Lullaby

Chapter 12

Nash is at the bar on Third, eating onion dip with his fingers. He sticks two shiny fingers into his mouth, sucking so hard his cheeks cave in. He pulls the fingers out and pinches some more onion dip out of a plastic tub.

I ask if that's breakfast.

«You got a question,» he says, «you need to show me the money first.» And he puts the fingers in his mouth.

On the other side of Nash, down the bar is some young guy with sideburns, wearing a good pin-striped suit. Next to him is a gal, standing on the bar rail so she can kiss him. He tosses the cherry from his cocktail into his mouth. They kiss. Then she's chewing. The radio behind the bar is still announcing the school lunch menus.

Nash keeps turning his head to watch them.

This is what passes for love.

I put a ten-dollar bill on the bar.

His fingers still in his mouth, his eyes look down at it. Then his eyebrows come up.

I ask, did anybody die in my building last night?

It's the apartments at Seventeenth and Loomis Place. The Loomis Place Apartments, eight stories, a kind of kidney-colored brick. Maybe somebody on the fifth floor? Near the back? A young guy. This morning, there's a weird stain on my ceiling.

The sideburns guy, his cell phone starts ringing.

And Nash pulls his fingers out, his lips dragged out around them in a tight pucker. Nash looks at his fingernails, close-up, cross-eyed.

The dead guy was into drugs, I tell him. A lot of people in that building are into drugs. I ask if there were any other dead people there. By any chance did a whole bunch of people die in the Loomis Place Apartments last night?

And the sideburns guy grabs the gal by a handful of hair and pulls her away from his mouth. With his other hand, he takes a phone from inside his coat and flips it open, saying, «Hello?»

I say, they'd all be found with no apparent cause of death.

Nash stirs a finger around in the onion dip and says, «That your building?»

Yeah, I already said that.

Still holding the gal by her hair, talking into the phone, the sideburns guy says, «No, honey.» He says, «I'm at the doctor's office right now, and it doesn't look very good.»

The gal closes her eyes. She arches her neck back and grinds her hair into his hand.

And the sideburns guy says, «No, it looks like it's metastasized.» He says, «No, I'm okay.»

The gal opens her eyes.

He winks at her.

She smiles.

And the sideburns guy says, «That means a lot right now. I love you, too.»

He hangs up, and he pulls the gal's face into his.

And Nash takes the ten off the bar and stuffs it into his pocket. He says, «Nope. I didn't hear anything.»

The gal, her feet slip off the bar rail, and she laughs. She steps back up and says, «Was that her?»

And the sideburns guy says, «No.»

And without me trying, it happens. Me just looking at the sideburns guy, the song flits through my head. The song, my voice in the shower, the voice of doom, it echoes inside me. As fast as a reflex. As fast as a sneeze, it happens.

Nash, his breath is nothing but onions, he says, «It sounds kind of funny, you asking that.» He puts his stirring finger into his mouth.

And the gal down the bar says, «Marty?»

And the sideburns guy leaning against the bar slides to the floor.

Nash turns to look.

The gal's kneeling next to the guy on the floor, her hands spread open just above, but not quite touching, his pin-striped lapels, and she says, «Marty?» Her fingernails are painted sparkling purple. Her purple lipstick is smeared all around the guy's mouth.

And maybe the guy's really sick. Maybe he's choked on a cherry. Maybe I didn't just make another kill.

The gal looks up at Nash and me, her face glossy with tears, and says, «Does one of you know CPR?»

Nash puts his fingers back in the onion dip, and I step over the body, past the gal, pulling on my coat, headed for the door.