The Devil in Silver

by Victor Lavalle

  “I left my book in my room.” Pepper pointed at her piles of newsprint and periodicals. “Maybe I could borrow one of yours?”

  She smiled without opening her mouth; a tight grin. “You better think of something else,” she said.

  Pepper didn’t see why she had to be hardheaded about it, but also didn’t want to get booted out. He liked the lounge at this hour. No Loochie, no Dorry, and far from his empty room. But without anything to read, he wanted conversation. He said, “You want to hear about Vincent Van Gogh?”

  She frowned, surprised. “The painter?”

  “The Dutch painter,” Pepper said, proud he could be more specific.

  This seemed to please her. That he didn’t back down or apologize. She smiled again, a little wider this time, but still showing no teeth.

  Behind him, Pepper heard the Redhead Kingpin clear her throat. The Chinese woman looked over his shoulder and rolled her eyes.

  “Tell me something interesting about his birth,” she said, speaking loud enough that it seemed defiant.

  “He was born on March 30,” Pepper said, “in 1853.”

  “Everyone is born sometime.”

  Pepper considered this. “His father was a pastor.”

  She peeked at another magazine on the table. Pepper was losing her. Behind him, another bout of throat clearing. Which only made him speak a bit more loudly, too.

  “But he wasn’t a very good one,” Pepper said. “People adored Van Gogh’s dad, as a person, but as a pastor he was second-rate.”

  This made the Chinese woman look up again with some interest. “It’s not a good scandal or anything. But I do like to hear about people who aren’t very good at their jobs. Not terrible, not great, just okay. I like people who are just okay.”

  Pepper said, “So what’s your name?”

  She crossed her arms. “What does everyone around here call me?”

  Pepper shrugged cartoonishly, raised his eyebrows. “How would I know?”

  She twisted her lips and sighed. “My name is Xiu,” she said. “But you won’t be able to pronounce it.”

  “Xiu,” Pepper repeated, but it came out sounding like “zoo.” He knew that wasn’t quite right because he’d just heard her say it. He tried to hold his mouth closed the way she had. It seemed like she clenched her jaw, pursed her lips, and (somehow) simultaneously parted her teeth to make the sound come out.

  “Xiu,” he tried. “Xiu.” But it only sounded worse. It made his neck hurt.

  Finally she tapped the tabletop with an open hand. “Just call me Sue.”

  Pepper said, “I’m going to keep practicing.”

  She nodded. “But until then …”

  “Sue.”

  She looked to be about his age. In her early forties. She had a wide round face, and her smile never grew bigger than that grin. In all the lines she’d spoken just now he had yet to actually see her teeth. It didn’t seem like they were missing, but like she consciously kept them covered with her lips. Such a self-conscious way of speaking. She had a broad, flat nose that seemed to float off her broad face. Thinning black eyebrows. Deeply black hair that fell limply on either side of her face and hid her ears. Her eyes were also black and, somehow, remote. They were like closed shutters. But he could see, even through those slats, her lights were on.

  “I’m Pepper,” he said.

  “I know who you are.”

  “You’ve been asking about me?” He sat higher in his seat.

  “You tried to escape,” she said.

  He slumped. “I don’t know what we tried to do. But it didn’t work.”

  She grabbed a copy of Outside magazine from her pile. “No. It really didn’t.”

  Sue stopped on a page with a photo of a waterfall spraying down a mountain. She pressed a finger to the water as if her skin would come away wet. “So what will you do now?” she asked.

  “I think I’ll go into real estate.”

  “Commercial or residential?”

  “I’m going to make a bid on the ball court over there.”

  “How much will you offer?”

  “A dollar forty-nine.”

  She bugged her eyes wide. “Don’t you know the bubble burst? A dollar forty-nine sounds like 2006 prices!”

  They leaned toward each other, just slightly. They hardly noticed it. She reached into her stack of magazines and slid a different one to him: National Geographic Traveler. Pepper looked at her. Sue creased a picture of a desert oasis. She tore it out carefully.

  “For the files,” Pepper said.

