“Shit,” Moe said. “Starting to think a paycheck isn’t worth the torture.”
“But you’re so good at it,” Vivian had replied, as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Now Moe is doing a reverse commute on the Eisenhower Expressway on her way to Berwyn. Taibbi has been behaving, and she doesn’t have time to waste. Moe knows in her heart that Chicago’s newest hero, Calvert Greene, is not as heroic as the public has been led to believe. He may not be a killer, but he could be. She’d looked into Greene. She found an injunction issued against him by the family of his deceased wife, and a pending wrongful death lawsuit being considered by the family’s attorney. Very recently, he’d been escorted from his old apartment after the doorman at his building reported his presence. According to the daily report, he’d cooperated and no charges were filed. Moe wasn’t able to speak to cops who filed the report. She left several messages but they hadn’t responded. I would reach nirvana if I could prove the man Sophia publicly dubbed a hero is actually a serial murderer. Moe grins so wide something pops in her ear, the sound cushioned in her helmet.
Taibbi is cruising along. Moe is at one with her new bike, her body and the bike humming at the same unified frequency as they flash through traffic. I’m making good time. The lane opens ahead of her. She twists the gas and feels like she’s flying. She cranks the throttle harder. The engine hesitates and sputters. She loses speed. The back wheel fishtails. She brakes hard. The tires try to grab pavement. I’m gonna crash. She’s jarred by a wicked wobble that threatens to unseat her. She slides back on the seat and mashes her center of gravity lower. Three cars shoot past. A horn blares. Ragged desperation forces her to keep wrestling the bike for control. Taibbi slows. The tires begin tracking. She can feel the road. The engine smooths out and the shimmy subsides. She sits up straighter. “What the actual fuck,” she says inside her Vicky helmet.
She tries her hazard lights, can’t find the button on the hand control. “Screw Flat Ass Ricky,” she says with venom. “And his pathetic handshake too.”
She carefully picks her way across the lanes of traffic to take the Austin exit, drives backstreets until she finds the place. According to the website, New Horizons is a residence for people transitioning from long-term immersive therapy to independent living. When she called, she was transferred to a social worker named Abbey. Next to the main building is a doughnut shop, You Can Dough It, staffed by current and former residents. That’s where she’s supposed to rendezvous with the overly perky social worker.
“I have to say I’m not completely, like, surprised to hear from you. When I saw on the news what Professor Greene had done I felt, like, so proud. He has really come a long way! He’s a celebrity around here.” Her voice has a ragged edge like she just woke from a long sleep.
Moe’s biggest pet peeve is women who talk in passive, unprofessional ways. She’s anxious from her near-death mechanical problem, which feels like a betrayal. She’s angry. And with each “like” uttered, each vocal fried upspeak, she longs to crawl across the table and beat the stupid from this girl’s skull. Instead, she keeps her expression neutral and says, “I’m hoping to do a deeper dive into his story, share his recent challenges. It makes his accomplishments that much more remarkable, don’t you think?”
“It, like, really does.”
“May I?” Moe asks while pressing the button on her recorder. “So, you worked with him closely?” She’s determined to keep this short and move on to the next interview.
“Like, very closely. Each client has a treatment team that meets three days a week. As part of Professor Greene’s team, I made sure he got to treatment and provided transportation and basically, like, lots of support. I coordinated resources to create a smooth path to independent living. He is a remarkable case. I was, like, so lucky to work with him.”
“Because …”
“Because his condition is so rare, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yes, of course. How bad would you say his condition was when he first arrived?”
“He had, like, a serious brain injury. Normal problems for a damaged frontal lobe: memory loss, diminished language, poor decision-making—or what we call bad executive function. Sometimes people say they feel like they are losing their minds. Well, in some ways Calvert’s accident damaged his left-brain functions, leaving him only access to strong feelings with no ability to place them. But, fortunately, his physical condition improved quickly with physical therapy twice a day. But his syndrome became, like, way more prominent.”
“Can you pronounce that syndrome for me? I’m not sure how to say it.”
“Cotard. Sounds just like it’s spelled.”
