Half Dead

by Brandon Graham

  Nurse Alicia slips a short pair of soft socks on Rosa’s feet, as if dressing a child. “Consuela brought her favorite socks,” she explains. The novelty socks have a bright pattern of diamond shapes and black text that says “This Meeting Is Bullshit.” The nurse wears a digital tablet on a strap across her torso. She pulls it up, removes a stylus, and pokes the flat screen with the rubber nub. For several moments, she works at charting.

  Calvert looks at the deep red mark left by the tight band of the compression socks, one depressed stripe under each knee. It looks painful. He wants to knead his thumbs over the offending marks, molding her flesh like clay until it regains shape. But he keeps his hands to himself.

  Nurse Alicia swings her digital pad back to her hip. She tugs the sheet over Rosa’s lower body, then the blanket. She tucks them in place. “All done. Let them know at the desk when you leave. I’ll come finish with Rosa.” In the mouth of the door, she says, “Take your time. She likes your company.” Nurse Alicia is gone.

  He sees himself from Rosa’s out-of-body perspective. Big head, pointy chin, feet made small through foreshortening. The marks on her legs remind him of his own scar hidden under his hair: he touches it. He feels Rosa’s eyes on him from above the ceiling, hovering over the flat roof of the hospital. How small and inconsequential he must look.

  A new thought bubbles to the surface. He has begun to understand that as his brain disintegrates, it gives off sparks of thought as a carbonated soda lets bubbles loose until it’s completely flat. It’s the memory of a person seen from high above, like Calvert is being watched by Rosa.

  “I know who attacked you,” he says. “I can prove it.”

  He bumps into the chair he’d been sitting in. It tumbles over and he goes with it. As he hits the floor, he watches the Bible’s pages spread open, hit the ground, crushing and bending the onionskin paper. He gets up and lifts the Bible quickly, worried his marionette musculature has caused damage to the holy book and the trust Consuela put in him. But the book seems fine.

  He goes straight to Rosa, leaving the chair where it lies. He sets the Bible in the bed with her. “I have to go now. I know who hurt you. Don’t leave. Come back to your body. Thomas needs his momma.” He wants to say something true before he goes, something with meaning. He says, “I also need you not to go.”

  He doesn’t wait for Rosa’s reply. He leaves the room, letting his body make all the decisions while his mind is elsewhere.

  You Get What You Pay For

  Having an office with a door she can lock is a new experience for Moe. For the first time in her professional life, she does not pack her laptop, but leaves it on her desk, open to the incomplete draft of her article on Calvert Greene. She also leaves a half-empty cup of unsatisfying tea. She throws her unusually light messenger bag over her shoulder and hangs her Vicky helmet on her forearm as she locks up. She’s giving herself plenty of time to ride out to Bug Off.

  “It’s not even three,” Loni complains directly behind Moe, a frantic undertone rising.

  “Loni, I’ve got a time-sensitive lead,” she exaggerates. “Gotta go while the source is hot.” She starts walking.

  “But—” Loni presents her glowing laptop and follows so closely her toes clip Moe’s heels.

  “Find Jerome. I told him about your story. He’s a good editor. Better than me. Don’t tell him that. He’ll look after you.”

  “But—” Loni says.

  “Don’t worry.” Moe half turns without slowing her pace. “Trust your instincts. You know what you’re doing.” That stops Loni. Moe makes her escape.

  Five minutes later, Moe’s on the street, rolling steadily south. She doesn’t want to drive on I-90. She’s reluctant to admit Taibbi scares her. The near-wipeout at high speed may have ruined their relationship permanently. She’s considering purchasing an actual car, the kind with four wheels. With her raise, she can afford something used. Besides, the motorcycle will be dangerous and miserable in the winter. She’d spent numerous winters completely suited up for bicycling. In truth, she only biked year round because she had no better option. Besides, the wind generated by motorcycling will cut right through my low-budget gear. As if to prove her point, a gust hits her chest so hard it challenges her grip on the handlebars.

