It was tacked to a big cork bulletin board, hung among a Bible's worth of posted printed pages. All the others were midget, though, flimsy notes on fist-sized memo paper, pinhead smudgy lettering compared to giant marker scrawls. Dwarfing the scatter like a hotel billboard, the poster hooked Hopper the instant his eyes skated by it.
Printed hugely like the top of an eye chart, the first word to snag Hopper was "sleep." Something he could identify with, which he knew too damn well; he always had to watch out for it, and sure enough, he didn't see it coming this time, either. "Research" next--doctors and test tubes, science fiction. Hopper read on, and the dollar sign made him go over it two more times.
"Sleep Research Group," said the poster. "Volunteers $22 Per Day."
The deal was unbelievable, inconceivable, probably too good to be true, but it gave Hopper a rocket lift the moment it all sank in. There had to be a catch, he knew, some tricky pricky loophole to shoot him down again. Probably, they had enough people already, since anyone would be crazy to ignore such easy cash; more likely, they would look him over and barrel his mucky mangled bum ass into the incinerator. There wasn't much of a chance that the poster would hand Hopper anything it promised.
That was why he washed up in the men's room and scaled the dingy stairs again. That was why, when he got to the place and found that it was closed, he spent the night reading magazines in the hospital lobby and waiting. National Geographic, Good Housekeeping, Jack And Jill--and tomorrow morning the room would open up and he would walk in and get twenty-two dollars or sacked out of the window.
*****
Campbell List was always moving. Every second, wherever he was, his body was constantly jiggling, snapping and rattling in a wily cockroach cadenza. Something always had to be in his hands, some pencil or bottle or skinny buffed quarter, kneading twirling tapping rolling in fingers like blinking antenna. When they were in the same room together, he made Lucy nervous, but Hopper was strangely calmed and fascinated by his motor speeding dance.
"Well, before you know it, there we were at the laundromat, ready to march in and take over. I was
half-crazy, boy I just felt that adrenaline pumping right through me. You know how that is, just physical, sexual almost--everything on the edge, ready to explode at any second." Campbell frisked a comb today, rubbed its teeth over the back of his wrist. A red pepper stripe was fading into view beneath the thin tan hair where he scratched.
"A laundromat? What were you doing at a laundromat?" Lucy bunched her bony long face in a puzzled horsy stare.
"Like I've been telling you, the garbage collectors in our part of town were assholes. They were carelessly dropping all kinds of debris when they emptied cans into their truck, and the junk was blowing all over the sidewalks and stoops and it was just a mess. So we decided to take over the local laundromat and force the mayor to get these idiots to stop horsing around. Our motto would be 'No clean undies until clean trash.' Nobody at City Hall would listen to us, nobody took us seriously, so we knew it was time for a confrontation." Still filing his wrist, Campbell started rocking his body from right to left in his chair.
"Sounds like deep shit to me," said Hopper, smiling with his arms folded across his chest.
"You better believe it, Ted! We were taking on the whole damn town this time! No surrender! We stocked provisions for a siege, contacted the local papers and TV stations. No more egg cartons and pork bones tossed on our front steps!" Campbell grinned and nodded proudly as he spoke, now ticking rhythmically in three different ways--comb sawing, torso rocking, head bumping. Hopper watched and listened closely, hypnotized more by the clockwork motion than the things Campbell was saying.
"So what, did you guys have guns to fight off cops? I'm sure they didn't just stay outta' your way," said Hopper.
"No guns, no guns," said Campbell emphatically. "Just our wits and spiritual strength. Guns are never a solution to a problem, they just make it worse, maybe get your own people killed. We were making a strictly nonviolent violent demonstration."
"Oh, that makes sense," laughed Lucy.
"It does, though," insisted Campbell. "You see, you need to be violent to a certain extent to get people's attention, or they'll just ignore you and the whole deal's useless. But you have to keep the violence under control, not let things get mentally crazy. Anyway, guns were verboten, I made sure."
"So did they shoot up the place and haul your ass away?" Coolly, Hopper lifted a gamy grappled sneaker to the edge of the table.
