Prelude to a Scream

by Jim Nisbet

  “Okay,” she said, “I mentioned it first. Then you mentioned it.”

  “Don’t you want another lil—?”

  “Mention it again.”

  “What? Me? Oh, I couldn’t. Please excuse…”

  When she smiled now she had four lips. Four beautiful, beautiful lips. “How’d you get so funny?” she said.

  “Me?” he said. “You should see you.”

  Her laughter sounded like windchimes on nocturnal Kauai.

  “There hasn’t been a man to make me laugh in…” She looked puzzled, then sad.

  “No wait,” Stanley said. “Don’t go there, I just came from there.” He wagged a forefinger between their faces. “It’s a nasty, sad, godforsaken, flickering place illuminated by nothing but televisions.”

  Vivienne, herself, seemed to be blinking back an untoward memory.

  “Like my apartment,” Stanley nodded, “if you could call it anything so domestic. Its walls reek of despair—a squalid place suffused by dark-ness and mildew, lit only by that noisy little window onto a thousand fake worlds—.”

  A tear rolled over her cheek, and headed for the corner of her mouth. But the smile, there swelling involuntarily, threw it off to the side, whence it fell onto her…Stanley tried to catch it, failed, his hand brushed her breast.…

  “Is that cashmere?” he stammered.

  Her beautiful mouth quivered between laughter and despair.

  “Oh no, oh no,” Stanley said. “Please…”

  “I-I can’t…,” she sniffled. “You won’t…”

  “No, please,” begged Stanley, “don’t cry. You’re too beautiful to cry. Wait, here, I’ve got a handkerchief.”

  A large flowered bandana bloomed out of his hip pocket into his hand and he gestured ineffectually with it. Another tear rolled over the same cheek, and followed the path of its brother. Sister? Stanley adroitly dabbed beneath her eye with a corner of the kerchief.

  They were very close now, head to head, and she said, almost inaudibly, “What’s a girl…?”

  “Don’t cry,” Stanley whispered.

  “Say it,” she whispered back. Her eyes were not eighteen inches from his.

  “S-s…” Stanley began.

  The eyes were big and filled with tears. “Say it,” she repeated softly. “Please say it.”

  Stanley allowed a sibilant to escape his teeth.

  “I can’t hear you,” her lips said, inaudibly.

  Stanley managed to whisper it, just below the threshold of audibility.

  “What?” she breathed.

  Stanley pulled her gently to him. She did not resist, and rested her head on his shoulder. The smell of her suffused his senses, and with it he swept a handful of her hair to his face. She was warm. She smelled good. He could feel her breathing.

  “Sex,” he said softly, directly into her ear. It was the first time he’d ever used that word as a verb in the imperative1, in the transitive2, and as an affirmative3, too.

  1. imperative: 3. [Grammar.] Of, relating to, or constituting the mood that expresses a command or request.

  2. transitive, 1. [Grammar.] Expressing an action that is carried from the subject to the object; requiring a direct object to complete meaning.

  3. affirmative 1. Asserting that something is true or correct, as with the answer “yes”…

  Chapter Three

  THERE WERE SHOES. WHITE SHOES WITH RUSTY DOTS ON THEM. But the light was all wrong, as if a scarf were over the eyes. A drip. A drip into a metal pan…

  “He’s coming out of it.” A high voice, strident.

  “Take him back.” A deep voice, with a strange accent.

  “No way.”

  “He’ll start screaming. Can’t have him screaming. Take him back down, please.”

  “I can’t yet.”

  “Do as I say.”

  “Look, Manny, I’ve got to stabilize him first. This guy’s drunker than the usual customer. It’s not easy, stabilizing a guy when he’s tanked on booze and chloral hydrate. It’s been four hours since he’s had a drink. His sugar’s kicking him awake, right through the sufenta. His sugar wants a drink.”

  This high voice sounds as if helium, or the toe of a boot, has been applied to the larynx.

  “So give him a drink.…”

  “Right. Since he’s flying first class we gently wake him, and ask if he’d prefer the Bordeaux or the Chardonnay. Then we can take him back down with Mezcal and curare. Doctor.”

