Eric fucking Blass.
Jared kept his eyes closed. If they thought he was unconscious—maybe even dead—they would run away like the chickenshit cowardly assholes they were.
Maybe.
“Norcross!” This time his name was followed by a boot prodding him in the side.
“Eric, let’s get out of here.” Another country heard from. Kent Daley, sounding whiney and on the edge of panic. “I think he’s out cold.”
“Or in a coma.” Curt’s tone seemed to indicate that this wouldn’t be such a tragic outcome.
“He’s not in a coma. He’s faking.” But Eric sounded nervous himself. He bent down. Jared’s eyes were closed, but he could smell Eric’s Axe cologne getting stronger. Jesus, did the guy bathe in the stuff? “Norcross!”
Jared lay still. God, if only a cop car would come by, even one driven by his mother, embarrassing as the explanations that followed might be. But the cavalry arrived only in the movies.
“Norcross, I’m going to kick you in the balls if you don’t open your eyes, and I mean really fucking hard.”
Jared opened his eyes.
“Okay,” Eric said, smiling. “No harm and no foul.”
Jared, who felt he had been badly fouled—both by the car that had creased him and by these guys—said nothing. It seemed the wisest course.
“We didn’t hurt the skeevy old lady, and you don’t look too bad, either. No legbones sticking out through your pants, at least. So we’re going to call it even. After you give me your phone, that is.”
Jared shook his head.
“You are such an asshole.” Eric spoke with kindly indulgence, as if to a puppy that had just piddled on the rug. “Curt? Kent? Hold him.”
“Jesus, Eric, I don’t know,” Kent said.
“I do. Hold him.”
Curt said, “What if he’s got, like, internal injuries?”
“He doesn’t. Car barely skinned him. Now hold him.”
Jared tried to squirm away, but Curt pinned one of his shoulders and Kent pinned the other. He hurt all over, his knee was only the worst of it, and there was really no point in fighting these guys. He felt strangely listless. He supposed that might be shock setting in.
“Phone.” Eric snapped his fingers. “Hand it over.” This was the guy Mary was going to a concert with. This guy right here.
“I lost it in the woods.”
Jared looked up at him, trying not to cry. Crying would be the worst.
Eric sighed, dropped to his knees, and squeezed Jared’s pockets. He felt the rectangle of the iPhone in the right front and pulled it out. “Why do you have to be such a dick, Norcross?” Now he sounded petulant and put-upon, like why are you ruining my day?
“There’s a dick here, but it’s not me,” Jared said. He blinked hard to keep the tears from falling. “You were going to pee in her ear.”
“No, he wasn’t. You’re disgusting to even think that, Norcross. It was a joke,” Curt said. “Guy talk.”
Kent piped up eagerly, as if they were actually having a reasonable discussion, and not sitting on him and holding him down. “Yeah, it was just guy talk! We were just playing around. You know, like in the locker room. Don’t be ridiculous, Jared.”
“I’m going to let this go,” Eric declared. As he spoke, he tapped away at the screen of Jared’s phone. “Because of Mary. I know that she’s your friend, and she’s going to be a lot more than my friend. So it’s a draw. We all walk away.” He finished tapping. “There: erased the video from your cloud, then emptied it out. All gone.”
A gray rock stuck out of the ditch, looking to Jared like a gray tongue going nyah-nyah-nyah. Eric hammered Jared’s iPhone on it half a dozen times, shattering the screen and sending pieces of black plastic flying. He tossed what was left onto Jared’s chest. It slid off into the muddy ditchwater.
“Since the video is gone, I didn’t have to do that, but Mary aside, I need you to understand that there are consequences for being a sneaky bitch.” Eric stood up. “Got me?”
Jared said nothing, but Eric nodded as if he had.
“Right. Let him go.”
Kent and Curt stood and backed away. They looked wary, as if they expected Jared to spring up and start swinging like Rocky Balboa.
“This is over for us,” Eric said. “We don’t want anything more to do with that moldy old cunt back there, okay? It better be over for you, too. Come on, you guys.”
They left him there in the ditch. Jared held on until they were gone. Then he put an arm over his eyes and wept. When that part was over, he sat up, slid the remains of his phone in his pocket. (Several more pieces fell off as he did so.)
I am a loser, he thought. That Beck song, it must have been written with me in mind. It was three against one, but still—I am such a loser.
He began to limp home, because home was where you went when you were hurt and beaten.
CHAPTER 10
1
Until 1997, St. Theresa’s had been a butt-ugly cinderblock building that looked more like an urban housing project than a hospital. Then, after an outcry had arisen over the leveling of Speck and Lookout mountains to get at the coal deposits beneath, the Rauberson Coal Company had endowed an ambitious expansion. The local paper, run by a liberal Democrat—a phrase synonymous with communist, for most of the Republican electorate—called this “no better than hush money.” Most of the people in the Tri-Counties just appreciated it. Why, customers at Bigbee’s Barber Shop had been heard to say, it’s even got a helicopter landing pad!
On most weekday afternoons, the two parking lots—a small one in front of the Urgent Care wing, a larger one in front of the hospital proper—were half-full at most. When Frank Geary turned into Hospital Drive on this afternoon, both were loaded, and the turnaround in front of the main entrance was also jammed. He saw a Prius with its trunk-lid crumpled from where it had been struck by the Jeep Cherokee that had pulled in behind it. Broken taillight glass shone on the pavement like drops of blood.