  She held the picture up. A series of date-palm trees surrounding a small pool of water. “This one isn’t a file. It’s a dream.”

  Sue reached below her chair where she had an old plastic Associated Supermarket bag. Inside there were two somewhat worn accordion folders. One manila, one blue. She opened the blue one, and Pepper saw dozens and dozens of clippings from glossy magazines. Each one a fantasy spot worth visiting. Sue slipped the image of the oasis in there. Then she pressed it shut with the Velcro tab. She touched the blue folder. “The dreams.” She touched the manila folder. “The files.”

  Pepper watched her quietly. Was this crazy or was it cute? And did Pepper care? At least right now? He was with a woman whose company he already liked. And she seemed to like him. In a coffee shop, at a party, or in a psychiatric unit, some interactions always feel good.

  “So will you come see me again tomorrow?” Sue asked.

  On the third night, Pepper arrived early.

  The three women (and Heatmiser) tended to hit the television lounge at about ten p.m. This allowed the dinner rush to pass and the food (and meds) to hit the other patients. By nine o’clock, most couldn’t stay awake even if you set a limb on fire. By ten there was hardly anyone left. That’s when the quartet hit the stage. They fought through the haze rather than fall asleep. Other patients did exactly the same during the day, after breakfast meds, or lunch. They chose to keep alert then because they liked being up with the sun. These four were just on a different schedule.

  And now there were five.

  Sue came in carrying her plastic bag with two accordion folders and the night’s reading material clutched to her chest. She wore a thin white sweater over her faint blue nightdress and white Keds that had been through a hundred or more cycles in a washing machine, clean but eroding. To Pepper, she looked like a librarian. And in a way, that’s what she was.

  Before she’d even settled herself in her chair, Pepper pulled his hands out from under the table. He waved his book at her. “I brought something tonight!”

  At the television Heatmiser shushed Pepper. Pepper looked back as if he’d like to mess with the kid, but that boy’s face already looked five kinds of tired, weary in a way that had little to do with sleep. So Pepper only nodded and said, “Sorry.”

  Heatmiser turned back to the closed-captioned scroll on the TV. The words appeared on the bottom half of the screen. “Catherine Zeta-Jones is touted for bipolar II disorder,” it read.

  Heatmiser laughed to himself. “I think you mean ‘treated,’ ” he whispered.

  Sue laid her stuff out at their table. Not the magazines, but the newspapers this time. She had the manila accordion file on the table; the blue one, for dreams, stowed under her seat. Pepper saw two words written in black ink on the side of the manila folder.

  “No Name.”

  This gave Pepper a chill, as if he were seeing that phrase etched into someone’s tombstone. He didn’t want to look at it. Pepper raised his book and showed her Van Gogh’s self-portrait on the cover.

  “That’s him?” she asked. “He looks intense.”

  Sue leaned closer to the page. “Actually, I think he looks a little like Elliott.” She pointed at Heatmiser.

  Pepper looked back at the television. “That’s his name?”

  Sue said, “Let me see some more of his paintings.”

  Pepper flipped through the book’s pages fast as a deck of cards. “These are h
is letters, mostly to his brother. There’s only a few pictures in here and they’re only in black and white. But I think his stuff was mostly in color.”

  Sue touched the cover. “Have you ever seen them in real life?”

  Pepper snorted. “I didn’t even really know who this guy was until I opened this book. I mean I heard about him, like his name, but I just knew it was, like, a saying. You know? A teacher said it to me in class once. ‘You think you’re a real Van Gogh.’ And that was only because I was drawing a woman’s tits on my desk.”

  “That’s charming,” Sue said and flared her nostrils.

  Sue reached into one of her sweater pockets and took out a tiny notepad and a pen. She set them on the tabletop. Nearby, Redhead Kingpin and Still Waters had already begun working for the night. The day’s newspapers were open. Both women scanned the articles.

  But Sue didn’t rush to join them as she might have on any other night in the past. When she looked at Pepper, she didn’t want to stay quiet. She didn’t mind if they spoke for a little longer.

