Fifty Mice Part 13

Jay looks at her strangely. "How do you know hes dead?"

Ginger blinks. "Your file."

Jay asks her how it says his father died.

"It doesnt."

"And my mother?"

"It doesnt say anything in there about your mom."

Jay wonders why. Ginger wants to change the subject, to the honey: "Its cold."

"Yeah," Jay says. "Weird, huh? Thats it, working, apparently. Bee magic."

Helen, exhausted, has crashed on the other side of the bed in a tumble of stuffed animals and her thumb, to which the little girl sometimes regresses, Ginger has explained, when things get especially stressful.

"I cant really cook at all," Ginger admits ruefully.

"Its that the honey seals the air out," Jay says. "Or maybe theres something in it, biochemically, or maybe just that its naturally sterile, I dont know-but now we have to wrap it with tissue or"-he points an elbow to a waiting roll-"toilet paper and leave it on overnight. By morning, the honeyll be gone and the burns will be pretty much-"

"Doctor?" Ginger interrupts.

"-gone."

"Im dripping."

Sure enough, honey is starting to sheet off Gingers arm. Slow-motion waterfall. Both his hands are presently engaged and therefore useless, so Jays at a loss. "Okay. Okay . . . I um . . . sorry about this but-" He bows toward her, lowering his head to her arm, and licks the overflow off the nape of her wrist, gently.

"Oh. Oh, wait-now youve got"-Ginger gestures to a smear of honey on his forehead-"something, here." She tries to squeegee it off with her one untreated pinky finger, but, failing that, just pulls him back toward her and licks the honey off his head.

There follows a very uncomfortably wired moment; an intimacy has enfolded them and neither one of them knows what to do with it.

"Thanks. For putting me out," she says finally.

"The fire? Yeah, well." He makes a vague gesture with one hand. "But what was the alternative? House burns down, and all my stuff is in here."

The joke is lame and slow-dawning, but Ginger shows him the possibility of a smile. Jay eases away from her, uncrosses his legs, slides off the bed and goes into the bathroom, flips the faucet on, water splashing, washing the honey off his fingers.

"Okay so lemme just . . . lemme just . . ."

He dries his hands, hurries back, and stands beside the bed, unfurling toilet paper to make long, narrow, padded bandages the way his mother would, careful and compact, her hands a blur, her eyebrows angled, serious, riot of hair pulled back and knotted to keep it from getting into the sticky stuff.

She was his original rock.

"Is this an important part of the treatment?"

"You better believe it. All of a piece. Kleenex is the preferred medium, due to its superior absorbency, but any two-ply will do."

"Mm." Ginger watches him with an expression he cant unpack, but its not blank, not indifferent.

Jay positions the completed bandage pads on Gingers honey-sealed burns, and he holds them in place with more toilet paper unrolled liberally up and down her arm and over her hand, forming a kind of soft cast that winds in and out of her fingers and over her palm and back up her arm, where he fastens it with Scotch tape. The pink tips of her fingers are stark against the white. Honey bleeds up through the tissue but doesnt surface. The room smells of bacon and sweetness.

"Your moms still alive?" Ginger asks.

Now its Jay who changes subjects. "Can I ask you something? What the h.e.l.l do you do all day? I mean, while Helens at school and Im cleaning returned discs of the Matrix trilogy or some other incredibly important video-shop ch.o.r.e?"

"Me?" She meets his gaze. "Youve followed me, you would know."

Jays face gets red, but he doesnt back down. "Okay, sure. Once. But-"

She cuts him off: "I float."

Snap: strip club aquarium, Ginger in the mermaid suit, silvery sequins glued to her hips, b.r.e.a.s.t.s weightless in their sea-green halter, hair fanned in lazy tendrils, stares emptily out at Jay, eyes searching his, hands flat against the gla.s.s.

Jay frowns, squints. "You what?"

-No.

"Float. I do all the household c.r.a.p my mother did and which I swore I would never do. I surf the web, 'Page Six and TMZ. I listen to music. I read trashy mystery books at the library, sometimes." She hesitates. "And I think about my old life. I float over it. Wondering what went wrong. And if I give a s.h.i.t."

"Your old life."

"Yeah."

"With your boyfriend and everything."

Sad, Ginger looks down at her papered arms and hands and says, "Husband," like shes underlining it. "He was my husband, Jay, we were married." She shifts her weight and leans away from Jay and scoots back against the wall. Creating some distance.

Stacy could never get close enough to him, it was like she wanted to crawl inside of him, but it was all about body, not soul. Even this far away he can feel Gingers heartache as she whispers, "We were cops. Did Public tell you that? So its not as if . . ." She stops again.

Jay wonders: As if what?

"And were not," she continues, voice thin, "I mean, its not . . ." She lets the thought drift off. Does she blink back tears? Jay cant tell, still wondering: As if what?

"Somebody out there gonna miss you, Jay?" shes asking, changing subjects, and doesnt wait for an answer. "I think about that part, too, dont you? With this disappearing stuff. Witness protection. One minute were in Kansas and the next, poof, Wizard of Oz. Tap tap. Gone. And all the people we knew . . ." Shes wistful, but shes fishing, too: ". . . A steady girlfriend or something?"

"That detail wasnt in my file?"

Ginger shrugs. Jay just swims around it. "Whats your real name?"

"I like the name Ginger, actually. They let me decide on it." She rotates her arms and studies his bandaging. Avoiding his eyes.

"You wont tell me?"

"I wont. I cant. Im sorry."

"Well, Im really Jay."

"Okay. Is that important?"

"Yeah."

She doesnt say anything, then.

"What about Helen?"

"You think that theres another name shes not telling us?"

"So Helen is real, too."

