Good Neighbors Read online

  ‘I don’t know if it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Christopher says, ‘but you get my point.’

  ‘I get your point.’

  ‘Good.’

  Then Christopher reaches his hand out toward Thomas. He doesn’t touch him, but he reaches out his hand and lets it settle on the mattress near him.

  ‘I like you, Thomas,’ he says.

  ‘I like you too,’ Thomas says.

  Then he looks up and makes eye contact again, but this time he holds it. He nods his head, as much to himself, he thinks, as to Christopher.

  ‘I do,’ he says.

  25

  The clock strikes five. The cow goes moo.

  26

  David is in the back with Mr. Vacanti while John drives the ambulance toward the hospital. Unconscious, Mr. Vacanti is strapped down on the stretcher, tied down tight – for his own safety, of course.

  ‘Slow down,’ David yells over the sound of sirens.

  ‘He’s got internal bleeding,’ John says. ‘He’ll die.’

  ‘Then he’ll die. I’ve got business with him.’

  ‘Take care of it, then, because I ain’t slowing down.’

  David breaks a capsule of smelling salts under Mr. Vacanti’s nose and watches the brown paper surrounding the capsule turn dark, and the man inhales, gasps, coughs, opens eyes which momentarily roll around in his head like overgreased ball bearings. Veins are broken in his left eye, and it’s pooling with blood.

  His eyes eventually find focus, and he looks up at David; and when he does confusion passes over his face like the shadow of a cloud.

  ‘Davey?’ he says with hesitation. ‘Davey White?’

  ‘Except it’s David now.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Wrong question, Mr. Vacanti.’

  ‘What?’

  David reaches out with two fingers and taps the shelf of glass jutting from Mr. Vacanti’s forehead as if it were a table top and he were making a point that needed emphasizing. The man yelps in pain. He tries to bat David’s hand away but he can’t move. David watches panic light in his eyes as he realizes he is strapped down. Strapped down tight. He looks down at his unmoving wrists and then back up at David.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he says. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I already told you that’s the wrong question, Mr. Vacanti,’ David says, and as he hits the last hard syllable he taps the glass shelf jutting from Mr. Vacanti’s head again. Another yelp. ‘The correct question is, what are you doing here. And the answer is, you were in a car accident. An ambulance was called. And I happen to be a paramedic. Unfortunately, your injuries,’ and he grabs the shelf jutting from Mr. Vacanti’s forehead and gives it a little shake, ‘are beyond my scope. And the hospital. Well,’ he laughs, ‘let’s just say I don’t think you’re gonna make it.’

  David reaches into his hip pocket and retrieves a flask. He unscrews the top and takes a nip. It burns his throat and it feels good. He follows the first hit with a second. The liquid warms his insides. His chest feels as if it’s got a small fire burning inside it.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Mr. Vacanti asks.

  ‘That’s a question you should have asked yourself decades ago.’

  David takes one last swallow from his flask before twisting the cap back on and tucking it away. Twenty-six years he went without seeing this son of a bitch and he turns up like this. Twenty-six years. He’d almost been able to make himself forget. He’d only thought of him once or twice a year this last decade. He’d almost been able to forget.

  ‘Preventative medicine is the thing,’ he says. ‘I mean, if you had asked yourself what was wrong with you way back when, if you had been able to stop your sickness, well . . . my guess is you wouldn’t be dying today, Mr. Vacanti.’

  Mr. Vacanti tries to pull himself out of the straps holding him down. He struggles, pulling hard, turning his hands purple, gritting his teeth, grunting, his whole body going taut, but finally – of course – giving up.

  ‘You won’t be able to forgive yourself for this,’ he tells David.

  David nods.

  ‘That’s probably true,’ he says. ‘After all, I haven’t been able to forgive you. I guess I’m just not the forgiving sort, am I, Mr. Vacanti? But then, I’m not a predator of children, either. We’ve all got our flaws, right?’

