The Dead Have A Thousand Dreams (18 page)

The files were color
coded. I fingered the C’s until I came to
Copely, Georgiana
, a thick folder
the color of American cheese. I opened it up under one of the
desks, put the flashlight on high and started snapping digitals
with my cell. Today’s chart was on top, followed by last Friday’s.
That was mostly it, charts and charts, lot of ‘em. I wasn’t reading
them, just glancing, shooting and flipping to the next
one.

It wasn’t until I got to
the letter that I paused. It looked like one of those
I’ve examined your patient
letters from another doctor, usually a specialist. But what
stopped me were the words at the top. The doctor sending the letter
belonged to a group of oncologists.

I didn’t have time to read
it, but I skimmed while I shot it. I caught words like

advanced stages

inoperable

a brain tumor of this
type

acute sensitivity to
light

I put the cell down and
ran through the last paragraph.

based on the rate of
growth

less than a year to
live

I just knelt there under
the desk, looking over the letter again.
Acute sensitivity to light.
I
thought about Georgiana, the constant darkness of her study,
wearing sunglasses whenever she went out. I saw her at her desk,
hands moving along the wood, telling me with knife-sharp accuracy
about the rainy day my wife and daughter left me.

Less than a year to
live.

>>>>>>

I got out of the Executive
Center at 12:03—didn’t run into any other problems. Didn’t run into
anybody in front of the building either. The cleaning woman in the
lobby was still cleaning, the guard was still dozing. Nobody had
come inside. Nothing out here but bone-white street
light.

This was death-shaken
paranoia, sure, but it was almost like somebody had been trying to
pull a joke on me. I kept waiting for somebody to break out
laughing somewhere, for some hard crack of laughter to come
thundering out of the sky.

Didn’t happen.

>>>>>>

WEDNESDAY JUNE 20, 7:40
a.m.

THE LAST DREAMS

I needed sleep but I
didn’t get much of it. Two, three hours. Which felt even shorter in
a hotel room. I saw the morning break, the gray and gold light of a
semi-cloudy dawn. If you can’t sleep, think—weigh the situation,
form a picture. But I couldn’t think either. I couldn’t finish a
thought, come to any conclusion. Emotional exhaustion is not a good
thing.

When the phone went off I
almost wasn’t going to answer. Then I saw Wooly’s number come
up.

And heard Genevieve’s
voice.

Please get over here. You
have to help. Something terrible’s happened.

I found Wooly in the guest
bathroom. His eccentric industrial hand dryer was splattered with
blood. So were the walls and floor. It looked like a Parkinson’s
patient had tried to open a can of paint. Wooly was sitting on the
toilet—with the lid down—his arms shining red with fresh gashes.
Pieces of a smashed champagne glass, the stem still intact, were
spread all around him. He was using one of the bigger shards to
slice himself up, cutting his fingers in the process. This was how
I’d seen him in the backyard two years ago, drawing his own blood,
mutilating his own flesh, completely psychotic and lost.

“I don’t know what to do
anymore,” said Genevieve. Her eyes were sagging in the
sockets.

Wooly turned his head,
staring wild-eyed at me, Genevieve and Nickie standing outside the
doorway.

“She’ll be coming around
the mountain, Quinn,” he said. “She’ll be coming around the
mountain when she comes.”

“What
happened?”

“Don’t be asking me,” said
Genevieve. “One little phone call and he goes all to
shit.”

“The check is in the mail,
Quinn,” he said in his insane little singsong. “And I’m really
enjoyin’ William Saroyan.”

“What was the
call?”

“Farooq,” said Genevieve,
“the manager at the lab. I took it. He said somebody Jay or
something was filing a suit for non-payment, theft of
service.”

“Jay
Chan
,” cried Wooly, suddenly aware.
“That pale-assed skidmark chink Jay Chan!”

“Allegedly,” Genevieve
went on, “he did some repairs on some machinery and he never got
paid. So I give the message to this one and he goes all in a panic.
Goes to the computer, couple minutes later he’s
gone
. He takes one of these glasses
in there—and this is good glassware—cracks it on the sink and you
can see what he’s done.”

“He
brought
this on me!” Wooly
wailed.

Genevieve looked at him
and shook her head. “What’s the big deal? Why should he get so
upset? He gets sued all the time.
I’ve
sued him.”

“It’s an
omen
,” said Wooly.
“Don’t you understand? It’s a fucking
omen
. Remember? Remember what she
said? Nickie, what did she say?”

“The threat will come from
the east. It will come with stalks…with solid lines and broken
ones.
”

“Right.”

“The threat will come from
the east, but it will be everywhere. What is here is
elsewhere.”

“Right—
the threat will come from the east
.
Well where the fuck’s Chinaman Jay Chan from? He’s from the
east
. And the
threat
will be
everywhere
? Far as I’m concerned, the
threat
is
everywhere.”

“Okay,” I said, “what’s
with the stalks? The solid lines, the broken ones?”

“That’s what I looked up.
That’s what I searched. That’s what they used in the
I Ching
—rice stalks.
They used broken and unbroken rice stalks to tell the future. And
you know what the root meaning of
I
Ching
is? Weaving, tying things together,
thread, fabric. And what do I do for a living? I test
fucking
fabric
.”

