Hard News

But they were virtually the only ones left on the street. Like the explosion of the shotgun that killed Jack Nestor the incident had erupted fast and then vanished immediately, pulled into the huge gears of the city and ground up into nothing. But for TV audiences throughout the metro area the events would live on in future newscasts until they were preempted by other stories, which would in turn be replaced by still more after that.
    Rune sat down on a doorstep to wait for the detective, and to watch the young reporters, holding their microphones and gazing sincerely into the eyes of their loyal viewers as they tried once again to explain the inexplicable.

    chapter 34    
     
    WRESTLE WITH IT, FIGHT IT.
    Standing in front of Claire’s hospital bed, Rune wore a white sleeveless T-shirt and black miniskirt. Beside her was Courtney—who was no longer New Wave preschool. No more black and Day-Glo and studs. She was in her new Laura Ashley cornflower-blue dress and lopsided hair ribbon (it had taken Rune ten minutes to get the red satin to impersonate a bow).
    A sharp, sweet smell was in the air. Rune didn’t know whether it was disinfectant or medicine or the smell of illness and death. She didn’t like it; she hated hospitals.
    “Where’s your mom?” Rune asked Claire.
    “At her hotel,” the girl said. “She was with me all night. That’s something about mothers, huh? Abuse ‘em all you want and they keep coming back for more.”
    Courtney clumsily set a paper bag on the bed. “I got this for you.”
    One-handed, Claire shook it open. Out fell a stuffed dinosaur. Courtney made it walk across the bed. “Rune helped me buy it,” her daughter told her.
    “How’d I guess?” Claire examined the plush face with serious scrutiny. “He’s like sensitive and ferocious at the same time. You can really pick them.”
    Rune nodded absently. “It’s a talent.”
    Fight it. Fight it down …
    Claire didn’t look good. She could sit up okay, with some help, but otherwise she was pretty immobile. Her skin was paler than Rune had ever seen it (and Claire was somebody who went as a vampire on Halloween the year before and hadn’t bothered with makeup or a costume).
    “I won’t see in my left eye,” she announced matter-of-factly “Ever again.”
    Rune looked her straight in the good one and was about to offer something sympathetic when Claire moved on to another subject. “I got this job. At a department store. It’s kinda bullshit. I have a couple bosses and they’re like, ‘Well, we’ll try you out,” And I’m like, ‘What’s to try?’ It’s not, like, the best thing in the world but it’s working out okay. Like listen to this—I’ve got health insurance? I got it just before I left to come down here. Man, they’re going to get some friggin’ bill.”
    This room was better than the Intensive Care Unit where she’d been for a few days. From here Claire had a view of rolling Jersey hills and the Hudson and, closer to home, one of Rune’s favorite hangouts: the White Horse Tavern, the poet Dylan Thomas’s hangout, where Rune had spent a number of afternoons and evenings with a literary and artistic crowd.
    Hospitals were pretty icky but here at least you got a view and sunlight and history.
    Claire was talking about her mother’s house in Boston and how weird it was that nobody in the neighborhood wore black leather or had shaved heads and how she hadn’t met any musicians or short-story writers but the one guy she met who she liked was a salesman. Wasn’t that the craziest thing you ever heard?
    “Crazy.”
    Rune nodded and tried to listen. The muscles in her abdomen clenched against the crawly feeling, like she was possessed by a space creature that was getting ready to burst out of her. Fight it down…. Fight it!
    Then Claire was into a travelogue, telling Rune and Courtney about Boston—Faneuil Hall and Cambridge and Chinatown and the lofts and antique stores around South Street Station. “There’s this one really, really neat place. It sells old bathtubs that must be three feet deep.”
    Rune nodded politely, and a couple times said, “Wow, that’s interesting,” in an uninterested way, which Claire seemed to take as encouragement to keep rambling. Rune found she was holding Courtney’s hand tightly. The little girl squirmed.
    Fight it….
    Rune didn’t say much about Boggs or Maisel or the
Current Events
story. Just the bare bones. Claire must have known Rune