Three

"I'm Margaret," she said, "Margaret Garfield."

"Of course you are," he replied, "Of course. How could I forget?"

But he had forgotten, and she didn't look like Margaret Garfield, not the Margaret Garfield he remembered, that face was not her face, the face he must have spent a thousand hours staring at while pretending to be paying attention to Mr. Scorpio, their eighth grade science teacher. That Margaret Garfield was the most beautiful girl in the world. How he'd dreamed about that face, dreaming while wide awake, a practice that became the source of all his later troubles in life. Does not use time wisely. Does not seem to possess the ability to focus. Reckless and careless. Not to be promoted. Not to find his place in the world. Story teller. Mischief maker. Liar. A fool.

He was a fool about Margaret Garfield and he didn't care he knew it, as long as they didn't tell HER! At thirteen, Tommy was still the shortest kid in class and the tallest kid was, you guessed it, Margaret Garfield. It seemed her long black hair was even taller than he was, and she had it all, everything a girl that age could want. She was the first to arrive at every stage of development, and the way she carried herself you would have thought she was in high school already. Rumor had it she had a boyfriend who was sixteen, but when it came to Margaret Garfield, rumor had a  lot of things. As he considered it now, rumors were all he knew about her after that one year they were in the same classroom.

"Whatever happened to you?" he mumbled.

"What are you talking about?" That would be Jimmy Blanks. "What do you mean, whatever happened to me? Is there something you don't like about me now? What a surprise! You never did give me any credit, and look who's here, look who's right by your side, who checked in on you, and brought you here, and stayed with you, and now you're giving me this? Whatever happened to what?"

The old man didn't say anything, didn't even know he'd spoken out loud. Jimmy got up and paced a bit as best he could in the crowded and hurried hallway. The whole place was lined with these portable beds that orderlies and nurses kept shoving this way and that, as patients were hustled in and out of rooms and doctors shouted orders. Jimmy had grabbed a desk chair with wheels from behind one of the nurses' stations and now that he'd jumped up and stalked about he saw that one of the nurses was eyeing the thing, so he scampered back and plopped his ass back down on it before she came and took it back.

"Whatever happened to YOU?" he grumbled, reminiscing. Uncle Tommy was one those people, the kind you could never be too sure about. Everybody thought he was a secret drunk, but Jimmy had scoured the old man's apartment more than once and never found any alcohol or even narcotics in the place. He kept to himself and in public was never known to drink or even swear too much. He always looked like he was waiting for a conversation to happen, a conversation about something interesting, but since the people he hung around were all stupid and boring it never did take place, and Tommy had to settle for small talk, gossip and idiotic opinions about unimportant things. That group of guys he stuck with, year after year and their once a week card game, Jimmy never knew what his uncle saw in them, or what they saw in him for that matter.

There was Larry Moscone, best friend since childhood, sanitation engineer par excellence. This was a guy who seemed to know all there was to know about every back alley and every lousy neighborhood across the five boroughs, though as far as Jimmy knew, he'd circled the same old route in Queens for something like forty years. It was like he'd made a study of bad things and where they'd happened, and marked his own mental map with little red squares and never forgot a thing, like he was some kind of elephant of urban crime. He also had a thing about fire hydrants, and which ones smelled like piss.

Ricky Bourbon - not his real name but who the hell knew what his real name was - was also known as The Fat Guy. Larry was Larry, but Ricky was The Fat Guy, and Ron was The Straight Man. Between The Fat Guy and The Straight Man you got to hear every freaking joke that was ever told on the Tonight Show through generations of lousy monologues. The Fat Guy, at least, was a corporate lawyer, very smart and successful in life, with three kids, all of whom went on to get doctorates in various branches of science, and The Fat Guy's wife was a member of the City Council a couple of times. You might have thought at least The Fat Guy would come up with some scrap of interesting conversation, but Tuesdays were his brain's night off from everything, and as far as Jimmy knew, Tommy never saw him on any other occasion, not even a wedding or a funeral. Tommy was just a prop in The Fat Guy's life. At least Ron was more of a friend, but Ron was the first to go, struck down by the Q32.

"Whatever happened to Ricky Bourbon?" Jimmy Blanks said to his uncle once he'd reconquered his seat and swung it around so his face was close to the old man's, but Tommy said nothing. He was flat on his back, his big old nose sticking straight up in the air and his wide open eyes were gaping up at the ceiling as if there was something to see. There wasn't. Jimmy had checked. At least the ceiling didn't seem to be as filthy as the walls.

"Don't they ever clean those walls?" he asked a passing nurse, gesturing at the line of mold that might have passed for decoration, even wainscotting in the right light. She sniffed and didn't bother to answer as she brushed by, and maybe that subtle collision between her left hip and his right shoulder was no accident.

"They want me to go," Jimmy thought. "Like I'm in their way, like I'm causing trouble for THEM! Who lost the blood samples, huh? Who had to take them again? Who's taking forever to get the results? I'm just doing the right thing here. What right have they got?"

"Whatever happened to you?" he snorted.