by Ursula Pflug
sss
“Where’d you get that?”
“Only one place this comes from,” I said, smearing a line of blue powder down my nose. “Help yourself.”
But he was already painting it around his eyes, laughing at himself, a blue raccoon. That’s how it works. It sinks into the skin, gets absorbed into the bloodstream.
Finds the heart, the brain.
“Thank you for loving me as much as you do,” said Little Davis.
sss
Oh, The Blues, you learn to live The Blues. The Blues is what we call it because of its colour, little packets of blue powder, fringe benefits to the trade. If you have the habit, you’re Living the Blues. Officially it’s not habit forming but what else could it be for how it makes you feel. Like you’re loved. Like you love. Love. That’s our other name for it. Love and Blues, two opposite kind of names, for the paradox it is, the double-edged blade.
We’re given an allotment to use in therapy on the clients where nothing else works; sometimes it can make people see the truth of themselves, but without violence, without pain. Makes them able to perform that open-heart surgery of the psyche that is necessary to their survival, to ours. Gives them a little light to travel their dark river. We are only their guides, and not always good ones. We suffice.
Ostensibly the government bureaucrats who administer the Clinics issue it to us for therapeutic use only, but they give us a lot more than we need to patch up all the broken suckers that walk in the door. It’s an open secret that it’s our danger pay. The breakdowns, the burnouts among therapists are so high they know the only way they can keep us is with The Blues. And by the time we realize how dangerous, how hard the work really is, and are ready to quit, we’re hooked. By then we’re strung out. ’Cause after you’ve emptied yourself, after you’ve torn yourself into tiny pieces leading some poor stranger home, you need a little solace for yourself as well, a little Love to get you through the night. And after a while you just need.
It took Little to teach me that as good as it works, it isn’t the real thing. You lose that distinction. If you ever knew the difference, you forget. Little died, and I remembered. It’s an imitation, and a cheap one, and the closest so many people ever get to love.
sss
“How much did it cost?”
“Did what cost?” asks Benji, rolling a joint.
“Your peace,” I say. “I don’t trust it. You got to tell me how much it cost.”
Benji. For the first time I see what looks like an emotion on her face. A little half smile like a voice breaking. Since Chuckie went away, Benji has learned how to be still, how to be alone. But somewhere it still hurts. I can tell. In this business, you learn all the signs.
“It cost,” says Benji. “It cost.”
“You just like the wife killers, Benji.” I say it through my teeth, slouching way down in the grey chair: “You just like the twisted fuckers you is paid to fix. You just ain’t as far gone.”
“How so?” asks Benji, supercilious, raising an eyebrow. In this business, we learn bad games. We even learn to like them.
“You just like them, Benji. Deep down all you want is to be loved.”
She laughs. Benji’s laugh. “And you, Ruby, what do you want?”
“That is so easy, Benji, so easy. I want Little to be alive again. I didn’t love him enough. That’s why he dead, Benji, because of me. His jalloo murdered him, but it could just as well have been me.”
“But honey,” she says, “you didn’t even know what love was. How could you know, being what you are?”
sss
We went home to my place. We walked there, stopping in alleyways to paint ourselves with blue graffiti. I live in a loft, further down the river on Kenya Road. All the way there Little kept telling me he loved me. It got to be embarrassing. This guy is such a kid, I’d think, letting the stuff go to his head so much.
“I love you, Ruby,” he said. “I really love you.”
We were lying on the Chinese rug, listening to music, staring at the ceiling. Painting it Blue. “Yeah, honey, I know. I love you too.” And I’d roll over to change the music, to reach for more. And I thought I did. He was so beautiful. His eyes like the ocean, washing through me. Telling me he loved me.
And I told him about Clinic. People love to hear that shit, why you work there, what it’s really like. So you tell them, you give them some kicks. Cheap thrills for them, easy points for you. But with Little I somehow got it wrong. With Little I got it wrong right from the start.
“I don’t want you to go crazy, Ruby,” he said. “I love you too much.” He was looking down at me, into my eyes. He was obstructing my view of the ceiling.
“What are you talking about, me going crazy?”
“All you people go crazy. I never met anyone before works River Street. I never thought I wanted to, heard you were all crazy. But you’re not crazy at all, and now, I don’t want you to be. You’re different. You’re not like I expected.”
“Listen,” I say, propping myself up on an elbow, “crazy is part of the job. Psychosis in a controlled environment. So it doesn’t happen out on the street. But you got to go with them, to where they go. And keep one foot on the beach, so’s you can lead them back out. Only sometimes you don’t come back. Sometimes they pull you in and drown you. I’ve felt it happening. Benji got me out one time, cut me loose. Some of them you got to let go. We’re still human, we government workers. It’s hard sometimes, to remember there’s that one or two a year, you got to cut them loose. It becomes a point of pride, fixing people. But it’s better to lose them than yourself as well. They put those ones on drugs, keep them locked up like they used to. There’s not many anymore. Not nearly as many as there used to be. Because of us.”
