The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘Is your wife a blond-haired woman?’ She puffs the words. ‘A blond-haired woman wearing sneakers?’ Her face shines with sweat.

‘Yes. She wanted a ball for our niece.’

‘Well, something’s wrong with her. She fell down. She’s unconscious. Mr Ghosh says he thinks she might have had a heart attack. He called nine-one-one. You better come.’

Ray locks the car and follows her into the store. It’s cold inside after the car. Mary is lying on the floor with her legs spread and her arms at her sides. She’s next to a wire cylinder full of kickballs. The sign over the wire cylinder says HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME. Her eyes are closed. She might be sleeping there on the linoleum floor. Three people are standing over her. One is a dark-skinned man in khaki pants and a white shirt. A nametag on the pocket of his shirt says MR. GHOSH MANAGER. The other two are customers. One is a thin old man without much hair. He’s in his seventies at least. The other is a fat woman. She’s fatter than Mary. Fatter than the girl in the blue smock, too. Ray thinks by rights she’s the one who should be lying out on the floor.

‘Sir, are you this lady’s husband?’ Mr Ghosh asks.

‘Yes,’ Ray says. That doesn’t seem to be enough. ‘I sure am.’

‘I am sorry to say but I think she might be dead,’ Mr Ghosh says. ‘I gave the artificial respiration and the mouth-to-mouth, but …’ He shrugs.

Ray thinks of the dark-skinned man putting his mouth on Mary’s. Frenching her, sort of. Breathing down her throat right next to the wire cylinder full of plastic kickballs. Then he kneels down.

‘Mary,’ he says. ‘Mary!’ Like trying to wake her up after a hard night.

She doesn’t appear to be breathing, but you can’t always tell. He puts his ear by her mouth and hears nothing. He feels air moving on his skin, but that’s probably just the air conditioning.

‘This gentleman called nine-one-one,’ the fat woman says. She’s holding a bag of Bugles.

‘Mary!’ Ray says. Louder this time, but he can’t quite bring himself to shout, not down on his knees with people standing around, one of them a dark-skinned man. He looks up and says, apologetically, ‘She never gets sick. She’s healthy as a horse.’

‘You never know,’ the old man says. He shakes his head.

‘She just fell down,’ says the young woman in the blue smock. ‘Didn’t say a word.’

‘Did she grab her chest?’ asks the fat woman with the Bugles.

‘I don’t know,’ the young woman says. ‘I guess not. Not that I saw. She just fell down.’

There’s a rack of souvenir tee-shirts near the kickballs. They say things like MY PARENTS WERE TREATED LIKE ROYALTY IN CASTLE ROCK AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TEE-SHIRT. Mr Ghosh takes one and says, ‘Would you like me to cover her face, sir?’

‘God, no!’ Ray says, startled. ‘She might only be unconscious. We’re not doctors.’ Past Mr Ghosh, he sees three kids, teenagers, looking in the window. One of them is taking pictures with his cell phone.

Mr Ghosh looks where Ray’s looking and rushes at the door, flapping his hands. ‘You kids get out of here! You kids get out!’

Laughing, the teenagers shuffle backwards, then turn and jog past the gas pumps to the sidewalk. Beyond them, the nearly deserted downtown shimmers. A car goes by pulsing rap. To Ray the bass sounds like Mary’s stolen heartbeat.

‘Where’s the ambulance?’ the old man says. ‘How come it’s not here yet?’

Ray kneels by his wife while the time goes by. His back hurts and his knees hurt, but if he gets up, he’ll look like a spectator.

The ambulance turns out to be a Chevy Suburban painted white with orange stripes. The red jackpot lights are flashing. CASTLE COUNTY RESCUE is printed across the front, only backwards. So you can read it in your rearview mirror. Ray thinks that’s pretty clever.

The two men who come in are dressed in white. They look like waiters. One pushes an oxygen tank on a dolly. It’s a green tank with an American flag decal on it.

‘Sorry,’ this one says. ‘Just cleared a car accident over in Oxford.’

The other one sees Mary lying on the floor, legs spread, hands to her sides. ‘Aw, gee,’ he says. Ray can’t believe it.

‘Is she still alive?’ he asks. ‘Is she just unconscious? If she is, you better give her oxygen or she’ll have brain damage.’

Mr Ghosh shakes his head. The young woman in the blue smock starts to cry. Ray wants to ask her what she’s crying about, then knows. She has made up a whole story about him from what he just said. Why, if he came back in a week or so and played his cards right, she might toss him a mercy fuck. Not that he would, but he sees that maybe he could. If he wanted to.