by Garrett Cook
A Debate With Hippocrates
Thorazine. Depakote. Welbutrin. Paxil. Vicodin. I quite simply don’t believe my eyes. I look up from the slips to make sure Elvis has not risen from the grave to make my shift at the pharmacy just a little more entertaining. Alas, no such luck. My life has no room for whimsy. The man is as fat, but has none of the King’s flamboyance. The prescriptions are from a doctor in Hartford. Three states over. This man is wearing a University of Indiana T-shirt. His driver’s license is from Michigan. His accent however is definitely deep southern. Florida or Georgia most likely. So, the daily grind of being a pharmacist is broken up by a question: where the hell is he actually from? Out of all the states I’m confronted with, I can’t come up with an answer. So I’m also left wondering why he’s here. Thomas Gennaro. The name rings a bell. I’m left even more suspicious because I’ve never seen anyone who puts matchbooks in the pockets of his wallet. He seems to have plenty. The pocket is overflowing.
“You collect matchbooks?”
“Yeah.”
Some connection is starting to develop, but I can’t place it yet. I need to know more.
“Can I see?”
The man looks extremely confused. He trembles slightly. I think I know something. I think I know something amazing.
“What for?”
“It’s an interesting hobby. I’ve never seen anybody do it before.”
“Okay. I never thought it was that unique, myself. I mean, people collect all kinds of things. All kinds.”
He takes them out, puts them down on the counter and spreads them wide. Fifty five motels. Sloppy sloppy sloppy. Shouldn’t be seen outside the Safe Zone, should we? Victim’s families, vengeful cops. This is the work of somebody with no semblance of self control and serious compulsions. Somebody who takes a vast cornucopia of pills. It strikes me that his fingers are lily white, his whole hands, but only up to his wrists. Chlorine. His face is very nicely tanned and I have a feeling that the rest of his arm is too. I’ve seen the newscasts, and with my photographic memory, blessing and burden, I can see every single motel mentioned by the shows Cass glues herself to. The Cabana Boy himself is here picking up what I would have to assume are some extremely ineffective prescriptions. Amazing. This one has killed a few cops in the chase, so he doesn’t like showing his face. It also impedes his work for the hookers to know who’s buying them for the night. A lot of people would be absolutely starstruck. This one is up for a Bundy and is considered a very weighty competitor. Fat pathetic little man. I can’t keep the bile in check and I can’t stop the blood from starting to rise up to my hands. My mind wanders back to the hardware store. A man who went through Vietnam was so impressed by this man’s particular brand of brutality. The hierarchy of violence is funny. The hierarchy of fame is nauseating.
When you get right down to it, this man is nothing but another crazy drifter who kills prostitutes. Another truck stop avenger looking to right a violation that the media that glorifies and obsesses over him couldn’t care less about. But he’s famous, has a book deal, and sells T-shirts. He’s famous, and yet he’s nothing. He couldn’t contribute less to society if he tried. As a historical footnote even, he’ll be completely lacking in import. Contemptible no-account pop culture cliché. Contemptible no account pop culture cliché here and vulnerable in the pharmacy where I work picking up his prescription. Providence, providence again.
Examining the matchbooks, I connect all the places to the photos from the news. Every motel has a victim and every victim has a gruesome photo on the news to keep the hungry little animals fed on blood. If the news didn’t slake their bloodlust, those Reap kids on the street would really be something. My mind ends up as a swirling blur of interviews with sheriffs and coroners and hotel managers. Even the occasional pimp with his face blocked out. The matchbooks themselves begin to feel a lot like crimes to me. I want to slit his goddamn throat just for having so many matches in his possession. I wonder if he ever did ME any favors, prevented any vessels from becoming possessed and taken by the Dark Ones. The disposal’s different, though. A lot more complicated than chopping their breasts off after holding their heads underwater in a hotel pool. The Dark Ones can still incubate in a corpse if the plumbing’s present.