  Her recent choice of a vehicle isn’t the only thing she’s second-guessing. After talking to Vivian, she’s started doubting her story. Is it news or only a vendetta directed at Sophia? Maybe a desire to prove that, although she’s not like the girls she grew up with, she’s still worthwhile. Perhaps she wants acceptance from girls like Sophia, to be found attractive by the same girls she spent her school years rejecting as inauthentic or dumb or frivolous. Rejected preemptively, so they’d never have the chance to reject her.

  She envies Loni because Loni knows enough to write well, but not so much that she questions her own opinions. Can we ever understand our own motivations? Moe has developed a complex relationship with the idea of objectivity.

  In J-school, the journalism professors taught that objectivity was a primary requirement for a reporter. It was used interchangeably with fairness and factuality. Moe, however, found the theory only held water for white reporters who have a whole spectrum of opinions represented on any given topic.

  As a queer woman of color, she found purpose in advocacy journalism. It was a way to transparently adopt a perspective aimed at social justice. Text Block was a good fit. She picked her stories. She could be rigorously factual, informative, and honest about news she felt needed attention. The truth was key. Truth separates advocacy from propaganda. Her published articles, her clips, demonstrate her perspective. If she starts questioning this Greene story, how can she trust her intuition on other stories? Her cheeks are hot in her helmet.

  The signal light ahead of her turns red. She clamps down hard on the brakes, is thrown forward, nearly going over her bars. Her hand comes off the clutch, and the engine dies. She rights herself and restarts the engine. The sound it makes seems off. The engine is surging, the idle a touch too low and running a smidgen too lean. She could be imagining it, hypersensitive to Taibbi’s every perceived signal that could indicate looming catastrophe. What the fuck do I know about anything?

  The light turns green. The car behind her honks. She lets the clutch out too quickly and kills the engine again. “Fucking fuck.” She waves the cars behind her around. She hits the electric start and listens to the engine turn over and over before finally coming to life. She checks her tiny, shaking mirrors and can’t see a thing. She glances over her shoulder, sees the way is clear, and eases down the road.

  In light of her torturous and uncharacteristically insecure feelings about her career, perhaps she’s been too hard on girls like Sophia. On Sophia specifically. Moe had been offended in J-school by Sophia’s apparent need to assimilate, to look and act in ways those in power would interpret as desirable, professional, and cookie-cutter. Whitewashing, she used to call it. But maybe that is as good a strategy as any: participate fully. Don’t stand outside and throw rocks. No one likes a critic. Change things from the inside. Still, Moe’s gut has always told her being changed by the system is the more likely outcome.

  On South Torrence, maybe ten minutes from her destination, as if her internal chaos is manifesting in reality, Taibbi starts to vibrate at low speed. It’s not the radical shaking that rattled her teeth on the interstate. But it scares her. She lugs the engine down a gear and turns on her flashers. Thank you, YouTube. The inside of her bubble screen starts to fog. Her hot breath makes her face damp.

  She creeps slowly the rest of the way and pulls into the lot at a crawl to park near an open garage door. She knocks down the kickstand and peels off her helmet. The flashers throw splashes of orange against the building until she shuts the engine off. She walks unsteadily around the corner and into the wide cool space of the Bug Off warehouse. There is a crash behind her. She flinches. She ducks and tries to protect her head with her arms. Her higher brain kicks in, and she
realizes no danger is imminent. She walks back outside to find Taibbi on his side in the gravel, leaking fluids.

  “Shit shit shit.” She gets low to heave the Honda into a standing position, gets him on his wheels, sees the kickstand is bent. She shoves the bike to lean it against the building. The tank and fenders are scratched and dented. The peashooter pipes are dimpled, the chrome cracked and flaking. She’s never felt so low. “Shit.”

  “That’s too bad,” a man says. “I can get that loaded in back of a van and drive you where you need to go. I don’t mind.” He’s tall, with slick white hair and angular features.

  “I’m Kaz. You’re the reporter? My wife told me you would be here.”

  “Moe.”

  “Svetlana’s in the office. Have some coffee.” He points toward the back of the garage.

  The idea of strong coffee is so appealing she wants to weep. For an instant, the thought of the scrunched expression of Professor Cynthia Regan unexpectedly pokes a ray of light through the dark cloud of her life. Looking at her bike, the clouds roll back in.

