“Teresa,” the girl said.
“You’re gonna be all right, Teresa. Now I’m going to put this oxygen mask over your face and I want you to breathe deep for me, okay?”
Teresa pushed the mask aside. “Where’s my phone?” she said.
An officer was taking Boyd to a patrol car. Boyd was cuffed, wet like a wet dog, no pants, his T-shirt in charred rags, burn marks on his face; he’d lost his other front tooth, his mouth a bloody hole. “I sidn’t soo anysing,” he said.
“You didn’t do anything to who?” the officer said. “The little girl you kidnapped and had tied up in your boat?”
Boyd thought about saying he was just showing her around but that sounded stupid even to him. “Whas abou suh guy who sot suh bomb ass me?” he said.
“You mean the guy that shot the bomb at you and saved the little girl you had kidnapped in your boat? Shut the fuck up and get in the car.”
Teresa’s dad, Néstor, arrived. Teresa told him she was walking near the store and somebody put something wet over her face and when she woke up she was in the boat and this black guy was asking her if she was okay.
“Did he do anything, you know,” Néstor said.
“No, Dad, you don’t understand. He wasn’t the guy that kidnapped me, he was like rescuing me. He was nice, I could tell.” Teresa told Néstor how the black guy carried her to shore, set her down, and told her to breathe deeply. After she could sit upright without holding on to him he said the police would be there soon. Then he got in his car with a girl and left.
“He just left?”
“That’s what I said, Dad.”
Néstor wondered why the guy didn’t stay and be a hero, get his picture in the paper, and be on TV. Néstor would have to find him and thank him personally. A black guy who shot grenades at people couldn’t be too hard to find. Néstor decided to let Teresa recover for a day or two before he asked her why she was near the store, which wasn’t on her way home, and if she was going to see that pendejo Ramón he’d take away her phone.
Isaiah carried Margaret across the lobby to the elevators, a group of people already waiting there. Nobody smiled or said anything. Too many crazies around these days, she might be his girlfriend.
Flaco was in physical therapy now. On the ride up, Isaiah decided to put Deronda together with Blasé. Maybe he could put her in a video and who knew, maybe she’d get discovered and be on TV. It was all luck anyway. Like the skinny girl walking past Beaumont’s as he was coming out. If he’d stayed inside another minute she would have suffered in ways he didn’t want to think about. She got lucky and maybe he did too. When you owed as much as he did you didn’t expect the coins to be put in your hand.
Isaiah had been to the hospital hundreds of times but always had a moment when he thought about coming back later or not at all but what would be the point? There was nowhere he could go, no road that went far enough or jet that flew fast enough to free him from his past. He wished he could be like Dodson, just go about his business like nothing had ever happened.
Isaiah had seen Dodson twice since the war. The first time was at Mozique’s funeral. The second time he was coming home late and saw a patrol car with its lights flashing and Dodson sitting on the curb with his fingers laced on top of his head. One officer was searching the car, the other talking on his radio. Dodson was outraged. “We got terrorists and serial killers running around everywhere and you muthafuckas ain’t got shit else to do but profile a law-abiding brutha on his way to a job interview? Yes, I know it’s one in the morning, you think a nigga ain’t got a watch? I what? I smell like marijuana? Oh you know that for a fact? You one of them drug-sniffing dogs disguised as a big-ass white man? Yes, I recently completed a sentence at a state correctional facility but what’s that got to do with anything? I’m out now. I don’t deserve this kind of harassment. I paid my debt to society.”
Isaiah drove on, thinking that was what angered him most about Dodson. The way he could hustle himself out of his own conscience and his simple-minded equation for all the wrong they had done. Do some time, see your probation officer once a month, and it was over, it was done. Your debt was paid.
When Flaco saw Margaret his eyes lit up and he grinned his lopsided grin. Jermaine, the physical therapist, put the boy in his chair and he wheeled over, trying to put words together. His brain knew what they were but his lips would forget how to say them. Oh my God, that’s so cool! came out Oh… ny… gone… nats… tso coo.