A Thousand Naked Strangers - Kevin Hazzard Page 0,48

But a pigeon? Or a parakeet? Petrifying. I laugh. He gets indignant. “It’s not that weird.”

I disagree. He Googles his particular affliction to prove it’s been recognized by the Internet-based medical community. It’s called ornithophobia. According to Wikipedia, Scarlett Johansson has it. “It may be irrational,” he insists, “but it’s real. Says so right there.”

So he’s afraid of birds. Every day it’s the same: strange conversations and small talk, long pauses—the monotony of the jilted psyche—punctuated by the occasional call from Her. This is how it is right now. We’re in an ambulance, idling outside a Kmart on Cleveland Avenue. He’s whispering into the phone. I’m next to him, silent, pretending not to listen. It’s tough, in an ambulance, to give even the appearance of privacy. I stare out the window. The Kmart is a freak show. Bargain hunters arriving in half-dead Mercury Sables, homeless men digging around the trash, hookers limping out of the Palace Inn and across the parking lot in search of more business. Today there’s a guy with a pressure washer and a huge drum of water strapped to a trailer hitched to his van. He’s set out cones and a sign advertising car washing and hand-detailing. At only fifteen dollars, it seems like a steal.

“Baby girl,” Marty whispers into the phone, “I know you’re having fun, but at least when the semester’s over, you’ll be coming back to me.” Silence. Then, “Right?”

I press my face to the glass and pretend I’m not here, not listening. I watch a man wander across the parking lot. He walks up to the car washer. They talk for a moment, it’s animated like old friends catching up, and then, suddenly, a gunshot. The car washer pulled a gun so fast, I never saw the motion. There was just the pop. Just like that—POP—and we’ve seen a man get shot.

For once it’s Marty who ends the call. “I gotta go.” He hangs up, phone still to his ear.

For a few seconds nobody moves—the shooter, his victim, Marty, or me—as if none of this is permanent, as if a little quiet will undo what’s just been done.

This isn’t how it normally goes. Normally, this sort of thing happens near but not close, maybe heard but never seen. The dispatch radio chirps, and a voice comes over the air to say something terrible has happened and could we hurry on over to take a look. Today it’s different. Today we’ve watched it.

Finally, as if insisting his injury is serious, as if to prove he’s truly in mortal danger, that he’s been shot and not merely insulted, the man staggers back. He puts a hand over his throat, and his knees buckle. Then he starts running.

“Where’s he going?”

“He’s running.”

“Why’s he running?”

The man turns, and for an instant it looks like he’s running to us.

“Is he running to us? Why’s he running to us?”

“Well, this is an ambulance . . .”

Oh.

But he’s not running to us. He struggles on at a slow trot, blood streaming down his arm and trickling into the parking lot.

“Now where’s he going?”

“Should we follow him?”

“Yeah.”

Marty puts the truck in gear and takes his foot off the brake. We start rolling forward, and when we catch up to him, what am I supposed to say? Marty has to remind me to roll my window down. Once it’s open, I lean out. “Hey, uh, you wanna get in?”

The guy looks over—eyes bulging, tongue out. Blood runs through his fingers. I don’t know how long he can keep this up.

Marty leans over my seat. “You’re shot, dude!”

The guy stops, but we keep going, roll right past him like he’s nothing but a ghost in the side mirror. Finally, brake lights. The ambulance rocks to a halt. We step out into the parking lot. I’ve seen plenty of people who’ve been shot, but I haven’t seen anyone get shot. Until now. This is a whole new experience, and as I grab the patient’s arm, I feel a tingle at the base of my spine, evolution’s genetic heirloom—someone tried to kill this man, and standing next to him, saving him, I’m prey, too. I look up to see if we’re in the crosshairs, but to my shock, the car washer—the shooter—is calmly picking up his buckets and mops. He stacks his cones neatly in a pile, then sits on the bumper and pulls out his phone. Ultimately, it’s the shooter who calls 911.

It’s curious, really, but there’s no time to think about it. We