  She finally says, “I wouldn’t say no to coffee.”

  The Full Picture

  Calvert’s mind is elsewhere when he jogs from Rosa’s room. As he passes the nurses’ station, he tries to recall what Barney told him about the exhibition.

  He takes the orange elevator and exits on the fourth floor. He backtracks through the congested lobby of swaying invalids. An obese man with yellowed feet and a red face is strapped to a gurney parked in Calvert’s way. The man pulls on his restraints when Calvert abandons the trail of dots and passes close to his swollen head.

  “Trash!” the man yells. “Trash trash trash trash trash. Dirty trashy trash man. Trash trash trash.”

  Calvert swings wider, startled by the accusation. In the elevator, he tries replaying the exact words Barney had used. It won’t come to him. All he can hear is “Trash trash trash trash.”

  Why’d that man call me trash? There’s a book about a young prince with epilepsy by an author Calvert once taught. Dostoyevsky perhaps or Tolstoy. No. Not Tolstoy. Calvert’s tainted mind retrieves the title: The Idiot. In the story, the prince’s ability to be an acceptable suitor for the high-society ingénue is threatened because of his seizures. The prince becomes increasingly addlebrained and is forced into a sanitarium. Calvert feels for the fictional Russian. Calvert is afflicted by a creeping death that has turned him into an idiot, unsuitable for love. The elevator doors close.

  Trash trash trash. The elevator opens, and two doctors walk briskly in.

  Calvert pushes his way between them to exit. He’s confused. He’s on the floor where he started. Didn’t push the button. He turns to see the elevator doors closing. “Wait,” he says. The doctors watch him through the diminishing space as the doors meet. He tries to use his weak arms to pull the doors open, but his simple machines can’t generate enough force.

  He looks for stairs. There are no stairs. He walks in a circle. He pushes the “Down” button and waits for the elevator. Trash trash. It’s well documented that mental illness was not treated medically during the Soviet era. Superstition and folklore dominated thinking about such issues. It was commonly held that the insane had been visited by demons or angels. Some thought possession made victims prophetic, their innocent souls touched by powers beyond the mortal realm. Was Gurney Man channeling a message? An indictment from Mere? Was he touched? Am I?

  The elevator opens. Calvert hurries in. A girl, maybe five, is there. She backs as far from Calvert as possible, wedging into a back corner. She’s alone; this bothers Calvert, but he doesn’t know what to do. Trash. He pushes the button for the first floor. Is being strapped to a gurney in my future? He hopes to die before that happens.

  His whole life he believed his mind was his greatest asset. Now, almost thoroughly dead, his fickle brain is abandoning him. Penance. He leaves the elevator, glances back at the solitary child. She’s gone. Calvert doesn’t think they stopped at another floor. Was she ever there? My hard drive is broken.

  Walking along the stretch of hothouse hallway, he slaps the side of his head, first with the flat of one hand, then the other. The hall, he notices, is cooler than when he arrived, less glare with the sun hidden behind buildings. He slaps himself some more. As if he has a short in his wiring, the impact fixes the bad connection, and Barney’s voice comes to him: “Lyla’s photos sold well. Did I tell you she took photos for one whole day for the show?”

  “That’s it: Lyla the photographer. That’s her name,” he explains triumphantly to no one in particular, maybe to the girl who was never there. He rounds the turn of the hall.

  “What?” Lucky asks. “You say somethin’?” He and a tall man in a similar uniform are in front of the desk, their chat interrupted by Calvert’s arrival.

  “Talking to myself,” Calvert explains. “I need to get home fast.”

  Lucky points through a solid wall. “Cross over to the outpatient building. Taxis line up along the side. This is my pal, Lex. Can he get a picture with you?”

  Calvert gives no reply. He jogs down the hall between portraits of administrators past and shoves his way across the busy sidewalk. He feels his pocket and reaches for his phone. He searches for a number he’d entered from a business card. He dials as he crosses the street.

  Message From the Dead

  Before starting, Ruther informs Whistler that the judge won’t issue a warrant. “But I’ve got him on speed dial. Get me something convincing, catch Schmidt in a lie, and we’ll send him back inside for good. Whistler opens the door, feeling confused and pressured. It goes downhill from there.

