Write me a Letter

one of cole slaw, two wedges of plain cheesecake, and a quart bottle of cream soda. Plus a paper napkin. Oh— plus a styrofoam cup of chicken soup. After she hugged me gingerly one last time and left, I devoured everything but the napkin and the plastic fork. The car she dropped off at Sacramento ’s airport, paying the tab for it as well. Whoever it was who said that love is, after all, the gift of oneself, might have added that a good pickle on the side doesn’t hurt, either.

18

    The following early afternoon, just after a lunch of macaroni and Velveeta, they moved me to another ward, in a wheelchair, my overnight bag on my lap and my pal the orderly pushing. This was both good news and bad news.
    The good news was that the law must have passed the word that it was no longer necessary to keep me in solitary, otherwise they couldn’t have shifted me even though I was taking up four beds. Maybe I’d get a different nurse, too, I thought on the journey, one that looked like Annette Funicello instead of Sir Charles Barkley. Down the hall we trundled, past a dead person being pushed in the other direction. Into the elevator. The orderly said his name was Fred. I said mine was Vic. Up one floor. Down the hall. Into a ward containing the bad news—Henry C. Clam. Now, Henry C. Clam was a sick man—he was in an intensive care ward. V (for Victor) Daniel was not a sick-enough man to need to be in an intensive care ward. Therefore if he was in one, especially one containing Henry C. Clam by chance, there had to be a good reason. And what better reason than Lt. Keith Kalagan, Homicide. I had no doubt at all that the whole room was not only littered with bugs but infested with them.
    My pal Benny was hooked up, tubed up, roped up, bandaged up, and propped up in the second bed down. The third bed down was invisible behind drawn white curtains. Fred helped me up onto the first bed down, then put my overnight bag under the metal-topped table beside it. Out he went. Swish. I winked at Benny. He winked back. I held one cupped hand to my ear to indicate I thought we were being eavesdropped on. He pretended to yawn, meaning, What else is new? and pointed one thumb at the invisible bed. I nodded, and pointed one thumb at various light fixtures and the telephones. He nodded.
    I eased myself into the bed. I stretched out my left hand as far as it would go. Benny did likewise with his right one. They met, just, and we gave each other’s fingers a sort of a squeeze. In case someone was watching through a gap in the drawn curtains around bed number three, I said, ”Hi, pal. Victor Daniel, we met briefly in the hotel lobby, remember?”
    He nodded. ”Henry Clam,” he said indistinctly around the tube coming out of his mouth. I couldn’t see where the other end went; he was lying on his side, facing me, and it disappeared over his shoulder. He was strapped up from his waist almost to his shoulders, with more tubes—perhaps parts of the drainage—snaking out front and back. He was hooked up to an IV as well and the connection for the heart monitor was still there just in case. He had to be hooked up to a bedpan, too, although his bottom half was covered by a sheet. I noticed one of the tubes went through a bottle of water that was gurgling slightly.
    ”How’re you doing, then?” I said.
    ”I’ve been better, I must admit,” he said in his throaty whisper. ”What about you?”
    ”Aw, nothing,” I said. ”A sore back, fell through the fire escape. Too bad I didn’t land on my head instead. Don’t talk if it tires you out, pal, but they told me you were shot, right?”
    ”Twice,” he whispered. ”From behind. I never heard anything. I went out to get some flies from my car. I woke up here.”
    ”Yeah,” I said. ”I heard. Jeez, I’m sorry, Henry.”
    ”I’m lucky to be alive,” he said. ”That’s the way I think of it, Mr. Daniel. Also, thank goodness for Blue Cross. And you, they tell me.”
    Which made me feel a little better, but not much. Benny fell asleep about five seconds later; he had to be fairly heavily sedated, the shape he was in and all the damage his system had taken. Sleep on, amigo. And sweet dreams. ”I went out to get some flies from my car”—dry flies, to fish with, obviously, not tse-tses—right in character, only he wasn’t out getting flies, he was covering the foot of the fire escape. Cookie must have been pretty good to surprise him so completely. ”Blue Cross”—that was