  “This is insubordinate.”

  “Go eat the worm.”

  “Swine.”

  “Tourist.”

  First class? He’d never flown first class in his life. They say the seats are wider. They say the wine is free. Red, please, and keep it coming. He’s never even met anyone who has flown first class. They say the first-class passengers are smarter than the ones in coach. And, please excuse him, but, while he’s flying first class…

  Where is he going?

  “He’s trying to say something.”

  That was a woman’s voice.

  “Take him back down!”

  “I’ve got to stabilize him first…”

  “Stabilize him?” Hysteria.

  “Stabilize him?” Mockery.

  “You mock me. ME…”

  “Don’t antagonize him,” said the woman. “He locks up when he’s antagonized.”

  “Oh. Brilliant’s not enough. He’s got to be sensitive, too.”

  “What the devil’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Except that most brilliant people aren’t sensitive at all. Whereas yourself…You’re very sensitive. Doctor.”

  Jesus. The sound made by pinching the mouth of a balloon so the escaping gas makes a squeal.

  “It’s just that operating makes him…”

  “It isn’t operating that makes him…It’s operating out of a textbook that makes him…And that isn’t the only thing that makes him… Getting up in the morning makes him.…”

  “You’re spitting on the fascia.”

  A whispered groan.

  “You see? He’s coming out of it. That moan… that’s… that’s a prelude. A prelude to a scream!”

  “Hey. Prelude to a Scream, that’s a good one. Good name for a band. Better than Tenesmus.”

  “No, no,” came a chorus of voices. “Stomach Punk is better…”

  “Wielding the guitar and playing air scalpel, instead of the other way around. We’re definitely in the wrong racket,” said the high voice. “But we knew that. Didn’t we? Doctor?”

  “I’ve seen this before. He’s going to be screaming at any moment! I tell you, he’ll bring the whole neighborhood down on us.”

  “Doctor, not to be so dramatic. Permit me to give him a local.”

  “A local?”

  “Sure. Lidocaine the T-6.”

  A chuckle.

  “That stuff’s expensive.”

  “So? Let him scream, then.”

  Silence. The whisper of cutlery. A moan.

  “Well?”

  “He… He’s almost up, isn’t he?”

  “You’re the goddamn anesthesiologist. Is he almost up or is he not almost up?”

  “No. I mean…not quite. He’s…he’s hovering just below consciousness. Like a hawk on the morning air. If he doesn’t catch a thermal, he’ll be okay.”

  “A thermal?” the woman asked breathlessly.

  “Something emotional, some jet out of his subconscious, a nightmare, a memory. Some buried anguish, an inner heat can lift him right up…”

  The woman laughed. “Just don’t mention red hair.…”

  A louder moan. The room had a strange resonance to it… the acoustic reflection of hard, parallel surfaces…?

  “Hey, he heard you. What’s that about?”

  “Man, that really works…”

  “Whoa, sweetie. Hold on… A little less of sufenta, a taste of curare. Okay… He’s stabilized. Okay… I can hold him…”

  Blackness. That is to
say, an absence of vision as received through the organs of sight. A dream of cute little rockets, playing tag with one another through thickets of stars…

  “Who…,” said the accent. “Who’d come around this place at night anyway? Who’s to hear? I mean, what’s more disconcerting: knowing what goes on in here or not knowing what goes on in here—?”

  “I’m glad you asked that question. If knowledge is a tiny subset of the unknown, one would have a hard time containing one’s curiosity. But if the unknown is the greater part of consciousness, why tamper with the status quo, otherwise known as God’s plan?”

  “Put a cork in it, Jaime.”

  Hard to put a name to this accent. A non-native speaker of English making radio theater, maybe… Coming on like the BBC… Authoritative, informed… The only voice available to missionaries in the jungle at the time of the uprisings… Hidden in the root cellar… Crushing the headphones to the ears so as not to let a phoneme escape, betray the tunnel to the rebels… Password Crepuscular Bollard… Where did that come from…?