“But they don’t pay you enough, Ruby. Even this,” he says, stroking my arm, leaving blue trails there, “this is lovely, but it isn’t enough.”
“I love you too, baby.”
And after that he just tried to make me laugh.
And he did. He made me laugh for weeks, while we stayed high. I didn’t go in to work, except to pick up my ration of Blues. Because I’m good, Frankie put up with it. And because Benji told him I was in love. And every day Little made me feel younger.
I felt young again, and I felt evil. I kept turning my back on it, thought it was residue from my last jalloo I couldn’t shake off. But it wouldn’t rub off, wouldn’t come off, no matter how much Blue I scrubbed at it with, how much Love. No matter how much of Little I used. But it was mine. It was my very own monster.
I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know it when we didn’t have enough anymore to keep the two of us going and Little came home one day, telling me he’d filled out an application for a job at the Clinic. I didn’t even suspect when I heard myself tell him how good he’d be. It’s a No Experience Preferred type of gig. They train you; it’s based on a personality profile they get from a bunch of tests they run on you. But I didn’t need to see the test results. I knew they’d accept him. He’d be better than me, better than Benji even. He had the dotted line around him, could merge, join others; see with them.
The night before he was to start training we thought we’d celebrate, do up what we had left in one big bang. And when the sky outside turned the same colour with morning, Little told me he loved me again.
“I love you too, baby. I love you because you’re so beautiful…”
Only this time, Little told me no.
“No,” he said. “You don’t love me. That’s just The Blues talking, and now you’ve made me hear them too. They’ve fucked me up, and I’m hard to fuck. I got too much polish, most things just slide right off. But The Blues has stuck, has made me need what I thought was just a good time. Not like you. You I loved from the start, although you never would believe me. You tried to buy me, Ruby. Didn’t think you were worth shit, didn’t
think I could love you for yourself.”
I went to the bathroom and locked the door, looked at myself in the mirror. Listened to his footsteps follow me, stop outside. Listened how his voice had gone quiet. Scary quiet. Saying: “You don’t love me. You think I’m just some dream The Blues dreamed up. You don’t even know what love is.”
I looked at myself in the mirror. Opened my mouth. Heard: “You never could handle your drugs. You’re just a kid. Go to bed, get some sleep. We can talk about it in the morning, if you still want. If you remember.” Then I turned the shower on, loud, so I wouldn’t hear what else he might have to say. So he wouldn’t hear me crying.
sss
He forgave me. To prove it he even moved his stuff into my place. He didn’t have much. Some clothes. A photograph album of some family. I threw that out, jealous. The only pictures I still had of family were scratched onto my brain, no matter how hard I tried to get rid of them. But Little forgave me.
It was hard, always being forgiven. Before, he’d always made me laugh, but now he had me taking showers all the time. I was never cleaner.
He finished training, started his first case. Frankie started him on an easy one: a teenage girl who’d had her heart broke. But Little was good, too good; he didn’t just heal her, he left her singing. And maybe that is what healing is, after all.
But it wasn’t just the first one; it was all his jalloos that followed. They all came away clean as spoons. Little spent himself for all of them like he was a stock market crash about to happen. When it came to throwing pearls before swine, he was the prince. And I thought it was just he was new to The Blues.
He said it was the money he liked. He did, too; money he had for the first time. He bought presents for his friends, vintage silk kimonos he had sent from Japan. For Benji, a turquoise one, with dragons embroidered in silver and gold.
For her to dance in. Little loved to watch Benji dance.
“When you dance,” he told her, “I don’t need much more in the world.” And she danced more often, because of it.
Sometimes he gave money to strangers in the street. “I like to make people feel better,” he’d say. It wasn’t only the money. Little loved his work; he thought it mattered.
sss
Living The Blues with you. We’d come off case and go dancing in the clubs that line the river: The Ocean, 1001 Knights, Kenya. Little knew all the doors and bartenders from his days as a performance artist. We never paid covers, and our first rounds always came on the house. They welcomed him home, his people. With me it was different. Little introduced me as his best friend, as the love of his life, but they turned away, mouths sharpening at the corners. I was the magician, the one who’d disappeared him, brought him back transformed: a therapist at River Street. The job attracts rumour-mongering faster than illicit sex. I played mysterious woman for them. I know all the lines; for some jalloos, it’s the only game in town, at least at the beginning.
When the clubs emptied at four there’d be parties, speakeasies, restaurants. And then we’d go home. Every morning between jobs we’d see the sun come up from my big factory windows. We’d see the sky change colour, shift from black to violet to blue. Blue. Washes of Blue. Awash in Blue.
“It’s good,” he said. “You’re very good.”
“This is all I’ve ever wanted.” And it was.
But the morning came that Little disappeared, lost me in the crowd of night faces, slipped away on the dance floor at Kenya.
I looked everywhere. I spent fortunes on a half-awake cabdriver, asking him to wait outside. He waited, and I always came out alone. He grumbled at me in his rear-view mirror, telling me I’d never learn. Finally he drove me home.