“Okay, thanks. That’s so helpful.” Jackpot. “Now that Professor Greene is away, does that mean he no longer needs treatment?”
“I’m scheduled to make a home visit next week. He’s on, like, pretty standard initial treatment for the disease: a regimen of daily antipsychotics. Counseling is, like, not fruitful because the condition is brought about by the brain lesion. It’s not about his understanding. It’s about his damaged cerebral physiology. There was some debate among his treatment team. But Doctor Shaw’s decision is the final word.”
“Disagreement over course of treatment?”
“Yes. But mostly over, like, diagnosis. Kathy Davis, the head counselor, felt the diagnosis of Cotard’s was premature. Felt it was possible Professor Greene was using the idea of death as a convenient shelter to allow him to disassociate from the loss of his wife. But Doctor Shaw was convinced. Like, very convinced and so excited to document the professor’s treatment plan for publication. But the grant fell through.”
“This gives me so much to go on.” Moe rises from the table, takes her recorder and her helmet with her. “Oh, one more question: What was the grant for?”
“Well, traditionally the only documented cure for Cotard is electroshock therapy. Doctor Shaw proposed targeted micro-shocks to specifically address the cause of the condition. But I can’t give you too many details. HIPAA, you know—patient confidentiality.”
“I, like, totally understand.”
No Rest for the Wicked
Calvert has an uneaten, room-temperature sandwich resting in his lap. Lunch is his only regular meal since Rosa was hospitalized and Coffee Girl was closed. Though last night he shared a beer with Barney as a kind of temporary send-off for the Far Afield Festival.
He doesn’t feel right. Earlier that morning, he’d poured two antipsychotics into his palm. When he tried to clap them into his mouth, one shot over his shoulder. He leaned down and slurped water from the faucet to swallow half his dose. He crawled around on the sticky floor to find the second pill. Never spotted it. It had vanished. He didn’t fish another pill from the bottle; concerned it would upset the stable system of mated pairs. Now he wonders if the delicate balance of his brain chemistry has gone off. His mood is dark and he can’t shake it. He hasn’t felt so much emotion since finding Rosa. Something structural may have shifted in his head during the Blake Machine incident; important components may have slipped out of place.
He watches Allen unpack his food. Allen has a series of mismatched butter tubs of various sizes stacked and secured with a web of rubber bands. He begins rolling the bands from around his assemblage and onto his wrist. Though Calvert is curious about what Allen is up to, he doesn’t inquire. He is not speaking to Allen. Allen seems not to have noticed. If Calvert had to name the feeling he’s having for Allen, he’d call it “perplexed.” Though, if he were more alive, he might call it “anger.” Not because Calvert was left alone for the first half of the day to check rooms for evidence of pestilence, with no company other than Daisy. That had become routine. In fact, Calvert prefers working with Daisy to being micro-managed by Allen, whom he has begun to actively dislike.
His feelings arise from three things. The first is Allen’s thieving. Today Allen filled an entire five-gallon bucket with tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, mouthwash
, and a stack of baby-sized soaps. He also gathered a pair of earrings, a cable for a smartphone, a zippered flipbook that held children’s DVDs, a couple small bottles of booze, jars of fancy nuts, a roll of toilet paper, and a hand towel, topping the entire haul with a tightly rolled pillow. Calvert is aware Allen’s petty crimes are illegal. Legality is not his concern. What bothers him is that it breaks faith with people that trust Bug Off to do honest work. It feels wrong.
The second of Allen’s activities that has begun to fester like the brown spot in Calvert’s brain is also about honesty. Allen has taken to prepping select rooms before Calvert enters. The rooms he prepares show evidence of bed bug infestation. The dried husks of dead bugs require Calvert to pull out heaters and blowers, vacuums, and spray bottles. It is a time-consuming process. Calvert doesn’t mind the work but suspects it’s a scam that Allen, and probably Kaz, play on the hotel to prove the worth of their service. It’s also an insult to Calvert, who is not supposed to notice the deceit. I may be dead but I’m not stupid. It seems to serve the secondary purpose of buying time for Allen to do what has most upset Calvert.
