She takes another swallow of beer, and now she’s staring at the dead TV screen, too.
“I’m not good for shit,” she says. “I haven’t been clean in over two years.”
“Yeah. I know. So does the company. They just don’t care. It just doesn’t fucking matter.”
She finishes her Natty Boh, crumples the can, and tosses it at a low heap of empties that has accumulated on the other side of the room, a lopsided aluminum talus slope.
The Signalman frowns and sighs and watches her like a disappointed parent or a heartbroken lover, and the truth is, he’s been a little of both to her. He says, “We don’t have time to dry you out. So you’ll have what you need. I’ve seen to that. You’ll have better than whatever garbage you’ve been shooting. And when it’s done, if you want rehab, you’ll get the best. And if you don’t want rehab, there’ll be no pressure, no guilt-tripping. I’ll bring you right back here and let you get on with—whatever you call this.”
She starts to reach for the cigarette she left in the ashtray, but it’s burned down to the filter. So she finds her pack of Chesterfield Reds and lights one.
“And if I say fuck off and refuse this generous offer?” she asks.
“Then they’ll hurt you, and when they’re done hurting you, they’ll still get what they want, which is something else you already know. You do not need me going into the particulars. You know the particulars. On more than one occasion, you yourself have participated in the particulars.”
“Yeah,” she says around a mouthful of smoke. She reaches down and pulls off the Band-Aid. The toenail’s missing.
“Jesus Harold Christ,” the Signalman grumbles, looking disgusted, leaning over and examining her foot. “It’s a wonder you don’t have fucking gangrene by now.”
“Shit. I don’t even remember doing that.”
“Well, maybe I don’t have time to get you clean. But I do have time to have you checked out. Get some fluids and antibiotics in you. A goddamn tetanus shot, for fuck’s sake.”
“I’m fine,” she says.
“I wasn’t asking,” he tells her. “And you’ve been chasing the dragon—and just about every other goddamn thing—so long now that I seriously I doubt you know fine from a tomcat’s asshole.”
There’s another silence then, and Ellison Nicodemo sits smoking her Chesterfield and gazing at the scabby, pulpy mess where her toenail used to be. The Signalman takes out his iPhone and sends a text. She doesn’t bother asking him what it was. He waits for the reply, then puts his phone away.
“You haven’t even told me what this is all about,” she says.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be briefed when we get where we’re going.”
“The least you could do right now—and I mean the very fucking least—is give me some sort of idea why I’m being dragged back into the fucking fray in the shape I’m in and after what happened in Atlanta. You can’t sit there and say you don’t at least owe me that courtesy.”
The words come out hard and angry and bitter, even though that hadn’t actually been her intent. She was with the company plenty long enough to understand that he’s just doing his job, same as she just did her job. Ain’t nothing personal, chica. He didn’t have to come in here and finesse the stinking junkie. He could have had her picked up and hosed off and never had to get his hands dirty. But now that’s just so much more spilled milk under the bridge, so to speak. Fuck him and fuck Albany. She just wants to fix and go back to sleep and go back to pretending that she’s never lived any other life but the slow, sloppy death she’s living now.
“All right,” he says. “Fair enough.” And the Signalman sets his beer can down on the floor, and he turns his head away, looking at the sunlight leaking in through those ugly chenille drapes, instead of looking at her. He rubs at his forehead like someone getting a headache. “You know, maybe if you had a TV that worked, or maybe the fucking internet, you wouldn’t be quite so surprised, me showing up like this. Between that cheddar-faced baboon playing president and the mess with the lunatic man-child in Pyongyang . . .” He trails off and lights another cigarette.
“But this isn’t about North Korea and it also ain’t about Trump,” she says. “Whatever this is.”
“No, it ain’t. But wouldn’t you think the world’s already got enough shit on its plate these days without the sorta shit this is about? I swear, I’d give my left nut to have Reagan back right now.”
“Fuck,” says Ellison, “I’d give your left nut to have Nixon back right now.”
“Look at you,” he laughs and glances at Ellison just long enough to spare her a half-hearted wink. “The Republican princess with the golden arm and the missing toenail. And they say the GOP has forsaken all integrity.”
“Okay, so why are you here?”
The Signalman takes a long pull on his Camel and, before he exhales, says, “Because she’s come back.” And then he puffs out a cloud of smoke to make any pint-sized dragon proud.
“Because who’s come back?” Ellison asks him, but suddenly the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck are prickling and rising to attention, good little soldiers, good as any horror novel cliché. She already knows the answer. In a bright, sick flash she realizes that she’s known it all along. Why else would Albany want her, after all this time and even in the shape she’s in? Why else would she ever matter again to anyone?
“She’s come back,” the Signalman tells Ellison again, a little more emphatically than before. “I’m here on this beautiful morning, fucking up your shit and dragging you outta dope-fiend heaven, because Jehosheba Talog’s come back.”
Ellison takes a deep breath, and she holds it a moment, like a swimmer hyperventilating, getting ready for a dive into cold water. “You’re sure?” she asks. “You’re absolutely sure it’s her?”
“Kiddo, I wouldn’t be here if we weren’t.”
“And what? They think maybe me wiping out that first time around, it was just a fluke, and, all evidence to the contrary, I’m still their ace in the hole? I’ll just blow my magic dog whistle and this time it’ll do the trick?”
“Probably something like that, I suppose. What happened in Atlanta, wipeout or not, it seems to have bought us a few years. I guess they think you might be able to buy us a few more, and that’s plenty good enough for government work. You know, it’s been an awful long time now since we’ve actually won a war. Why, buying time, that’s the new V-Day.”
Ellison coughs, then wipes her mouth and looks at the floor, at her dirty feet, at the missing toenail. “So a long shot at an extension on an overdue loan,” she says.
“Like the man said,” the Signalman tells her, “it is what it is.”
“Yeah, all right,” says Ellison Nicodemo, then stubs out her cigarette out on the edge of the Disneyland ashtray. “But I’m gonna need a few minutes.” And she thinks how amazing it is that her voice is hardly trembling at all.
The Signalman wipes at his sweaty face with the white handkerchief, then takes out the silver pocket watch he always carries, the watch that earned him his nickname many long years ago. He checks the time, then puts the watch away again.