Authors: Wil Mara
The woman standing behind him was Katie Milligan, a plain and wholly unattractive thirty-four-year-old who’d held the same clerical position in the town’s public works department since her first summer following high school. She opened her tiny purse and took out a tissue as soon as she realized Easton was the same man who’d been hacking his lungs out when they were in the medicine aisle together. She covered her nose and mouth and took a step back when Easton sneezed mightily and caught only part of it in his hands. His eyes were red and watery, his skin pale. She agreed with the cashier that he needed to see someone, but she didn’t inject this into the conversation. As a general rule, she did not enter conversations unnecessarily. She lived alone with a tankful of tropical fish and a hundred old books, and that was just fine with her.
She watched in horror as Easton, finished with his transaction, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his lumberjack’s coat. It left a shimmering string of snot in its wake, which he seemed not to notice.
As he passed through the automatic doors, he looked down at his change. This was a lifelong habit.
Count your change, always
. The medicine rang up at $6.53 (which he thought was a rip-off), and he’d paid with a ten. So he should have $3.47 left.
He was fingering through the coins when the punch came. Not a real one, for there was nobody within twenty feet of him. But it felt real enough—like the boxer’s fist in the center of his gut. The money tumbled from his hand, the bills fluttering down and the coins bouncing everywhere. He wrenched out a terrible sound and staggered to the nearest car to steady himself. His mind swirled; his breathing became heavy.
When the second punch arrived, he fell to the ground in a heap. With his hands pressed against his stomach and his dignity stripped away, he rolled around on the blacktop groaning. Several people came rushing over, asking if he was okay. He wanted to say
Do I look okay?
but couldn’t summon the breath. The third and fourth shots weren’t so bad, but they furthered the humiliation by causing him to urinate in his pants. A small crowd had gathered now, and several were on their cell phones calling for an ambulance.
A message flashed through Bob Easton’s brain:
This isn’t a cold. This is something else
.
DAY 3
If the management at Bally’s Hotel and Casino had a way of checking, they likely would’ve been puzzled by the fact that each of its 345 guest rooms had its thermostat set between 70 and 78 degrees F—except for the one on the seventeenth floor that was occupied by Ms. Doris Whittenhauer, supermarket checkout clerk from Ramsey, New Jersey. By 4:30
A.M.
, with the air conditioner blowing at maximum for the third straight hour, the temperature had fallen to 62 degrees F. The heavy gold curtains had been pulled shut, eclipsing a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, the only illumination came from two night-lights Doris brought along—one in the bedroom and one in the bathroom. She always took night-lights with her when she went on her regular trips to Atlantic City.
She sat motionless and naked in the tub, which was filled to the edge with water chilled by the ice cubes she’d requested from room service. Two champagne buckets stood dripping in their tripods outside the doorway. The woman who answered the phone when Doris called the second time said, “Didn’t we just send one?” Doris didn’t reply; she just hung up. When the knock came at the door, she said to leave it out there, she’d get it in a minute. Then her trembling hands reached out and grabbed it—hands that barely looked human anymore.
It began Tuesday morning, about twenty-four hours after the encounter with Easton. At the age of fifty-two, Doris knew her body well enough—the sudden drop in strength meant an illness was coming on. (She always imagined a pressure gauge with its needle moving slowly to the left.) But the trip to AC was already set in stone. She’d received a postcard from Jennifer, her personal casino hostess, more than a month ago. It said a comp room was ready whenever she wanted it. She started going down there with her ex, Alan, back in ’96 when they were still trying to keep the marriage afloat. As it turned out, he had not one but two girlfriends tucked away in the area—the first at Caesars and the second at the Taj. The final straw for Doris was when the Taj bimbo showed up at Bally’s one evening and demanded to know who she was. Alan managed to talk his way out of it, and Doris let him. It was over anyway.
