her soul used to be, and through the vacuum its absence left, something slithered.
“Give it to me!” the woman shouted.
“No, it’s mine!” Audrey answered, then balled her free hand into a fist. They faced off, noses inches apart. The woman’s breath was animal crackers, and she was the first to flinch. The animation faded from her scarred-up eyes. She retreated and sat back down again, then smiled blankly, as if her outburst had never happened.
Audrey pressed the paper to her chest to smooth it, then put it in her pocket with the pills.
“Let’s get out of here,” Saraub said.
She nodded. “Ooooh, yeah.” They walked out, and as they did, the woman called: “I know who you are! You’re the one who builds, but you do it all wrong. You’re no good to anybody!”
Audrey bit her lip and squeezed the note tight.
When the doors to the elevator shut, she pressed her openmouthed face into Saraub’s thick arm, making a round, wet mark on his shirt, and cried dry tears.
In the parking lot, they sat in the car but didn’t drive. The sprawling hospital spread out like a mirage, as far as she could see. Birth and death, and nothing that resembled living, in between.
22
Icarus’ Wings Burned Black
She spent all of Thursday and Friday at Betty’s bedside while Saraub worked in the lobby, or at the motel. Friday night, they ate BLTs at Shorty’s Diner. In her mind like low-level noise pollution, heavy wings flapped.
Their waitress was a big-hipped high-school girl with rosy cheeks who spent her downtime giving them the stink eye from the lunch counter across the room. They looked different from everybody else. They weren’t wearing jeans, for one. For another, Saraub was Indian. Strike three, she’d returned her baloney sandwich and asked for the butter to be scraped from the bread. Upon its return, she’d checked for spit, then worried it might be snot, then decided to be safe, since her temporary crown was bothering her anyway, and not eat it at all.
The table where they sat was greasy, and a wire poking out from the vinyl booth had scratched her thigh. She blotted now with a napkin and fought the strange temptation to taste the salty redness.
“When are you going to take her off life support?” Saraub asked.
She looked out the window, where the sky out there was too big, and found herself homesick for The Breviary, whose sheltering walls would never permit such a question. “I’m not.”
“But you heard what Burckhardt said. She’s not waking up.”
She thought about that photo. And the list of the places they’d lived. And the promise she’d made to Betty, that she’d broken. Too soon. She could not have this conversation right now. Maybe not ever.
“You worry about your own family. I’m not abandoning her because of some doctor. She’s my mother, and I promised never to leave her.”
Saraub opened his mouth as if to speak, then swallowed a french fry instead. Then the rest of the fries, all in a few bites. “Bob Stern from Sunshine called my agent,” he said when he was done.
“Yeah?”
“It’s a go. Contracts went out last night. I start in D.C. with Senator McCaffrey, then back to New York to interview that former Servitus CEO. After that, the editing starts. Probably in Los Angeles, where they’ve got cheap suites.”
“Oh!” she clapped her hands together in delight. “That’s wonderful!”
He nodded. “Call came last night. I might have to leave tomorrow morning, but my agent’s trying now to see if he can push it back a week.”
She was so happy she beamed. “Well, don’t screw it up on my account. The movie’s more important.”
“Is it?”
“Of course. This is your dream. Aren’t you thrilled? I think I might pee my pants I’m so happy for you. Why aren’t you happy?”
He leaned forward, and she saw what he was going to ask before he asked it. Leave it to Saraub to make lemons out of lemonade: “Why won’t you be my wife?”
She looked down. Then reached into her pocket, and felt the hard ring. Her face turned red, and even as she did it, she knew she should keep her big mouth shut. But it had been on her mind all week. She’d been hiding it from him every morning, moving it from one pocket to the next. And why had she brought it, anyway? Had she really thought one of the rich crones at The Breviary was going to pick a lock? “You should take this back,” she