'One thing. Do you still think Barbie's guilty? Never mind what the rest of them think, do you?'
A long pause. Then she said,'We'll talk when you get here.'And with that, she was gone.
Rusty was leaning with his butt propped against the examination table. He held the phone in his hand for a moment, then pressed the END button. There were many things he wasn't sure of just now—he felt like a man swimming in a sea of perplexity—but he felt sure of one thing: his wife thought somebody might be listening. But who? The Army? Homeland Security?
Big Jim Rennie?
'Ridiculous,' Rusty said to the empty room. Then he went to find Twitch and tell him he was leaving the hospital for a little while.
9
Twitch agreed to keep an eye on Ginny and make sure she didn't overdo, but there was a quid pro quo: Rusty had to examine Henrietta Clavard, who had been injured during the supermarket melee, before leaving.
'What's wrong with her?' Rusty asked, fearing the worst. Henrietta was strong and fit for an old lady, but eighty-four was eighty-four.
'She says, and I quote, "One of those worthless Mercier sisters broke my goddam ass." She thinks Carla Mercier. Who's Venziano now.'
'Right,' Rusty said, then murmured, apropos nothing: 'It's a small town, and we all support the team. So is it?'
'Is it what, sensei?'
'Broken.'
'I don't know. She won't show it to me. She says, and I also quote, "I will only expose my smithyriddles to a professional eye."'
They burst out laughing, trying to stifle the sounds.
From beyond the closed door, an old lady's cracked and dolorous voice said: 'It's my ass that's broke, not my ears. I hear that.'
Rusty and Twitch laughed harder. Twitch had gone an alarming shade of red.
From behind the door, Henrietta said: 'If it was your ass, my buddies, you'd be laughing on the other side of your faces.'
Rusty went in, still smiling. 'I'm sorry, Mrs Clavard.'
She was standing rather than sitting, and to his immense relief, she smiled herself. 'Nah,' she said. 'Something in this balls-up has got to be funny. It might as well be me.' She considered. 'Besides, I was in there stealing with the rest of them. I probably deserved it.'
10
Henrietta's ass turned out to be badly bruised but not broken. A good thing, because a smashed coccyx was really nothing to laugh about. Rusty gave her a pain-deadening cream, confirmed that she had Advil at home, and sent her away, limping but satisfied. As satisfied, anyway, as a lady of her age and temperament was ever likely to get.
On his second escape attempt, about fifteen minutes after Linda's call, Harriet Bigelow stopped him just short of the door to the parking lot. 'Ginny says you should know Sammy Bushey's gone.'
'Gone where?' Rusty asked. This under the old grade-school assumption that the only stupid question was the one you didn't ask.
'No one knows. She's just gone.'
'Maybe she went down to Sweetbriar to see if they're serving dinner. I hope that's it, because if she tries to walk all the way back to her place, she's apt to bust her stitches.'
Harriet looked alarmed.'Could she, like, bleed to death? Bleeding to death from your woo-woo… that would be bad!
Rusty had heard many terms for the vagina, but this one was new to him. 'Probably not, but she could end up back here for an extended stay. What about her baby?'
Harriet looked stricken. She was an earnest little thing who had a way of blinking distractedly behind the thick lenses of her glasses when she was nervous; the kind of girl, Rusty thought, who might treat herself to a mental breakdown about fifteen years after graduating summa cum laude from Smith orVassar.
'The baby! Omigod, Little Walter!' She dashed down the hall before Rusty could stop her and came back looking relieved. 'Still here. He's not very lively, but that seems to be his nature.'
'Then she'll probably be back. Whatever other problems she might have, she loves the kid. In an absentminded sort of way.'
'Huh?' More furious blinking.
INever mind. I'll be back as soon as I can, Hari. Keep 'em flying.'
'Keep what flying?' Her eyelids now appeared on the verge of catching fire.
Rusty almost said, I mean keep your pecker up, but that wasn't right, either. In Harriet's terminology, a pecker was probably a wah-wah.
JKeep busy,' he said.
Harriet was relieved. 'I can do that, Dr Rusty, no prob.'
Rusty turned to go, but now a man was standing there—thin, not bad-looking once you got past the hooked nose, a lot of graying hair tied back in a ponytail. He looked a bit like the late Timothy Leary. Rusty was starting to wonder if he was going to get out of here, after all.
'Can I help you, sir?'
'Actually, I was thinking that perhaps I could help you.' He stuck out a bony hand. 'Thurston Marshall. My partner and I were weekending at Chester Pond, and got caught in this whatever-it-is.'
'Sorry to hear that,' Rusty said.
