Magic Street Page 0,21

have him."

The door behind him opened. It was one of the neonate nurses. "Who you talking to out here?" she asked.

Ceese was going to say, Her, but when he turned back around the motorcycle woman wasn't on the second step down anymore. For a second he thought she was entirely gone, but then he looked down and she was at the bottom of the next flight of stairs, where if he called to the nurse to come and see, the motorcycle woman would be gone before she could get there to look.

"It's dangerous by these steps," said the nurse. "What if you dropped him?"

Below him, the motorcycle woman held out her arms. But despite her promises, Ceese knew that if he tossed the baby to her, she would step back and let the baby hit the stairs and spatter his brains everywhere and she'd be gone and they'd think Ceese went crazy and killed the kid and they'd lock him up until he admitted that there was never no motorcycle woman holding out her arms.

"I won't drop him," said Ceese.

"Still, come away."

"Sure," he said. "Wanted to look out the window is all."

"All that's out that window is a parking lot and a lot of hot asphalt trying to cool off in the darkness," said the nurse. "Want another Coke?"

Yes he did. So he could get the baby to drink it.

"No thank you," he said.

Was this what it was like for everybody? Did they all keep thinking of ways to poison or drop or otherwise kill their babies?

Not my baby, he reminded himself. Not mine at all. But that means, not mine to hurt, either. Not mine to give away to motorcycle women. Not mine to kill.

He belongs to himself, that's what. And nobody's got a right to steal his whole future from him.

Am I crazy, to think of ways for this baby to die? Was there really a motorcycle woman on those stairs? How would she know my name was Cecil? She called me Cecil and she didn't make a sound when she went down those stairs in a couple of seconds when my back was turned.

He sat on the bench between the elevators for the rest of the shift. When Miz Smitcher came to him and woke him, the baby was still in his arms, and still alive. And sure enough, even though a different desk lady had lots of things to sign at the desk when they got there, none of them gave Miz Smitcher permission to turn the baby over to the hospital. She had to take the baby home.

"All right then," said Miz Smitcher, "if I'm going to be his foster mother, I'm going to name him."

"Might as well," said the new desk lady. "Got to call him something."

"Mack," she said.

"First name or last?" asked the desk lady, poised to write something on a form.

"Short for something?"

"That's the whole name. The whole first name."

"Last name Smitcher?" asked the desk lady.

"No way in hell," said Miz Smitcher. "Bad enough I'm stuck with Willie Joe's name, I'm not going to impose it on a poor little baby who with any luck will never meet him. Last name Street, that was my name when I was growing up. My daddy's and mama's name."

"Mack Street," said the desk lady.

"Just like that?" asked Miz Smitcher. "Don't need permission?"

"There's countries where you can't give a baby a name without the government's okay, but here, you just pick a name."

"What if this baby already had a name?"

"The person named him went and left him in a field somewhere," said the desk lady. "I'm betting there's no birth certificate. He still had amniotic fluid on him, the doctor said. He was born and laid in that grass and that was it. So this is the first name he ever had, count on it."

Miz Smitcher turned to Ceese. "What do you think? Mack Street okay?"

"Mack's an okay name," said Ceese. "Better than LeRoy or Raymo," he said.

"I agree with you there."

"Way better than Cecil."

"Cecil's a good name," said Miz Smitcher. "Every Cecil I knew was a fine man."

Not all. Not if you knew the sick crap that was going through my head this afternoon.

"But we got a Cecil in the neighborhood," said Miz Smitcher. "Near as I can tell, we got no other Mack."

"Mack Street is a good name," said Ceese.

And then it was done. Papers signed. And in a few minutes, Ceese was sitting in the car beside Miz Smitcher, holding little Mack Street