There is a remnant of cool left to him. It’s in the way he combs his gray hair back with a little wave at the top. It’s in his gold neck-chains and the way he lights his Camel straights: one-handed, with an ornate Zippo lighter. He has a distinctive, slightly sinister accent, a mix of South Boston and Brooklyn, acquired in the years he spent in the army.
He doesn’t even know the nurse’s name. But she knows his.
At the veteran’s hospital the nurses smoke where the patients smoke, in a little room near the front entrance. There are a couple of round tables, some molded plastic chairs, a coffee machine, a gummy deck of cards, a television bolted high up on the wall, a cribbage board, and a few tattered copies of Legion magazine. But no one plays cards or cribbage, and the television, usually tuned to the History Channel, seems to be there mostly for ambience, often serving up the familiar sounds of war.
