His heart nagged at him,Get up, get up, get up, but he couldn’t.
A shadow passed overhead, and he thought,Wow, death really does have a flair for the dramatic, but then a bony hand grabbed his shoulder, and rolled him onto his back, and Kenzo looked up and saw Arthur Fletch’s infamous red hat.
Hah, he thought bleakly.Called it.
But then the man knelt, and the face drew closer, revealing different angles, and more wrinkles than Kenzo remembered from Fletch’s last author photo, and when he spoke, the voice that came out wasn’t the bland midwestern drawl Fletch was known for but a thick Scottish brogue.
“Och, what happened tae ye?” And since it was a question, Kenzo tried to speak, but he managed only a wheeze and a groan before the man patted his shoulder. “Haud yer wheesht, son. And whit are ye planning on doing with that brolly? Nae the smartest weapon.”
Kenzo didn’t have a clue what a brolly was, but he assumed it must be the umbrella, since that’s all he was holding. He dropped it, still trying to figure out the meaning ofwheesht, as the man looped an arm under his bloody shirt and helped him to his feet. A fresh swell of pain made him realize he wasn’t quite as close to death as he first thought.
“Bleeding,” he said, as if that wasn’t obvious.
“Aye, I can see that, right enough,” said the man, shouldering most of his weight as he steered Kenzo, not back toward the steps, but down a narrow path, away from the House That Petrarch Built.
Kenzo’s vision blurred, his memory dipping, minutes chewed up and swallowed by the fog of blood loss, and when his senses staggered back, he was in a small cottage. A single stone room, with a bed in one corner and a stove hugging the other, a narrow table halfway between, where Kenzo was leaning, to keep from falling over.
The whole thing had taken on a dreamy haze. The man swam somewhere at the edge of Kenzo’s sight, but he thought it must be some kind of figment, a ghost, even though he had never believed in spirits. He was a skeptic against his own wishes—hewantedto believe, had spent nights in haunted houses in Savannah, gone to grave sites in Paris, even a séance in New Orleans, hoping to be convinced. But the world was just the world.
And it was scary enough.
He heard the crackle of radio static and realized that the man, whoever he was, was calling for help. And for the first time, he wondered if he’d actually get out of this alive.
But a body only had so much blood to lose, and he was still losing.
The man drifted back into focus.
“Who are you?” asked Kenzo. “And why are you wearing Fletch’s hat?”
“Name’s Angus,” said the man. “And it’smahhat. Arthur liked tae mooch it from time tae time. Fer photos an that. Said it had an air of authenticity, whatever that’s supposed tae mean.” The man lifted a cup to Kenzo’s lips. Kenzo took a long swallow, expecting water, only to discover it was Scotch. He coughed, which sent a fresh wave of agony through his ruined stomach.
“Ah ken,” said Angus, holding him upright, “it’s rough, but trust me, it’ll help.”
With that, Kenzo saw what was in his other hand. A needle and what looked like fishing line. Nausea rolled through him at the sight.
“Need tae sew you up,” said the man, “tae stop the blood.”
Kenzo downed the rest of the Scotch and held the cup out with shaking, bloodstained hands. The man smiled and filled it again.
And then he got to work.
“Now,” said Angus, right before the needle sank in, and Kenzo’s vision dappled, black and white. “Why dinnae ye tell me who stuck ye?”
“Long—story,” hissed Kenzo, clutching the cup so hard it would have broken if it were anything but clay.
“Ah’ve time,” said Angus with a crooked grin. So Kenzo told him. Talked, to keep from screaming as the old man sewed up his back, told the whole weird tale of it, NDAs be damned. It felt like such a long story, but somehow he reached the end by the time Angus came around to look at the hole in his front.
The old man stopped to refill the cup a third time before making him lean back and peeling the sodden cloth from his stomach.
“Have you—been here—the whole time?” asked Kenzo.
“Aye,” he said. “An’ then some.”
Maybe it was just because Kenzo could see what he was about to do, could see the blood-slicked needle, the too-thick thread, but he felt the room dip and pitch, felt his heart lurch, felt whatever tattered fragments were left of his courage giving way.
But then Angus started talking.
It could have been an act of kindness, giving Kenzo something else to focus on, or the old man might have just needed to get it out, and Kenzo was there to listen. Either way, Angus spoke, and it was funny, but Kenzo swore that the longer he listened, the more he started to understand the rolling rhythm of the man’s voice. It was like a current, something you either fought against or let wash over you. And Kenzo didn’t have a whole lot of fight left, so he listened.
