way to do that was to go to sleep right after dinner, so that she wouldn’t forget and suddenly move her head. And that’s exactly what she did.

After Kelly closes her eyes, Goodman wedges Larus against one side of her head and a pillow against the other. He kisses her softly on the cheek.

“Good night, Daddy,” she says.

“Goodnight, angel.”

He phones his mother-in-law to tell her that the test is over and that they’re back at his place.

“How’s our little girl?” she asks him.

“She seems okay,” he says. “I just put her to bed.”

“You think she’s safe there?”

“Absolutely,” he says.

“Okay,” his mother-in-law says. “But keep an eye on her, all right? You can never be too careful, you know.”

“I will,” he assures her.

In a basement apartment across the street and two doors down, Daniel Riley sits up straight. “Did you hear that?” he asks.

“What?” Ray Abbruzzo asks.

“I just put ‘our little girl’ to bed, where she’ll be ‘safe.’ Now if they’re not talking about a load of drugs, my mother’s not Irish.”

“Could be,” Abbruzzo agrees. “Could be.”

“You
bet
it could be,” Riley says. “I’m telling you, Ray - the fucking Mole is back in action.”

The word in the South Bronx that evening is that a new load of shit has hit the street and that Big Red’s people have got it. It’s being sold in nickles and full loads - street talk for bundles. It’s called “Red Menace” on 141st Street; on 125th, it’s packaged as “Red Devil.” And the talk is that downtown they’re moving the same stuff as “Red Dawn,” and up by the bridge they’re calling it “Spanish Red.”

By nine o’clock, more than 20,000 bags have been sold. By midnight, except for a few leftovers here and there, it will all be gone, out onto the streets of the South Bronx and Harlem and Washington Heights, into the veins and up the nostrils of the city’s walking dead.

Goodman spends Sunday afternoon as he always does, with Krulewich, the Whale, and Lehigh Valley. The Giants are playing the Cowboys at Dallas, so the game doesn’t start until four o’clock New York time. In deference to Krulewich’s poor eyesight, they turn the TV volume down and listen to the play-by-play on the radio. The Whale’s not happy about the arrangement, because he really likes John Madden, who’s one of the TV announcers. But the radio guys describe the action in a lot more detail, and are Giants fans themselves, so they let you know whenever the refs give the Cowboys a favorable call.

On this day, the Giants are no match for either the Cowboys or the refs, and the game’s been pretty much decided by halftime.

Nevertheless, the Whale wants to keep watching, to see if the total final score is more or less than the forty-one-point “over/under” line that the bookies have predicted. But he’s outvoted three to one in favor of hearts, the game Lehigh taught them last Sunday.

Goodman plays cautiously again, all but forgetting to look for an opportunity to shoot the moon. But nobody else goes for it, either, and the final score after five hands is much closer than last time.

“You guys are gettin’ the hang of it awright,” Lehigh tells them. “But you’re still no match for the champ!”

They turn the ball game on in time for Goodman to see that at least he did better than the Giants.

“I
knew
they’d be over!” moans the Whale. “I coulda cleaned up! I coulda won a
fortune!”

“The spinal fluid shows a few abnormal cells,” Dr. Gendel tells Goodman over the phone Monday morning.

“What does that mean?” Goodman asks.

“It’s hard to say, really. She could have some kind of low-grade infection in the meninges, the lining of the brain. We’ll put her on an antibiotic and see what that does. But what I’d really like to do is another MRI, this time with contrast.”

A chill runs through Goodman’s body. “That’s where you inject dye into her?”

“That’s right. It gives us much more definitive pictures.”

Goodman’s afraid to ask where they inject the dye. He remembers the huge syringe, tipped with its terrible needle; only this time, he pictures it filled with a dark purple liquid, aimed again at the base of his daughter’s spine, or perhaps the back of her neck, or her temple, or the spot between her eyes.

“You really think this is necessary?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t be suggesting it if I didn’t,” the doctor tells him. Goodman thinks he detects a note of defensiveness there. “But there is a little problem before we can go ahead.”

“What’s that?” Goodman asks, dreading more bad news.

“My office manager tells me that you’ve made no payments on your bill. And when she checked with the MRI facility, they told her it’s the same story with the first test they did. Apparently, there’s no insurance? Anyway, they say they won’t do another one unless they’re paid in full for the first one and up front for the second one.”

“I’ve had some trouble . . .” Goodman starts to say, but his voice trails off.

