It wasn't until quitting time that Nolan found the courage to ask Samuel about the girl. They were standing in the hospital parking lot with the other day laborers. When it was his turn, Nolan accepted his food sack and barter slips, taking care to fold the delicate paper into his britches. His slips might not smell like roses when he went to use them, but if he was jumped maybe they wouldn’t be found.
Outside the gate, he stepped to the side and waited. His dah would be expecting him, but what he'd seen today was eating him like a cancer. If he didn't get to the bottom of things, he’d never sleep, much less step foot into the Plan B room again.
Samuel came limping out minutes later, already biting into his apple. Samuel tucked the barter slips in his pocket, pulled out a serrated knife and took off toward the lights and sounds of the bazaar.
Nolan galloped after his supervisor. “Samu—”
The old man whirled with such speed Nolan almost lost fingers, the blade slicing inches from his hand. Samuel's ferocious look fell away as he saw Nolan cowering before him.
“Boy!” Samuel said, dropping his blade. “I nearly cut off your dome. What're you doing running up on me when I got barter slips in my pocket?”
“Sorry,” he said again. “Had something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Now?” Annoyance crept onto Samuel's face. He adjusted his tan eye patch and sighed. “Couldn't it wait 'til morning? It's payday, son.”
Nolan nodded. “It's just”—he lowered his voice—“I can't ask you in the hospital.”
Samuel's face tightened and he scanned the crowd streaming toward the bazaar. Sucking in his paunch belly, he leaned close to Nolan. “Anything you need to say to me out here is probably best left unsaid,” he whispered.
Nolan furrowed his brow. “I can't.” He felt that swelling in his stomach again as he thought of the girl. He remembered her pink lips tightening. What if she was aware? What if she knew what was happening to her? He locked eyes with Samuel. “I need to know.”
Samuel harrumphed, pushing air through his nose. He swiveled toward the bazaar. “Better walk fast if you're gonna keep up with me.”
They cut through the crowd streaming toward the center of town. Torches lit the way, smelling of burnt oil and throwing jittery shadows across the landscape. The air was full of drums and guitar and the calling voices of women. Whores past breeding age beckoned from tents, their lips rogued and their skirts high. Mounds of soft, pale flesh curved out of tight bustiers. Twanging guitar floated out of a make-shift shack, while men's voices sang a drunken refrain. Nolan had never been allowed to go to the late night bazaar and guilt followed him as he clomped after Samuel. His poor dah was lying in bed, coughing, while he attended this display of sex and food and drink. And yet the music and the flickering firelight was intoxicating. His heartbeat pounded along with the taut bongos, their tat-ta-ta-tat-tat filling the air. Nolan veered closer to a stand wafting the aroma of roast meat. A hand seized his arm.
Samuel's one-eyed glare met him. His supervisor drew him close. “You ever been to the night bazaar?”
Nolan shook his head. Samuel's grip was a vice. The boy tried to pull away. Samuel tugged him closer. The firelight danced over the old man's wrinkled features. “You wanna live this night 'til the morn?”
Nolan nodded numbly. This was a mistake. He should be home with his dah, and yet, he needed to know.
“Then you stick to my heel like a well-trained mutt or you'll be dead 'fore sun up. Get me?” Samuel let go of Nolan's arm.
Nolan rubbed his bicep, feeling like a spanked toddler. “I get you.”
Samuel adjusted his eye patch and strode back through the throng of men. Nolan followed.
A few minutes later he found himself at an apothe's stand, far from the main thoroughfare of drinking and womanizing. At least it was quieter here. Nolan's head was thick from all he'd seen and heard. He wanted to go home, but now he had no idea what direction his home was. He pressed after Samuel into the apothe's lean-to, wishing he had gone when he had the chance.
“Sammy!” the tall, long-haired apothe said when they walked in. Stooping under his low-ceiling lean-to, the apothe hugged Samuel with one arm. “How's the Breeders, our last beacon of hope and wonder?” The apothe made a mock serious face, puckering his mouth and lidding his eyes as if he were at worship. Then he guffawed, a sound both too loud and too abrasive for the late hour. “Dr. V put you out to pasture yet?”
Samuel cracked a smile for the first time. “Dr. V wouldn't know what to do with her shit if she fired me. Though Nolan here” —he said, turning, snagging Nolan and drawing him forward— “he'd probably pick up where I left off. Good at cleaning shit, this lad is.” Samuel smiled at him. Nolan nodded awkwardly.
“Well, Dr. D has got what you need right here,” the apothe said pointing to his chest. He reached behind him to racks stuffed with pots, baggies and dried plants hanging by stems. Nolan noted a very old shotgun tucked behind the counter, illegal and very necessary in this man's line of work. Dr. D came out with a paper bundle and handed it to Samuel.
His supervisor turned over most of his barter slips without batting an eye. Nolan hadn’t seen someone pay that much for one product in all his days of bartering. What, in God’s name, was in that bundle?
“Always a pleasure,” Samuel said, tucking the package under his shirt. He tapped his head with two fingers in a sign of parting and turned to leave.
“Wait,” Nolan said, staring into the apothe's half-lidded eyes. “You have anything for wet-lung?” He drew out his barter slips. “I can pay.”
The sad shake of the apothe's head dropped Nolan's stomach. “Wish I could take your money, sonny, but there ain't nothing can cure wet-lung.” He turned away from Nolan's outstretched barter slips. “Sorry.”