Slow River

He knew there were things I wasn’t saying, but he merely nodded. “I have it.” They had probably sent it to the family as proof that they had me. “I’ll get it messengered over first thing tomorrow. Will I see you then?”

He looked old and frail. “Oh, Papa, yes.”

We walked farther. We had been walking awhile.

“I have to go.”

We held each other again. Longer this time, and harder. I had my father back. “Tomorrow,” he whispered. I hurried down the towpath.

Spanner was in the Polar Rear, drinking alone. She saw me in the mirror and watched me thread my way to the bar, the way a well-fed snake will watch a young pig: trying to decide whether it should kill now, or wait for its prey to grow a little and make the attraction, the mesmerizing gaze, the final strike worthwhile.

I didn’t bother to sit down. “Why did you do it?”

She shrugged, looking down at her drink. “Why not? You always said I would do anything for money.”

“And will a quarter of a million make you feel good about yourself?”

“Money always helps.”

“That’s what you’ve been waiting for all along, isn’t it? A reward. For your prey to finally get big enough, worth the risk. Worth lunging for, pumping full of poison.”

Her eyes seemed dry and blank. No reflections there. No clues about how she felt, or if she did feel anything anymore. I doubted she understood a word I was saying.

“Did you hate me right from the beginning?” She said nothing. “Why did you hate me? Because I had what you didn’t, self-respect?”

She stirred. “You didn’t have any self-respect when I found you naked and bleeding and nameless. No, what I hated was that you had choices. You chose to not go back to your family. I had no choices. I’ve never had choices.”

“That’s not true. There is always a choice.”

“Easy to say when you’re a van de Oest.”

Perhaps she was right. I would never know. I was not her, and I was glad. “What do you want me to say? That I hate you? I don’t.” And I didn’t. I didn’t feel much of anything except sorrow that she could not and would not see the chances and choices and possibilities of change I felt everywhere about me. And it wasn’t just because I was a van de Oest. Stella had been a van de Oest, and she had killed herself. Greta had been brought up as one, and she had twisted and stayed twisted. You had to allow change, you had to want it. You had to believe you deserved it. Spanner did not hate me; she hated herself.

I left her sitting there alone, looking at her reflection in her beer. I wondered what she saw.

The medic had a clinic in the center of town. I had to offer him a triple fee to open up for me for a nonemergency.

There was no nurse. He cleaned my left hand himself, worked on it quickly and efficiently, and closed up the incision with a plastic staple. He sprayed it with plaskin. Put a small sticking plaster on the top. “That’s to remind you it’s stapled. Otherwise, you might forget and try to use it.”

I wondered how many times he had saved people’s lives, or how many times he had tried and failed, without notifying the authorities. His eyes were very tired, down-drooping, like a bloodhound’s. He was exhausted. What would happen if there was a gunshot wound, or a serious stabbing to attend to, and he was too tired?

“Doctor,” I said on impulse as he collected his instruments in a tray, “if I made a donation, would you give me some information about one of your past clients?”

“No”.

“For thirty thousand?” He hesitated. “For thirty thousand now, and a yearly stipend—enough to hire an assistant for the night shift? I’ll put it in writing if you like.”

He put the tray down and looked at me steadily, his eyes more like a dog’s than ever. “What’s the question?”

“Did you treat a man, just over three years ago, with a wound to his neck? A man about six feet tall. The wound would have been about here.” I pointed to the left side of my neck, at the carotid.

“What kind of wound?”

“Puncture. Tear. Made with a long, rusty nail. And if you did treat him, did he die?”

He said nothing for a long time. “Let me ask you a question instead. You know I need the money—the clinic needs it. If I refuse to give you confidential information, would you withhold it?”

The man had saved my life. He knew it, I knew it. I sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” That wasn’t enough. The thirty thousand was stolen, anyway. “You can have the thirty thousand. No strings attached.”

He went to his terminal and for a moment I thought he was going to pull the information I needed, all the case notes, because I had made the selfless choice—like the child in a fairy tale being rewarded by the old witch in disguise. But life isn’t a fairy tale. He was making up my bill.

He held it out.

“Thank you,” I managed, and headed for the door.

At the wharf, the lights were still out from my last visit. The surface of the river was choppy in the wind. I watched it awhile. The riverbank is the one place in the jungle where an animal is visible from the air and the ground.