A moment.
"Victoria? Are you there?"
And it was then I knew I had to go in. That I couldn't keep him lying in there, immobilized by the bullet in his spine, him thinking she was here, refusing to come in despite his requests. I couldn't think she would do that.
So I swallowed my reluctance and entered.
Like all the other single bed hospital rooms I had been in it was sparse. It had two larger than average windows that looked into a courtyard, a curtain that could be pulled around the bed for privacy, and an extra chair near the window. The walls and other furniture were decorated with flowers, balloons, and a putrid shade of emerald over-sized stuffed bear that looked like a mutated beaver. Later I would find out its card read, Love, Francesca in large letters and, the Vecchio family in a much more diminished script. There was no television.
I soon realized that I could see much more of the room than its occupant could. He lay face down on what looked like a primitive massage table, complete with a hole where his face could rest, without his being suffocated against the mattress.
"Who is it?" he asked again, and if hospitals didn't have the peculiar policy of keeping all rooms at least in half-light, I would have probably thought the question was posed by the emerald bear.
"We don't know each other," I said, and then unnecessarily added, "I'm not Victoria."
I wondered whether or not I should approach the head of the bed, as I would if he was sitting up and we were talking. Or whether he would be satisfied with what I had said and I could excuse myself and leave.
"I know," he said, and I crept closer. "I dreamt she was here last night."
I let it go, not knowing what I was or was not supposed to say to Vecchio's partner.
"You have her smell about you," he continued. "Are you wearing perfume?"
"No," I said, honestly, not liking in my current state the discussion of how I did or did not smell. "You must be mistaken."
"Also," and I heard him take a deep breath, like someone inhaling from a joint. "Gasoline, premium grade, a rather abrasive pumice-based soap." He inhaled in again, "the upholstery of a 1971 Buick Riviera, blood, and--if I'm not mistaken--a Saint Bernard?"
"I guess there's not much to do here in the hospital," I offered, not knowing what else to say to such a list.
"No," he said, as he had to, to the floor. "Not much. Are you hurt?"
"Not anymore," I said, intuiting that he was referring to the blood. I wondered if he had that ability in other areas as well, and whether it had ever proven embarrassing; telling a woman he could smell blood on her.
"You've been with her, haven't you?"
It was as straightforward a question as I had ever been asked. It seemed pointless to ask whom the "her" he referred to was. Was it within the realm of possibility that he really could smell her perfume--or some other scent of hers on me?
"Last night," I responded, forgetting all about Ray's theoretical desire for secrecy. "She knocked me unconscious, stole my car, and drove here."
I wanted to say that I hadn't minded, really. I didn't feel bitter or vindictive. That I would have given her the keys, driven her myself if she had only asked, and that my only real complaint at all was that at that moment I wanted to be at home in bed asleep, not in this hospital fighting this ache in my bones.
But how do you say that? How do you explain; I met this woman, she was a criminal, she was nothing but unkind to me, but there was something--something dark and beautiful, like a liquid pain floating in the timbre of her voice--something that would have made me gladly do--what? What? Whatever she had wanted, so long as she took me with her.