"Well, no, not really. I mean, I'm sure the cops planned to move in soon because we saw unmarked cars cruising past that we thought were suspicious. But they didn't come for us. They would have, but we...you see, we left before they could get there." He was still bobbing, darting, etching as he spoke.
"So what happened?," asked Lucy.
"The, uh, the Panthers came and forced us out."
Hopper chuckled. "Oh, no, man. Black Panthers? Some mean mother fuckers, man."
"No, not Black. Gray. The Gray Panthers."
"You mean the senior citizens? The old people?" Lucy gasped, cupped her slender hands over her mouth as she started to giggle.
"Yes, the old people," sighed Campbell, his rhythmic capering slowing. "An army of them, practically, forty or fifty gray-haired Panthers came storming off the street and charged into the laundromat. They kept hitting our barricades, rushing against them till they broke through--and by then there was nothing we could do."
Hopper puffed with laughter, cannonball eyes flap shuttered wide open. "Oh shit, that's good! You guys were beat up by a bunch of old fogies! Man, they must'a been pretty damn tough!"
"It was the force of numbers! There were just too many of them, and they kept coming through the door at us!"
"How many of you guys were there?" asked Hopper, snickering.
"Three," said Campbell. "But we were a strong group."
"Yeah, that's what it sounds like!" Hopper thrust his head back, whaled apart his jaws and roared. "A bunch'a real he-men!"
"We were outnumbered, but we would've been strong, I mean strong enough to repel the Panthers, if they hadn't surprised us." Campbell sounded defensive, his voice a little higher and harder, and he wasn't moving so much anymore. "We weren't expecting anything like that, we were watching all day for cops. We were doing other things when they hit us."
"What other things?" asked Lucy.
"Well...our laundry, actually."
"Your laundry? You take the place over and do your laundry?" Hopper laughed hard, pelican croony warbles throttled from his throat.
"We couldn't fight back, anyway. I mean, we tried once we knew what was happening, but we couldn't bring ourselves to hit them. We were basically pacifists
anyway--nonviolent violence, remember? Also, my grandmother was one of them."
Hopper flipped and tackled, hooting squinting speechless in his chair.
"How long did you hold the laundromat, then?" asked Lucy.
"Two hours, actually," muttered Campbell. While Lucy and Hopper fell apart, bursting and burbling around the square table, he sat quietly and smiled. In the limey bright light of the hospital cafeteria, his flamingo thin figure rested, only one wiry arm still moving, tapping a plastic salt shaker by his tray. His brown hair was long, pulled straight back and bound in a ponytail, probably reaching halfway down his back when untied. Bottlecap quartz glasses hung granny-style from his knotty beak nose, gossamer wire frames slitting the pale fretful nut of his face. His forehead was smooth and large, sloping down to green vinyl eyes parted with the bumpy cone nose. Lips, cheeks and chin receded, cliffed neckward above his faded flannel shirt. Waiting for the laughter to die away, he was yellowy somber, somehow weakly saddened despite the smile on his face.
"You're crazy, Campbell," said Lucy, giggling slowly to a stop from across the jumbled lunch trays. "I really don't know where you get the ideas for these wild stunts of yours."
"Oh, just brilliant inspiration, I guess. Somebody has to st
and up for people's rights."
"Yeah," snorted Hopper. "Stand up to those bad senior citizens!"
"Well, I think it's nice that you're concerned about people. There's nothing wrong with trying to help people, you know." Lucy tossed her head lightly, waving her frizzy mane of coal shiny hair behind her. It was longer even than Campbell's, falling only a few inches above her waist, and Hopper liked to look at it.
"Thanks, Lucy." Campbell was pleased with the compliments, bowed his head slightly and tapped the salt a little quicker. "I try, I really try to make things happen. The world is such a miserable place sometimes, and I feel, I just feel like I need to make it better, and if I don't then I'm letting myself down and the people around me, too."
"So why did you come here, Campbell?" Lucy leaned back in her chair, pressing her fluffy black pile against the red plastic.
"Oh, I'm interested in this kind of thing. You know, psychology, medicine, how the human mind works. The mental aspects and physical aspects have always intrigued me." The salt shaker stopped tapping, and Campbell began swirling a fork in the air instead. "I have some problems, too, you know. I'd like to look into them some more."