“This isn’t real,” said
Genevieve. “This is
not
reality.”

“It’s another
fucking
prediction!
”

“It’s like the last days
of the
Romanovs
around here.”

“I can’t
stand
this!” Wooly
screamed, starting to cut himself again, slapping the piece of
glass into his arm until his face went white with pain. “I’m gonna
fucking die!”

I stepped inside. The
bathroom seemed smaller now—Wooly had a way of completely filling
space by himself. I moved toward him, negotiating the crunchy mess
on the floor.

“Watch your footing,” said
Genevieve.

I stopped six feet away
from the toilet, giving the bughouse bastard some space. “Put it
down.”

He blinked at me like he
didn’t know what I was talking about.

“The glass,” I said, “put
it down.”

He shook his head. “I
can’t get away. Everything keeps reminding me what’s going to
happen. No fucking escape.”

“So what good is
cutting?”

“It’s relief. It calms
you—I told you that once. It hurts so much it makes everything
silent. Sometimes you can actually pass out from it.”

“And then what? You’re
right back where you started.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know
what else to do.
You
know the feeling.”

“I know the feeling, but I
don’t feel that way anymore.”

“Yeah well
fuck
you.”

“Put it down. You’re just
fucking yourself up.”

“I
can’t
put it down. I’m in too much
pain. Can’t you
see
that? Can’t you
see
I’m in pain?”

“What about me?” Genevieve
yelled from the doorway. “I’m your
wife
. It’s
my
pain too!”

“Go
fuck
yourself!” He raised the shard
and went to gouge another big hole in his arm.

I pulled the Glock and
pointed it at his head. “Put it down.”

Wooly was astounded.
“What’re you doing? You’re gonna shoot me?”

“Quinn,” Nickie said
behind me, “I can’t let you do this.”

I wasn’t gonna let her
stop me.

“Just put it down,” I
said.

“You’re gonna
shoot
me?”

“If you don’t put it
down.”

“What kinda threat
is
that
? I’m
gonna die anyway.”

“You want to go now or you
want the extra 24?”

His lips started moving
but nothing was coming out. It was like he was talking to himself.
Then his face all at once collapsed and tears were running out of
his eyes like fresh blood. He’d broken down crying just like that.
He began curling himself into his own body as he let the glass fall
on the floor. He was fetaling as he sat on the toilet, cocooning
himself in his own flab.

“Don’t bother with me,” he
sobbed. “I’m not worth it.”

Genevieve nearly knocked
me over as she bowled into the bathroom. She grabbed two towels and
ran them under cold water while I put the Glock away.

“My life’s a waste,” Wooly
moaned. “My life is useless.”

“I don’t want to hear it,”
Genevieve said as she wrapped the towels around his bloody arms. “I
don’t know how much more of this I can put up with.”

“I’m incompatible with
myself is what it is.”

“You know what, I’m going
to get the Bacitracin from the other bathroom and fix you up. When
I’m done, you need a trip to the rock.”

Wooly declined. “I don’t
deserve it. I’m not
fit
for the rock.”

“Well you could use
it.”

He turned to the
bathroom’s small window while Genevieve mopped at his limbs.
“What’s the weather for tomorrow?”

“I have no idea,” she
said.

“This could be the last
time I see the sun. This could be my last sun.” He looked back,
staring at the dripping walls. “And tonight will be my last night.
My last sleep, my last dreams.”

“Get your ass out. I need
to clean up in here.”

Wooly stood, a very wobbly
affair. Genevieve took one armpit, I took the other and we began to
shuffle him out. Nickie limped ahead of us as we guided him to the
kitchen, halting as he grabbed the walls for balance.

“I’m inconsolable,” he
kept saying. “Can you do something?”

We dropped him down on a
kitchen chair. He stared at the table in front of him like it was
beyond his comprehension.

“You want something to
eat?” said Genevieve. “I’ll fix you something.”

“Why bother eating?” he
lamented. “It all just turns to shit.”

“Then just stay put. I’ll
go get the B.”

Wooly watched her leave.
“She’s the only one who understands me,” he said, “and she doesn’t
understand me.”

I glanced at Nickie. All I
got back was a look of complete neutrality. She was acting as if I
wasn’t there.

Wooly seemed to collect
himself a bit. He turned to me. “You’re
here
,” he said with a genuine sense
of discovery. “I guess you made out okay last night.”

I told him what I found. I
told him about the letter, the inoperable brain tumor, the acute
sensitivity to light.

Genevieve came back with
the Bacitracin and gauze when I delivered the prognosis.

“Georgiana’s got less than
a year to live.”

The women went into shock,
plenty of
oh my God’s
going around.

Wooly, though, he just
shrugged. “That makes two of us.”

“That’s a horrible thing
to say,” said Genevieve. “Is that the best you can do? The
woman’s
dying
,
she’s sick and she’s
dying
, and this is what you have to
say?”

Wooly began to weep again.
“You’re right, you’re right.
Horrible
, you’re right. I’m a
horrible person. I say horrible things. I do horrible things. I’m
just a horrible human being.”

“Sad to say,” said
Genevieve, “there’s probably worse out there than you.”

He shook his head in wide
arcs, full 180’s, then stared again at the table, gazing at it as
if he thought he could find some kind of answer there.