Kansas City Noir by Steve Paul Read Free Book Online Page B

should get in the car.”
    No one moved.
    “I need help,” she said.
    Brandi went to the kitchen and returned with a giant purse made of shiny white leatherette. It was suddenly awkward, like a dinner party dispersing after an unforgivable scene. Ilon and Nick pushed Britt out the front door and into the back of Allison’s car. Nick pulled the seat belt shoulder strap down but Britt shook his head violently no. His right hand was still stuck over his heart. “Nothing,” he said.
    Nick and Ilon got into the front of their car, parked behind Allison’s Land Rover in the circular drive. Brandi stood with her hand on the Nissan’s back door, watching Allison walk around. She gave her a little wave. “So is your dad the guy,” she called in a conversational tone, “the one who died in jail?”
     
    * * *
     
    There was an hour wait before a triage nurse showed Britt down a corridor and up onto a gurney closely enclosed by polyester drapes. It was like being in a motel shower with two other people. Britt seemed revived by the imminence of medical care. He’d even made the walk from the waiting area by himself.
    “What’s the problem?” the nurse asked.
    “Overdose,” Britt said. Allison was surprised at his plain-speaking. “I had a heart attack or something from an overdose.”
    The nurse took his vitals. She inquired what substances he’d taken. Coke? Yes. How much. A lot. Two or three lines, repeated several times over the course of the night. Ecstasy? Two. Meth? No. Heroin? No. Other opiates—Percocet, Percodan, Vicodin, OxyContin? One pill of something, at the beginning of the evening. Alcohol? Vodka tonics. Maybe five.
    The nurse disappeared and no one came back for a long time. This must mean no dire danger. Britt seemed to think so too, because he cheered up. Flat on the gurney, he listened alertly to various commotions taking place around them. After a while he propped himself up on his elbows—a remarkably strenuous pose for one so hefty and so recently collapsed. He dug in his shorts pocket for his phone and took a glance. “No juice,” he muttered. He turned to Allison with a bright smile. “Do you mind getting me something to drink? And some kind of snack? I need salt. Oh, and a magazine from the waiting room?”
    Allison said nothing. She pointedly took her own phone out of her purse, having been reminded of its useful distractions, and resumed a game on the New York Times crossword app.
    What she minded most was that stupid fat slut’s invocation of her father. She didn’t deserve to as much as speak of him. It wasn’t just that this was the first time, in a very long time, a decade or more, that anyone had the stupidity and lack of tact to mention her father to her directly, it was also that the girl must have heard the story from Britt, meaning that he had betrayed her, wronged her, unforgivably.
    “Do you hear me?” Britt said. He didn’t notice that she hadn’t yet said a word to him all morning. “Allison, water, I need water.”
    “You could have died,” Allison said at last. “Next time, you will.”
    “I know, yes,” Britt said. He thinks she is nagging—not predicting, not telling him. “I’ll be more careful.”
    He won’t, she thought. It’s only a matter of time, probably days, before he’s back to the usual. Whatever Britt is, he’s not moderate. He drinks a lot. Smokes a lot. His favorite foods are Town Topic cheeseburgers and onion rings, his second favorite giant platters of pasta piled with meat sauce and melted cheese at Garozzo’s or Carmen’s. Some mornings he goes and gets an entire flat box of Lamar’s: apple fritters and cinnamon cake donuts and frosted Long Johns filled with whipped cream that has the pearlescent sheen and delightfully slick, frothy mouthfeel of nondairy, highly artificial ingredients. His own dad died of a massive coronary at age fifty-one, Britt’s age now.
    At the emergency room, he was told to return for follow-up EKGs and to