  He waits for a response but Mr. Vacanti only stares. It’s well enough; there’s nothing the son of a bitch could say anyway.

  ‘But here’s the thing,’ David says. ‘Even if I can’t forgive myself, I’ll be able to live with myself. I’m sure of that. I’ll be able to live with myself. What I can’t live with is letting you get away with what you did, not when this opportunity has been handed to me.’

  He nods to himself.

  ‘I didn’t want to . . .’ Mr. Vacanti says, trailing off.

  ‘But you did,’ David snaps at him. Then he smiles and pinches Mr. Vacanti’s bloody cheek. ‘Just do what I say and it’ll all be over soon enough,’ he says. ‘Maybe it won’t even hurt.’ He scratches his chin where beard is growing in. ‘Do you remember that, Mr. Vacanti?’

  After a moment’s pause, Mr. Vacanti shakes his head. ‘That’s a direct quote,’ David says. ‘Any guess as to who I’m quoting?’

  There is a moment of silence.

  ‘Me,’ Mr. Vacanti says finally, not looking at him.

  ‘Bingo,’ David says, and taps at the shard of glass jutting from Mr. Vacanti’s head for emphasis. ‘Bing. Go. Got it in one guess. God, you’re sharp. No pun intended—’ looking at the shard of glass. ‘It’s no wonder you’re a teacher. Kids just have so much they need to learn, don’t they? And you’re just the one to teach them.’

  They must be getting near the hospital. That can’t happen. They can’t get there, not with Mr. Vacanti still breathing.

  ‘Wait here,’ David says to the strapped-down Mr. Vacanti before heading to the front of the vehicle where John is busy driving.

  ‘Listen to me,’ David says. ‘I want you to pull over.’

  ‘He’s gonna bleed to death,’ John says. ‘I’m taking him in.’

  ‘You don’t understand this,’ David says.

  ‘I understand enough to know that I’m not stopping.’

  ‘I’m asking you as a friend,’ David says. ‘We can slice one of the tires. We’ll say we got a flat. No one will ever fucking know. You don’t have to do anything but stop the ambulance. I’ll take care of the rest.’ He wipes at the corners of his mouth. ‘No one will know,’ he says again.

  ‘I’ll know,’ John says. ‘I’ll know that we killed a man whose life we were supposed to save. I don’t know what your history with him is but it’s turning you blood-simple and I’m not gonna be a part of it.’

  ‘Goddamn it, John,’ David says. ‘We’re friends. I’m asking you, please.’

  ‘We are friends. And in the five years we’ve worked together, I’ve never seen this kind of shit from you before, so I’m willing to bet whatever he did to you was serious, and I’m really fucking sorry for that, David. I am. But I won’t be party to killing him. I just won’t.’

  ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t want to kill him. I just don’t want to save him.’

  ‘It’s our job,’ John says. ‘People do jobs they don’t want to do all the fucking time.’

  ‘Not like this, they don’t.’

  ‘You can’t kill him.’

  ‘I already told you, I don’t want to kill him.’

  ‘Not saving him when you can save him is the same goddamn thing and you know it. Only it’s a coward’s murder. Now you listen to me, David. I’m driving this ambulance the rest of the way to the hospital without any fucking stops. If you got a problem with that man back there, it’s yours to deal with.’

  David wants to make him understand, wants to say something so he’ll understand, but he knows that nothing he can say will change John’s mind.

  David turns away
from him and starts toward the back of the ambulance.

  ‘David,’ John says.

  David looks at him.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ David says, and makes his way to the back.

  27

  Unable to walk, Kat crawls toward her apartment. She can’t be more than ten feet away, but even that short distance seems insuperable. She feels cold and weak. She has bled so much. It’s splattered across the courtyard. She can barely move – but she does move. One hand in front of the other, one skinned knee in front of the other.

  Easy-peasy, she tells herself. Just move your arm six inches, press it against the concrete and pull yourself forward. Like pouring a drink. Like changing a tire. It’s a simple task – simple.

