"Grafton, Sue - C is for Corpse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grafton Sue)

"How's Kitty?" I said.

He started slightly. "Oh. Sorry. I didn't recognize you when you came around the corner. She's better. They just brought her up and they're getting her settled. I'll have a chance to see her in a bit." His glance strayed toward the elevators. "Glen didn't come down with you by any chance, did she?"

I shook my head, watching a mixture of relief and momentary hope fade out of his face.

"Don't tell her you caught me with a cigarette," he said, sheepishly. "She made me quit last March. I'll toss these out before I go home tonight. It's just with Kitty so sick and then all this stuff-" He broke off with a shrug.

I didn't have the heart to tell him he reeked of tobacco. Glen would have to be comatose not to notice it.

"What brings you down here?" he asked.

"I don't know. Bobby went off to bed and I talked to Glen for a while. I just thought I'd stop by and see what was happening with Kitty."

He smiled, not quite sure what to make of it. "I was just sitting here thinking how much this felt like the night she was born. Waiting out in the lounge for hours, wondering how it was all going to come out. They didn't let fathers in the delivery room in those days, you know. Now, I understand, they practically insist."

"What happened to her mother?"

"She drank herself to death when Kitty was five."

He lapsed into silence. I couldn't think of a comment that didn't seem either trivial or beside the point. I watched him put out his cigarette. He worked the hot ember loose, leaving an empty socket like a pulled tooth.

Finally, I said, "Is she being admitted to Detox?"

"Actually, this is the psychiatric ward. I think the detoxification unit is separate. Leo wants to get her stabilized and then do an evaluation before he does anything. Right now, she's a little bit out of control."

He shook his head, pulling at his double chin. "God, I don't know what to do with her. Glen's probably told you what a source of friction it's been."

"Her drug use?"

"Oh, that and her grades, her hours, the drop in her weight. That's been a nightmare. I think she's down to ninety-seven pounds at this point."

"So maybe this is where she needs to be," I said.

One of the double doors opened and a nurse peered out. She wore jeans and a T-shirt. No cap, but she did wear a nursing pin and a name tag that I couldn't read from where I sat. Her hair was ill-dyed, a shade of orange I'd only seen before in marigolds, but her smile was quick and pleasant.

"Mr. Wenner? Would you like to follow me, please?"

Derek got up with a glance at me. "You want to wait? It won't be long. Leo said five minutes was all he'd permit, given the shape she's in. I could buy you a cup of coffee or a drink as soon as I'm done."

"All right. That's nice. I'll be out here."

He nodded and moved off with the nurse. For one brief moment, as they passed into the ward, I could hear Kitty delivering some high-decibel curses of a quite imaginative sort. Then the door closed and the key turned resoundingly in the lock. No one on 3 South was going to sleep tonight. I picked up the National Geographic magazine and stared at a series of time-lapse photographs of a blowhole in Yosemite.

Fifteen minutes later, Derek and I were seated in a motel bar half a block away from the hospital. The Plantacion is a rogue of a drinking establishment that looks as if it's crept to its present location from some other part of town. The motel itself was apparently built with an eye to sheltering the relatives of the ill and infirm who come to St. Terry's for treatment from small towns nearby. The bar was added as an afterthought, in violation of God knows what city codes, as it is smack in the middle of the residential neighborhood. Of course, the area by now has been infiltrated by medical buildings, clinics, convalescent homes, pharmacies, and various other suppliers to the health-care industry, including a mortuary two blocks away to service folk when all else fails. Maybe the city planning commission decided, at some point, to help ease the pain by making eighty-six-proof alcohol available along with the other kind.

The interior is narrow and dark, with a diorama of a banana plantation that extends behind the bar in the space that usually supports a long mirror, liquor bottles, and a neon beer sign. Instead, arranged as though on a small lighted stage, scale-model banana palms are laid out in orderly rows and tiny mechanized laborers go about the business of harvesting fruit in a series of vignettes. All of the workers appear to be Mexican, including the tiny carved woman who arrives with a water barrel and a dipper just as the noon whistle blows. One man waves from a treetop while a wee wooden dog barks and wags its tail.

Derek and I sat at the bar for a while, scarcely speaking, we were so taken by the scene. Even the bartender, who must have seen it hundreds of times, paused to watch while the mechanical mule pulled a load of bananas around the bend and another cart took its place. Not surprisingly, the house specialties run to cuba libres and banana daiquiris, but no one cares if you order something adult. Derek had a Beefeater martini and I had a glass of white wine that made my lips pull together like a drawstring purse. I'd watched the bartender pour it from a gallon jug that ran about three bucks at any Stop N' Go. The label was from one of those wineries the grape pickers are always striking and I pondered the possibility that they'd peed on the crop to retaliate for unfair labor practices.