“Well, I wasn’t.” He sounded out of breath.
“Or maybe he’d reached his limit of being a kidnapper.” But what I really believed, though didn’t say, was, It’s because he thinks you slept with his wife.
We stood there another minute, watching the paper towel fill with blood again. And then, as if reading my mind, he said, “I’ll bet it was revenge.”
I’d been tearing more paper towels out of the dispenser. I froze. “How do you figure?”
He looked at me strangely. “What do you mean? It’s simple: I hit him in the mouth yesterday, he hits me in the head today.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess it could be that.” I handed him the paper towels.
After another fifteen minutes, during which time I tried to clean blood off the bathroom floor, Nolan pulled the ball of paper towels away from his head and I made myself take another look. He was still bleeding, though less so, and I could see now that the wound wasn’t as dire as I’d first thought. The ear wasn’t going to come off. Still, the cymbal had sliced deeply into the cartilage, and the angle between his ear and his head seemed to have shifted by a few degrees.
“You’ve got to get stitched up,” I said. “Otherwise it’s never going to stop bleeding.”
He nodded, and I thought I’d finally gotten through to him when he said, “How’s your sewing?”
The implication made me queasy. “No. Forget it. Not a chance.”
“Yes,” he said.
“No.” There was absolutely no way. My hands were already shaking just thinking about it. “Anyway, you’ll want a plastic surgeon. This is your face we’re talking about.”
“It sure is. So you’re going to have to be careful.” When I tried to protest again, he cut me off. “Listen. This is nonnegotiable. Forget the hospital. Got it? When I’m back in Missouri—if I’m ever back in Missouri—I’ll have my doctor tend to it. He’s a good man who won’t ask questions. Until then, I’m in your hands.”
17
Last night this stretch of town would’ve been deserted. The only people who came out at night here were either looking for trouble or already in it. But now it was a bright Saturday morning, and plenty of people were on the sidewalk feeding meters and pushing strollers and holding kids’ hands. My window was cracked open, and I smelled fresh bread. The sign hanging over the bank said it was fifty-two degrees. It would have been a perfect morning on the golf course.
I headed back into the outside world to get Nolan the supplies he needed. I was driving too fast, but for the first time since Friday night the kidnapping had been relegated to some less critical place in my mind. Right now I had an urgent task to do. Doing it was almost a relief. Almost. At the pharmacy, just a mile or so from the studio, I rushed from aisle to aisle, not knowing exactly what was required. Everything I knew about first aid centered around what to do until the professionals took over. What, though, if the patient refused the professionals?
I found gauze and Band-Aids and first-aid tape. Several kinds of pain reliever. I grabbed a bottle of Pepto-Bismol for my own stomach. Could you buy surgical thread at a pharmacy? Maybe not. But then, in the next aisle, I came across a small sewing kit. A needle was a needle, I figured. Thread was thread. I looked at it and looked at it, then walked away, then returned. Could I actually sew thread through someone’s flesh? I’d never even sewn on a button before. I imagined Nolan, liquored up from my whiskey, gritting his teeth as I pushed the needle through his ear with all the skill of an ape.
Disinfectant cream. I’d almost forgotten. My decision postponed, I returned to the first-aid aisle, and that was when I saw, on the bottom shelf, the First Aid & Survival Kit. Professional Series, it said. Eighty-nine dollars. I bent down, set everything I was carrying on the rack, and read the list of contents: dressings, tapes, ointments, medications, antiseptics … the list went on and on. There seemed to be an entire hospital inside.
And then from behind me: “Good morning, dickless!”
I turned around. Bobby Hazen was standing in the aisle wearing a Night Ranger concert T-shirt and black parachute pants. His hair was sticking up and he was holding a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, with which he saluted me.
I gave him a noncommittal “What’s up?” and continued evaluating the first-aid kit.
I knew Bobby from back when we both lived in the Village. He was one of those guys who’d spent his teenage years cocooned in his bedroom with his acne and his Fender Telecaster and emerged like some soft-spoken guitar god that everyone wanted in their band.