Do you see the slug?" "YesYou must have been...
Do you see the slug?"
"YesYou must have been holding the gun I
held up my hand, tilting the finger at a pretty
severe downward angle
427
"That's about rightAnd it had to've been a
partial misfireThere was enough bang to drive it
through my skull-case and deflect the bullet
downward at an even steeper angleIt burrowed
into my brain and came to restBut before it did,
it created a kind of
"Bow-wave?"
His eyes lit up"Exactly! Only the texture of
brain-matter is more like calves' liver than
waterWireman can be eloquent, he admits it
The slug created a downward bow-wave that caused
edema and cartier replica watch ladies santos 100 steel pressure on the optic chiasmThat's the
brain's visual switching-pointAre you getting
the richness of this? I shot myself in the temple
and not only did I end up still alive, I ended up
with the bullet causing problems in the equipment
located back here He tapped the ridge of bone
above his right ear"And the problems are getting
worse because the slug's movingIt's at least a
quarter-inch deeper in than two years agoI didn't need Hadlock or Principe
428
to give me that information; I can see it in these
pictures for myself
"So let them operate on you, Wireman, and take it
outJack and I will omega planet ocean watches make sure Elizabeth's okay
until you're back on your He was shaking his
head"No? Why no?"
"It's too deep for surgery, amigoThat's why I
didn't let them admit meDid you think it was
because I've got a Marlboro Man complex? No way
My days of wanting to be dead are overI still
miss my wife and my daughter, but now I've got
Miss Eastlake to take care of, and I've come to
love the KeyAnd there's you, EdgarI want to
know how your story comes outDo I regret what I
did? Sometimes sí, sometimes noWhen it's sí, I
remind myself I wasn't the same man then that I am
now, and that I have to cut the old me chanel cabas bag some slack
That man was so hurt and lost he really wasn't
responsibleThis is my other life, and I try to
look at my problems in it as
"Wireman, that's bizarre
"Is it? Think of your own situation
429
I thought of my situationI was a man who had
choked his own wife and then forgot about itA
man who now slept with a doll in the other half of
the bedI decided to keep my opinions to myselfPrincipe only wants to admit me because I'm
an interesting case
"You don't know that
"But I do!" Wireman spoke with suppressed passion
"I've met at least four Principes since I did this
to myselfThey're balenciaga replicas handbags terrifyingly similar: brilliant
but disassociative, incapable of empathy, really
only one or two doors down from the sociopaths
John DMacDonald used to write aboutPrincipe
can't operate on me any more than he could on a
patient who presents with a malignant tumor in
that same locationWith a tumor they could at
least try radiationA lead slug isn't amenable to
thatPrincipe knows it, but he's fascinatedAnd
sees nothing wrong with giving me a little false
hope if it'll get me in a hospital bed where he
can ask me if it hurts when he doesAnd
later, when I'm dead, perhaps there'd be a paper
in it for chanel red black handbag