Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [27]
“Are you all right?”
Ruby looked up and saw an elderly woman peering at her.
“No,” Ruby said frankly.
“I’m sorry. Can I help?”
“Probably not,” Ruby told the woman. She smiled but was pretty sure it came out as a hideous grimace.
“Let me get some help,” the woman said.
Ruby watched the woman gesticulate at a nearby traffic cop.
“I’m fine, ma’am,” Ruby protested. “Really, I’m just having a bad moment but I’m not ill.” Ruby stood up. The last thing she wanted was the attention of a cop.
“But, my dear, you look awful. Did they just let you out of the hospital? They shouldn’t have.”
“They didn’t,” Ruby confessed. “I couldn’t stand to stay in there any longer. I left.” Ruby wasn’t sure why she was being so frank.
“I understand,” the woman nodded, “but you really shouldn’t be sitting on the sidewalk in your condition. Something terrible will happen.” There was toughness in the woman’s steel-colored eyes.
Ruby slowly stood up.
“Why don’t you come with me? I live only a few blocks away.” The woman had taken Ruby’s elbow.
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” Ruby said. “But I need to go home.”
“Let me help you get a cab then,” the woman said. “Do you need cab fare?”
Ruby felt like laughing. Or crying.
“Thank you, I’ve got money.”
Ruby steadied herself against a lamppost as the older woman hailed her a cab.
“You’re sure you’re all right, dear?” the woman asked as Ruby got in.
“Yes, thank you, you’ve cheered me up.” Ruby offered the woman her brightest smile.
The woman smiled back and gave a little wave as the cab pulled away. It was one of those rare but exquisite New York moments.
The cabbie was a skinny, compulsively well-groomed man in his twenties. He had pictures of Jesus taped along the dashboard. He winced but didn’t complain when Ruby told him she was going to Coney Island. She didn’t have the energy to apologize for making him drive to Brooklyn. She rested her head against the back of the seat and dozed on and off through the forty-minute drive. She tipped the cabbie over-generously. He thanked her without moving his lips.
Ruby let herself into the apartment. Ed wasn’t there, and the cats didn’t even deign to emerge from their sleeping places to greet her. She went into the bathroom to wash up and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked like total shit. Felt like it too. She was, she reflected, morbidly alone.
Ruby came out of the bathroom and went to look at the answering machine. No one had called. I am morbidly alone, Ruby thought again. She figured if she kept thinking this ridiculous phrase over and over, it would become so funny she wouldn’t feel alone anymore. She tangentially thought of an article she’d read years earlier about the singer Carnie Wilson, who had been morbidly obese and had radical surgery to shrink her stomach. “I am so fat I could die,” the singer had said before having her stomach surgically reduced to the size of a peanut.
Ruby picked up the phone and dialed Ed, but both his cell and office phones went to voice mail. She tried Jody with the same result. She then plodded into the kitchen and mechanically prepared the cats’ dinner. The furry sociopaths emerged from their hiding places. As they ate, Ruby sat at the kitchen table and stared at them.
It wasn’t that late, but Ruby was that tired. She went into the bedroom and crawled into bed fully clothed. She pulled the sheet up over her head.
10. MACHINERY
When Ruby woke, it was still dark but everything seemed bright. She got out of bed slowly wobbling as she took her first steps. She put a hand to her head and touched the bandage. It felt crusty. She hobbled into the bathroom and saw that her eye was swollen and blue. What’s more, she was still morbidly alone. She considered jumping out the window. It was only two flights down though. She’d damage herself only enough to make life rotten and difficult.
Ruby went into the kitchen and avoided thinking as she brewed coffee, fed the cats, and downed eight ibuprofen tablets. She pictured the pills eating through the