Psychostasis

by Ezra Blake

  Ash’s fingers find his zipper. He presses his face so close to Jake’s face that the stench of stale beer clouds his senses. “I seen videos. It ain’t that hard. Heat a knife red hot, snip, and you’re done.”

  Jake bites his lip hard and tries to keep his eyes open. Any reaction is the wrong reaction. Don’t indulge him.

  “I’ll make it worth your while.” He slips his hand into Jake’s pants and cups him through his underwear. Blood flushes through him like a waterfall of hot copper. Ash’s hands are so soft, so delicate. And he hates Jake’s guts.

  “Then we can be together, right? We can’t sin no more. Least, I can’t.”

  Ash unfurls himself over the console and lowers his head.

  Jake swerves. The road slips around his field of vision like ink from a snapped pen. He’s an inch away from the barrier when they screech to a halt, Ash pink and unshaken, bright-eyed. “That’s it,” he pants, adhering himself to Jake’s side again. “Just sit back, I can—”

  Jake shoves him off. He smacks the door and bounces right back, saying, “Yeah, that’s it!”

  By the time Jake has a decent grip on his shoulders, Ash’s soft lips are wrapped around the head of his cock and then he doesn’t want to hold on anymore. He tips his head back and squeezes his eyes shut. The heat is unbearable. It’s Gillian Anderson. Courtney Cox. Rose.

  It’s Ash, sniffling and smearing snot and tears in his pubes. Ash mumbling something he can’t hear, isn’t intended to hear, doesn’t need. His hips buck, making Ash gag and smack the back of his head into the wheel. He braces an arm across Jake’s thighs and redoubles his efforts. He’s Angelina Jolie. Helena Bonham Carter. He’s jamming a finger up Jake’s ass, and Jake comes to his senses.

  “Off,” he grunts, opening the door into traffic and spilling out, pants around his thighs. “Fuck. Fuck.” He yanks them up and fumbles with the button. Ash is sitting in the wheel well, pouting. Jake slams the door in his face.

  He paces the shoulder for a moment, hands behind his head. Jams them in his pockets, finds cigarettes. He leans against the hood and lights up.

  “C’mon.” Ash’s raspy voice trails behind him. “Come on. You like me, right? You said you like me.”

  Jake stalks away from the car. If Ash gets within swinging distance, he’ll punch the kid’s teeth out and he can’t be held responsible.

  Ash says, “You’re gay, right? Don’t you want—”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I don’t know why you’re so mad!” Ash shouts. “I’m tryna do what you want!”

  “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT.”

  His voice cracks and his lips snap shut; he drags the sleeve of his dirty hoodie across his eyes. The first thing he sees once they’re clear is Ash’s pale terror: tight, trembling. Closer than he thought.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I’m sorry,” Ash says. “I’ll leave. I’ll go to the shelter.” He blinks tears from his stupid gigantic eyes and Jake’s rage goes limp and shrivels up in his palm. He’s angry. He is. It’s just cold out here.

  “No,” he says. “Get in the car.”

  “But you—”

  “Get in the fucking car, Ash.”

  “But are you gonna—”

  He yanks Ash into the car, drags one of the trash bags onto the console and rips it open, revealing plastic sheeting, cans, and broken glass. “Where the fuck are my pills?”

  Chapter 15

  At ten in the morning, Ivan is still home. He’s made quiche.

  The ceiling fans circulate hot breeze through the villa. It will be another day spent half-fainted on the library chaise, basking in the rippled sunlight, perhaps reading. A glass baking dish rests on the counter, cloudy with oil and speckled with bits of egg and spinach.

  “What day of the week is it?” Chris asks, pouring his coffee. He’s still lazy and half asleep, hair damp from the shower he barely recalls taking. In college, he could get blackout drunk and eat an entire pizza without consequence. Now he’s floored by three shots of whiskey and a little verbal abuse.

  “Saturday,” Ivan says, a faint sneer tugging at his lips. “It must be pleasant not to know.”

