He wakes up when he hears Terri saying, “—the hell are you doing here?”
Peter Moretti is standing there with flowers in his hand. Smile smooth as his silk tie. Terri glaring at him, Madeleine fixing him with a calm, hard look.
“I came to see my friend Danny,” Peter says.
Terri spits, “Get out.”
“It’s all right,” Danny says.
Peter comes over to the bed, sets the flowers down on the side table, leans in and, still smiling, whispers, “You’re dead, Danny. Soon as you get out, you’re a dead man.”
They all know that a hospital is off-limits. Last thing in the world you want to do in a war is piss off doctors and nurses, because you might be seeing them in a trauma ward, and they let you bleed out because you’ve exposed them to gunfire at their place of work. Ditto with priests, who might be giving you last rites. You don’t want them to be nervous and fuck up the words that stand between you and hell.
Peter straightens up and turns to Terri. “Anything I can do, anything you need, please let me know.”
“Get out.”
“I don’t know why you’re being this way,” Peter says. “I had noth ing to do with what happened. You want to know what your husband was doing down there that night, ask him.”
“I don’t need you to tell me what to say to my husband.”
“Of course not,” Peter says. “I overstepped. I’ll leave you alone. I’m sure Danny needs his rest.”
Madeleine follows him out of the room. “Mr. Moretti. Do you know who I am?”
Peter’s smile edges toward a smirk. “I heard.”
“Then you’ve also heard what I’m capable of,” Madeleine says. “If you hurt my son, or even try to hurt my son, I’ll put you where your father is.”
“You were right to leave Providence,” Peter says. “You should have stayed away. And you should stay out of this.”
“Perhaps your father would be more comfortable in Pelican Bay,” Madeleine says. “Twenty-three hours a day in solitary and no pretty little Puerto Rican maricóns satisfying his baser desires. If I make one call to a certain federal judge . . .”
“You know,” Peter says, “whether a whore blows a guy for a dime bag or a million dollars, she’s still a whore.”
“But she’s a whore with a million dollars,” Madeleine says. “I happen to have a lot more. Take me on, Mr. Moretti, I’ll string your balls on a necklace and wear it around town.”
A few mornings later Danny gets into a fight with Terri when he finds out that Madeleine paid their month’s rent and bought groceries.
“What am I supposed to do, Danny?” Terri asks, in tears because he yelled at her and she was so stressed out about his shooting anyway. “You’re not working and the bills still come.”
Even though he’s run out of sick days, they’re still punching him in down on the docks. But money is tight. Regardless, the thought of his mother putting food on his table makes him furious. “You do not take her fucking money, Terri.”
Terri throws up her hands and looks at him, mouth agape, like Who the hell do you think is paying for this room? Danny doesn’t have an answer—he’s aware of his hypocrisy.
All the more so when Rosen says that the best thing for Danny is six weeks at a special rehab facility up in Massachusetts. Which costs about what it sounds like. Danny’s insurance with the union is pretty good, but it ain’t private-out-of-state-facility good, it’s local-outpatient-clinic good.
“Is there that big a difference?” Danny asks him.
“The difference is a cane,” Rosen says. “The local place gets you the next thirty years on a cane, the private place gets you the next thirty without one.”
Madeleine insists on springing for the private clinic.
“Money is not my problem in life,” she tells Danny.
“No? What is your problem in life?”
“Right now, you are. You’re my son acting like my child.”
Terri tells him pretty much the same thing.
“Think about me,” she says. “Maybe I’d rather have a husband who doesn’t need to set down his cane to pick up his baby? Maybe I’d still like to get laid every once in a while—”
“Terri—”
“They’re nurses, Danny,” she says, “they’ve heard ‘laid.’ How about I’d like to take long walks on the beach with you, maybe get on a bicycle, ride around Block Island or something? Maybe I’d like to dance with you again. You don’t let your mother do this for you—for us—I’m done with you. My hand to God, pregnant and all, I’ll leave you. You can be a bitter, lonely old man like your father.”