I asked,
“How is Malachy?”
He shook his head, said,
“No change.”
Then he did a thing that broke every rule Stewart held close. He moved over, had a lighted cigarette in his hand, said,
“You’ll be wanting some of this I’m thinking.”
I’ve always had some incomprehensible bond to him but, I swear by all that’s holy, I fucking loved the guy right then. He said,
“The nurses will massacre me.”
I nearly smiled, said,
“Jesus, they’d need to be quick.”
The cigarette done, he took it, extinguished it, put it in his jacket.
Opened a window to let the smoke evaporate. Either that or he was going to jump. He waved his arms futilely, said,
“You caused quite a stir, Jack. The Guards were here. Even Clancy showed up.”
Venom washed over me, I said,
“No doubt he wept.”
Then I zoned, it was to be like that, into and out of consciousness, lucid one moment, stark raving mad the next. I heard, as if from a great distance, a poem by Marin De Brun, based on Dalton Trumbo’s book, Johnny Got His Gun. The lines uncoiling in my head like a soured mantra: Sightless, soundless Your day’s begun Tearless, wordless, no songs be sung Your hand in ruins Your head in hell.
Snapped back to hear Stewart say,
“Clancy said it was self-mutilation, your self-loathing reached boiling point.”
I said,
“It’s a theory.”
Maybe the nicotine, maybe Clancy, but I finally looked at my heavily bandaged hand, asked,
“How long before I get out of here?”
He told me the truth, said,
“Few days but, Jack, get some rest, OK?”
I thought,
“Rest in peace.”
Before he started on the bullshit of:
They can do great things these days.
Lots of artificial appendages.
Etc.
I told him,
“They had me spread-eagled on a slab of granite, said it was a headstone.”
I could see the dots connecting in his head, I said,
“Stewart, be real careful, you hear me?”
Rare to rarest did Stewart allow his real feelings to surface. Zen kept the six years of prison under wraps and, too, the death of his beloved sister. He utilized that deathly calm to block out the torrents of simmering lethal rage. Kept a mask of amused detachment to keep the world behind philosophical glass.
Not now.
Fury wrapped his face. His eyes were slits of sheer menace. He said,
“I hope to fuck they have a run at me.”
The nurse came, did that fluffing of pillows they do, then gave me a shot, hurt like a bastard. Stewart said,
“I’ll be back later, Jack. Here’s your mobile, it was in your jacket.”
I was slipping back into sleep, said to Stewart,
“They answered the phone to Laura, said enough to send her fleeing back to London.”
He looked truly sorry, said,
“Ah, no, that’s just the bloody pits.”
Which is one way of seeing it, I suppose.
I might have phrased it a little more heatedly.
I kept hoping, praying, that somehow, in some wild flight of a miracle, Laura would write to me, and I could then try, try to explain to her what happened.
No letter.
I wasn’t to know, she did write.