In spite of the soap opera, she made some friends at Bally’s and, truth be known, liked coming down from time to time. It was a quick and inexpensive way to escape the routine and recharge the batteries. Alan did the right thing after the divorce and disappeared, moving to Texas to live with a brother. She never heard from him again, which was great. As the years passed, Doris went from a Gold Club member to Platinum, and then Diamond. That meant free rooms, food, and booze, as well as the end of having to wait on line for anything. The staff treated her like the Queen of Sheba, quite a respite from the grind at the supermarket.
She hadn’t been down in almost three months. She wasn’t a big fan of the shore between Memorial and Labor Day. The casinos were elbow to elbow with every obnoxious out-of-towner. The best time to go, she had learned, was in May or September—warm enough to stroll the boardwalk and breathe the sea air, but still far outside the nightmare of tourist season.
Jennifer booked her a deluxe suite this time—wide-screen plasma TV, a smaller one set into the bathroom mirror, art deco accents, everything granite and walnut.… Gaudy, but she liked it. She also had over four hundred dollars in comp money. Her plan was to spend two days courtesy of the house, playing the slots and maybe a little blackjack, getting a twenty-four-ounce porterhouse at the Reserve (her favorite), and, hopefully, seeing the girls—Susie from Manahawkin, Alexandra from Margate, and Lynn from Smithville. She didn’t have their phone numbers or email addresses, didn’t even know their last names. But they were part of the fabric of her Atlantic City world, and she found comfort in their company.
She realized an illness was on the way as she was setting the last of her things into her suitcase. She immediately connected it with Easton and cursed him out loud.
Probably the damn flu,
she thought.
So much for the guy who never gets sick
. Well, flu or not, she was going down there. She’d been looking forward to it and badly needed the break—three twelve-hour shifts in the last week alone, plus her boss, the twenty-eight-year-old manager of the store who had been there for only half a year but had the unbeatable qualification of being the owner’s son-in-law, had been an even bigger jerk lately than he usually was. The idea of sitting home with an ice pack on her head watching reruns of
M*A*S*H
was out of the question. Besides, she hated having plans ruined at the last minute. She’d have to be in the hospital on her way to emergency surgery before she let go of this trip.
She locked the door of her apartment just after eight thirty that morning, stuffy and light-headed. The drive would take about two and a half hours, the great bulk of which would be spent on the Garden State Parkway. She brought along two different meds from the bathroom cabinet, plus a box of tissues for the passenger seat of her faithful ’06 Toyota Corolla. She listened to Elvis and Everly Brothers CDs on the first half of the journey, singing along in her soft, passable alto. When the fever, chills, and sweating started, however, she got on the cell phone with her sister, Rita, in western Pennsylvania and cursed every breath that kept Bob Easton alive. She had no way of knowing he was already dead.
By the time she pulled into the valet area, the aches had set in. They weren’t so bad in her knees or neck, but the one in her lower back was torturous. She received a jolt every time she moved, like a poke from an electric prod. When she finally got out of the car, she had to muster all her strength to keep from crying out. She was more than happy to let someone else carry her suitcase to her room this time—it was worth every penny of the two-buck tip.
She tried unsuccessfully to unpack, took two Sudafed tablets, then went down to the casino floor. She found one of her favorite video poker machines—Ultimate 4 of a Kind Bonus Poker—and sat down reverently before it. She lit a cigarette, inserted her comp card, and asked a waitress for a gin and tonic. A few of those, she figured, and the cold would disappear. She didn’t see Susie or Alex or Lynn, but one of them would show up eventually. She made the maximum bet on her first spin, won double in return, and immediately felt better. She was in business.
The coughing and sneezing started about a half hour later. The cough wasn’t unusual; most of the people in the aisle had a nasty hack from years of smoking and boozing. But the sneezing made her stand out. By late afternoon they were coming every few minutes. One rose so quickly that she sprayed the machine glass with it. She still had some tissues from the car, but they didn’t last long. The waitress brought a pile of napkins, then another. Everyone within earshot identified her as the sick lady who should’ve stayed home. She received two scoldings for being so inconsiderate, as if Atlantic City were a bastion of class and civility.
Six o’clock was supposed to be dinnertime: her much-anticipated visit to the Reserve. But she didn’t feel up to it now—all she wanted to do was take more Sudafed and lie down. The pain in her back had grown roots, forcing her to take baby steps to the elevator. Alexandra was sitting at a blackjack table, but Doris pretended not to see her.