"What's your problem?" asked Hopper.
"Well, see, I don't dream. At least I don't think I do. I mean, I can never remember having had a dream, never in my life. Not even a flash or a vague memory of one. Of course, most people don't remember their dreams, but I'm different, I know. I've been to doctors before, when I could afford them, and I found out that I never enter REM sleep. They said I never get rapid eye movement, the deep stage when you do your dreaming. I nod off and my body rests, but it's just like a nap. I always stay in the upper levels, never get down to the deep mental processes."
"Everybody dreams," Hopper said.
"Not me."
"I'm an insomniac," Lucy said. "That's why I signed up. I'm a chronic insomniac. I thought maybe they could help me."
"Take some pills," suggested Hopper.
"They don't work. Nothing works for me. Believe me, I've tried everything I could. There's something wrong with me, and I just can't sleep."
"That's bad." Campbell shook his head in counterpoint to the twirling fork. "You have to sleep sometime, though, or you'd die."
"I sleep maybe twice a week, three or four hours at a time. It stinks, it really does. It started about four years ago, and it never lets up." She smiled gently, eyelids drawn halfway as she stared at her lunch tray. Her hands were folded in her lap below the table edge. "I'm always sick. Every day, I drag around exhausted. It's like I'm always half asleep, but never really there."
"Shit, I feel bad for you. What have the doctors said?" asked Campbell.
"Well, I've been to a few, but so far no luck. Nobody seems to know what's causing it. Maybe here they'll pick up on something, and I won't have to pay for it, either." She smiled and brushed a glade of feathery strands from her eyes. "If not, well, I keep making the best of it, I guess."
"Anything yet from Sprowl or Mavis? Any word on your condition?" Campbell dropped the fork in his glass, leaned forward and started drumming on the table like a bongo player.
"Nothing so far, but we've only been here three days. Who knows? I think both doctors seem to know what they're doing, and they specialize in sleep, so maybe they'll be able to help me. Never give up, right?" She shrugged and laughed like a tambourine. "Either way, they sure like me here. They say they've never seen anyone like me. I hope that's a compliment."
Campbell stopped thumping and lifted a crabby hand to her shoulder. "Hang in there, Lucy. All bad things must come to an end."
Lucy looked down with a pillowcase sadness, about to do something but turning to Hopper instead. "So what's your problem, Ted?"
"No problem at all. I sleep like a baby. I'm just here for the bucks."
"Where are you from, Ted?" asked Campbell.
"Around town. You know, pretty close by here and all that."
"You originally from here?"
"No. No," lied Hopper, sniffing. "I'm from Florida. Miami."
"Huh," said Campbell. "That's a crazy town, isn't it? I was down there two years ago, for this 'no nukes' march, and believe me, I will never forget it. How long ago did you move here?"
"Long time ago," continued Hopper. "When I was a kid."
"Wow. Say, that march was something else. Nothing like the laundromat thing, it was better coordinated and executed. No Gray Panthers, either. Physically, it was shocking, tomato sauce everywhere--which of course had spectacular mental and spiritualistic effects."
"Tomato sauce?" frowned Lucy.
"Blood, like blood, you see? It was a symbolic thing, spraying this sauce all over the ground by the plant, through the fence. It was everywhere, all over the cops and workers and right through that fence, the only way we could get to the plant itself. The only problem we had was with these Girl Scouts."
*****
All the doctors liked working with Hopper, in fact couldn't keep their hands off him for the seven buggy hours he spent at the hospital each day. He was their project, their screwy pet guinea pig, a stunted human blunder with valuable symptoms. At first, when he walked in the door of the sleep center, they wanted to boot him out, to wave, poke, and call security slobbering pushy to cuff him away. Bumlike and grouchy, a filthy worthless freeloader meant trouble for golfing doctors.
It all changed when he fell dead asleep in the middle of talking to an intern. By the time he came around and unscrambled his thinker, Subject Narcoleptic had earned a day's pay.