  Pepper, sensing that he’d passed some hurdle, some gate, felt a flush in his chest and arms. He said, “The thing I’ve been thinking about, as I’m reading these letters, is that there’s actually two Vincent Van Goghs.”

  “Like clones?” Sue asked.

  Pepper laughed loudly.

  Behind him, Heatmiser said, “Come on, man.”

  Pepper leaned closer to Sue so they could speak quietly. He said, “I mean there’s Van Gogh, now, whose name is used to tease a kid at P.S. 120 just because he’s drawing …”

  “Tits,” Sue said dryly.

  Pepper kept going. “You know they have a whole museum dedicated to Van Gogh in Amsterdam? They have a plug for it in the back of the book. A whole building dedicated to what he painted in his life.”

  “How long did he live?”

  “He was dead at thirty-seven.”

  “Damn.” Sue sat back in her seat. “I’m forty-one.”

  She looked at Pepper quickly, to see if the admission would sour him somehow. But Pepper didn’t care. He was still on his “two Van Goghs” point. He put his hand on the armrest of her chair. He said, “But the second Van Gogh is just a guy named Vincent. Vincent lived for thirty-seven years. Van Gogh only came to life after Vincent died. Same man, two people.”

  Sue watched Pepper’s hand there on her armrest. She tapped his arm with her notepad playfully. But he mistakenly thought she was trying to push him back. Like he was getting too close. So he pulled his arm away. Sue’s disappointment passed like a breeze on the back of her neck. It made her shiver. She placed her forearm on the armrest then so if he reached out again she’d be sure to feel his touch.

  But to continue the conversation, Sue said, “That reminds me of an interview I heard with Sheryl Crow once.”

  “Tangent!” Pepper hissed and laughed.

  “Just listen. She was talking about how she made a living when she was younger. Before she became famous. She used to give music lessons in Los Angeles. And she said one day she had this guy come in for a lesson but I think he didn’t come back. Or she didn’t pursue it. She never saw him again.

  “Then she’s watching a movie, maybe it was Thelma and Louise, and she sees the guy who had been in her living room for music lessons. He’s right there on the screen. Having sex with Geena Davis. And in the interview she said something like ‘If only I’d known it was Brad Pitt!’ ”

  Pepper watched her quietly. “And?”

  “If only she’d known it was Brad Pitt? She did know it was Brad Pitt. He just wasn’t Brad Pitt yet. Same man. Two people.”

  Pepper reached out and touched her wrist, there on the armrest. Nearly involuntarily, her fingers opened and her notepad fell out of her hand.

  Pepper smiled. “Now we’re talking.”

  Pepper pulled his fingers away from her skin and immediately she missed them. He leaned over to grab her notepad from where it fell. When he did, his head moved past Sue’s nose, and she smelled the shampoo Pepper had used when he showered just before seeing her tonight. She had the same shampoo, of course. They all did. But when a woman likes a man, nothing about him remains common. It’s his. Especially his. Even some no-name, half-bleachy shampoo. Eau de Pepper. (Available at ninety-nine-cent stores everywhere.)

  Pepper handed back her notepad. She felt afraid her face had flushed, so she focused on her newspapers. Pepper returned to Vincent’s letters.

  They stayed at the table together until five a.m.

  26

  “Randolph Maddix, a schizophrenic who lived at a private home for the mentally ill in Brooklyn, was often left alone to suffer seizures, his body crumpling to the floor of his squalid room. The home, Seaport Manor, is responsible for 325 starkly ill people, yet many of its workers could barely qualify for fast-food jobs. So it was no surprise that Mr. Maddix, 51, was dead for more than 12 hours before an aide finally checked on him. His back, curled and stiff with rigor mortis, had to be broken to fit him into a body bag.”

  THE NEW YORK TIMES

  April 28, 2002

  27

  “I’LL BE GONE in less than a week.”

  Sue told him this on the fourth night.

  They didn’t take the same table as the previous nights, close to Redhead Kingpin and Still Waters. Tonight they wanted a little privacy, which meant moving a few tables over. This one was also hidden from the view of staff members inside the nurses’ station by a structural column. Considering the circumstances, this felt like running off to a private villa.