Earlier, as Calvert finished repacking the equipment on the dolly after a by-the-numbers abatement, he heard a woman in distress. Calvert, his ragged feelings reminded of Rosa, raced down the hall toward the sound, Daisy galloping happily at his side. The sounds got louder at the end of the hall. He ran into the last room and saw the back of Allen. He was wearing only a short blue T-shirt like a pornographic Donald Duck. His dimpled ass was clenching as he thrust his hips into a woman reclining on the bed. She wore running shoes that bobbed in the air, bucking with every motion of Allen’s body. She made a strained moan. Allen grunted. In that confused moment, Calvert saw Allen with both hands around the woman’s throat, her face red, her hair damp, her eyes pinched tight, and in the ear closest to Calvert, one of the earrings Allen had taken from the Echelon’s box of Lost and Found. Calvert was quickly overwhelmed by embarrassment when he understood what was happening. He ran from the room, the noise of his footfalls unnoticed. In the hall, he made a chick chick sound to entice Daisy to quit sniffing the carpet and leave the room where Allen was pounding his way through a member of the housekeeping staff.
Now, half an hour later, Daisy, who normally is singularly focused on devouring her well-earned kibble, turns her dusty snout in Allen’s direction to watch him unpacking his stack of containers. Her doggie eyes register surprise when one of the butter dishes shoots her direction and hits the thick carpet. She draws back, one forepaw raised, prepared to run for her life. When the dish doesn’t advance, she moves forward to nudge it with her nose, smell it. She growls to prove she’s not scared. Having made the world safe from aggressive containers, she snorts and returns to her food.
“Silly bitch,” Allen says, grabbing his butter tub back. “I call this my hillbilly bento box.” Allen is very proud. “After those asshole cops got done casting accusations my way, I bummed a cigarette and walked out front of the station house. Now I didn’t need a smoke, but I wanted outside while I waited, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was sneaking off. I used smoking as an excuse. See, Professor, I’m smart too.” He looks to Calvert for some credit.
“Clever.”
“Yep. Clever is the word. Pretty fucking clever. Know what I saw when I was pretend smoking?” He’s arranging bowls in a semicircle so each is within arm’s reach. “Take a guess.”
“A learned cat?” Calvert guesses.
“What the hell is a learned cat?”
“I’m not sure. I think Pushkin wrote a fairytale about the learned cat attached to a tree with a golden chain. I don’t remember the rest.”
“That Pushkin asshole again? You’re an insecure son of a bitch, aren’t you? I’m tellin’ how smart I am and you gotta talk about dead Russians. You can’t stop talkin’ about how great Russians are.” Allen is a bit unhinged. “No. I did not see no fucking learned cat, whatever the fuck a learned cat is. Though I recently spotted a willing pussy. You think that’s what Pushkin was talkin’ about?”
Calvert plays dumb. He says, “How’s your wife?”
“She’s great. Gettin’ along great.”
“Good to hear.”
“A food truck is what I seen. It was called Dim Sum Grub. You know Dim Sum?”
“Not that I recall.”
“It’s a kind of Chinese food. Like steamed tapas served in a bunch of bowls with dipping sauces and weak tea. I found that out when I ordered ’cause it was lunchtime and I was hungry. Thanks to your heroics, my food was stuck in a van miles away. It hit the spot though, those dim sum. Shrimp dumplings, some kind of meatball in a bun, and a sweet glazed thing like a sticky biscuit. The meat was like my Aunt Anus’s meatloaf. Which was the best thing she ever cooked. But dim sum cost an arm and a leg, and I’m not made of money. So I got the idea to do it myself, only better.” He gestures to his arrangement of bowls.
“The bento box is not Chinese. It’s Japanese.”
“Well, fuck you, Professor. It’s all the same. I was going to share my de-fucking-licious meal. But you can eat your crappy sammich for all I care. Hey, know how to tell if a guy is a Chinaman or Jap?”
“Look at them?” Calvert asks.
“You can’t tell that way. No one can tell.”
“People can tell.”
“Nope. Not a soul.”
Calvert says, “Ask them?”
“No, you can’t ask. They don’t speak English. They only speak ping pong ping pong.” Allen is getting loud.
