Frayed

by Tom Piccirilli

“You’re the sweetie pie girl next door. They’re the hot gorgeous bimbos who ignored the nerds in high school. And the elderly Nurse Bradley? The loving grandma?”

  “To an extent it’s fantasy fulfil ment.”

  It probably was. I figured it just might work. It sounded insane enough to work, and I thought it might actual y help some of the poor mooks, at least for the time they spent in their delusional paradise funny farm.

  I also found it exploitive and manipulative. But I thought that about pretty much everything.

  Trudy continued, and I could hardly see the innocent girl in her now. It made me feel overwhelmingly sad for a minute. “The very fact that so many mental health facilities are staunch, overbearing, even frightening places may have a detrimental effect on the patients.

  You take people who already have a social unease, resentment, jealousies, and other emotional disorders and traumas and then further remove them from normal society. We try to address the individual with whichever staff members might provide the most comforting effigy or archetype needed in their treatment. Then their transition back into society wil be established much more smoothly and with less tendency to revert back to their former aberrant behavior.”

  So Gray needed a couple of coochie mamas out in a pool to gaze over, and the sweetheart gal to slow dance with him and bake him brownies whenever he wanted them.

  I was starting to get a headache. “And when did the Clinic begin this trial approach?”

  “Approximately the same time your friend arrived.”

  “Six months ago. And what’s your rate of success?”

  “The results yet to be determined.”

  “I see.”

  “Only a few patients have returned to their previous social settings and the data is stil being correlated.”

  The state board behind the Clinic was going to have a shitstorm of hel fire coming down on it soon.

  Which one of the guests would ever want to return to the fears, addictions, and dread of the world when they had paradise on a stick inside the Clinic?

  They would never want to leave. No wonder everybody looked so sane and happy. They were.

  Inside the bin. The minute they were kicked loose again, they’d be twice as fucked up as before. They’d be lonely for the camaraderie, the dances, the happy lobster faces, the fritters and chicken parm sandwiches, their little pil s handed out by sweet old ladies. They’d be making false suicide attempts by the hundreds, slitting their wrists and downing tranquilizers in an effort to get back into Club Lunatic.

  Were Doctor Howards and Trudy real y so naive and near-sighted to believe there could be any other outcome?

  I had another burning question. “What about Cheyenne Califa?”

  Trudy—Dr. Ferrara—weighed her words careful y, playing it so close to the vest that I could see the granite wal going up. “She’s a guest with a sorrowful past.”

  “And what would that past consist of?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “She seemed to mean something to Gray.”

  “I find that difficult to believe.”

  These people and their bland imaginations. When somebody starts off with a lie and goes to such extremes to tel you that there are half-truths abounding—for the good of others—you knew you were dealing with someone who would pick and choose the facts that only benefitted her cause.

  “But I’m not here to talk about her, Eddie.”

  “No, I didn’t think so.”

  I appreciated the two-prong attack. First the old man takes a stab at me, and then he gives his information to Trudy here and she comes in for a fol ow-up assault. But for what purpose? To what end?

  She was good at her job and must’ve sensed my lingering interest in her. I couldn’t help my natural draw to her sensuous, sweet good looks despite the frigid posturing now. You found a man’s weakness and struck it. This was the way emperors were deposed, this was how wars were lost.

  Her compel ing eyes grew fierce until they blazed.

  “Eddie,” she said in a tone similar to my mother’s when I’d broken her good crystal. “What happened out there? On the Isle?”

  “You real y don’t want to know, lady.”

  “I’d like an answer please.” Again, speaking in the authoritative role, brooking no opposition, trying to force me to answer through the sheer force of her wil .

  It wasn’t working. The game had been fouled up.

  Trudy already existed in one role for me, and couldn’t switch to another in the middle of this play.

  “No.”

  “Don’t you want your friend to heal?”

  “What makes you think he hasn’t? What makes you think he’s not exactly who he’s supposed to be?”

  “But he tried to kil you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Twice as a matter of fact.”

  “More times than that.”

  “But why?”

  “Because he hates himself.” The look on her face made me sneer. “You people are so ful of yourselves.

  Did you ever think that once you had a thread of somebody’s guts in your hands, it might be a bad thing to unravel it?”

  “Not if he’s suicidal or homicidal.”

  I swung off the bed and moved around the room, feeling caged and wired, but also vital for the first time in months. “Who the hel isn’t nowadays? You must have quite the file on me as wel , if he talks as much to you about his life as I suppose he does. But I’m not one of your guests, your patients, your experiments or whatever else you want to cal our good buddies in the bin.”

  “Please don’t keep using al these euphemisms and making such negative stereotypes, Eddie.”

  “Ah, baloney.” The way she said my name was beginning to real y jab at me. “By the way, what’s your first name? Is it real y Trudy?”

  “I’d rather not divulge that at this time,” she told me, stil seated so austere and proper in the chair.

  “What a surprise.” I don’t know why, but seeing her like that, pretty but aloof, refusing to tel me her name, somehow washed al the rage from me. It left me then, and some of the weakness and pain returned. It was if she had wound me up so much that my spring had snapped. “I think we’re done here, Dr. Ferrara.”

