Yeah.

And no more easy blood. No more stipend from the Society coffers. Scuffling. Scraping for my own blood, let alone the stuff for Evie’s transfusions. And, sure, no more sit-downs with Predo, but probably seeing him sooner than later. Once I’m out from Society sanction, he’ll be sending his giant to collect me. For accounts past due.

Rogue.

Alone.

God I want it.

God I want to be alone. Please let me be alone. Leave me alone. Don’t ask me for anything. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to think about anyone else anymore. I’m no good at it.

I reach out and drop the butt of my Lucky in Terry’s teacup.

– Where am I going?

He slides the cup away.

– Coney Island.

Coney Island. The far edge of the world. Where the land runs out. Put it on a map, you’d be scrawling Here there be fucking monsters across it.

I don’t say anything, I don’t have to.

Terry holds up a hand.

– Yeah, it’s a bit of a haul. But you’ll have wheels. And company. -Company. So why the fuck do I have to go?

He picks up his cup, remembers I dropped my smoke in it, frowns.

– The company is exactly why you’re going, Joe.

He holds a finger up to signal the waiter who turns his back and continues flirting with the cashier.

He sets the cup on the table.

– My own fault for being a dick. There’s karma for you, Joe.

I look at the clock one last time. If I hurry, I’m pretty sure I can catch the drunk orderly.

– Why I’m going, man? Company?

He pushes the cup away.

– Yeah, company. Well, like I say, their person, the Freaks’, is coming here, but, they’re you know, leery, so, one of ours has to stay with them.

I rise, lean over the table.

– Fuck. No.

– Easy, man.

– I am not going out there to be tied up and sit in a basement with a bag over my face waiting to find out if it all goes cool so I don’t get my head sawed off. You want a pawn, send one. Hurley’s around here someplace.

He puts his hand over his heart.

– Hurley? No, not for this. And you? Sit hostage? No way. Man, that’s like the whole point. They’re sending someone from their hierarchy, Joe. We have to do the same. That’s why you got to go, to make sure she gets back. I can’t rely on Hurley if any, you know, subtlety is called for.

I stay on my feet.

– She?

He glances at his watch.

– Yeah. And she’s, you know, a valuable asset, so handle with care, right?

– I don’t appreciate being discussed like I’m property.

We both look at Lydia.

Terry rises.

– Man, I wish I could be in on this. It’s like a brave new world.

Lydia points at the check and money on the table.

– Is that what you’re leaving for a tip? You know what someone makes in the service industry, Terry? There’s no minimum wage, no health benefits, no pension plan. You ever waited tables?

Terry digs in his pocket.

– My bad. My bad.

I rub my forehead, look at Terry.

– It has to be tonight?

– Yeah. See, these aggressors I’m talking about, imperialists really, they’re kind of everywhere out there from what we hear.

– Great.

Lydia puts her hands in the pockets of her Carhartt jacket.

– Except on Friday night. So if we don’t want to mess with them we go now.

Why couldn’t it have been Hurley?

– It’s political. Not that I’m saying any decision isn’t political, but in this case it’s more so. Every time you put one of those things in your mouth and light it and inhale and then blow the smoke for other people to breathe, that’s a political decision.

With Hurley I could have smoked without getting this shit.

– And don’t look at me like that. Just because it can’t affect me or you, that doesn’t make it OK. We may be afflicted, we may have been infected with a disease that’s enabled us at the same time that it’s disenabled us, but we have to remember that we live in the same world as everyone else. That’s the biggest danger I see to the Society charter. The fact that we need blood to survive, that’s going to be a huge psychological hurdle for non-Vyral people to clear, but the psychological impact of that need on the Vyrally impaired is as big an obstacle. I see it all the time, the drinking of blood, the fact that it comes from uninfected humans makes it very easy to begin seeing the uninfected as somehow less real than us. We can’t afford that kind of, elitism isn’t the word, but that kind of superiority to creep into our thinking. Smoking, just freely spewing your secondhand smoke around to kill people, that’s political, Joe, whether you want to accept the fact or not.

I offer the pack to Lydia again.

– So you want one or not?

She slumps back in her seat.

– Just keep your window down, OK, I hate the smell of the fucking things and I don’t want their stink all over the van.

I light up.

– Sure, window down, of course. I mean, where the hell am I gonna throw the butts if the window’s not down?

She looks out her own window.

– Karma, Joe, it’s gonna shit all over you one day.

– And it’s been so good to me up till now.

– Without you even knowing it.

– Whatever.

I park the Econoline and open the door.

Lydia looks at the sign on the storefront and shakes her head.

– No. No, you will not be drinking and driving.

I step out of the van.

– Keep your panties on, it’s not for me.

At Beth Israel, I find my orderly and give him his pint of Gilbey’s and he uses his passkey in the elevator and takes me up to Evie’s floor. The night nurse rises behind her desk as we approach, a hand reaching for the phone, but the orderly goes to her and slips her the twenty bucks I gave him and she turns down the hall and walks into the bathroom.

The orderly takes a hit off his pint.

– Five minutes.

I go into Evie’s room. Curtains are drawn around her bed and the old lady’s. I duck under hers.

She looks like hell.

I look at the bags in her IV stand. Straight fluids in one. And a morphine drip. She must have cramped badly after the chemo. She must have dry heaved for a couple hours and been unable to sleep. A trache tube juts from her throat. That’s new.

I think about the night we met.

I think about putting a hand over the end of the tube.

I touch the scabs that have grown over the part of my ear the Count didn’t rip off my head and think about peeling them away and leaning over the bed and pressing the wound to Evie’s lips and finding out what kind of girl she really is.

What kind of man I am.

I take the chart from the foot of her bed and look at it. It means nothing to me. I put it back. I put a hand in my jacket pocket and take out the candy necklace from Solomon’s store. I put it on the bedside table and leave, not having the guts to do anything that might help her.

The night nurse is at her station. I stop in front of her. She smells like a different brand of disinfectant than the one they use to clean everything in here.

– Why the trache tube?

She doesn’t take her eyes from the screen of her computer, just raises her hand and rubs her fingers against her thumb. I grab her wrist. With a squeeze and a twist and a pull I could mash her radius and ulna and tear her hand from her arm and drop it in her lap and walk out with her screams as a sound track.

She looks at my fingers wrapped around her wrist.

– You’ll have to let go of me, sir.

This isn’t her fault. Evie being sick has nothing to do with her. She’s just trying to get by.

I squeeze.

She gasps.

I haul her up out of her chair.

– The fucking hole in her neck, why’s it there?

She puts her hand over mine, plucks at my fingers, stops, pats my wrist as if to calm me.