Every day, they stuck electrodes like leeches on his forehead, his temples, his chest. Blood samples and urine, stethoscopes and flashlights, beeping graphing monitor screens tumbled through his restless time. They talked to his a lot and clipboard busy scribbled always, jamming buttons and flashing lights like airplane pilots in heat.
Best of all, it would last two weeks, two looping weeks of testing and money. The other subjects were paid by check, one big payoff at the end of the swing; Hopper asked for cash, and the doctors agreed, slipping him fresh bills every other day. They wanted to keep him around a while, and as long as Hopper could stack up the cash, he had no intention of leaving.
The doctors were ecstatic when Hopper would drop, medical mad analyzing and ferreting glyphic notes. They kept him connected to plipping emerald screens all day, laying him in a darkened room behind two-way mirrors; his unexpected fits of sleep triggered wild cricket bleeping singing nightlike in the frantic watching room. They timed him and charted him, pointed whispering serious at the teapot serenade. For the doctors, sleepless crumbling Lucy and dreamless Campbell List were almost as microscopic riveting, and altogether, the three skewed volunteers gave a classic stricken show to dramatize.
Seven days into the project, Hopper was strapped and wired to the same buzzing computer as Lucy Nemo. On soft sheeted cots, they lay three feet apart in the darkness, both hopelessly sleepless and scoping out the ceiling.
"Do you have a job, Hopper?" Lucy's voice was low and bluesy, rustling firelike above the hornet buzz.
"No. I ain't working anywhere lately, unless you wanna' call this a job."
"How do you support yourself, then? Are you on welfare?"
"I can't get welfare," he blandly replied. "I get by okay."
"How do you buy food and pay your rent and everything?"
"Let's just say I'm not a big eater," Hopper said.
"Why don't you work anywhere? You seem like a bright guy. I'm sure you could get some kind of job."
"Maybe I don't want some kind of job. I said I get by, right? That means I do just fine without it. Work is bullshit, nothin' but bullshit."
Lucy paused for a moment, then turned toward Hopper. She could not see his face because of the computer between them.
"Is it because you're narcoleptic? Is that why you're not working?"
"What about you?" asked Hopper. "Where do you work?"
"For my father. I'm a bookkeeper in his car dealership. He likes
having me around, because he doesn't have to pay me as much, and I'm good with figures. And the big bonus of course is that I never fall asleep on the job." Lucy laughed and switched her head away from Hopper's cot.
"That sucks," said Hopper.
"Oh, it's not so bad. I sort of like working for my dad. You know, days off when I want them, not as much pressure, a little bonus now and then. He can be tough, but he's fair and he loves me. My mother's a different story, though--the original cold bitch."
"Don't let her push you around," said Hopper.
"I don't. I mean, I did but I don't have to anymore because she's gone. Divorced. She lives in Arkansas now, and I make it a point to never visit Arkansas. Do you have family in town?"
"Yeah," mumbled Hopper. "I got family."
"Any brothers or sisters?"
"Yeah."
"How many?"
"I don't know!" snapped Hopper. "What the hell do you care?"
"Sorry," huffed Lucy. "I just asked! I'm just trying to make conversation."
"Maybe I don't want no conversation right now. I'm gettin' paid to sleep, not tell you my fuckin' life history." Hopper yawned and rolled over, felt the electrodes on his arm and temple press against the mattress.
"Fine. I won't say another word." Lucy was silent then, letting the monitor bumble whir whisper in the shadows. For a while, she lay still on the cot, trying to sleep again, knowing she could not, the old desperate ritual she never abandoned. There was always a chance, she thought, always a shot no matter how long the night might be. She hoped for the breakthrough, the magic willow lullaby, the graceful drifting unconsciousness which she knew would never come.
Hopper finally rolled back around to face her, saw her thick body stretched out past the computer. Lucy was big but not shapeless or fat; she had girder bones, long and steely, surrounded by bready firm flesh loafed fully. Flowing woven legs swept slowly to wide hips, dove inward like brass, rolled up to marble breasts. Her lower back lifted slightly before a pillowy buttocks, blue jeans tugged tight around the seminal curves.
6 Short Stories Page 4