“McDonald’s French fries,” she had told him first thing that morning, as soon as they had managed to get rid of the nurse. “Just like in Paris.”
It was true. The only thing Karla had wanted to eat in Paris was McDonald’s French fries. Evan would make reservations at fancy restaurants, even at the Brasserie Lipp, and Karla would pick at her food until she could get McDonald’s French fries. If they had had McDonald’s restaurants in war zones, Karla might never have come out to visit civilization. Still, Evan thought, it couldn’t be right to feed her McDonald’s French fries when she had just come out of a coma. He wished he knew more about comas. He wished he had spent the last few days at the library, reading up on comas, instead of sitting here doing—what? Worrying?
“McDonald’s isn’t even making French fries this early in the morning,” Evan told her. “They don’t start making lunch until eleven o’clock. Would you want one of those hash brown potato things?”
“No,” Karla had said. “God no. French fries.”
“Okay. But—”
“I know,” Karla had said. “I’ll wait. Do me another favor. Go out and get me some papers.”
“And leave you alone?”
“Well, Evan, you can’t very well run errands for me if you aren’t willing to leave me alone.”
“I know,” Evan said. “But you were the one who said you were worried about, you know, a recurrence of what happened—”
“If anybody knew I was awake. Yes, Evan, I know. But nobody does know I’m awake. Except you. Unless you told somebody.”
“Me? No. Of course I didn’t tell anybody.”
“Good. Then go out and get me the papers and come back with them and then do something about the French fries. God, but I’m hungry. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry. Have you ever been to Morocco?”
“No,” Evan said.
“I think that’s where we’re going to go when we get out of here,” Karla said. “It’s the only place in the world where they’ve got something I like as much as McDonald’s French fries. You can go to these little places in the old city of Tangier and eat appetizers for hours. And drink wine. You don’t know what I would give right now for an enormous bottle of wine.”
“You don’t drink,” Evan said. “I’ve never seen you drink.”
“You’re right. I don’t drink. But something like this calls for it. Do you know that I’ve been in six civil wars and never been hurt once?”
“Is it six?” Evan asked.
“And here I am, back in Philadelphia, and what happens? And all because of Patsy MacLaren, for God’s sake. I think she’s crazy, Evan.”
“Who?” Evan said.
Karla lay down flat in the bed and closed her eyes. “I think I’m going to pretend to go to sleep now. I might even sleep. Go get me the papers.”
“If you really do go to sleep and something startles you, you’re going to get found out,” Evan said.
But Karla was asleep again, already. It was one of the ways Evan could tell that she was still in very bad shape. One minute she would be sitting up, bright-eyed and energetic. The next minute her eyes would be closed and she would be out, just gone, lost to the world. There were big dark circles under her eyes too, and her skin was too white. Evan thought that as soon as she ate those French fries, she was going to heave them right back up again, but he also thought it was useless to argue with a woman who could fall fast asleep in the middle of your peroration.
Now it was eleven o’clock, hours later, and Evan was back. He had the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Star and all three New York papers spread out across the foot of Karla’s bed. He had the door to Karla’s room firmly shut, but not locked, because there was no way to lock the room doors on this floor from the inside. This was, after all, supposed to be an adjunct to the intensive care unit. Karla was sitting up in bed, sucking on long strands of French fries as she went through one paper after the other. Evan had gotten the French fries by pleading with a motherly-looking woman who served as day manager for the McDonald’s in Liberty Square. He had had to give Karla an imaginary baby that he was the imaginary father of, but he had done what he set out to do, and that was the main thing. That, Evan Walsh thought, was the entire point of his life.
Outside, the promise of a storm had turned into a real one, thunder and lightning, wind and darkness. The hospital room was air-conditioned, so the window was shut, but the shade was up. It could have been the middle of the night out there. Evan wouldn’t have believed that there were so many trees in the middle of Philadelphia. He’d never noticed them until they started blowing around like that.