Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [47]
And I moved away, behind Tino, behind Eileen’s bed, far from Rebar’s reach. I ran one arm over Tino’s shoulder and said, “Those shoes suit him better anyway. Don’t they?”
It wasn’t the shoes. It was everything. Rebar was a loaded gun.
“Have another beer.” I tossed one of the last two to Rebar. “Calm down. I’ll be back. Bathroom.” I shook the nearly empty can in my hand.
Eileen said, “Use mine.” She pointed to a door off the side of the room.
Eileen’s bathroom was small, like a bathroom on the back of a Greyhound, only clean. Everything was made out of stainless steel and pressed board. I looked for signs of a hidden camera in the ceiling. Maybe a hospital kept watch in stray corners. What did I know? A second door on the opposite side of the toilet’s small space meant a nurse or another patient could walk in, and I was afraid I’d touch something meant to stay clean. I wasn’t drunk, but was on my way, and drunk was where I’d rather be.
When I stood to flush, I saw I’d peed in an aluminum pan meant to catch a urine sample. The pan hung inside the toilet bowl. I’d peed in Eileen’s collection cup. For all I knew, Eileen’s pee was there too. I hadn’t looked first, and wouldn’t touch it afterwards. Eileen’s urine and mine, they’d go to the lab together.
Then I heard Ray. His hoarse voice. I heard him in the hall. He knocked on the door to Eileen’s room. He yelled, “Eileen? Baby? I’m here.” I didn’t run the water. I listened.
Tino yelled back “Baby, we’re all here.”
Eileen said, “Come on in, sweets.”
I listened for my own name, Vanessa, but didn’t hear it now. MEN WHO FATHER CHILDREN LIVE HERE. I read the words across the bathroom’s blank wall, saw those lines and jagged angles. The last time I’d seen Ray, he’d given me three hundred bucks and walked me to the Lovejoy clinic. What I didn’t tell him back then was, I’d already lost his kid. He left me on the corner, bleeding in ways he didn’t know anything about, with a pocketful of cash. Now he was back.
I tipped my beer can upside down over the urine collection tray, then put the can on the floor and crushed it.
On the other side of the door, Ray said, “Bushmills. Excellent stuff.”
Eileen laughed, said, “Blood thinners and painkillers.”
Rebar was a soft murmur at the far wall, saying things I couldn’t hear.
I turned the handle on the second door. The hallway was out there. I could walk out and keep going. I had my coat. We hadn’t gone so far I couldn’t walk home.
I leaned into the mirror, fixed my lipstick. Rebar, on the other side of the door, said, “You think you’re some kind of fucking comedian?”
Now Ray was the murmur I couldn’t hear. If Rebar was drinking Bushmills, let them be Christ crucified. I wasn’t going back.
The ashtray in my purse was like brass knuckles. Solid, hard, and beveled.
There was nothing in the bathroom worth anything unless I needed a plastic yellow pitcher or a roll of toilet paper. I wanted a powder-blue robe. A souvenir. A robe soft and sweet as pot smoke in cold air.
I found a place where the counter opened from the top. I opened the piece of hinged pressed board, and down below was a dark hamper. Linens. There was the peeping corner of a robe. I reached in. I’d take one.
On the other side of the wall Tino said, “Where’d Nessa go?” There was my name.
“She’s here?” Ray said.
I could leave. Leave Ray, the one man I wanted to stay with. Leave Rebar, who I couldn’t get away from. And then there was Tino. There was no place far away enough.
I closed my fingers around a robe in the hamper. When I lifted the cloth, there was the blooming flower of watery bloodstains. Maybe it was Eileen’s blood. Inside the hamper, instead of clean pillowcases and sweet robes, there was a pile of bloodstained sheets, towels, and robes twisted and tangled. The hospital linens were thick as bodies. They were a pool of what’s left after you slice open a brain, arms and legs, hearts and lungs, clamp a vein shut. They were soaked in all that life, intertwined.
I dropped the bloody robes. Washed