Come Out Tonight (31 page)

But by the end of a month, I’d completely used up one of the sixteen packages of Somnolux.
 
So I’d never be able to make full restitution, not to mention the Oxycontin which wasn’t there in the first place, something that Carl would never believe....So, on the last day of September, I resolved...to decide.
 
And I decided...not to tell.

*
   
*
   
*

One evening after finding the sixteen packages of Somnolux, I took the subway up to see Sherry.
 
Across the tracks, on the local platform I could see the back of a brown suit, buzz cut, shiny shoes.
 
I knew it was him even before I caught the glint of his dark glasses in the glare of the station.
  
The train pulled up and I got in, but then we just sat there for more than a minute, don’t ask me why.
 
I could see the local pulling in on the other side.
 
It stopped, opening then closing its doors.
 
By the time it pulled out, Old Brown Suit wasn’t there anymore: headed, I guessed, for the same place I was.
  

Eventually, I got there, too.
 
I looked around the station, but of course, he wasn’t exactly waiting to be seen.
 
I walked the fifteen blocks to the nursing home in the dark.
 
For all I knew, Brown Suit was marching in lockstep with me on the other side of the street.
 

I must have gotten there around eight.
 
As I walked in the room, I could see Sherry, sitting in the corner chair, talking to a short-haired woman whose back was towards me.
 
They seemed to be having a real heart-to-heart.
 
Sherry was so into it, she didn’t notice me come in till I was halfway into the room.
 
The woman turned around, and it was whaddyaknow Detective Sirken.

“Find the perpetrator?” I asked, trying to sound legit.

“Hello Henry,” the detective said.
 
“How are you?”

“I’m fine but that’s not the point,” I said, going over to Sherry.
 
“How are you?” I asked Sherry.

“Pretty good,” she said, smiling at me.
 
She looked good too, even if the smile was a little lop-sided.
 

“Fantastic.” I said, giving her a kiss.
  
“What were you two talking about?”

Sherry shrugged.
 
“Trying to remember,” she said.

“Remember what?” I asked

“What happened that...night,” Sherry said.

“What
do
you remember?” I asked.

“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” Sirken said from the door.

“No! Don’t go,” I shouted, running after her.
 
“Tell me about the investigation.”

“No new leads,” she said, when I got to her.
 
“By the way, I heard about the break-in.”

“What break-in?” Sherry called from the chair.

“It was nothing,” I called back to Sherry.
 
To Sirken, “You heard about that?”

“I know everything,” the detective said, smiling.

I must have hesitated.
 
What did that actually mean?
 
“Did they find the Oxycontin?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said..
 
“Nor any of the other stuff.
 
Whoever took it hasn’t tried to sell it yet.”

“What break-on?” Sherry called.

Sherry’s like a dog with a bone.
 
She just won’t give it up, even when she can’t find the right word, and her short-term memory stinks.
 

“Oh, didn’t I tellya?”
 
I called to her.
 
“There was this break-in at the pharmacy.”

By now, Detective Sirken was walking out the door.
 
“Nice talking with you, Sherry,” she said, disappearing.

“What were we talking about?” Sherry asked when I returned.

“Nothing,” I said.
 
“I just thanked her for coming.”

“Something about a drug store,” she said, closing her eyes.

“Better get back to bed,” I said, half-carrying her over.
 
“I think you’re tuckered out.”

“Yeah.”

I got her settled in bed, and she closed her eyes.
 
I asked her if she was comfortable, but she didn’t answer.

“Sherry?” I said, but her eight hours were up.

I went home, feeling everyone was against me.
  
What did Sirken ask and what did Sherry answer?
 
For that matter, what did Sirken know and what did Sherry remember?
 
They were in a huddle as I came in.
  
Was the detective asking her about me?
   
Sirken said, “I know everything.”
 
Was that a joke or a threat?
 
Had she gotten a search warrant and checked my apartment?
 

I let myself into the apartment, running straight away down the dark hallway, flipping the bathroom switch.
 
Fifteen boxes were still in the medicine cabinet, looking the same but not the same.
 
Were they all on their side like that?
 
Was that someone else’s fingerprint on the mirror?
 
You’re just being paranoid, I told myself.
 
I tore open one of the fifteen boxes, withdrew one tablet, and threw it down my throat along with half a glass of toothpaste water.
  
I was asleep before I hit the bed.

*
   
*
   
*

The rest of the week passed pretty uneventfully.
 
Carl had long since stopped ribbing me about the Oxycontin.
 
When no leads materialized, he called his insurance company and filed a claim for all the stolen stock.
 
Everything seemed to be back to normal.
 
Sure, I was running up to see Sherry every other night and on weekends, but I was sleeping great, and I wasn’t forgetting things or making mistakes on the job, so everything was copacetic. Carl said I had proved myself, and put me back on prescription duty.
 

So, everything was cool, except for the fact that I couldn’t seem to kick Somnolux.
 
I mean, every time I tried to stop the pills, I’d get non-stop nightmares.
 
Dream rebound, the Internet said.
 