She ordered room service—hamburger and fries—but ate very little. She forced down a few bites because she figured her body needed some kind of nutrition. Then she lay on the bed and closed her eyes. The curtains were open, the last shreds of daylight fading fast. The clock on the nightstand read 7:32, and she was soon asleep.
She was jarred awake three hours later by a rumbling in her stomach, followed by a hot rising in her throat. She rolled quickly and vomited over the edge. It came out in two gushes, and the wet slapping sound made her guts tighten. Residual particles felt like cigarette embers on her tongue. She tried spitting them out, then raked them off with her fingernails.
She fell back on the pillows and collected her thoughts.
I’m in Atlantic City, at Bally’s … Room 1733.… I’ve been looking forward to this trip for weeks.
She saw her cell phone on the small circular table by the window and wondered if she should call her sister.
Maybe …
She put a hand to her forehead—it was filmy with perspiration and burning hot.
The odor from the vomit began drifting up. She covered her nose and turned away. Her breathing was heavy now, heart pounding.
I need to take more Sudafed
.
As she got to her feet, the first cramp struck her lower abdomen like the head of a sledgehammer. She yelped and went down, her knees on the floor while her upper body slumped across the second bed. Another blow followed, more vicious than the first, and she spilled onto the floor. Tears began flowing as she pressed hard against her stomach to dampen the pain. She curled into a fetal position and rolled onto her back. A guttural scream came to the surface with such force and clarity that it surprised her. Then a series of stuttering moans as the pain finally began to fade.
She turned over and got onto all fours. Sweat collected in the center of her forehead and fell away in large drops, making
pat
sounds when they hit the carpet. She got to her feet and went to the bathroom, where the Sudafed box stood on the vanity. She ripped out another pill and sloppily filled a glass with water, knocking it back with an alcoholic’s greediness.
Even in the dim glow of the night-light, the image in the mirror halted her. Her face was bright red and slightly swollen; it almost looked like someone else. The glass fell from her hand and clattered on the marble, miraculously remaining unbroken, as she covered her mouth and began sobbing.
She fled back to the bedroom and called her sister on the cell phone. The conversation was brief and hysterical. Doris, whose memory was mythic among her friends and family, reported every detail. Rita listened patiently, then told her to stay calm; she was getting dressed and driving out to get her. Meanwhile, Rita suggested, she should try to get some more sleep. Doris followed this advice after pulling the curtains shut, covering the vomit with a white towel, and turning on the air conditioner—the latter because she was suddenly feeling unusually warm. Then she stripped down to her bra and panties, crawled into the second bed, and cried until she slipped away.
She woke again at exactly 4:22. It was the itching that did it this time, first on her arms and legs, then her cheeks. It worsened as her senses defrosted—became maddening, really. She scratched the back of her left calf with the big toenail of her right foot. Then along her right forearm with her left hand. And then the right hand went to her right cheek. It became a bizarre, almost comical symphony of choreographed movements. Soon it was everywhere—behind her neck, along her sides, and around her still-sore abdomen. While each scratch temporarily reduced the itch, it also increased the heat under her skin, like she was triggering little fires everywhere. When she realized how far the temperature had dropped in the room, she threw the covers off. She generally disliked the cold, but now she was grateful for it.
The odor filled her nostrils again, which was puzzling.
How could it still be that bad?
When she realized her fingers were wet and sticky, the answer to the mystery zoomed into her head like a missile—
Oh no …
She groped for the light and looked down. What she saw was so surreal it made her light-headed. They weren’t just blisters rising from her body; they were tiny
balloons
. Many were deflated, broken by her fingernails, and leaking a wheat-colored pus with wispy streams of scarlet.
Oh my God.
She got to her feet, trembling uncontrollably, and went into the bathroom. She was about to turn on the overhead light, then decided against it. The night-light would be enough.
I don’t want to see it that well
. As a fresh round of tears began rolling down her cheeks, she stepped in front of the mirror.