“How awful,” I muttered.
“I don’t like knives, Doc.”
“I don’t either,” I agreed.
We headed out. I felt grimy with gun oil and gunshot residue. Shooting is much dirtier than most people might imagine.
Marino was reaching back for his wallet as we walked. Next he was handing me a small white card.
“I didn’t fill out an application,” I said, staring, rather dazed, at the license authorizing me to carry a concealed weapon.
“Yeah, well, Judge Reinhard owed me a favor.”
“Thank you, Marino,” I said.
He smiled as he held open the door for me.
Despite the directives of Wesley and Marino and my own good sense, I stayed inside my building until it was dark out, the parking lot empty. I had given up on my desk, and a glance at my calendar had about done me in.
Rose had been systematically reorganizing my life. Appointments had been pushed weeks ahead or canceled, and lectures and demonstration autopsies had been rerouted to Fielding. The health commissioner, my immediate boss, had tried to reach me three times, finally inquiring if I were ill.
Fielding was becoming quite adept at filling in for me. Rose was typing his autopsy protocols and micro-dictations. She was doing his work instead of mine. The sun continued to rise and set, and the office was running without a hitch because I had selected and trained my staff very well. I wondered how God had felt after He created a world that thought it did not need Him.
I did not go home right away, but drove to Chamberlayne Farms. The same outdated notices were still taped to the elevator walls. I rode up with an emaciated little woman who never took her lonely eyes off me as she clutched her walker like a bird clinging to its branch.
I had not told Mrs. McTigue I was coming. When the door to 378 finally opened after several loud knocks, she peered quizzically out from her lair of crowded furniture and loud television noise.
“Mrs. McTigue?” I introduced myself again, not at all sure she would remember me.
The door opened wider as her face lit up. “Yes. Why, of course! How grand of you to stop by.
Won’t you please come in?”
She was dressed in a pink quilted housecoat and matching slippers, and when I followed her into the living room Burned off the television set and removed a lap robe from the couch, where she evidently had been sitting as she snacked on nutbread and juice and watched the evening news.
“Please forgive me,” I said. “I’ve interrupted your dinner.”
“Oh, no. I was just nibbling. May I offer you some refreshment?” she was quick to say.
I politely declined, seating myself while she moved about, tidying up. My heart was tugged by memories of my own grandmother, whose humor was unflagging even as she watched her flesh fall to ruin around her ears. I would never forget her visit to Miami the summer before she died when I took her shopping, and her improvised “diaper” of men’s briefs and Kotex pads sprung a safety pin and ended up around her knees in the middle of Wool-worth’s. She held herself together as we hurried off to find a ladies’ room, both of us laughing so hard I nearly lost control of my bladder, too.
“They say we may get snow tonight,” Mrs. McTigue commented when she seated herself.
“It’s very damp out,” I replied abstractedly. “And it certainly feels cold enough to snow.”
“I don’t believe they’re predicting any accumulation, though.”
“I don’t like driving in the snow.” I said, my mind working on weighty, unpleasant things.
“Perhaps we’ll have a white Christmas this year. Wouldn’t that be special?”
“It would be special.” I was looking in vain for any evidence of a typewriter in the apartment.
“I can’t remember the last time we had a white Christmas.”
Her nervous conversation tried to overcome her uneasiness. She knew I had come to see her for a reason and sensed it wasn’t good news.
“Are you quite sure I can’t get you something? A glass of port?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
Silence.