  “I’d like to read some of your work. Do you have any of your books with you?”

  “No.”

  “Not in the car?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Real y?” She leaned forward and got a little sloe-eyed, grinning as if she saw through my pretenses which weren’t pretenses.

  “Why would I lie about not having copies of my books in my trunk?”

  “I thought most authors had copies of their novels on hand to sel to potential fans.”

  “I’m not very good at sel ing my books, and I don’t have many fans.”

  “Wel , I’m sorry to hear that, Eddie.”

  “I bet.”

  I could wel imagine why she was so interested.

  She’d like to compare my work to that of Gray’s, and see where our themes and symbols overlapped. What fictions we’d created and what truths we’d refashioned to suit our own designs.

  Trudy stood and reached into her pocket. She handed me a couple of tiny blue capsules.

  “Here are some sedatives. They’l help you sleep tonight despite your discomfort.”

  I said thank you and immediately decided to flush them.

  Her bottom lip firmed as our hands touched. I got the impression she wanted me to make the attempt to jump her bones just so she could make notes about it.

  So she could entangle me even more deeply into the bizarre play they were performing up there at the Clinic. Gray might be the leading man, but I thought he somehow had a more direct hand in the whole show, as if he might be directing it, even this scene, right now, from afar.

  6

  A BEAUTIFUL PAST DESTROYING ITSELF

  BEFORE THE EYES OF THE CREATION,

  BUT NOT FOR YOU

&n
bsp; Two days later, back in the city, Gray’s first wife, Nola, found me in the 59th Street subway station waiting for the downtown C train. She swept up behind me like the shadow of a huge raven and enveloped me before I could react. I was stil slow from the battered ribs.

  I liked Nola, even though she often scared the hel out of me. She hit 5’11” even without her boots, which she always wore, and she stood there towering above me, her lengthy black hair brushed out in a wild mane, the black leather coat huge with flared cuffs and hem.

  Nola looked very much like a new age superhero destined to battle demons and other occult forces to save the rest of humanity. It was a role she wore wel , but one that had subtly impressed itself on her over the years. Gray had cast her as the protagonist in his first three novels and he’d somehow influenced her with his personality and force of his creativity. Until the girl I’d met back when we were teenagers was no longer recognizable.

  Gray hadn’t written about this character “Dahvana, Vampire Huntress” in nearly a decade, but Nola couldn’t shake the persona he’d invented for her. She held on to it the way she tried to hold on to Gray himself, with the strength of her resolve and terror of loneliness. So far as I knew, she’d never so much as dated another man since Gray abandoned her, except for me.

  With each new year she’d been forced to sublimate herself further and further into the role. Her black makeup was thick but perfectly applied, as if by an ancient Egyptian artist. I spotted the edges of extensive tattoos making their way around her wrists and up her throat. It annoyed me to think about what she must look like beneath her Dahvana outfit. The character had been attacked by al manners of night creatures, from bestial shapeshifters to living golems and sea serpents rising from the East River. Dahvana had many scars, and I couldn’t help thinking about Nola clawing and cutting herself to mimic the wounds of a second-rate character written by a man who no longer loved her.

  She had once worked for a modeling agency doing mostly evening wear catalogues. I knew that she’d digressed—if you could cal it that—to doing nudes on the web, mostly posing for Goth and fetish sites, but I hadn’t kept too close an eye on her for the past couple of years. I didn’t know if she was doing the same thing now or had gone even deeper into the underground.

  Dahvana had something of a cult fol owing. Monty Stobbs had managed to sel rights to a gaming company that produced a fairly popular software game, but I didn’t know how involved Nola might be with that, if at al .

  As usual, I got the feeling that I should be much more on top of things than I actual y was.

  She noticed my bruises and said, “You’ve seen him.”

  “I could’ve just been mugged, you know.”

  “I know his teeth marks. He’s had some dental work.”

  “Jesus.” I knew Gray had fucked her up pretty good during their marriage, and afterwards, but Christ. I checked my hands and the indents were faint but stil there.

  “Tel me how he’s doing,” she said as the C train lumbered into the station. I started for it and she placed her hand on my shoulder. Not grabbing, not pul ing, simply leaving it there so that the gravity of her need moved up through her and into me. I looked at the train and al the folks getting on, and then I watched it pul out and roar away.

  Turning, I shrugged her hand away and said, “Nola, it’s seventy degrees on a nice spring day. Why are you wearing that get-up?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  “These are my clothes, Eddie.”

  She had to be sweltering, but the pale skin of her face appeared cool, even cold. She had grown so comfortable in the disguise that it was no longer a masquerade. This was her entirety now, and I had to stop holding on to a past that no longer existed.

  For a brief time after they’d split, I thought maybe she and I could be right for each other. I’d felt the increasingly apparent possibility that I might be in love with her. We spent a lot of time together then, in each other’s beds and lives, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that she stil wanted Gray and somehow expected me to help her get him back. It’s a discouraging experience to be on top of a woman, making al the love you can, and seeing in her eyes the boundless adoration for another man.