  But wait! Hadn’t the entire ward gone on high alert about seven weeks ago? Hadn’t the aftermath of Pepper’s insurrection had consequences? Well, yes: Staff members were approved for overtime pay, but that only lasted a month; Pepper, Dorry, and Loochie were checked to be sure they took their medications; legal counsel had evaluated the hospital’s possible legal culpability; and the criminal matter of Kofi Acholi’s death was being investigated by the New York City Police Department.

  (But if the pace of Pepper’s possible indictment for assaulting Huey, Dewey, and Louie weren’t evidence enough of systematic sluggishness, please consider that the full extent of police activity in the likely suicide of Samantha “Sam” Forrester was that a yellow sticker had been affixed to the door of her room, sealing it shut; the yellow sticker read, in part: THIS AREA IS THE SITE OF AN ONGOING POLICE INVESTIGATION. DO NOT ENTER. The police wouldn’t be back to this room for eleven more weeks. And when they came, it would only be to cut the sticker, open the room, and conclude their investigation with a few sheets of paperwork; Miss Chris would be left to scrape the remains of the sticker off the door and door frame, and halfway through, she’d pawn the job off on the nearest orderly.)

  Which is to say that Pepper and Sue would be left alone at their table.

  Because they sat behind the columns, Pepper felt bold. He rested his hand on her right thigh, which was slim and soft. He squeezed her leg. How long had it been since he’d been able to do that to a woman? Too long.

  “You’re getting discharged?” he whispered.

  He knew he should only feel happy about this. Like hearing someone you care about has just had a long jail sentence commuted. But this also meant that in less than a week she’d be leaving him. When they’d only just begun. He understood that he was being selfish. He tried the same sentence again, trying to sound elated.

  “You’re getting discharged!”

  He would walk her to the secure door. He would watch her walk out. And he realized that, despite his own sadness, he would be so glad she was free.

  “I’m getting deported,” Sue said.

  He laughed at this. A big one. Up from the belly. Enough to make everyone else in the lounge shoosh him hatefully, as if he were a teenager texting in a movie theater. And their sound was so loud, so clearly hostile, that a member of the staff called out from the nurses’ station.

  “Everything all right down there?” she shouted.

&nb
sp; Not just a nurse, but Josephine. Back on the job. Working an overnight shift, but wary in a way she hadn’t been before. A little afraid to come down to the lounge on her own. (Especially with Pepper in there; don’t think she hadn’t tracked him passing by.) Then she felt resentful that this job had swiped some of her confidence, her ease. She was no longer Josephine; now she was Nurse Washburn. She’d already started telling patients to address her that way.

  In the lounge, Sue cupped her hands and shouted, “One hundred percent all right down here!”

  Nurse Washburn’s chair creaked as she sat back down. Then, very faintly, they all heard the clacking of computer keys.

  “Come on,” Pepper said quietly. “Stop playing with me.”

  He ran his hand down Sue’s thigh, toward her knee. She clasped his wrist. She pinched her lips and softened her eyes as if Pepper were the one in need of sympathy. “I’m not playing,” she whispered. “I have less than seven days.”

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “Deport you for what? Deport you to where?”

  “To China.”

  This was the first time he really thought about the crispness of her English. “But you speak English so well,” he said.

  Pepper said those words before he had time to think them through. But you speak English so well. Just a burp produced in a fetid little chamber of his mind. The wrong thing to say. He knew it. He knew it. But that didn’t mean shit to Sue.

  She squinted her eyes into slits. She curled her upper lip until her teeth bucked out. “Oh, sank you velly much,” she said. “Missa GI Joe Amelican!”

  Pepper kissed the side of her face. Their first kiss, and it came because of this. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.”

  She pulled away from him. She crossed her arms. A fight had begun. One Pepper couldn’t win with apologies. But then he noticed something new. He pointed at her mouth. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen your teeth.”

  Sue gasped as if her skirt had blown up over her head. She dropped her upper lip. She brought one hand up to her mouth and covered it.