“Sounds to me like Niles is trying to tell you something, and you’re not listening. Quite possibly he’s pointing out something right under your nose, but either you’re caught up in other preoccupations, or you don’t want to hear it.” Brazil enjoyed making this point.
“Since when are you a cat shrink?” West glanced at him, experiencing that same giddy sensation again, that wiggling in her bowels, as if tadpoles had hatched somewhere down there.
Brazil shrugged.
“It’s all about human nature, animal nature, whatever you want to call it. If we take the time to try and look at reality from someone else’s perspective, try a little compassion, it can make a difference.”
“Gag,” West said, and she flew right by the Sunset East exit.
“You just passed the truck stop. And what you do you mean, gagV ” You sure got your lines down pat, don’t you, boy? ” She laughed in a not-so-nice way.
“I’m not a boy, in case you haven’t noticed,” he said, and he realized for the first time, to his shock, that Virginia West was scared.
“I’m a legal adult, and I don’t deliver lines. You must have met a lot of bad people in life.”
This honestly amused her. She started laughing as rain fell harder.
She turned on wipers and her radio, while Brazil watched her, a smile playing on his lips, although he was clueless as to what he had said to amuse her so.
“Met a lot of bad people. ” I She sputtered, almost helpless.
“What do I do for a living, for Christ’s sake? Work in a bakery, serve ice cream cones, arrange flowers?” More peals of laughter.
“I didn’t mean just what you do for a living,” Brazil said.
“The bad people you meet in policing aren’t the ones who really hurt you. It’s people off the job. You know, friends and family.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” She sobered up fast.
“I do know. And guess what?” She shot him a glance.
“You don’t. You don’t know the first thing about me and all the shits I’ve come across when least expecting it.”
“Which is why you’re not married or close to anyone,” he said.
“Which is why we’re changing the subject. And you’re one to talk, by the way.” She turned the radio up loud as rain beat the top of her personal car.
“W Hammer was watching the rain out the window of her husband’s room in SICU, while Randy and Jude sat stiffly in chairs by the bed, staring at monitors, watching every fluctuation in pulse and oxygen intake. The stench got worse every hour, and Seth’s moments of consciousness were like weightless airborne seeds that seemed neither to go anywhere nor land. He drifted, not here or there, and his family could not tell whether he had any awareness of their presence and devotion. For his sons, this was especially bitter. For them, this was more of the same. Their father did not acknowledge them.
Rain streaked glass and turned the world gray and watery as Hammer stood in the same position she had maintained for most of the morning.
Arms crossed, she leaned her forehead against the window, sometimes thinking sometimes not, and praying. Her divine communi cations were not entirely for her husband. Hammer was more worried about herself, in truth. She knew she had reached a crossroads, and something new was meant for her, something more demanding, that she might never do with Seth weighing her down, as he had all these years. Her children were gone. She would be alone soon. She needed no specialist to tell her this as she watched the continuing ravenous ingestion of her husband’s body.
Whatever you want, I’ll do, she told the Almighty. I don’t care what.
Why does it matter, really, anyway? Certainly, I’m not much of a wife.
I would be the first to confess that I haven’t been much in that department. Probably not been much of a mother, either. So I’d like to make it up to everyone out there, okay? Just tell me what.
The Almighty, who actually spent more time with Hammer and was more related to her than she knew, was pleased to hear her say this, for the Almighty had a rather big plan in store for this special recruit.