  She crawls through the darkness of early morning and she tries not to pass out and she keeps telling that part of her that wants to let go, that wants to quit, to shut up, just shut up.

  It’s so loud now, that part of her.

  Just let the darkness come, it says. It’ll be easier. It’ll be easier, and maybe afterwards, when you wake, you’ll find this was all just a bad dream.

  But she knows if she lets go, if she quits, if she lets the darkness come, she won’t wake. She’ll never open her eyes again. She wishes that wasn’t the truth, but it is, and she knows it.

  She can still feel people watching her. She can’t see them now – her head is down and she doesn’t have the energy to look at anything but the tiny pebbles imbedded in the concrete she’s crawling upon, tiny smooth pebbles that look as if they’ve been polished in a riverbed – but she can feel them, those eyes, those people watching her. They don’t make a sound. But they’re there, and they do not help.

  She pulls herself forward another six inches. She’s not going to die out here. She’s not going to allow herself to die out here.

  Putting one arm in front of the other, sliding her body across the cold concrete being made warm by her heat, as her body is made cold by the night, pulling herself forward on her now raw arms, Kat manages to move herself five feet nearer her apartment. It is such an exhausting, painful, Sisyphean task that, though she halves her distance to the front door, getting that last five feet seems harder than getting ten feet did when she began.

  She is so tired. She is so cold. She hurts so bad.

  But she can see the keys now. She can see them hanging from the doorknob. From the doorknob in the closed door – closed.

  How will she be able to reach the doorknob?

  Three and a half feet off the ground, it might as well be ten feet off the ground – or twenty.

  Why did the wind have to blow the door shut?

  Why does God hate her?

  What did she do?

  What did she do to deserve this?

  God damn Him.

  God damn Him, why does He hate her?

  Stop. Stop, she tells herself. You can’t let yourself fall apart again: it costs too much: it spends too much energy. You need all the energy you have left. You need all the energy you’ve got left, so just stop, stop now. You can fall apart later. Once you’re safe. You can slip into the warm water of a warm bath and you can fall apart then. But not now. Right now you’ve got to get to that door. You can do that much. Don’t worry about turning the doorknob yet; don’t worry about pushing the door open yet. Just get to the door, Kat. You can do that. You’re strong and you can do that.

  Easy-peasy, she tells herself.

  Easy-peasy.

  Like pouring a drink, she tells herself. Like changing a tire.

  She focuses on the keys. She won’t take her eyes off them. She focuses on the keys and she puts one raw, raggedly skinless arm forward, and she pulls herself bodily six inches closer to the door. Six inches closer, she thinks. Four and a half feet. I only have to do that nine more times, she thinks, and I’ll be there. And she does it again. Eight more, she thinks.

  Eight.

  Attainable goals, she thinks.

  Like pouring a drink.

  Then she hears a noise from the street that makes her panic.

  She hears the sound of a vehicle pulling to the curb and coming to a stop. She wants to believe it’s help. She wants to believe it’s someone who will see her and say oh my God, you poor thing, you poor, poor thing, what’s happened to you, let me help, but it’s not.

  She recognizes the loose, jangly rattle of the engine. She’s heard it before. She heard it immediately after the man who attacked her ran away, ran out to the street. It’s his car, and he’s come back. He must have come back.

  She can see the light of the headlights splashing across the oak trees at the front of the building.

  Don’t panic, she thinks.

  And then she puts an arm forward and pulls her body forward behind it.

  Seven, she thinks.

  The headlights go out.

  She puts her other arm forward.

  The engine goes quiet.

  Six, she thinks.

  A squeaking car door opens and she hears feet hit asphalt.

  Five, she thinks.

  Don’t panic.

  The door slams shut and she hears footsteps coming nearer.

  Four, she thinks. Don’t panic.

  Four, she thinks.