  I had enough ghosts. I didn’t need to be haunted by one from a guy who was stil alive. Especial y under the goddamn covers.

  “He’s fine, Nola. In fact, he’s better off than I am.

  Probably you too. That Clinic is heaven compared to the Upper West Side.”

  “Is he working again?”

  “Yes. He’l probably knock out a bestsel er while he’s there.”

  “Don’t make fun,” she said, and hit a pose like Dahvana about to use her magical crossbow to send a silver spike into the chest of some child of darkness.

  “You think I am?”

  “Does he seem any better? Any...happier?”

  “His left jab is stil pretty good, and I guess his teeth are much nicer. By the way, thanks for al fuck’s sake for asking how I’m doing.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she had the good grace to actual y sound it. She loomed over me and I felt like I should get up on tiptoes to save my dwindling sense of masculinity.

  “What are you doing in this part of town?” I asked.

  “I was just going to Friedkin’s bookshop.”

  Stil looking for Gray’s out of print novels, storing them up and giving them away to anyone who showed the slightest interest in his work. Doing more for his career out on the street than Monty Stobbs or any other agent or lawyer Gray ever had.

  “I meant in life, Nola. In general, you know?”

  “Stil modeling.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t say it like that.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not porn, Eddie.”

  “I know.”

  “And it’s none of your business even it was.”

  “Sure,” I said, and my bel y clenched tighter.

  Possessive with the brutal iciness of knowing someone you once cared for is exposing herself to others.

  Imagination is a cruel master to the jealous man. I was a petty person at heart, like every ex-lover, and I was more or less fine with that.

  She might be showing her body off to every horny prick out there with a computer who liked to see tal women with tattoos, but her soul was stil Gray’s.

  “You were wrong, you know.”

  I let out a long, loud growl of disgust. It sounded more manly than a sigh. “Nola, don’t give me any shit, al right?”

  “You were wrong, what you did to him. You have to make it right.”

  We’d been going through this for years. Nola holding on to the tail end of some dream where she could turn back time if only somebody else did the right thing.

  “Don’t you have some goddamn vampires to kil ?

  Go on, Nola, get away from me.”

  “You need to make it right again.”

  “I would if I could, but it’s not possible.”

  “Only you can cure him.”

  “Taking me out of his life is like taking his past away. Take his past away and you take his madness away. Take his madness away and he’s not himself anymore. Don’t you understand that?” Nobody else had a grip on that pertinent fact yet except me, but no one else knew him as wel as I did either. Not his doctors, not his wives, nobody. “It’s the reason why I visited him. I wanted to see how long my very presence would take to unravel him. It was less than an hour. This is the way it’s always going to be, until one of us dies.”

  “You can save him, and yourself. Just go back out there to that inlet. Go see what you buried in the sand.”

  “You don’t know what the hel you’re talking about!”

  She put her hand on my shoulder again, taking back the force she’d wil ed into me. I could feel it leaving me, releasing me from the spot. She moved off and I stood there waiting for the C Train again, except I’d forgotten whe
re I was going.

  7

  I SNORT THE DEVIL’S DUST BUNNY

  WITHOUT REJECTION

  I worked my way with the throng up to the street. I wandered around for a while and even passed by Friedkin’s bookshop. I usual y stopped in and signed my old paperbacks for him, but lately they hadn’t been sel ing much and I didn’t want to appear even more desperate for attention than I already was.

  After about an hour it started to rain and I found myself in the garbage-strewn doorway of Monty Stobbs’ office building. Maybe I’d intended to come here from the beginning, or maybe Nola had somehow sent me this way with her urging. I walked in and took the elevator to the third floor and tried not to notice how much water was coming in through the cracked plaster of the ceiling.

  Monty didn’t look like a New York agent. Most of them wore thousand-dol ar suits and carried themselves as if they were celebrities who didn’t want the crust of a common humanity on their shoes. The ones I’d worked with I’d eventual y learned to hate, and they had hated me just as much.

  But Monty looked like an L.A. porno producer in the early 80s, which is just what he’d been. He had on pink suspenders and a thin black tie that didn’t match his charcoal shirt. He had his sleeves rol ed up past his elbows. He was single-handedly doing his best to bring the shag mul et back into style.

  I stepped inside the little waiting room and saw that his secretary, Candi, was slumped in her seat using two fingers to slowly peck at the keyboard. Her eyes kept closing as she wavered in the chair. She was fal ing asleep even with me standing right in front of her.

  The stink of beer and bourbon wafted heavily around the room. I glanced at the screen and saw that she was sending out what was supposed to be an astoundingly positive letter about the bril iance of a manuscript cal ed I Snort the Devil’s Dust Bunny. For an initial fee of $250 Monty Stobbs would virtual y, nearly, practical y guarantee to sel the book for Mr.

  Winslow Hurp.

  Candi had been one of Monty’s finds, back in the day. She was twenty years out of the triple-X business but stil dressed to show off her tits. A wide cleavage in a skin-tight blouse. Once they’d been attributes that brought in the big cash. After two decades of too much sun, liquor, plastic surgery, and occasional carcinomas, I cringed at their exposure.