Page 25 of The Damage Man

Evan told him this last time, the one time they met.

“Wow,” Jacob says. “Life, huh?”

A precise repeat of their last go-around on this.

“So how’d you hear about me if it wasn’t from … the rich lady?”

“Veronica LeGrande,” Evan says calmly. “That’s her name. You will learn her fucking name.”

Jacob’s gummy eyes flare with what seems like amusement. “Why should I?”

“Because I’m two feet from your IV line, there’s a syringe on the tray, and dying from an air embolism can be excruciatingly painful.”

Jacob’s mouth gapes. A horrible cawing sound comes out. At first Evan thinks he is crying but then he realizes it is an attempt at laughter.

“So … I see I did get … some piss and vinegar into you … after all.” He has to articulate carefully, each word an Everest. His hand, bandaged and catheter-stuck, flares just barely toward the chair. “Sit.”

Evan eases between the foot of the bed and the wall, lifts the cowboy hat from the chair, and sits bedside. The proximity to this man is unsettling. Tufts of nasal hair outgrowing the nostrils, white gunk at the corners of his lips.

“Hand me … ice.” His breath carries the rot of the grave.

Holding his own breath, Evan leans across him, grabs the thin paper cup, nestles it in his hand.

Jacob rattles a pellet of ice into his mouth. “So dry. And these … sores.” An eyebrow cocks rakishly. “Ain’t the kind you get from fun … tell ya that.”

The blood-pressure cuff wheezes to life, takes its reading, hisses an exhalation.

Jacob closes his eyes. His chest sinks.

Stillness.

It lifts.

Without realizing it, Evan has tensed on his chair. It takes a conscious effort to relax his legs.

The singer keeps on, bathing the room in melancholy: Why can’t you be blue over me?

“That goddamned broad’s voice … puts a fist in my throat … every time.” Jacob’s eyes stay closed, it seems, in appreciation.

It is stunning how little Evan knows of this man.

His mind pulls to Blake in that run-down bungalow. How the hell did he muster the courage to ask what he needed to ask?

The spaces between the pulse ox beeps quicken.

Jacob’s eyes stay closed. His lips move faintly. Evan strains to hear what he is saying. “… ’ronica … gran…”

He’s down to agonal breathing, the words pushed out from his stomach.

“Yes,” Evan says.

At the response, Jacob alerts slightly, lids twitching. It’s as if he’d forgotten Evan was there.

His mouth bunches and parts, lips chapped, teeth a ragged yellow ledge. His voice comes as little more than a fading rasp: “… scared…”

His hand gropes the sheets, bunching them, fragile skin tenting beneath the clear adhesive film. It edges closer to Evan’s side and Evan realizes with horror that he wants Evan to hold his hand.

He squeezes his eyes shut hard. Four-count inhalation. Hold for four. Exhale for four. Hold empty.