  28

  Frank watches in his sideview mirror as a pair of legs scissor their way around the police cruiser’s door, as they head toward him. The police cruiser followed him for only a few hundred yards before its light flashed and the cop waved him to the curb. And then sat. They sat on the side of the road for several minutes before the cop finally pushed open the driver’s side door of his patrol car and stepped from within, Frank getting more nervous as each second passed. But now the cop is walking toward him, holding a bright flashlight up by his right shoulder as he walks.

  Frank sits stiff, his hands on the steering wheel. The guy’s trouble, obvious trouble, and Frank doesn’t want him to claim that he was reaching for something, that he thought Frank had a gun, say, and that’s why Frank is dead. He knows it doesn’t really make sense, doesn’t really matter – if the cop wants to shoot him or do something else he’s just gonna do it and he can make up whatever he wants – but Frank will take no chances.

  A chest fills Frank’s driver’s side window. A flashlight beam shines in bright so that when Frank tries to look at the cop standing outside his car he can’t see anything but an explosion of blinding light. It’s like trying to see someone clearly when they’re backlit by the sun.

  ‘Good morning,’ the cop says.

  ‘Morning, officer. Something the matter?’

  ‘You don’t know why I stopped you?’

  ‘Should I know, sir?’

  ‘You being smart with me?’

  ‘No, sir. I just don’t know why you pulled me over.’

  ‘Then that’s what you shoulda said in the first place. I’m the one asking the questions.’

  ‘Okay, sir.’

  ‘Give me your keys.’

  ‘That’s not a question, sir. I don’t mean you any disrespect, but I just don’t know why you would need my keys.’

  ‘And you don’t need to know.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Someone fitting your description was seen fleeing the site of a burglary,’ the cop says. ‘I’m gonna check your trunk.’

  ‘Fitting my description?’

  ‘You’re colored, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then he fit your description.’

  Frank doesn’t move.

  ‘If there’s nothing in your trunk, you got nothing to worry about. I’ll give you back your keys and you can be on your merry way to wherever colored folks go at five o’clock in the morning.’ The cop puts the beam of light directly into Frank’s eyes. ‘Is there something in your trunk?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  But he still doesn’t move.

  ‘Give me your fuckin’ keys before I lose my temper.’

  Frank reaches to t
he ignition and slowly pulls out his key and hands a ring of them over to the cop. The cop takes them, snapping them violently out of Frank’s hand.

  ‘Don’t move,’ the cop says. ‘Just sit here and be a good boy.’

  The cop smiles, taps the roof of Frank’s car, and then turns and walks away. Frank can see him walk to the back of his Skylark and pop the trunk. Then the trunk lid swings up, blocking Frank’s view of the cop and his car.

  He does not like this. Something is wrong. He checks his glove box for an old pack of Chesterfields but finds nothing. Frank quit smoking two years ago – mostly. Now he only smokes in moments like this. There have been a lot of moments like this tonight.

  He hears a noise that sounds like it might have come from the cop car, a door opening or something, a squeak. He hears a grunt. He wants to get out of his car and see what’s going on but he doesn’t want to get shot. He feels trapped in here.

  When he was in the army he often had to deal with officers that acted just like this cop. Lieutenants, second lieutenants, fresh out of academy and simply handed their rank. They were green and still high on their new found authority. They were the most likely to give you shit about having your sideburns a bit too long. About not having shaved close enough. About not saluting immediately or sharply enough. About not having your BDU in perfect condition, crisp and ready for war. Your boots gotta shine if you’re gonna bayonet a son of a bitch, private. I wanna see my reflection in ’em. They thought they owned the fucking world because they were simply handed authority without having to earn it, without having to earn it or the respect that should come with it. They thought respect came with the lieutenant insignia they bought down at the PX. Soldiers hated them – the privates and specialists Frank knew, anyway – and this cop is just like that. Some people get a uniform and they think they answer to no one. Or they know they answer to someone and they hate it, but the rest of the world better watch out, goddamn it, because the rest of the world answers to them.