It takes a change of elevators and a walk across the skyway to reach the Bucket, and he sees exactly four people on the journey. Two are nurses whispering together outside a med supply closet; two are interns in the doctors’ lounge, laughing quietly over something on a laptop computer. None of them notice the graveyard-shift maintenance man, head down as he pushes an overloaded cart of laundry.
The point where he’s most apt to be noticed—and perhaps recognized—is the nurses’ station in the middle of the Bucket. But one of the nurses is playing solitaire on her computer, and the other is writing notes, propping her head up with her free hand. That one catches movement out of the corner of her eye and without raising her head asks how he’s doing.
“Yeah, good,” Brady says. “Cold night, though.”
“Uh-huh, and I heard there’s snow coming.” She yawns and goes back to her notes.
Brady rolls his basket down the hall, stopping just short of 217. One of the Bucket’s little secrets is that here the patient rooms have two doors, one marked and one unmarked. The unmarked ones open into the closets, making it possible to restock linens and other necessaries at night without disturbing the patients’ rest . . . or their disturbed minds. Brady grabs a few of the johnnies, takes a quick look around to make sure he is still unobserved, and slips through this unmarked door. A moment later he’s looking down at himself. For years he has fooled everyone into believing that Brady Hartsfield is what the staff calls (only among themselves) a gork, a ding, or a LOBNH: lights are on but nobody’s home. Now he really is one.
He bends and strokes one lightly stubbled cheek. Runs the pad of his thumb over one closed lid, feeling the raised curve of eyeball beneath. Lifts one hand, turns it over, and lays it gently palm-up on the coverlet. From the pocket of the borrowed gray trousers he takes the bottle of pills and spills half a dozen in the upturned palm. Take, eat, he thinks. This is my body, broken for you.
He enters that broken body one final time. He doesn’t need to use the Zappit to do this now, nor does he have to worry that Babineau will seize control and run away like the Gingerbread Man. With Brady’s mind gone, Babineau is the gork. Nothing left in there but a memory of his father’s golf shirt.
Brady looks around the inside of his head like a man giving a hotel room one last check after a long-term stay. Anything hanging forgotten in the closet? A tube of toothpaste left in the bathroom? Maybe a cufflink under the bed?
No. Everything is packed and the room is empty. He closes his hand, hating the draggy way the fingers move, as if the joints are filled with sludge. He opens his mouth, lifts the pills, and drops them in. He chews. The taste is bitter. Babineau, meanwhile, has collapsed bonelessly to the floor. Brady swallows once. And again. There. It’s done. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he’s staring beneath the bed at a pair of slippers Brady Hartsfield will never wear again.
He gets to Babineau’s feet, brushes himself off, and takes one more look at the body that carried him around for almost thirty years. The one that stopped being of any use to him the second time he was smashed in the head at Mingo Auditorium, just before he could trigger the plastic explosive strapped to the underside of his wheelchair. Once he might have worried that this drastic step would backfire on him, that his consciousness and all his grand plans would die along with his body. No more. The umbilical cord has been severed. He has crossed the Rubicon.
So long, Brady, he thinks, it was good to know you.
This time when he pushes the laundry cart past the nurses’ station, the one who was playing solitaire is gone, probably to the bathroom. The other is asleep on her notes.
10
But it’s quarter to four now, and there’s so much more to do.
After changing back into Babineau’s clothes, Brady leaves the hospital the same way he entered and drives toward Sugar Heights. Because Z-Boy’s homemade silencer is kaput and an unmuffled gunshot is likely to be reported in the town’s ritziest neighborhood (where rent-a-cops from Vigilant Guard Service are never more than a block or two away), he stops at Valley Plaza, which is on the way. He checks the empty lot for cop cars, sees none, and drives around to the loading area of Discount Home Furnishings.
God, it’s so good to be out! Fucking wonderful!
Walking to the front of the Beemer, he breathes deeply of the cold winter air wrapping the sleeve of Babineau’s expensive topcoat around the .32’s short barrel as he goes. It won’t be as good as Z-Boy’s silencer, and he knows it’s a risk, but not a big one. Just the one shot. He looks up first, wanting to see the stars, but clouds have blanked out the sky. Oh, well, there will be other nights. Many of them. Possibly thousands. He is not limited to Babineau’s body, after all.