  Chris shrugs and eats his quiche. Naturally, it’s the best quiche he’s ever tasted. Regular food is an entry on the ever-expanding list of things Ivan has ruined for him.

  “We never finished our conversation last night,” Chris says. “Seemed important, but you stopped to…” A slow grin spreads across his face. “Abuse me.” The word feels different in his mouth today. What was once a cruel, hard fact has absorbed the saccharine taste of a whispered secret.

  Ivan presses his lips into a white slash, no doubt replaying his catalogued record of last night’s obscenity: the tears, the vomit, Christopher’s bruised esophagus. “It wasn’t important. I told you the truth and you refused to accept it.” His gaze flicks upwards, toward the fan. “Let’s move forward. I’m in a good mood today, Christopher.”

  Chris smirks and settles back in his chair. “I mean, it wasn’t all me. I just kept my mouth open.”

  “Don’t be obscene,” Ivan snaps. “I’m not talking about your little pasquinade.”

  “What—”

  “Parody. Caricature. Satire.”

  “I know what it means. What about fucking my face strikes you as satire?”

  Ivan silently picks at his quiche.

  “We’re going into town,” he says, a few moments later, “to buy luggage. I doubt you remember, but you soiled my suitcase in transit.”

  Chris scowls. “Why?”

  “I’ve taken an indefinite sabbatical.”

  “Hang on. I gave you mediocre oral sex and you quit your job?”

  Ivan drops his fork, props his head on his fist, and speaks through clenched teeth. “It’s a sabbatical, darling. I’m welcome back. And despite your intense self-involvement, I promise, not everything is about you. I’ve arranged to meet a previous employer in Napoli. They relocate people,” he says. “They’re willing to relocate a person for us.”

  Chris scarfs down quiche. There is no appropriate response, and he’d rather bite through his own tongue again than ask for more details.

  “We exchange favors—my surgical skills for their expertise in Human Resources.” He surveys the dining room impartially, as though cataloguing its dimensions to draw up a floor plan.

  Chris opens his mouth long before forming an answer, and what comes out is his least important question. “Uh, my passport—”

  Ivan pulls a small booklet out of his jacket pocket and slides it across the table. “I’ve already made arrangements.”

  He flips the cover open, and his doppelgänger’s face stares back at him. He looks a little younger; his eyes are bright and his cheeks are full, but the resemblance is still striking—they could have been twins before Chris fucked a hole through his occipital lobe. The haircut is identical. How long has Ivan been planning this?

  “Martin Guerre?” He reads.

  “Did you really think your victim was named Christopher in French?”

  “I guess not.” He frowns. “If I already have a fake identity, you didn’t need to drag me through customs in a suitcase.”

  “He brought his passport with him when he came to visit me in the States, but an Italian visa would be more difficult to procure. I’d prefer to minimize the paper trail.”

  “He came to visit you.”

  “He was a prostitute.”

  Chris swirls a whirlpool into his coffee and stares into the center like it might swallow him up if he can just concentrate hard enough.

  Ivan purses his lips. “If you don’t want to go, we can murder the next person who takes my parking space. It’d be simpler.”

  He’s at the top of a skyscraper, watching a demolition crew wreck the first floor—but he can agree to this, or he can stay here and wait for the worst. So he says of course he’s sure, and Ivan says they need to buy clothing for travel. Although both statements are equally untrue, they proceed accor
dingly.

  Florence is sweltering and sparsely populated this time of year. Though it isn’t summer yet, most locals are already vacationing in more habitable climates. It’s a good day to shop for sweat-wicking smart fabric undershirts and dress shoes with double-cushioned insoles, but Chris has always been, and will always be uncomfortable in public.

  The crowds congregate at tourist sites, including, unfortunately, Ponte Vecchio bridge. They cross it anyway. Ivan isn’t too out of place, in tailored cotton shorts, a breezy top with two buttons undone, and aviator sunglasses which lend him an irritating devil-may-care charm. He could be mistaken for a particularly well dressed tourist, but Chris knows better. He’s light years away from these young trust-fund couples, sunburned families and tired children dragging their feet across the bridge. It’s nothing but camouflage. And Chris, by mere association, is also hiding in plain sight.

