the doorknob, a third towel pressed to his jaw, her eyes searching his face:
"Jesus, Dolores, you've got to get yourself together. You've got responsibilities. Think about those sometimes - okay?--and get your fucking head right."
Those were the last words his wife heard from him. He'd closed
the door and walked down the stairs, paused on the last step. He thought of going back. He thought of going back up the stairs and into the apartment and somehow making it right. Or, if not right, at least softer.
Softer. That would have been nice.
THE WOMAN WITH the licorice scar across her throat came waddling down the breezeway toward them, her ankles and wrists enchained, an orderly on each elbow. She looked happy and made duck sounds and tried to flap her elbows.
"What did she do?" Chuck said.
"This one?" the orderly said. "This here Old Maggie. Maggie Moonpie, we call her. She just going to Hydro. Can't take no chai'ces with her, though."
Maggie stopped in front of them, and the orderlies made a halfhearted attempt to keep her moving, but she shoved back with her elbows and dug her heels against the stone, and one of the orderlies rolled his eyes and sighed.
"She gone proselytize now, hear?"
Maggie stared up into their faces, her head cocked to the right and moving like a turtle sniffing its way out of its shell.
"I am the way," she said. "I am the light. And I will not bake your fucking pies. I will not. Do you understand?"
"Sure," Chuck said.
"You bet," Teddy said. "No pies."
"You've been here. You'll stay here." Maggie sniffed the air. "It's your future and your past and it cycles like the moon cycles around the earth."
She leaned in close and sniffed them. First Teddy, then Chuck.
"They keep secrets. That's what feeds this hell."
"Well, that and pies," Chuck said.
She smiled at him, and for a moment it seemed as if someone lucid entered her body and passed behind her pupils.
"Laugh," she said to Chuck. "It's good for the soul. Laugh."
"Okay," Chuck said. "I will, ma'am."
She touched his nose with a hooked finger. "I want to remember you that way - laughing."
And then she turned away and started walking. The orderlies fell into step and they walked down the breezeway and through a side door into the hospital.
Chuck said, "Fun girl."
"Kind you'd bring home to Morn."
"And then she'd kill Mom and bury her in an outhouse, but still..." Chuck lit a cigarette. "Laeddis."
"Killed my wife."
"You said that. How?"
"He was a firebug."
"Said that too."
"He was also the maintenance man in our building. Got in a fight
with the owner. The owner fired him. At the time, all we knew was
that the fire was arson. Someone had set it. Laeddis was on a list of suspects, but it took them a while to find him, and once they did, he'd
shored up an alibi. Hell, I wasn't even sure it was him."
"What changed your mind?"
"A year ago, I open the paper and there he is. Burned down a
schoolhouse where he'd been working. Same story - they fired him
and he came back, lit it in the basement, primed the boiler so it would
explode. Exact same M.O. Identical. No kids in the schoolhouse, but the principal was there, working late. She died. Laeddis went to trial, claimed he heard voices, what have you, and they committed him to Shattuck. Something happened there - I don't know what - but he was transferred here six months ago."
"But no one's seen him." "No one in Ward A or B."
"Which suggests he's in C."
"Yup." "Or dead."
"Possibly. One more reason to find the cemetery."
"Let's say he isn't dead, though."
"Okay..."
"If you find him, Teddy, what are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Don't bullshit me, boss."
A pair of nurses came toward them, heels clicking, bodies pressed close to the wall to avoid the rain.
"You guys are wet," one of them said.
"All wet?" Chuck said, and the one closest to the wall, a tiny girl with short black hair, laughed.
Once they'd passed, the black-haired nurse looked back over her shoulder at them. "You marshals always so flirty?"
"Depends," Chuck said.
"On?"
"Quality of personnel."
That stopped both of them for a moment, and then they got it, and the black-haired nurse buried her face in the other one's shoulder, and they burst out laughing and walked to the hospital door.
Christ, how Teddy envied Chuck. His ability to believe in the
words he spoke. In silly flirtations. In his easy-GI's penchant for quick, meaningless wordplay. But most of all for the weightlessness of his charm.
Charm had