“Well,” Dr. Gendel says, “I’d hate to have to make a diagnosis without the proper tools. What is it you do for a living again?”

“I’m an accountant, a bookkeeper.”

“Right. Well now, you wouldn’t want to attack a complicated accounting problem without your . . . your calculator, would you?”

“No,” Goodman says, feeling patronized. The truth is, he often does figures by hand, trusting himself more than machines, and also because he likes numbers - working with them pleases him. But he knows the point would be lost on the doctor, so he keeps it to himself. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says instead.

He says nothing to Kelly about the conversation. She’s spent the weekend recuperating. She had a headache most of Saturday, but then again, it might not have been as a result of the spinal tap. Her back is still sore from the needle.

“Get dressed, angel,” he tells her. “I’ll drop you off at Grandma’s on my way to work.”

“Can I stay with Carmen instead?” she asks.

“I’m sure Carmen has things she has to do.”

“Nothing that Kelly can’t do with me,” Carmen says.

“Please, Daddy?”

“I don’t know-”

“Pleeeeeze?”

“Go to work, Daddy,” Carmen says. “The women in your life will be just fine.”

That seems to settle it.

At work, Goodman uses a double-entry system to hide the check he wrote to Mount Sinai. To anyone looking at the books, the entry will show up as a legitimate operating expense. It’ll be a good three weeks before the canceled check itself comes back with next month’s bank statement.

Manny’s there but, as usual, pays no attention to Goodman and his work. He’s upset about the price of the new Goodyears and preoccupied with a tire bath that’s suddenly sprung a leak and flooded the back of the shop.

Around 3:30, Goodman calls home to find out how “the women in his life” are doing.

“We baked
bread!”
Kelly tells him. “I never knew you could do that, did you?”

“No, I never did.”

“And we’re going to make
curtains.
Carmen’s going to teach me how to
sew.”

“That’s terrific,” he says, wondering whatever happened to the feminist movement. “Let me talk to Carmen, okay?”

Carmen says, “Hello,” just as there’s a clicking noise on the line.

“What’s that?” Goodman asks.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Sounds like somebody’s tapping your phone. You into something I don’t know about?”

“Right,” he says. “That’s why I’ve got all that money you see sitting around the apartment.”

“So
that
explains it,” she laughs.

“How you guys doing?” he asks.

“Great,” she says. “But hurry home. We miss you.”

After he hangs up, he tries to remember if he’s ever been told that before.

“Stop playing with those buttons!” Ray Abbruzzo yells at Daniel Riley.

Riley takes his hand away from the equipment. “You hear that?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Abbruzzo says. “The part about them hearing noises and figuring their phone’s tapped.”

“That’s nothing,” Riley assures him. “Only somebody who’s doing something wrong thinks his phone’s tapped. Ever hear of an innocent guy thinks that way? And did you hear the bit about there being money in the apartment?”

“I think he was being sarcastic, like.”

“No way. This guy made a move over the weekend. I bet you anything he unloaded a package, and we fuckin’ missed it.”

Abbruzzo yawns. “You hungry?” he asks.

* * *

That night, with Kelly asleep on the sofa bed, Goodman and Carmen sit across the card table from each other, sipping the last of their coffee. The last crumbs of homemade bread dot the tabletop.

He’s told her about his conversation with the doctor, told her about his inability to pay for his daughter’s tests, told her about his pile of overdue bills. She’s placed one hand over his, and now she strokes it softly, the same way he watched her stroke the kitten not long ago.

“I could go back to work,” she says softly.

“To the
street?”
He pulls his hand away.

“It’s not the street,” she says. “I was a call girl, not a streetwalker.”

“No way,” he says. “I’ll rob a bank before I let you do that.”

“I could go back to waiting tables,” she suggests.

“Your $5 an hour, and my two afternoons a week,” he laughs.

She takes his hand back in hers, this woman who’s just offered to sell her body to strangers in order to help him pay his bills. He sits there, listening to the hum of the refrigerator motor, until it abruptly shuts off, leaving the rise and fall of Kelly’s breathing from the sofa bed as the only sound in the room. He looks over at her, and for some reason he remembers how upset she’d been at the hospital over the prospect of her naked butt being exposed. He’s struck by just how vulnerable she is, how very fragile. He knows he has to do whatever it takes to protect her.

And right then and there, Michael Goodman does the unthinkable. Turning slowly back to Carmen, looking her straight in the eye, he does precisely that which he’s promised himself he will never do.

“Tell me about your brother,” he says.