  Another moan.

  “That was appropriate. He groans every time you make a decision.”

  “It’s getting softer, though,” said the woman hopefully. “Isn’t it?”

  Now the playful rockets come in loud and low. Too loud. Too low. Businesslike. Run for cover.…

  “Hold him…!”

  The bluish stars against blackness became rusty splotches against whiteness, interlaced by textured contrails and metal-rimmed eyelets. Fly buzz. Motor on a V-2 rocket… It’s when it cuts off that you’ve got something to worry — There! It cut off—!

  “You going to wait until this guy can read the number on my license plate already? Gas the bastard!”

  “You telling me my job, Doctor?”

  “You’re working for me, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but at this moment my higher allegiance is to the patient, who needs me more than you need—”

  “Jeeze,” said the woman’s voice, “he’s strong—.”

  “Get the duct tape.”

  “Gas him I tell you!”

  The helium voice: “Vital signs not yet stabilized. Can’t do… substantial risk. Who knows what that cocktail is doing to him? Alcohol, chloral hydrate, sufenta—I don’t know if he’s on Mars or the subway. Do you, Doctor?”

  A tearing sound. Somebody’s wrapping a package. That lousy job in the shipping department, summer of ’67, everybody else following the song to San Francisco.…”

  “We can’t have him all the way up! Don’t you realize the risk?”

  “The risk is to us, he sees.”

  “Yes, to us.”

  “That’s right. Us. Fuck the patient.”

  “Critical. Okay. He’s quieting down, now. Yes. Look. Nobody’s going to hear him scream, for chrissakes. Besides, he doesn’t have the strength.”

  “My Christ when God was handing out brains this entire outfit stood on line with a communal thimble! I’m not talking about screaming. Let him scream. It’s his seeing that I’m worried about.”

  “Practically the old Random Walk, this guy’s metabolism…”

  Silence.

  “There’s always the eye bank,” the radio voice mused.

  “Eye bank,” said the second voice. “Eye bank? There’s no going back, once that’s started. Besides, who knows from eyes?”

  “Can of worms, it’s a fact.”

  “Precisely! A can of worms. The can is the unknown, see, and the worms are the known…”

  “Aw, can it, Jaime.”

  Silence. Rather, a roar that equates to silence, like looking into the mouth of a blast furnace. Then a single, deafening drip.

  “He’s hysterical, look at him. The guy takes me seriously.”

  “You shouldn’t antagonize him.”

  “Antagonize him? Me? I’m just passing the time, waiting to see if my patient is going to die or not. Antagonize him? He might as well be passing a kidney stone.”

  “That’s it. Maybe the guy’s got a kidney stone. Is that possible? Maybe that’s what woke him up.”

  “Doctor, darling, get a grip. What woke him up is ten thumbs retracting his colon.”

  “You know, you’re in this a little too deeply to be talking like that. Deprecating my skills. Why when I was your age…”

  “When you were my age, you and your fellow students were jerking off to Elective Affinities…”

  The woman stifled a laugh, then tried to sound serious. “You shouldn’t antago—”

  “A good anesthesiologist knows how to keep a patient down, and not let a simple thing like pain and chemical confusion get in his way. And as for Goethe,” the second voice said, “YOU LEAVE GOETHE OUT OF THIS!”

  A moan, no longer a whisper.

  Silence.

  “It’s us who’ll hear the screams,” said the radio voice morosely, a mere disconcerted shadow of its formerly shouting self.

  “Take it easy,” said the high voice soothingly. “We haven’t lost one yet. Right?”

  Silence.

  “Right?”

  “A can of worms. One day we’ll open one up and it’ll be exactly that.”

  “Gross,” said the woman. “Is that possible? Is he serious?”

  “Like he said. It’s like a corpse completely covered with flies. From a distance it looks like a mildewed velvet suit. Fuzzy. But close up: everything is moving.”

  “Oh my God…”

  “…just perceptibly moving…”

  “He’s got something there, you know. I remember a guy we took out of the Mission, last year—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you about smoking around this oxygen?”