  “Stop here,” Ivan says. “Look.”

  Chris follows his gaze to a case of gold jewelry, identical to every other case of gold jewelry on the bridge. “What am I looking at?”

  “This.” He gestures to an oblong gold bowl about the size of a fist. “It’s from the 5th century BC. If you read the plaque, you’ll see that no similar objects from this period have been found anywhere else. Why is this so important?”

  “Um…I don’t know.” He readjusts the shopping bags slung over his shoulder and shifts from foot to prosthetic and back again. His stump is killing him.

  “What’s special about gold?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to find?”

  “Its rarity makes it expensive, which means this object came from a society large and advanced enough to have a concept of wealth and social class. But gold has another unique property.”

  Ivan pauses to give him a chance to chime in, but Chris can’t think in this heat.

  “It doesn’t have to be made. Gold can be found in the riverbed, already pure, so malleable that you could crush this bowl in your hand.” His hand brushes the small of Chris’s back as he leans in closer. “Interesting that the most precious metal is also the most easily shaped.”

  Chris narrows his eyes.

  “Anyone lucky enough to stumble across the raw materials can make a simple bowl, but the real treasures—” he waves toward the most impressive artifact, a necklace made of thousands of interwoven golden threads “—require skill and patience. And of course, they can always be crushed.”

  He shies away from Ivan’s hand. “Yeah,” he says. “Only if you take them out of the case.”

  Chapter 16

  Everyone hates evening rotations, but Elliot hates them the most. Each Tuesday, his mother reheats the dinner he prepared and watches Jeopardy alone while he lifts his leaden eyelids in the ER’s windowless, artificial daylight.

  Frost blew through the basics. Now he quizzes them on only the most esoteric techniques, defects, and illnesses. He aims the hardest questions at Elliot. Actually, he aims most questions, observations, and snide remarks at Elliot. The rest of his group is beginning to resent him.

  They get half an hour for dinner. He usually spends it dozing in the deserted hallway behind the cafeteria. Today, he wakes to Frost’s voice:

  “So this is where you’ve been hiding.”

  Elliot sneers. Maybe if he keeps his eyes closed, Frost will go away.

  “I get the impression you’ve been avoiding me.”

  He opens his eyes. A plastic bag dangles in his face, emblazoned with the ugly orange and green Taco Hut logo. Frost says, “Call it a peace offering.”

  And he remembers, as he’s sitting at Doctor Frost’s oak desk with half a burrito hanging out of his mouth, that the Cold War was technically peacetime.

  “So tell me, how have you—”

  “Good,” Elliot says, still chewing.

  “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “I’m good.” He glances to the sofa in the corner. “Class is good. Grades are good. Life’s good.” If he took a nap on that couch, what would Frost do? Realistically?

  “We’ve barely spoken since your surgery. You’re recovering well?”

  “Oh, I’m great.” He smiles with teeth. “Better than ever, now that I got rid of that defective kidney.”

  “The ureter was improperly divided. Twice. Yours and its predecessor.”

  “Sounds like a pattern.”

  “Our European friend was adamant that we try again.”

  Elliot crushes the burrito wrapper in his palm. “What do you want, Doctor?”

  “I want you to remain prudent,” Frost says, sliding his untouched lunch to the side so he can lean forward and steeple his fingers. He’s a caricature, but he means it. “I understand your hostility, Elliot—I do, and hostility is your right. I recognize my part in this. But I need you to understand that we suckle the same teat. Don’t cut it off to starve me.”

  Elliot grimaces, schools his expression, and pushes his chair out from the desk. “I’m not cutting anything off. It didn’t go so well the first time.” He dumps his burrito wrapper in the trash. “Break’s almost over, if you don’t mind. Thanks for the food.”

  He resumes breathing in the elevator, but even then, the air tastes stale. He rides it all the way to street level. Frost can’t expect Elliot to cling to his coattails after a conversation like that, and it would be prudent to take a cool-down lap around the parking lot.