Ginger, stubborn, returns to her talking point: "No girlfriend?"

Jays sure that she knows, so why is she asking? "Fiancee," he says, flat.

"Oh. Whens the big date?"

Jay suggests that his present situation has put a kink in any plans, but Ginger isnt buying it.

"So there was a date on the books."

"Well," he admits, "no."

"Huh." Ginger stares at him. "Commitment issues?"

"Personal freedom issues," he says.

"Oh." But: "So I guess . . . this is all . . . kinda ironic, then. Considering."

"Yeah." Jay is suddenly uncomfortable. "Look-" He stands up. "Im here-"

"-by mistake. I remember."

"You dont believe me, either."

"No," Ginger admits. "And its just that Im not. A mistake. I mean, my being here isnt one. So."

They look at each other for a long time, then Jay nods and leaves Ginger frowning at an empty doorway.

In the kitchen, he takes in the damage: not too bad: burned grease everywhere, the charred tablecloth, the sour funk of the burned bacon. He picks up the overturned frying pan from the floor and clatters it in the sink. He unrolls a few feet of paper towels, drops them, and mops grease with his foot until its thick and cloudy and pooling up, then hes down on his knees, sopping it and throwing the sodden towels into the trash. The linoleum gets bright shiny, reflecting hard overhead light. He finds some 409 in the cupboard and, with another length of paper towel, manages to cut the grease and scrub the floor clean to its scuffed, worn, dull natural state.

Standing at the faucet, lathering his hands, he looks absently up through the window at the lit window of the house next door. Tripod-the prodigiously endowed a.s.shole, Marshal Miles-is gazing right back at Jay from Barry and Sandys kitchen. s.h.i.t-eating grin. Exaggerated thumbs-up gesture, his arm cast all squiggled with best wishes and crude cartoons.

Jay frowns.

Tripod puts his tongue against the inside of his cheek and makes a lewd hand gesture suggesting, what? Masturbation? Oral s.e.x?

b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. Or whatever. It doesnt matter.

Something in Jay snaps.

Hes out of the kitchen, out the front door, into the darkness and braced by a cold wind off the bay before his next thought registers, if hes thinking at all. He hurdles a short hedge, goes up the front steps of Barry and Sandys house onto the wooden porch and kicks the front door in, splintering the doorjamb just like in the movies and making a crazy racket.

The floor plan of this bungalow is pretty much the mirror image of Jay and Gingers, but the tiny living room where Sandy is just standing up from the recliner where she was doing her nails and watching TV when her front door caved in is divided from the entry by a low wall decorated with a collection of ugly china figurines, so even if she wanted to intercept Jay, she couldnt.

"Where is he?"

Sandy, fingers outspread, nails drying, cotton b.a.l.l.s wedged between her toes, cant seem to decide whether first to shout or to move, so Jay keeps going, murmuring under his breath, "Youre all a.s.sholes," just as the man theyve named Barry comes out of the kitchen, calling to his partner: "Sandy?" He sees Jay, and sputters, "Whoa. Jimbo. What the h.e.l.l are you-"

"He kicked the door in," Sandy repeats unnecessarily.

"Wheres Tripod? And wheres all the surveillance stuff youre using to spy on us?" Jay asks, brushing past Barry and heading down the hallway. "In the bedroom?" Barry is hot behind him. "You have cameras in every room of my house? So you can watch me? Record me and Ginger and Helen?"

"Hey." Barry says, reaching for Jays shoulder. "Hey."

"Why didnt you come over and help put out the f.u.c.king fire?!"

From behind him, somewhere, Sandy: "What fire?"

The bedroom: normal: single bed, cheap pressboard dresser, some clothing draped over a chair. No Marshal Miles. Jay shouts, "PUBLIC?!" although hes pretty sure Public is not in the house.

"What the f.u.c.k is wrong with you people? She could have been seriously burned. I thought you were on my side. I thought you needed me to volunteer whatever it is I know. I thought that was essential."

As Barry tries again to grab him, big hand on one shoulder, Jay shakes violently free, swings wildly, his fist deflecting off Barrys hands as they reflexively go up to shield his face.

"Easy, Jim. I have no idea what youre-"

"I want to talk to Public."

In the back bedroom there is another bed, another cheap dresser, a big taped-up David Hockney poster that pa.s.ses for artwork, and Jay finds himself for an instant wondering resentfully why Barry and Sandy got two bedrooms while hes in the one-banger sleeping on a s.h.i.tty sofa.

"Get a grip on yourself, man," Barry says, as Jay pivots and tries to move back up the hallway, past him, but Barry blocks his way, and things quickly turn to an awkward, ugly kind of stand-up wrestling, something Jay is not very good at and would like to escalate into a full-out fight that he would be even worse at, but evidently Barry has instructions not to hurt him.

"Christ on a cracker, man, will you-will you-just stop-cmon." Barry tries to corral Jays whirling arms and fists. "Were not watching anything but your back, you moron. Were here to PROTECT you-stop stop stop-stop fighting-us-"

"Wheres Tripod?! Ask him about it. I just saw him in the window-"

"Just. Take it-easy-"

They spin. Jay slips Barrys grip, steps backward, and, sensing movement behind him, pivots, swings, and hits Sandy, just arriving, right in the face.

She sinks, hands crossed over her nose.

Barry wraps his arms around Jay from behind, jams him down to the floor, and pins him there. "Calm the f.u.c.k down."

Between her hands, Sandy says something neither of them can understand. Back against the wall, knees to her chest, painted toes lifted, head tilted back. Theres blood running down her chin.

"I just want to talk to Public," Jay says, played out, as Barry lifts him and holds him against the wall with one big forearm up under his neck. "This is all-I saw that a.s.shole Tripod-I just need to talk to Public."