Joyland

and a plain-faced woman standing in the weedy front yard of an anonymous tract house. Eddie looked about twenty-five. He had his arm around the woman. She was smiling at him. And—wonder of wonders—he was smiling back.
    There was a rolling table beside his bed with a plastic pitcher and a glass on it. This I thought rather stupid; with his hands bandaged the way they were, he wasn’t going to be pouring anything for a while. Still, the pitcher could serve one useful purpose. I propped the photo against it so he’d see it when he woke up. With that done, I started for the door.
    I was almost there when he spoke in a whispery voice that was a long way from his usual ill-tempered rasp. “Kiddo.”
    I returned—not eagerly—to his bedside. There was a chair in the corner, but I had no intention of pulling it over and sitting down. “How you feeling, Eddie?”
    “Can’t really say. Hard to breathe. They got me all taped up.”
    “I brought you your gloves, but I see they already . . .” I nodded at his bandaged hands.
    “Yeah.” He sucked in air. “If anything good comes out of this, maybe they’ll fix ’em up. Fuckin itch all the time, they do.” He looked at the picture. “Why’d you bring that? And what were you doin in my doghouse?”
    “Lane told me to put your gloves in there. I did, but then I thought you might want them. And you might want the picture. Maybe she’s someone you’d want Fred Dean to call?”
    “Corinne?” He snorted. “She’s been dead for twenty years. Pour me some water, kiddo. I’m as dry as ten-year dogshit.”
    I poured, and held the glass for him, and even wiped the corner of his mouth with the sheet when he dribbled. It was all a lot more intimate than I wanted, but didn’t seem so bad when I remembered that I’d been soul-kissing the miserable bastard only hours before.
    He didn’t thank me, but when had he ever? What he said was, “Hold that picture up.” I did as he asked. He looked at it fixedly for several seconds, then sighed. “Miserable scolding backbiting cunt. Walking out on her for Royal American Shows was the smartest thing I ever did.” A tear trembled at the corner of his left eye, hesitated, then rolled down his cheek.
    “Want me to take it back and pin it up in your doghouse, Eddie?”
    “No, might as well leave it. We had a kid, you know. A little girl.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. She got hit by a car. Three years old she was, and died like a dog in the street. That miserable cunt was yakking on the phone instead of watching her.” He turned his head aside and closed his eyes. “Go on, get outta here. Hurts to talk, and I’m tired. Got a elephant sitting on my chest.”
    “Okay. Take care of yourself.”
    He grimaced without opening his eyes. “That’s a laugh. How e’zacly am I s’posed to do that? You got any ideas? Because I haven’t. I got no relatives, no friends, no savings, no in- surance. What am I gonna do now?”
    “It’ll work out,” I said lamely.
    “Sure, in the movies it always does. Go on, get lost.”
    This time I was all the way out the door before he spoke again.
    “You shoulda let me die, kiddo.” He said it without melodrama, just as a passing observation. “I coulda been with my little girl.”

    When I walked back into the hospital lobby I stopped dead, at first not sure I was seeing who I thought I was seeing. But it was her, all right, with one of her endless series of arduous novels open in front of her. This one was called The Dissertation.
    “Annie?”
    She looked up, at first wary, then smiling as she recognized me. “Dev! What are you doing here?”
    “Visiting a guy from the park. He had a heart attack today.”
    “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. Is he going to be all right?”
    She didn’t invite me to sit down next to her, but I did, anyway. My visit to Eddie had upset me in ways I didn’t understand, and my nerves were jangling. It wasn’t unhappiness and it wasn’t sorrow. It was a queer, unfocused anger that had something to do with the foul taste of jalapeno peppers that still seemed to linger in my mouth. And with Wendy, God knew why. It was wearying to know I wasn’t over her, even yet. A broken arm would have healed quicker. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to a doctor. Is Mike all right?”
    “Yes, it’s just a regularly scheduled appointment. A chest X-ray and a complete blood count. Because of the pneumonia, you know. Thank God he’s over it now. Except for that lingering