  If an interrogation is a dance, Schmidt has taken the lead. If it’s a boxing match, Whistler hasn’t landed a punch. Schmidt has an answer for everything, and they are the same answers as last time. In an honest, natural, human way, Schmidt’s story changes slightly, a different emphasis or varied vocabulary, an extra detail he’d previously omitted. But not in a practiced way that feels cautious or contrived. In a convincing way. Which is infuriating.

  “There are lots of white vans in Chicago. I bet white is the most common color of work van. I know you don’t have my plate number because it wasn’t my van. Besides, I was across town at the time.

  “Sure, I work at the Echelon now and then. But do you know how many people a place that size employs? A lot, I bet. You should check into that.

  “I was there to pick up Cal before work. The professor doesn’t remember how to drive. Imagine that. This guy has a PhD and can’t drive. He ever tell you about Pushkin? If he hasn’t, he will. Trust me. Pushkin is some writer he remembers all about. Doesn’t know his cock from a carburetor. But he knows about Pushkin. It’s a crazy world.

  “Killing my aunt was an accident. God rest her soul. I regret losing my temper. I was a hothead when I was young—horny and angry. I take full responsibility. I did my time. Paid my debt to society. That’s how the parole board saw it. I’m a free man. Legal as the day is long. I’d never hurt a woman. I focus on pleasing as many as I can. You have to do what you’re good at. Am I right?”

  Whistler doesn’t answer. He feels like he’s on a speed date gone bad. He knows he should start from the top, slow it down. Make Schmidt repeat in detail every moment of the morning Rosa was attacked; repeat every question, rephrase his inquiries until Allen is frustrated and fidgety. Try to trip him up. Get him to punch holes in his own alibi.

  The plan to bring Schmidt’s wife in had been solid, but Suzuki hadn’t been able to locate her. If she’d been observing as Allen bragged about his life’s work pleasing women, Whistler might have had leverage. Instead, Whistler is wondering how it’s possible for this gross ex-con to be attractive to anyone. It gets under his skin. He glances up surreptitiously. I can’t even find a date.

  A vision of the hot TV reporter, Sophia Garcia, suggestively handling her microphone, passes through his mind. His face flushes. He shakes it off, clears his throat, tries to focus on the case file he�
�s pretending to look at, attempts to come up with a new approach. It’s unclear what will work. Schmidt has hexed him with some kind of prison voodoo.

  “What if I told you we have your wife watching right now? Listening to everything you say? How do you think she’s taking you bragging about other women?” Whistler takes a stab at it but doesn’t try to sell it.

  Schmidt smiles. “My wife is in Atlanta for the next week to visit her mother. I doubt she’d agree to the interruption. She’s a saint. I’m not. She knows the score. She tries to save me from my wayward behavior, and I try my damnedest to keep my place in hell. It’s our thing. Don’t get me wrong—she’d be disappointed. But that would only make her more determined to rehabilitate me.”

  Whistler realizes the ex-con has spent far more time being interrogated than Whistler has spent interrogating. Schmidt knows how to act cooperative while giving nothing, knows the legal system better than the overworked public defenders. Whistler is playing checkers; Schmidt is playing chess. The worst part, Whistler is being persuaded of Schmidt’s innocence. He glances from the file to the suspect again. Schmidt has hard eyes as he grins his teeth at Whistler. He’s smug. He didn’t ask for a lawyer. He hardly needs one.

  Schmidt clears his throat and drops his hands into his lap. Whistler says, “Please keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “It’s your game boss. I’m just playin’ it.”

  Whistler has one move left: sliding the photo of the potential first victim under Schmidt’s nose. The trick is, he isn’t likely to get a spontaneous confession. All he can hope for is a telling reaction when he sees dead Ginny Flores. If the look is there, Whistler will know. He won’t have proof. But he’ll know. Schmidt will know he knows. That could rattle Schmidt. A rattled Schmidt could make mistakes. Whistler would find rattling Schmidt deeply gratifying. He grips the glossy edge of the crime scene image, ready to reveal it dramatically.