Then, something funny happens. I completely forget about the very existence of the Dark Ones and obsess instead over how this bastard spreads from town to town, kills and then goes elsewhere. I get on a bus now and then to spread out, get off the radar and do some good a town or two over, but this guy, he’s gone to every single state now. He only needs the pills because he himself is a disease. He needs to try to put himself into remission.
He has gotten a lot friendlier and he goes on and on and on about the matchbooks. I hear very little. I finally gather myself, tell him it’s been nice talking to him but I have lots of work to do, so many prescriptions to fill and all. He takes his matchbooks and walks out, leaving me alone with so many pills. As a professional healer (yes, professional healer, a part time pharmacist is still a healer, I need things like this to get through my day), I am morally obligated to give this man his medicine, no matter how reprehensible and disgusting he actually is. He is a distinguished entertainer who needs to be in tip-top shape to work.
It’s amazing how little time I have to argue with myself to accept that this is complete and utter bullshit. I’m so glad there’s another guy named Thomas Gennaro in town. I replace his antidepressants with sedatives and his mood stabilizers with MAOIs. I have to put these in bigger capsules, but that’s okay. I can’t help but think of this other Thomas Gennaro as more than a coincidence. I’m on the right track. I’m doing the lord’s work after all. Not quite the shit that was handed to me in Catholic school, but the lord’s work can be done. A few days ago, I shot my first man. There was no pang of guilt or concern for the most part, no moral qualms to get in my way. He was a problem, so I shot him. After I shot him, that particular issue was resolved. Almost cathartic. Stands to reason that getting rid of Gennaro would be just as cathartic, even more so because he’s more of a celebrity and more of an annoyance and really more of an everything than a small timer like Kringle. Nice to know that this media darling would no longer haunt me with his antics. So many others, though. Ultimately futile, I’d suppose, but I have to do what I feel is right and what might make me feel good later. I think it is quite likely that poisoning Thomas Gennaro will make me feel extremely good. Not even Thomas Gennaro, the name is irrelevant, like some comicbook supervillain, he’s the Cabana Boy, he’s his handle now. I’m not even killing Thomas Gennaro. That’s a relief, because killing Thomas Gennaro might have made me feel bad. But, erase the legend, erase the handle, erase the Cabana Boy. Fifty five dead hookers will thank me. I’m not quite sure Gennaro works with the Dark Ones, though I’m sure the DVDs and the books about him are crawling with nanites, but just the same, it’s good to be rid of a second worthless nobody who liked to take things apart. Human beings are not Swiss watches or Lego castles. Many of them are all wires, but the deconstructive urge is still too much. I think it was Yeats who said “things fall apart, the center cannot hold”, in fact I know it was Yeats. The man was right. This is all starting to crumble. Why take it apart and see why it crumbles. Even the robots deserve better, though I have this irritating tendency to tell myself otherwise. I also have this irritating tendency to be uncertain whether it is in fact me telling myself otherwise. So, Kringle deserved it and the Cabana Boy deserves it.
I look down at my watch every five minutes or so. One old man, old woman, depressed housewife after another. Shuffle in shuffle out shuffle off the mortal coil. Shuffle shuffle shuffle vanish. Like a card trick without the amusement. Makes me feel like a machine. I always hate feeling like a machine. So many of the others are machines, after all, so I have to take pride in being a real flesh and blood man. No matter how proud I am of my guts and my grey matter and how tightly I hold onto them. Twelve glances at the watch per hour. Four hours of work following the
Cabana Boy’s departure. That makes forty eight glances per hour. It scares me how precise the timing of my glances is. In fact, the watch is pretty much just a prop. I am my own watch. Spinning gears momentary ticks in my head. Around glance twenty five, the Cabana Boy comes and picks up his medicine. I try my hardest not to seem nervous, but I’m so excited. Afraid he might be on to me, but the excitement and anxiety are the most apparent things. It’s lucky he’s way too far gone to even notice how much I fidget. Can’t even see the sheen of sweat on my face or hear the heaviness of my breathing.
