back down in the chair by the door. Round one, Chloe.
“I fuckin’ hate needles,” Penny mutters. “Hate hospitals.”
For the first time, Chloe sees Penny’s legs, stubbled and crisscrossed with thick white scars. Penny senses her looking, jerks the sheet sideways over them.
“Car accident?” Chloe asks, just to fill the silence.
“Sort of.”
Chloe doesn’t say anything.
“Car accident, yeah. I was fifteen, and me and my girlfriends decide to sneak into a club in Denver. A few rum and Cokes, step out to smoke, and these three fuckin’ dickheads raped and beat the shit out of me, drove over my legs with a van. Doctor said the only reason I didn’t bleed to death was the cold, froze the blood. It was real cold in Colorado. Nobody found me till morning.”
“Oh, Penny…” Chloe doesn’t know what else to say.
“Yeah. You got no idea. I fuckin’ hate needles.”
EVENTUALLY, FRANCIE REACHES JOHN in Los Angeles. Judging from Francie’s side of the conversation, it takes some convincing for him to come back. Something he says makes Francie cry. She can barely stay in the room, flitting in and out, going for coffee, making calls.
“Maybe I should go out and look for a car seat? There’s got to be a place somewhere close…,” Francie says as the lunch carts go by the open door.
“I’ll go!” Penny offers, and for a brief moment, they all share a tentative laugh.
When the nurse helps Penny onto a bedpan, because she insists she’s too weak to stand—“And I’m gonna pass right out on the floor and sue this fuckin’ hospital!”—Chloe and Francie go into the hallway, perch awkwardly on the love seat. There is nothing for Chloe to say to her, nothing reassuring or positive, nothing at all.
“Vultures are circling already, huh?” It is Jason, jingling the buckles of his leather jacket. He tips his shaved head toward Francie because he is holding a huge teddy bear, the kind you buy from the street vendors on Burnside who sell fleece blankets with unicorns, buckets of roses, and these cheap oversize stuffed animals.
“We’re just following the birth plan.” Chloe forces the calm into her voice, looking from Jason to Francie. Sometimes she feels completely unqualified to do this job.
The pitocin is working; Penny’s screams tear up and down the corridor. At four centimeters, she gets the epidural. It takes the anesthesiologist more than one try, and they are both cursing before it is over. Afterward, Penny falls asleep. Jason disappears again, Francie goes to visit the Novas, and Chloe finds a comfortable spot on the couch in the hallway lounge and closes her eyes.
11
Gift Shop
JASON
It’s easy to find her, look for a place to spend money, and there’s Blondie. Jason takes a breath and pushes the glass door open, the bell jangling in his ears. She’s at the card section, sideways to him, opening every single one of them, reading, then putting them back. Upstairs, his girl’s writhing on the bed, nothing he can do about her pain, and she’s down here fucking browsing. It’s easy to picture her with a Starbucks in one hand, her foot jiggling one of those strollers that cost more than a month’s rent, baby unattended. Jason liked the way the ancestors did it, dikkinagun, the way his aunt Selma-Wade carried her retard son for years, crisscrossed to her heart. But you’d have to be strong. He watches Blondie, a walking hunger strike, couldn’t carry a gallon of milk, let alone a baby. Not like his Penny, strong.
Still, his eyes go to the crocodile purse dangling off Francie’s elbow.
Easy, Jason tells himself. Just ask for what’s yours. The ache in his back is a steady pulsing of pain, better if he keeps moving, so Jason circles the magazine rack, shaking his legs, thinking how to start.
The clerk, a folded-over granny with brown teeth, is watching him, sour-eyed, suspicious.
“Can I help you?”
Francie looks up, sees Jason, the card slips out of her hand, flutters to the ground.
“Jason! Is it time?”
“No manners? No ‘nice to see you’?” He crosses the gift shop in three strides.
“No, I mean, yes, but I thought you were here because it’s time.”
“It’s not. But I like to see that you’re eager.”
She bends down, her head level with his cock, as she picks up the greeting card.
“Congratulations on the birth of your son!” it says, a stick-figure baby in a diaper.
“I sure as shit hope that’s not for Penny.”
“No,” she says, her voice shaking. She steps back, tucks the card into its envelope.
“’Cause you’re causing