I’d manage a night or two without it, go through Hell and start in again. I was limiting my alcohol consumption to weekends after I had seen Sherry, though, and all in all was keeping myself in line, but sometimes I’d wake up Mondays to a surprise.
  
One Monday I found Heather Kuznitz in my bed.
  
As I watched her, speechless, she stretched, the sheet cascading down a sleek and tempting body, giving me a sexy smile.
 

“Hey big guy,” she said, reaching out to my privates.

All I could remember was that time months and months ago when she threw me out of her apartment telling me to fuck off.
  
It was obvious something had changed.
 
But what?
   
“I never thought I’d see you again,” I said.

“Honey, you saw me last night.
 
All of me.”
 
She laughed, edging closer.

I looked at the alarm clock.
 
A quarter to nine.
 
“I gotta get to work.”
 

“This won’t take long,” Heather said, climbing on top of me, her body soft and perfumed with sweet sweat.
  
She gave me that sexy smile again, half dreamy, half mischievous.
 
“Let me thank you for last night,” she said, taking me in her mouth.
 

* * *

Stuff like that happened.
 
Women’s underwear would show up in my drawers; homemade lasagna, in the refrigerator.
  
At first it kind of fucked with my mind, but it wasn’t hard to get used to.
 
Heather came and went.
 
She didn’t seem to want anything from me but the sex, and most of that was already consummated and done with when I woke up.
 
Still, I reaped the benefits of grateful women.
  
I was beginning to like this life where I was the hero and the benefactor with no effort on my part.
 
And I was slowly losing my enthusiasm for visiting Sherry every other day, having to act care giver and cheerleader, even though now she was awake, and that was what I said I’d always wanted.
 
I felt something in me morphing, but I couldn’t say into what.
 
Maybe it was natural.
 
Maybe it was just that I wanted a life.

Anyway, Thursday was my late shift at work.
 
So, Thursday morning I took my usual trip to the
Bronx
.
 
Old Brown Suit wasn’t on the platform.
  
I figured maybe he had taken the weekend off, but no such luck.
 
There he was, already sitting in the back of the 8:14 express car as I walked in.
 
I nodded to him, but he was too engrossed in an ad for learning Cantonese.
  
I sat down on the other side of the aisle.
 
We traveled almost all the way up to the
Bronx
, separated only by the width of a subway car, staring out of opposite windows.
 
He left the stop before I did, passing me in the aisle without a glance.
 
I wondered why he had even bothered making the trip.

I walked the rest of the way to the home along quiet, empty streets. The gang members usually huddled on street corners at night must have been home, sleeping it off.
 
Used syringes were scattered in the gutter and busted liquor bottles littered the sidewalk, but all in all, in daylight this place was sadder than it was scary.
 
The wind might have been blowing right through the bombed-out bus shelter, but for the first time I saw homey scenes painted on tenements’ boarded windows.
 
Red flower pots sat on dining tables; a big TV set with rabbit ears on top showed Oscar the Grouch; little girls with ribbons in their hair leaned over of the sill.
  
Boarded, falling-down buildings, but someone took the time to paint hope on those windows.

Inside the home a few dozen old folks, probably up since dawn, milled around.
 
I could see the old busybody traffic cop shuffling towards me, fixing to interrogate me again, so I scooted down the hall and ducked into Sherry’s room.
 
There she was, lying in bed, pale and still, her eyes open but staring a million miles away.
 
She hadn’t had her Somnolux yet.
 
I walked back out and down the hall to the nurses’ station.
 
Why they call it a nurses’ station, I’ll never know.
 
You can’t ever find any nurses there.

I sauntered down one hall and then another, finally finding the day nurse.
 
“Sherry Pollack hasn’t had her meds yet,” I told her.

“Honey, I’m way behind.
 
The subway took forever, and here I am doing my best.
 
I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I calculated the distance from there to Sherry’s room and how long that would translate to in time.
 
“Let me give it to her,” I said.

We argued for a few minutes, she insisting only licensed practitioners can give out meds, and me insisting I was the very first to give Sherry Somnolux, so obviously I was qualified.
 
This didn’t fly.
  
So I followed her down the hall as she did her rounds, not letting her out of my sight.
 
Down one hallway, up another.
 
Finally she sighed and reached into her cart for the Somnolux, put it into a little dixie cup and handed it over.
 
It was an ordinary 10 mg tablet.
 
If I hadn’t been so paranoid about depleting my supplies, I could have given her one of mine.
 
Never mind.
 
I ran down the hallway, almost bumping into an old man with a walker.
 
“Sorry, sir,” I said, rounding the corner, sprinting the last lap toward Sherry’s room.

When I walked in, she was still in the same position she had been before.
 
I dissolved the pill in a little water on a teaspoon, grabbed the dead weight of her and hoisted it into a sitting position, opened her mouth and forced it into her mouth.
 
Ten minutes later her color brightened and her face flushed.
 
Her eyes seemed to twinkle, and her mouth curved into a smile.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi, yourself,” I answered, our usual repartee.
 
I helped her to sit up, pushed the button to let down the side of her bed.
 
“Can you dress yourself?” I asked.