And after that, twenty three glances follow and I am ready to go home. I am ready to go home about four glances after he goes, but twenty three more is when I get to go home. Home where I can live and breathe and bleed. No detours this time. No conversation, no scooping out victims, no hunting for nefarious extradimensional beings seeking to corrupt and annihilate us gradually. My going home rituals are abandoned in favor of seeing the woman I love and being away from streets full of Dark Ones, Reap Kids and killers. I get to be away from all of that poison that’s seeped in so deep everywhere else. I greet Cass with a kiss that almost makes me forget. The kiss asserts my skin and proves that in my veins there is red and not motor oil black. Every real person needs to prove these things sometimes. Cass looks confused and doe-eyed. She is legitimately taken by surprise this time.
“Jeremy?”
I say nothing. I see that there aren’t words. Every time I see there aren’t words. It feels like people can’t communicate because there aren’t good enough words. Words that really do taste and touch and smell. So, I don’t use any and I let my kiss and my embrace say everything. There’s nothing wrong with the silence. I see myself whisper the things I can’t say right down her throat and making them into poems that I could never be articulate enough to put on paper. It plagues me that I think that the only things that I can do sincerely are kill and fuck. But, this isn’t killing and it isn’t fucking. The kiss is a language, a language that real people with real minds and real hearts and real souls speak to each other in a time when those things aren’t comprehended.
Cass half cries. “I love you, Jeremy.”
Then there’s a miracle. I put an end to all of the almost crying I’ve done so much recently. I devolve into a truly honest mood swing. Nothing in me is prepared for this, although everything has been waiting for it. No, not devolve. I ascend into a truly honest mood swing. The tears are apotheosis, grailblood dripping down and washing away the poison and the motor oil, and the-the-the blood.
“Cass, I don’t want to be a pharmacist anymore. I want to be alive.”
She holds me and all of a sudden I’m saying things. This reminds me why humanity is worth defending and once more why I have to-
But this feels like the crusade. Wars are fought everywhere I suppose. No escaping them. But this is a better part of the war. This defines, validates, and explains the crusade. This is more active than the action.
“They’re not all people, Cass. People look like people, but I think that they’re not and what I want is I want to be a person, so I don’t want to be a pharmacist. I thought maybe that I could could could…”
My crying begins to drown my syllables, yet, at the same time it crystallizes the things that they try to say. It kind of chokes my ability to stay coherent. I sound like a child, but Cass doesn’t care. The blondes and the Cabana Boy’s hookers and the the the-god, all the women that had to die. So many men could have cried and been honest before it came to this. So many. Maybe the hookers and waitresses and joggers weren’t Cass, but I’m vulnerable and she’s vulnerable and the streets are grey with wolves. Vicious animals that could come and take her away, as easily as- she holds me and I’m honest.
“You wanted to help people. All you want is to help people, Jeremy. But you’re really just filling them up with pills. How are the pills really helping? What good will pills do?”
Some morbid and smirky part of me cracks a little smile at the question. I see the Cabana Boy writhe and twitch. Somebody is safe. The Dark Ones must be losing a little bit somehow. In my three years as a pharmacist, I think this is the most healing I have ever done. Cass is right. I just want to help everybody.
“I love you…” I stammer.
“Shh…I know, Jeremy, I know.”
I relax in Cass’ arms and feel my contribution. I don’t need to kill tonight.
Obsolescence
Jeremy and I are not talking too much lately. It’s a pity. Jeremy and Cass have both called in sick and I feel neglected. I should be above such things, but I’m not. I really wish that I had something very important to say because God, I hate just sitting around and waiting for my time to come. When Jeremy is bored, he can read a book, he can watch people and he can play any number of stimulating little games people play to keep themselves amused a little longer. But me, I just need to wait. I don’t even have thumbs to twiddle. I just have to sit here and prepare to do my fucking job, my fucking all important job that doesn’t get done without me. Pull the levers, manipulate the switches that need manipulating, reassign the mechanisms, whisper the things I need to whisper. But, Jeremy is at peace. I really want him to be happy, at least on some level, but I am utterly beastly bored.
