The Hardest Thing

my status, my self-respect. For what? For the kind of sex I could get any night of the week, as long as I keep myself in shape.
    And then what? Forty bucks on the nightstand? Until the day when the wrinkles are deeper and the flesh is saggier and I’m the one who has to pay for it, what then? You can’t afford much on a doorman’s wages. Rent—just about. Food—if you’re careful. Sex? Forget it. Junk food and jerking off, that was the future I was looking at. Not much of a prospect for a man who’d served his country for twelve years.
    Come back at five…
    Two and three-quarter hours.
    And what would I find if I went back at five? Jody/ Brian/Stirling, whoever and whatever he was, a cute guy with a great ass and brain damage. What could he offer me? What could I possibly offer him? We’d known each other for a week and a half, we’d fucked in various positions throughout New England, and we’d been caught up in the violent endgame of a massive organized crime operation. Not exactly the basis for enduring love, is it?
    They trained you well…
    Fuck off, Kingston! Get out of my head! What the fuck was his problem? Pissed off because Jack Rendell got the cute blond cop, not him? Taking it out on me, because he knew I wasn’t going to stick around as his bottom boy? Yeah, get back to the steam room, Martin, and wave your wiener at someone else. I’ve had enough.

    Made you believe all the bullshit.
    “Fuck!” I was walking down the street outside the hospital, talking to myself. Great. Now I was a loony. Check yourself in, Dan, why don’t you? I’m sure they have a psychiatric ward. See if they can give you some happy pills. Take a fucking overdose while you’re at it. Do everyone a favor.
    They trained you well.
    A hundred times I was ready to leave. A hundred times I walked back to the hospital entrance, checking my watch, pacing up and down and wishing for a miracle, a sign.
    What would Will want me to do?
    Clouds part, Will’s face appears in the misty distance, birds sing, flutes and violins…
    I waited. No message from Will.
    “Will is dead.”
    Talking to yourself again, Stagg. Do much more of that and they’ll put you in a straitjacket.
    But yes, Will is dead, and I’m alive, and this whole fucking mess isn’t going to alter that fact. He died and I was left to face the world without him. And I made a pretty poor job of it.
    I saw an ambulance arrive, a stretcher coming out of the back, a body under a blanket with drips in the arms. Some poor bastard who wasn’t going to have the luxury of deciding what to do with the rest of his life. Someone who’d had that choice taken away from him.
    Ten to five. Ten minutes early. Shit—live with it.
    I walked through reception and straight into the elevator.
    “Brian Cooper,” I said to the nurse on the ward desk.

    She smiled, checked her watch and said, “That’s okay. He’s in there.”
    A door with a round window through which I could see the corner of a bed.
    I pushed the door open. There was a man sitting beside the bed. He was leaning his elbows on his knees, slumped forward in an attitude of exhaustion. I stepped forward enough to see that he was holding Jody’s hand in his.
    I turned to go, but he heard me, and looked around.
    “Hi.”
    “Sorry to disturb you,” I said. “I got the wrong…”
    “You here to see him? You a friend?”
    “Er…yeah. I guess.”
    He stood up, and I could see Jody’s sleeping face, still badly bruised and cut, but recognizable.
    “I’m Steve Cooper,” he said, holding his hand out. He was tall, well built, a little older than me I guess. Unshaven. Hadn’t slept in a while.
    “Dan Stagg.” We shook, man to man. Rivals? “I guess you’re a…a friend too.”
    “No,” said Steve, with a smile. “I’m his dad.”
    “His dad?”
    “He was asking for you.”

The Hardest Thing 13
    We alternated watches around Jody’s bed, one off, one on, sometimes meeting for long enough to drink a cup of coffee or eat a doughnut. If there was any news, we passed it on. Usually there was nothing. He was “stable,” that’s what the doctors said, and neither of us asked more. Would he ever wake up? What would he be if he did? How much damage had been done? We wanted to know, and we didn’t want to know, and in that state of ignorance four days went by.
    Steve was a quiet kind of guy. Didn’t talk much about his son, didn’t have a lot of questions about me, who I was, what I meant to Jody, what