  The waiting room is familiar. He avoids it when he can. Elliot was born in this hospital, and this is where his mother sat, petrified, holding a screaming infant while her husband begged the nurse to get her in faster. He can’t wait here. The plan is to speed-walk through the double doors and run in circles until he doesn’t need to break anything, but that’s not what happens. As he slides past the front desk, he’s stopped in his tracks by three little words:

  “Just castrate him!”

  Elliot pauses against the wall which shields him from the unenviable receptionist. She’s saying, “I’m sorry, sir, but this is the emergency room, not a cosmetic surgery clinic. If you like, our mental health team can—”

  “You’re crazy if you think either of us are taking your fucking brainwashing pills! Healthcare is a business, don’t pretend it isn’t about money. You’re really gonna turn us away just because—”

  “Please take a step back, sir.”

  He peeks around the corner. The patient scoffs, tossing his dirty brown hair out of his face. “He doesn’t need your mental health team. He needs this procedure. And we’re going to keep coming back here until somebody—”

  Elliot catches an impulse. He steps up to the desk. “Mark!” He says. “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  The man freezes mid-sentence. His pupils are the size of golf balls.

  “I’m so sorry about this,” he tells the clerk. “I’ll take it from here. Thank you.”

  She squints at him through round magnifying glasses, but she doesn’t stop them from leaving. That’s how it always works. Pass the problem along the chain of command.

  Elliot ushers him toward the door, but he only makes it a few steps before the man stops dead. “We’re not leaving,” he says.

  “If you or your friend need help, I’d be happy to talk to—”

  “I’m not here to fucking talk, lady.”

  The secretary asks, “Do I need to call security?”

  “That’s fine. We’re leaving.” He takes a step closer, out of earshot, and hisses, “Calm the fuck down. Do you know what this looks like?”

  The man bares his teeth.

  “It looks fucking crazy. Let me help you.”

  He opens his mouth to speak, but Elliot raises a hand to stop him and says, “Parking lot. Let’s go.”

  “I need Ash, he’s—”

  “Let’s just step outside.”

  “—In the car, and he needs this operation or he’s gonna do it himself and I don’t mean in a few months, I mean tonight, and it’s gonna get infected and his pelvis is go
nna rot off, and—”

  Everyone’s staring, but Elliot isn’t doing anything wrong. Just saving the receptionist some trouble.

  “—don’t you dare tell me shit about a psychiatric hold because I’ve been on a psychiatric hold and I know it’s just a way to keep people with subversive ideas out of the public eye, and you charge us thousands of dollars for some zombie pill that makes us—”

  They step into the cool night air. Elliot hugs a Green Initiative sapling between his shoulder blades and says, “Stop for a second. Let me think.”

  Elliot has made a grave error. The guy is at least a foot taller than him and hyped up on drugs. This isn’t a business opportunity; it’s a gunshot wound in the making—but what can he do? Go inside? Methamphetamine Mark will definitely chase him down.

  The guy waits, hand on his cocked hip, lips pressed together to prevent words from leaking out. “You’re right about all of that,” Elliot says—we’re on the same team, see? Don’t rip my face off with your teeth. “But it’s not important right now. I know someone who can help if you have money.”

  “Cash,” he says. “Two and a half grand, in the car.”

  Elliot takes a slow breath. He is not getting in the car.

  “Okay,” he says. “Tell me what you need in ten words or fewer.”

  “I need—” he closes his mouth again, brow furrowed. Counting? “My friend needs someone to castrate him tonight. I’ll pay.” His jaw snaps shut and he grinds his teeth for a moment. “If you don’t do it he’s going to leave and do it himself and he’ll probably do a shit job and get a kidney infection and fucking die, and I’ll be stuck wondering what—”

  “I think I get the picture.” Elliot grips the tree and squeezes until he’s sure it’s going to snap. “The hospital can’t do what you’re asking, but I know someone who can. Can you answer some questions? Briefly?”