The guy that yelled at Kate is smoking in the corner of the patio as we come out. No one is looking. Sweetness ambles over and slaps him. Even openhanded, the blow lifts the guy off his feet, onto his back. He rolls over and pushes himself up onto all fours, tries to get up. Sweetness rests his foot on his back, puts his weight into it and slams him hard onto the ground. “Be rude to her again,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.”
Sweetness walks away. The guy stands up. In the streetlight, I see the slap left about a thousand millimeter–sized little blood blisters on his cheek and jaw. He reaches in his mouth and pulls out a molar, then another tooth, and another tooth, and he cries.
I drive Kate home in her new Audi.
27
I get up early the next morning. I have a post-op checkup with my brother Jari. In his office, we do the usual stuff. He tests my reflexes and blood pressure and so on, but mostly we talk.
“Do you have any physical problems at all? Coordination. Weakness. Headaches. Any more seizures?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“What about going flat? Have you had any improvement there, felt any emotions?”
“Of a kind,” I say. “I don’t feel anything, but sometimes I like or want things.”
I pick up my cane. “Like this. I love this thing, would sleep with it if I could.”
“What about people?”
“Women. I see a beautiful girl, it drives me crazy. Picture the wants of a six-year-old combined with the libido of a sixteen-year-old.”
“Have you acted on those feelings?”
“No, but I could. I don’t seem to care about what I do, either. My existence is binary. Want/don’t want. Like/don’t like. Will/won’t. I have no shades of gray.”
“What about your family. Anything there?”
“Not a damned thing. I practice smiling in the mirror. I remember what my feelings were, and act according to what I think I should do based on memories. It seems to work. I know what my duties are, and I fulfill them.”
“I advised you to talk to your wife about this. Have you done it, or even considered it?”
“No, and I won’t. I don’t think Kate could accept it.”
He leans forward in his chair, rests his elbows on his desk and his head on his hands. “It’s been three months. No progress at all doesn’t bode well. You need your wife and her support.”
I say nothing.
“Do you really think you’ve hidden the change in yourself from her? How do you think this is affecting her?”
I think of the gifts she now accepts, knowing the source of the money that bought them. She never would have even contemplated accepting them a short time ago. She’s trying to find a way of coming to terms with what I do now, and she refuses to complain because I asked her, openly and honestly, before all that has come to pass began. I realize, although she isn’t coming to terms with it, that it isn’t fair to hold her to the agreement, because she didn’t understand what it might entail. Nor did I.
I was na?ve and used. Arvid once told me that my na?veté would be the death of me. For the hundredth time, I think: this black-op was never for the forces of good. I was misled. I’m a rogue cop and a criminal. Sooner or later, I’ll outlive my usefulness and they’ll find a way to get rid of me. Probably set me up, discredit me, and see that I get a long prison sentence. The public will applaud such excellent skank. The mighty brought low. Even a savior of children. I can’t quit because first I need to find a way to not only get free of the corrupt politicos that control me, but to destroy them in order to do it.
It occurs to me that her acceptance of the Audi last night symbolizes Kate’s acceptance of the situation, that she’s so fed up that she doesn’t care anymore, and maybe my marriage is in trouble.
“Doctor-patient privilege,” I say. “I do things that are illegal, with the blessing—no, under the mandate—of the establishment. Some of them are ugly. I don’t hide them from her—or many of them, anyway. They bother her. I don’t know if it bothers her because I do them, or because I’m untroubled by them.” I don’t mention her two-day drunk. It was Vappu, might mean nothing.
“Do you take the tranquilizers I prescribed for you?”
“No. Nothing makes me nervous.”