“You can tell if they speak Japanese or Chinese,” Calvert says reasonably. He knows the more calmly he answers, the more upset it will make Allen. For reasons he can’t fathom, he wants to upset Allen.
“No. No one can tell the difference,” Allen says stubbornly.
“I can.”
“No one normal. You wanna know or not?”
Calvert doesn’t care, but he says, “How?”
“If he tries to give you a business card, he’s Japanese.”
“What if the person is Korean or Malaysian. What about Vietnamese or Burmese? Taiwanese? Couldn’t he be Japanese and not have cards?”
“Are you trying to ruin my joke? You are. I told it wrong. But you are trying to ruin my good-time joke. Why? Why ruin my super funny joke? Men don’t ruin other men’s jokes. Everyone knows that. Friends play along.”
“Were you telling a joke?” Calvert asks innocently.
Allen has had it. “I said it before and I say it again: fuck you.” He restacks and re-bands the containers. It takes him a while. He gets the configuration wrong and has to start from the beginning. He doesn’t speak to Calvert. When he’s done, he carries his improvised bento way down the hall to the room where he had sex earlier.
Calvert is pleased with himself. He wants to ask, Does your wife know what you do while you’re at work? Do the women know you’re married? Why cheat on a woman who loves you? But he knows the answer.
Calvert doesn’t want to think of those things. He keeps seeing Rosa. He sees her eyes the last time they were open. He feels how heavy her body is in his dead arms, how hot her flesh is against his abdomen. Not a memory of the event, but the event itself, happening to him right now and every moment. He calls down the abandoned hallway, “Allen.”
“What?”
“I should go see Rosa at the hospital.”
“I’m eating.”
“I didn’t mean to frustrate you,” he lies.
“Go visit her if you want to. I don’t know why not.”
“Okay.” Calvert takes a bite of his floppy sandwich. He stands as he chews. Daisy is lapping the last of her water, pushing the bowl back and forth across the hall to get every last drop. She looks at him, licking her jowls wetly. She watches him walk to the main elevators. He sees her cock her ears to question his departure, but she doesn’t ask.
Unverified Nicknames Production
Nothing is easier than getting a taxi at a high-end Chicago hotel. Ca
lvert walks through the grand lobby and out the revolving door, wearing his Bug Off uniform. The doorman says, “Hello, sir, need a car?”
“Yes, please.”
“Where you headed?”
“Rush Medical Center.”
The doorman calls, “Syed,” and beckons with a twitch of two fingers. His white cotton gloves make Calvert think of sitting on a mall Santa’s lap a lifetime ago. The association makes him feel warm toward the doorman. The part of himself that sits back and witnesses his own demise makes an observation: The fatty myelin that protects the axon of my nerve cells is flaking away, causing thoughts to arc wildly. The organizing structures of my stored experience are breaking down. My card catalog has been upturned. This failure of linear brain function began with his accident of course. But since being unceremoniously discharged from his treatment program, the rate of decline has been escalating. The confession of past transgressions dragged from him by Christian’s art piece completely broke his faith in the value of discursive thought. He’s ambivalent about his death. But he does hope to see Rosa before it is finalized. Rosa’s genuine smile flashes his way. Myelin.
A round-bellied man with a black neck beard and a brimless cap on the crown of his shaved head hops in his taxi and drives past two other cars to park beside Calvert. The man pops out, jogs around the car, and shakes Calvert’s hand. “Airport,” he suggests hopefully.
“Rush Med,” the doorman says.
The driver looks irritated. “Luggage?”
“No,” Calvert says.
The driver forces a smile and opens the back door. He waits as Calvert settles in, firmly closes the door, and turns to the doorman. “What is going on today, John? I’ve only gotten four fares and none to the airport. I said I was sorry.”
“Don’t be paranoid, Syed. Next one. You come back. I’ll get you an airport run.”
Calvert listens through the gap at the top of his window. He watches his driver pass around the front of the taxi, slip into the driver’s seat, and punch buttons on his rate meter. “Rush Medical Center,” the guy says. “Which building?”
Half Dead Page 22