The force of the coke will be like coming up through waves.
* * *
—
By the time Eli returns, he’s on his third glass.
“You killing yourself,” Eli says, sitting beside him.
Sunny stares at the floor, glassy-eyed. “I don’t care.” He looks up. “Where’s the coke?”
Eli fishes a baggie out of his top pocket, places it on the table.
“Do you know what I had to do for this? Some guy tried to shoot me with a crossbow.”
Sunny holds the bag up to the light.
Nearly a full gram in there.
“Assholes.” His movements are sluggish. He slurs his words. “Get me a mirror and a card.”
“Please . . .”
“Fuck you.”
“How about thank you?”
“Fuck you.”
“You know something,” Eli says, fetching what Sunny needs, “you cannot talk to people this way and expect to survive.” He points to his chest. “I take shotgun for you. I lie in hospital. I lie to your father. I hide your secret. I do everything you ask. Not once you say thank you.”
He wipes the mirror down with a Kleenex, tips out the coke, cuts three huge lines, rolls a note.
“Fuck you,” Sunny slurs.
“Why you do this?” Eli says, handing him the note. “You know when someone talks like this to me, I cut their tongue out.”
Sunny smirks. Bends down to take the first line with one eye closed. Misses it.
“You think I’m fucking joking,” Eli says. “But no, I serious. I do it. Cut out their tongue, stick it back down throat. Watch them choke on it. No problem. Sleep just fine. Dream of kittens.”
Sunny sets himself up just right this time. Pulls the whole line.
“But you,” Eli goes on. “With you I don’t do nothing. You know why?”
Sunny looks up at him with the false clarity of a brain exploding with coke.
“Why?”
“Because you already fuck yourself.”
Sunny sits back, closes his eyes.
Eli says, “I know suffering when I see it, my friend.”
“You can go now.”
Eli walks toward the door. “You know something, I think you used to be good guy.”
Sunny shakes his head. “You don’t know who I am.”
* * *
—
Now, in his hand, he holds the sonogram of his unborn child.
He holds the report.
Patient name: Neda Kapur.
One last thing, one piece of doubt.
He has to know.
He takes out his phone, dials the mobile number listed on the report.
* * *
—
She has her phone on the table in front of her.
The cigarette burning down in her hand.
When it rings—unknown number—she answers right away.
Clairvoyance.
Despair.
Puts it to her ear.
Hears the silence of a sealed room, a sealed mind. And all these fucking years.
What if he’d called once? Just once?
She hears him breathing.
Heavy but regular. So brutal.
The ocean, the sand, the fire.
“Sunny,” she says.
The last thing she wants to do is cry.
She forces a false smile. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
Nothing.
She waits.
Waits.
He keeps breathing.
Is he going to stay silent after all these years?
Then he speaks.
“I need you to tell me something.”
His voice so measured, so clinical.
She feels like she’s going under again.
The anesthetist’s needle in her vein.
Her insides pulled out.
She puts her cigarette out, gets up and walks to the freezer, places the phone between her shoulder and ear.
She retrieves the ice-cold vodka. Brings it to the table with a shot glass.
So unexpected, how life goes.
She swirls the bottle, releases the vodka into the glass. Drinks it down.
“What do you want to know?”
Pours another shot.
“Did you kill my son?”
The abruptness, the impropriety of it.
It makes her laugh.
“You think it’s funny?” he says.
“No,” she cuts him. “It was never funny. None of it.” She walks to the window, looking out on the wet street, the orange lights. The N55 bus passes, early workers sit gloomy below, a few ravers up top. She knocks back the shot once more. “Is this really why you called? On your wedding day?”
“Did you kill him?”
Silence. She gathers herself.
She feels the vodka burn, her belly slowly becoming warm.
“You should have told me.”