Page 19 of Going Home in the Dark

“The wheelchair. You said you needed it. It’s yours. Even after I gag down this dinner, I’m not going anywhere. Not with this toe.”

Spencer regarded the wheelchair, glanced at Butch, looked at the open door behind him, felt his face flush, and said, “Thanks.”

Bobby well knew the torment that Spencer had gone through even before he’d been widely identified as a geek and sought community with the other amigos. Spencer’s life had been rich with humiliation before his parents divorced, before his mom, Angelina, took the name Constanina because that’s who she’d been in a previous incarnation, before his father married that sweaty stripper, Venus Porifera, who appeared nightly at the men’s club out on the state highway, beyond the town limits, where there was no shame or laws against obscene performances. Nevertheless, in spite of all Bobby’s understanding and regardless of the deep sympathy he felt for Spencer, impatience drove himto say, “Why the hell is it taking so long for Rembrandt to find a wheelchair in a hospital? Is he in a fugue state, painting a wall mural of terminal medical conditions outside the ICU?”

From her perch on the side of the bed, where Ernie lay on his back in his street clothes, Rebecca said, “Chill, Shamrock. He’ll show up in a second.”

Pacing agitatedly, Bobby said, “So might some orderly, going to take Ernie to a cooler in the basement to stash him for a mortician. Or, hey, maybe the law requires an autopsy in a case like this, and the coroner is on his way even now. Whether maybe it’s a mortician who pumps him full of preservatives or a coroner who slices off the top of his head to look for a brain aneurysm, that’s the end of our boy. We need to beout of here.”

“We’ll have him out of here in plenty of time,” Rebecca said. “In a hospital, they have their hands full trying to keep the living alive. They deal with corpses, too, but it’s not the primary item on their agenda.”

“How can you be so sure? If I was a hospital administrator and there were dead people scattered all around, I’d want to get them the hell out to preserve the reputation of the institution.”

“Did you forget? My character inShriekwas a nurse.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I forgot. In the final sequence, when Judyface cut off that cop’s arm with a chain saw, that’s why you knew how to save his life.”

“So listen to me and relax.”

Bobby continued to pace like a nervous gerbil exploring the confines of its cage. “Listen, I’m not being critical. It stretched the imagination that you could stop his bleeding the way you did and that he didn’t go into shock, but I was still with you, still buying it. However, after you killed Judyface—or thought you killedhim—when you walked out through the cornfield to the highway with a two-hundred-pound cop leaning on you for support—”

Rebecca said, “Oh, how I loved the end music. It was just so inspiring.”

“Yeah, okay, it was. And I totally believed you wouldn’t leave the guy and you could find the strength to do your part, but I was never sold that, with one arm cut off and all the blood he lost, he could stay on his feet and make it through all that corn.”

“Well, the credit crawl was long, and the director didn’t want to go to a black screen. He wanted the audience to think there was one more jump coming, maybe Judyface’s mom would erupt screaming through the corn for revenge, a setup for a sequel. What always botheredmewas how we left the severed arm behind. My character being a nurse, I think she would have brought the arm with the hope it could be sewn back on the cop.”

“You’re right,” Bobby said.

“I know I’m right.”

“You should direct.”

“Maybe one day.”

Spencer crashed through the door and rolled a wheelchair across the room to the bed. He said, “Don’t ask.”

An orderly coming to move the corpse, a mortician and assistant speeding toward the hospital in a hearse, perhaps a coroner en route to argue with the mortician for dibs on the deceased, and nurses bustling from room to room—all those people would complicate the task of spiriting Ernie Hernishen to the ground floor and out of the hospital.

Having played a nurse in three films, Rebecca was reasonably confident that she could talk her way through most encounters with medical staff. However, she had never played a hospital security guard or janitor; on their way out, if they drew the attention of such a person who was a suspicious type and who had an exaggerated sense of his authority, unpleasantness could ensue.

Once Ernie was propped in the wheelchair in his clothes, he still looked dead even to the amigos, who intuitively knew that he was alive. Rebecca resorted to the contents of her purse. She swiped a light coat of lipstick across Ernie’s bloodless lips and applied wisps of rouge to his cheeks. With his disarranged hair forming a spiky halo, those ministrations made him appear to be a clown who had succumbed to a cardiac infarction before completing his makeup. Rebecca used her hands to smooth down her amigo’s hair as best she could, and Spencer contributed his hat to the cause, and Bobby supplied a pair of sunglasses. At last, Ernie no longer looked entirely dead.

Incomplete without his trademark hat, like a less than gifted Spencer Truedove impersonator, the artist left the room to call an elevator and hold it with the hope that, against all odds, Ernie could be whisked away without incident.

Giving Spencer time to perform his assigned task, Bobby was poised behind the wheelchair, hands on the handgrips, and Rebecca stood with one hand on the door to room 340. The third-floor hall—the stage—waited beyond.

She said, “Wheel him along casually. Don’t hurry. We don’t want to appear as if we’re fleeing. I’ll talk to him as we go. He’s our uncle Ralph from Salt Lake City.”

“He doesn’t look like a Ralph,” Bobby objected.

“My actor’s instinct says no one will look twice at a Ralph.”

“Salt Lake City?”

“People thinkMormonswhen they hear Salt Lake City. People trust Mormons. You never hear of a Mormon bank robber or rioting Mormons or a Mormon shooting up a shopping mall. Okay, let’s go.”

Rebecca pulled open the door, and Bobby rolled Ernie into the corridor. Rebecca followed and proceeded at the left side of the wheelchair. So far, so good.

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