  “Aw go bottle Mezcal with your worms. You see that little tube there? That’s where the oxygen is. It’s in that little tube, and that cylinder, and underneath the mask. Watch. See?”

  “Stop waving that lighter around!”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t make a federal case out of it.”

  “It’s against the law to smoke in the workplace.”

  “You begin to piss me off.…”

  “You’re completely loco.”

  “Loco?” A chuckle. “Loco.…”

  “Next thing you’ll be flicking ashes into the retroperitoneal.”

  “If ashes in the retroperitoneal killed surgery patients, no patient would get out of surgery alive.”

  “This isn’t a hospital,” the woman reminded him.

  “This guy shouldn’t have come up like this.”

  “The man shouldn’t have come up like this, he says. You couldn’t gas a cat.”

  “No telling about guys like this. You can gas them and gas them and nothing happens, they’re just barely under. Then—”

  “Then?” It was the woman, the woman’s voice. He found himself waiting to hear it. What was it about that voice?

  Oh…

  Oh, yeah.

  That voice has green eyes…

  We’re still together.

  Green eyes like the lights on the out-of-control panel for some fabulous vehicle designed to surf gravity. Some sleek little rocket chasing another sadder little rocket through thickets of stars and a rattle of glassware, in and out of the twinkling Olympia waterfall that sounds like perpetually pouring whiskey, into a wisteria-wreathed sylvan tunnel that turns head-on into the roaring BART train, headed the other way and it’s not stopping here…

  We’re still together…

  Rat. A big rat. Got on in Fremont, rode all the way to the Embarcadero… Hunching across the platform…

  “I don’t know. They wake up. So you give them an extra taste, just a little extra taste and — whhtt!”

  “What?”

  “They go out for keeps.”

  The woman gasped.

  “Not even so much as a Goodnight, Irene.”

  “You mustn’t allow —”

  “Oh, god.” She has a heart.

  “God has little to do with it.”

  Silen
ce.

  “You could be quoting Goethe here, Manny.”

  Silence.

  “How about, ‘One is not a man until one has built a house, planted a tree, fathered a son’?”

  Silence.

  “You ever planted a tree, Manny?”

  A hiss of escaping gas.

  “Of course, at this end of the century, were Goethe to have a look—.”

  “He’d start a band called Tenesmus,” put in a faraway voice.

  “And in his song lyrics observe,” the high voice continued, not missing a beat, “that one is not a man until one has cut down the tree one’s grandfather planted, built oneself a dome with its timber, hatched a son by one’s sister, redlined the credit cards, burned down the works with one’s family inside, and, finally, run out of ammunition and fallen under a hail of tax collector’s bullets.”

  Silence.

  “Bust out with a little air scalpel there, doc, and we’ll hunker down for the atrocious bass solo.”

  Silence. A clatter of metal on tile.

  “Sorry. Another blade, please.”

  Silence. A whisper of cutlery.

  “He’s right, though, you are kind of cute tonight, Sibyl. It strikes me your cuteness stems from an apparent attachment to the patient, here.”

  Patient? What patient?

  “This? How could I be attached to… what’s left of… this?”

  “He’s only temporarily disassembled.”

  “Yeah. Besides, consider the ghost in the machine.”

  “When he’s all sewn together, he’ll be that machine, again. He’ll rejoin that superset, the unknown.”

  “Same ghostly personality, unfortunately.”

  “Even then.”

  “So you’re not… attached?”

  “He’s just a guy is all he is. Just a lonely guy…”

  “Do tell.”

  Silence.

  “Hey Sibyl, I’m feeling hetero tonight: How far would you go to keep this lonely guy alive?”

  “What?”

  “A total stranger.”

  “I— You—”

  “After all, neither of us has ever seen him before. Nor shall we again.”

  The woman said nothing.

  “Just a slight counterclockwise twist of this spigot…”

  “Wait!”

  “Or perhaps a clockwise twist of this one…”

  “Stop it!”

  “He’s nothing to you.”

  “He’s alive, for God’s sake. He’s a human being.”