“Call me Will. And I’m not suggesting you are. It would be an entirely normal reaction. Now that you know it’s there, you’re going to feel it. I suppose it’s also possible that the bullet has shifted. Perhaps it’s pressing on a nerve that it wasn’t before.”
“Why would it shift?”
“That I don’t know.”
“And would that be why my wrist started aching?”
A long pause. “I don’t know that either. Half the patients I see seem to be suffering from mild cases of carpal tunnel. It’s almost always because they spend too much time in front of their keyboards. So that was my natural assumption in your case. But if—if that bullet is pressing on a nerve—then, sure. Symptoms might be presenting in your wrist.”
“And maybe I really am feeling pain in my neck, too.”
He ignored this. “I’ll call and hassle the lab again. Try to hurry them up on your blood work. I’d like to see your blood lead level. They work seven days a week over there. Maybe they’ll have something by tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
“And I should hear back on Monday from Marshall Gellert. The neurosurgeon. I couldn’t track him down yesterday, but he’s the best in town. I’ll ask him to see you right away.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll have to see what he says. Meanwhile, what did you find out from your parents? Can they help with figuring out how it got there?”
I made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a bark. “You were right. They knew.”
“And?”
I laugh-barked again. “How much time have you got?”
He listened for nearly an hour. After we hung up, I stepped out my front door and went for a long walk through the streets of Georgetown. No collapses this time. Just the steady beat of my boots hitting brick. And in my neck the dark mass of the bullet, throbbing, pulsing, keeping time.
? ? ?
THE TOMBS is a Georgetown institution. A big, dark, brick cellar one block from campus. There’s a bar on one end and a noisy restaurant packed with undergrads on the other. It is the kind of place where students meet their roommates for happy-hour pitchers and buffalo wings on a Saturday night, then return hungover the next morning, to meet their parents for an eggs-Benedict brunch. It’s tradition to come to the door at midnight on your twenty-first birthday. They stamp you on the head and pour your first legal beer on the house.
I did think twice about turning up on Saturday night. I might bump into someone I knew from the university, and I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. But the thought of staying home was too depressing. Plus the Tombs is right around the corner from me, and I couldn’t be bothered dressing up and heading anywhere swanky. So I called Martin and told him to meet me.
We settled ourselves in a leather booth in the back corner and sat staring at each other. Martin knows me too well to bother with small talk. Instead he flagged down a waiter, ordered the artichoke dip and a beer for himself, and a glass of white wine for me.
It is not quite true what I said earlier, about not liking whisky. I like rye whiskey fine. I can’t stand Scotch, but a few years back I was seeing a man from Kentucky. He liked to drink Sazeracs, mixed with rye from a distillery near where he grew up. Rye tastes like bourbon but better. More peppery and less sweet. I acquired the taste and still drink it on the rare occasion when I am drinking to get drunk. Martin knows this. He raised an eyebrow when I canceled the wine and requested instead a double Bulleit, neat.
All he said, though, was “Make it two.”
We sipped in silence for a bit. Then he said, “Irritating, isn’t it? How it’s become all fashionable lately?”
“What?”
“Rye.”
“It’s fashionable?”
“Don’t you ever go out? It’s the hip thing. Laura and I actually got invited to a rye tasting the other night. All these fortysomethings who never drink anything but seventy-five-dollar-a-bottle Bordeaux, sipping and pretending to detect notes of green apple and tobacco.”
“I just like the taste.”
“See, that’s the fashionable thing to say. Very authentic of you.” He took another sip, then looked into my eyes. “You used to have nightmares, when you first came. You would crawl into my bed and curl up against me, hot and all wet with tears. When I woke up in the morning, you were always gone. Do you remember?”
“God, I’m getting sick of people asking me that.”
He looked hurt.
“I’m sorry. Martin? I’m sorry. But you know, you’re one of the worst parts of all this.” I pointed at him. “You and me. Finding out that—that you’re not really my brother.”
“I am really your brother.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You mean we aren’t related by blood.”
I nodded.
“I thought about that, too.” He glanced around, then picked up a steak knife lying on the table. He held out his finger and drew the serrated blade across it. Drops of blood sprang out.
He reached across the table. “Your turn.”
I must have looked aghast.
“Come on, trust me. Give me your hand.”
I did as he said. The blade hurt more than you would think as it sank into my flesh.
He set down the knife and pressed his finger against mine. “Now I am. Your blood brother.”
For the first time since this all began, I started to cry. I knew it was only a gesture, but at that moment it felt like the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me. We sat there, hands clasped, tears running down my face. He wrapped a napkin around our fingers and held it tight.
“Martin, I didn’t mean—”
“Shush. You don’t have to say anything.”
He caught our waiter’s eye and mouthed, Two more.
The waiter looked at me with misgiving, no doubt thinking I was enough of a mess as it was. But he trotted off. The drinks went down easy. We were on our third round when suddenly I grinned.
“What?” asked Martin.
“We’re drinking Bulleit.”
“So?”
“Pronounced bull-it. And I’ve got a bullet in my neck!”
“Not funny.”
“Oh, come on, it’s hilarious.” I clinked my glass against his.
Slowly he smiled. “Technically, you know, we’re drinking shots of Bulleit. Get it? Bullet shots?”