Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

had come outside to smoke.
    “You see that bench,” said Jinny. “Oh, never mind, we’re past it now. It has a sign—THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. But it’s out there for people to sit down on when they wander out of the hospital. And why do they come out? To smoke. Then are they not supposed to sit down? I don’t understand it.”
    “Helen’s sister works in the laundry,” Neal said. “What’s her name, Helen? What’s your sister’s name?”
    “Lois,” said Helen. “Stop here. Okay. Here.”
    They were in a parking lot at the back of a wing of the hospital. There were no doors on the ground floor except a loading door, shut tight. On the other three floors there were doors opening onto a fire escape.
    Helen was getting out.
    “You know how to find your way in?” Neal said. Easy.
    The fire escape stopped four or five feet above the ground but she was able to grab hold of the railing and swing herself up, maybe wedging a foot against a loose brick, in a matter of seconds. Jinny could not tell how she did it. Neal was laughing.
    “Go get’em, girl,” he said.
    “Isn’t there any other way?” said Jinny.
    Helen had run up to the third floor and disappeared.
    “If there is she ain’t a-gonna use it,” Neal said.
    “Full of gumption,” said Jinny with an effort.
    “Otherwise she’d never have broken out,” he said. “She needed all the gumption she could get.”
    Jinny was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. She took it off and began to fan herself.
    Neal said, “Sorry. There doesn’t seem to be any shade to park in. She’ll be out of there fast.”
    “Do I look too startling?” Jinny said. He was used to her asking that.
    “You’re fine. There’s nobody around here anyway.”
    “The man I saw today wasn’t the same one I’d seen before. I think this one was more important. The funny thing was he had a scalp that looked about like mine. Maybe he does it to put the patients at ease.”
    She meant to go on and tell him what the doctor had said, but he said, “That sister of hers isn’t as bright as she is. Helen sort of looks after her and bosses her around. This business with the shoes—that’s typical. Isn’t she capable of buying her own shoes?
    She hasn’t even got her own place—she still lives with the people who fostered them, out in the country somewhere.”
    Jinny did not continue. The fanning took up most of her energy. He watched the building.
    “I hope to Christ they didn’t haul her up for getting in the wrong way,” he said. “Breaking the rules. She is just not a gal for whom the rules was made.”
    After several minutes he let out a whistle.
    “Here she comes now. Here-she-comes. Headin’ down the homestretch. Will-she-will-she-will-she have enough sense to stop before she jumps? Look before she leaps? Will-she-will-she—nope. Nope. Unh- unh .”
    Helen had no shoes in her hands. She jumped into the van and banged the door shut and said, “Stupid idiots. First I get up there and this asshole gets in my way. Where’s your tag? You gotta have a tag. You can’t come in here without a tag. I seen you come in off the fire escape, you can’t do that. Okay, okay, I gotta see my sister. You can’t see her now she’s not on her break. I know that, that’s why I come in off the fire escape I just need to pick something up. I don’t want to talk to her I’m not goin’ to take up her time I just gotta pick something up. Well you can’t. Well I can. Well you can’t. And then I start to holler Lois, Lois . All their machines goin’ it’s two hundred degrees in there sweat runnin’ all down their faces stuff goin’ by and Lois, Lois . I don’t know where she is can she hear me or not. But she comes tearing out and as soon as she sees me—Oh, shit. Oh shit, she says, I went and forgot. She forgot to bring my shoes . I phoned her up last night and reminded her but there she is, oh, shit, she forgot. I could’ve beat her up. Now you get out, he says. Go downstairs and out. Not by the fire escape because it’s illegal. Piss on him.”
    Neal was laughing and laughing and shaking his head.
    “So that’s what she did? Left your shoes behind?”
    “Out at June’s and Mart’s.”
    “What a tragedy.”
    Jinny said, “Could we just start driving now and get some air? I don’t think fanning is doing a lot of good.”
    “Fine,” said Neal. He backed and turned around, and once more they were passing the familiar front of the hospital, with the same or