Dark City Lights: New York Stories by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941110225
Publisher: Three Rooms Press
Published: 2015-04-27T21:00:00+00:00

OLD HANDS

BY ERIN MITCHELL

“You have an old soul.”

“I’m not sure about that, but I definitely have old hands.”

LUNCH IS ALWAYS INTERESTING. I sit on the same bench in a relatively quiet corner of Central Park most days with a book and my sandwich because I have to get out of the store, away from the squawking, yipping, mewling … not to mention the smells. I must look approachable, because usually at least one of the homeless men wandering by will have a pithy comment or three. I’ve gotten good at responses that are dismissive without being rude. The Soul Man, for example, had no comeback for my hands retort, and shuffled off muttering about pigeons.

This isn’t where I intended to be. Killing a person has a funny way of getting your life off-track.

Don’t misunderstand … I’m not a glamorous or interesting hitwoman. I have no idea how a silencer works, wouldn’t know how to buy a gun if my life depended on it, and I don’t collect stamps. I’m kind of dowdy; my most attractive feature, my Dublin accent, is fading fast into a typical New York twang. I’ve spent my entire life taking directions from those in positions more powerful than my own.

I was a nurse. Technically, I still am; my license is good for life, and my registration has another year before it expires. But I hadn’t deliberately chosen nursing so much as I’d fallen into it by default, and my illustrious career ended when Mr. Richards took his last breath. I gave him the right painkiller—but the wrong dose. I had glanced at the chart, filled the syringe, and with all the efficiency in the world, depressed the plunger into his IV. He was dead within minutes.

There was a morbidity and mortality conference, of course. The resident gave his presentation, after which it was abundantly clear that the mistake was mine. The order was correct, but I had misread it. When I met with the HR woman who was trying just a little bit too hard, she explained that I would get a reprimand. The Incident would be recorded in My File.

“But given that you’ve never had something like this happen before, we don’t see the need to take any further action.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You seem surprised.”

“I am. I mean, I expected to be fired. I should be fired.”

“We don’t see it that way.”

“I was negligent. A man died. It was my fault. How else is there to see it?”

“These situations are always difficult. We have a counselor we’d recommend you talk to.”

Instead of making an appointment with the counselor, I used the typewriter at the nurses’ station to prepare my resignation—it only took a few minutes thanks to typing skills courtesy Sister Lamb at St Mary’s Holy Faith—and slipped it under HR’s door before leaving that night.

I grabbed a newspaper on the way home and saw a help-wanted ad for a small pet store on West Seventy-first. I figured I could handle furry and scaled creatures. The owner

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