No Little there to kiss me to sleep, just a hollow in my gut where he’d been. The bed was big and grubby; the morning light too critical for the dust we were always too happy to clean. I got dressed again and walked over to the Fifth Street Deli, and on my way there clouds came, and it started to rain. With the rain, even the pigeons took cover.
sss
It was noon when he found me at my table, littered with newspapers, coffee cups, Kleenex. He ordered a tea and sat down across from me. He looked different. I was withered, shrunken, but the hours had changed Little the other way; he was more substantial. His body took up space, filled the room; I’d only seen him float before. But Little wasn’t dancing any more.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Little.”
“Ruby.”
“How come you done what you did?”
“We’re going to quit.”
“Quit? What are we going to quit? You don’t want me anymore. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“No. No, it’s not, stupid. You and I are going to quit our jobs at River Street. Preferably we are going to quit this town, this country. We are going to quit.”
“You sure know how to ruin a good thing, baby.”
It seems he’d seen a friend turn blue. The other kind. From lack of breath. They are always cooking up new drugs to dump on the street, and this one hadn’t passed the test. Or it had. Whichever way you look at it.
“Drugs are thieves,” Benji always said.
“The Blues is just the same, Ruby. Maybe it don’t steal your breath but it numbs your soul. Just because it’s government run doesn’t mean it’s exempt. Especially because. I don’t need to see it, what’s happening to us. To you, especially. I’m new to this game, but you, Ruby, are going nowhere fast.”
Big deal, I figure. I’ve been going nowhere fast my whole life and I still haven’t arrived. “Yeah sure, Little,” I say. “We quit. You and me. You gonna go back to dancing on tables at The Ocean? That silver paint shit for your skin, Little. You know some other way to feel this good?”
“It doesn’t look to me like you feel very good, Ruby.” And then he looked tired. I’d never seen him look tired before. It made me feel sad to know even Little could get burned out. That he would get old. I put my hand over his.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
sss
We’re sitting at the big factory windows, looking down at the ships. I’ve told you we’ll quit, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid if I take away The Blues this will be gone too, these moments with you. Without The Blues, you’ll see me as I really am, and, having seen, you’ll leave me. Why would you stay?
I remember what it was like here, before you came. I’d sit at this window for hours at a time, smoking cigarettes, watching the river. And towards dawn, when the loneliness got too sharp, when the memories of my father came crowding in, I’d reach for The Blues. I’d send him away again, send him drifting down the long blue river of forgetting. Then when he was gone, I’d be alone. And I would dance. And in the morning, there would be birds.
There’s silences between us as we sit here, watching the river. Palpable silences I can touch, that I know will open, will draw apart like a curtain, giving birth to what?
Little hands me the joint, as though, holding it, I’ll be defenceless, will have to listen.
And he tells me I am proud to be a scar.
I don’t say anything, because the curtains are drawing apart, and they’re taking my breath with them. I can’t speak, so Little tells me what I’m saying.
“It’s like you say to everyone, “You can’t hurt me, see how hurt I am already.” You do yourself in so there’s only leftovers for the rest of the hyenas. You take all their glory away—and you think that’s good enough—you think you’ve won. But you ain’t. ’Cause when you’re Blue you’re stuck, you never get to rise above it, to where the real colours are. The colourful colours. There’s always been people who really do love you, Ruby. There always will be. You’re lucky that way. For some people, there really isn’t anyone. You’ve met enough of them on the job. You should be able to tell the difference.”
He gets up, goes over to
the stereo, turns the music down. “You’re right. Most people don’t give a shit about you. But the ones who really do care, you should treat them well.”
The curtains are all the way open now and I’m trying as hard as I can to feel what’s there, what it is they’ve opened to. Because it can’t be seen. You have to feel it.
And I think maybe it’s love. The other kind I hadn’t known existed. I think maybe this time I can finally afford to believe, that this time he’s given me the currency I need to hear the words only love could make him speak. I wonder from who Little learned it. He’s only twenty years old. I wonder who made Little get so wise.
He comes walking back towards me. He’s wearing a red kimono. With birds of paradise. At least, I think that’s what they are. “Treat yourself well, Ruby. You, more than anyone, deserve it.”
But I don’t. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve him. If I had, I wouldn’t have tried to buy him. For a moment you get a glimpse of it, your chance at happiness, but it’s not a real chance, because no one gets happiness, at least I’ve never met anyone who did. It’s just a trick, to let you know what you’re missing. So that it hurts more, when you wake up, and things are the same as they ever were.
“You’re too smart,” I say. “You’re too good-looking. You make me feel old, and I’m only twenty-six. And you make me feel ugly, and dumb. You’re too fucking good. You’re too perfect. Let up a little, will ya? Give the rest of us gimps a chance.”
He looks at me from so far away, as though the room just grew a million miles long. I can’t make out his face and I don’t know if it’s because I’m crying or because he is.
“Go away,” I say. “The Blues has scrambled your brains, baby. Leave me alone.”
He goes. From far away across the room I watch him go, walk ever so slowly towards the bedroom door. I sit where I am, frozen to death. I want to call him back but I don’t know how. I’ve never done it before. At the door he stops, then turns.