Cass wraps her right leg around his, and runs her fingers up and down his arm. He rolls his eyes back and just enjoys himself. Jeremy is experiencing simple unrefined joy. I myself tend to believe that such feelings are not to be had. I believe that such feelings should be confined to dogs and apes and other such ridiculous primitives. The little animals. He likes and admires the little animals enough that he doesn’t even eat them anymore. So much for evolutionary perfection. I wish that he would just come to terms with the fact that he’s too useful for things like that. Would you like to sleep on a star, carry moonbeams home in a jar and be better off than you are? Or would you rather be a pig? Old Bing Crosby song seems so pertinent. So many take the easy way out existentially. Powerful, Adonaic, brilliant Jeremy has chosen the life of a farm animal. I almost think I’m at fault for turning his brain off when things get dull; I’ve coddled him to the point at which his banality tolerance is far too great. I’m occasionally the one that lets him play the little games that keep him amused, and now I have nothing to amuse myself with. Oddly appropriate. I think about Cabana Boy yesterday. Like a bored high school jock lacking the wit to come up with a good insult, I resort to a low blow.
“You kill like a girl. Pills, Jeremy? God, pills? I’m starting to feel that my faith in you is quite misplaced. You worry me. I need a Cuchulain and I get a Borgia. Not only that, but you’re further mixing business with pleasure. And what about the Dark Ones? And what about the unrelenting plague of evil about to be loosed? So, Mr. Pharmacist, how do we cure all of this? Paging Dr. Jenkins…the world needs you, Jeremy. No healer, no warrior, no guardian. Neither the flame that purges nor the water that quenches. Excuse my pretention, but I must lay it on thick…” Like Cass says, “Same shit, different day.” I have often contemplated whether or not I have feelings of my own, but now I see that they mirror his. Redundancy, worthlessness, hesitation…I exist to build a better mousetrap, yet shriek at the sight of vermin. Pathetic. The division between us stands at killer and killjoy. It actually hits me and I choke knowing that for him to do what I need him to do, he has to be joyless. And I end up as the agency that deprives him of that joy. Maybe there’s a whole culture of stupidity and a heartbreakingly menial job to help with that, but my role is still quite prominent. If I were an entity that could stand on its own, I wouldn’t be so frustrated by these idyllic interludes. If I were at all self-contained, I would not be wishing he would go and do something worthwhile or trying to whisper in his ear that she’s a robot. Though I resent the Dark Ones, I suppose that can be called nothing but corruption. Jeremy’s a hypocrite and so am I. I think she’s a robot, I think it’s all adding up for me, but it’s not. If I thought otherwise, I would have too much else to understand.
Lik
e why he is quite content to lie in bed and enjoy the kisses, caresses and the very touch of his girlfriend. His robot girlfriend. Nanites. That’s the angle. There is always an angle. I wouldn’t dare to think there isn’t one. Be vigilant. Deny everything. Take no shit. Clean up emotional messes. These are my orders, my prerogatives. If I encounter something that I do not understand, I should eradicate it because if I don’t understand it, it is in the way of the mission. So, I’ve decided on the angle. She is in league with the Dark Ones and trying to spread Nanites via physical and psychic contact. Simple but devious. It would be just like them to do something like that to him. Give him someone to love only to be poisoned and transformed by her. Reprehensible. And it has to be the case, because otherwise, Jeremy who has an innumerable amount of very useful things to do would not even think of being in bed with Cass. Is it true or would I like it to be? Perhaps I’m in a position where it doesn’t matter. And that might just be why I’m on the inside and Jeremy is on the surface. Perhaps it’s also because he has things to enjoy.
They kiss and it’s once more electric. Once more an earthquake, tidal wave, hurricane kiss between desperate fleshy elementals. They are once intertwining and being once more a single body with one skin and four hands like a statue of some Hindu God. The hands float around each other and I can’t keep track of which belongs to whom. They simply enjoy each other, take each other in like sips of wine or a chocolate milkshake. I can only feel the aftershocks really and the quickening of his heart. I can see him feeling what he feels and understand what it does to him, but I don’t get any of it. Neither get nor comprehend. Neither kind of “get.” But work must be done, Jeremy, work must be done.