The Normals

by David Gilbert

  Corker cracks opens the back of the van.

  Suitcases are collected.

  Rodney Letts grabs his bag—literally a bag, a blue recycling bag. His belongings press against the plastic; they seem cancerous. Rodney opens up the cinch, shoves in his grocery bag of liver-saving items and slings the load over his shoulder. Billy has seen his type in the city, people who prospect for cans and earn their keep in five-cent increments. Those people always shame him with their small deposits of dignity. They work harder than he does—hell, they even do environmental work. Right now Rodney beams like he's worth his weight in aluminum. "How do I look?" he asks Billy.

  "Good," Billy lies.

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah. You look good."

  "Good, good, good, good," Rodney mutters. "Maybe there's a chance."

  Billy reconsiders for the sake of charity. "Take my hat. Your hair's a bit messy." Like oil spills and cormorants, he thinks.

  "I've always had impossible hair," Rodney says.

  Billy hands over his hat. It crowns Rodney the way whipped cream might crown a turd. "Much better," Billy says.

  "But I hate New York."

  "It loves you. Trust me."

  "Fits perfectly. We must have the same sized melon."

  "I guess we do."

  "Kids called me Bucket."

  "They can be cruel."

  "I didn't mind."

  Billy, infused with goodwill, tells Rodney, "Maybe we could clean up your face as well. You have . . . " Billy touches his own nose, like "Simon says clean the black crud on the tip of your nose."

  "That's permanent," Rodney says.

  "Oh, God, sorry."

  "I don't know how or when but one day it just appeared."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Might be frostbite."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Or some weird freckle or sun spot."

  "You should probably get it checked by a dermatologist," Billy says, immediately feeling ridiculous for giving this man a skin-care suggestion.

  "Yeah, maybe."

  "I'm sure it's nothing," Billy says.

  "I've had it long enough I'd be dead if it was something."

  Suitcases collected, they follow Corker across the courtyard—nearly an acre of limestone. The basic seating order of the van is maintained on foot, people having bonded by proximity. Up ahead, Swain smokes, guided by a trail of last cigarettes, while Corker tucks in his company shirt and rehearses how he should hold his clipboard: officious? casual? somewhere in between? Lannigan saunters with his tan angled for a final taste of sun, his deportment casting Sameer Sirdesh as faithful Gunga Din. Next come Ossap and Dullick. My God, these two travel heavy, each arm pontooned by a duffel bag. They walk buddy-buddy, whispering and nodding like bad boys in church whose jokes will always remain private. Billy starts to hate them. It's unreasonable, unjustified hatred, really the best kind, before any strain of understanding can get in the way. Side by side, Dullick and Ossap are an exclamation point of bully camaraderie. Plus those four duffel bags.

  Gretchen wheels her suitcase over toward Billy. "I'm expecting multiple costume changes," she whispers.

  Billy—"Huh?"—is baffled.

  "From those two," she says.

  "You know I was just thinking the same thing. Because that's a lot of luggage."

  "Maybe they're traveling on after the study."

  "I don't like them," Billy says.

  "Because of their luggage?"

  "I just don't like them."

  In the middle of the courtyard looms a sculpture, a hand, Billy realizes, a huge hand done in bronze, maybe fifteen feet high and pointing skyward, like those foam fingers raised drunkenly in stadiums and arenas, the elephantiasis of We're #2/ Billy wonders if this is corporate artwork as brag, a Go HAM! salute. Because he also sees God in there, what with the scale and the visual line directing your eye toward heaven. Look up! He's watching you! Like the famous finger of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Adam and God. Creation. Life. Then death pops into mind. The less famous but equally thrilling Last Judgment frescoed over the altar. The Resurrection. Now Billy pictures the rest of the statue buried beneath the courtyard, hundreds of tons of decomposing bronze and the AHRC is its headstone. The sculpture could be portraying the first punch of everlasting life, and along with the saved come visions of the damned, of emerging corpses, of flesh-eating zombies, real horror movie stuff—Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead—and with dusk of the dead fast approaching, the finger's shadow stretches toward Billy with creepy solicitation, like Nosferatu gesturing for—

  Oh.

  Billy notices where the shadow is falling.

  The black inlay within the limestone is not decorative but functional, arranged in gradations of degrees and numerals—Billy, you idiot, the courtyard is the face for a clock, a giant sundial, the finger the gnomon— even worse, a bad pun: a digital sundial.

  Billy kicks the ground, executed in a single joyless skip.

  "What is it?" Gretchen asks.

  "I just noticed that this is a sundial."

  "What'd you think it was?"

  "I don't know. A hand. A finger."

  "It's good luck," Rodney informs them. "Before you go inside, you're meant to punch the clock. Same as when you leave. Guys up there must be rookies," he says of the rest of the group who have unknowingly breezed by this charm. Rodney steps on the base and taps the heel; the touched bronze suffers from the vitiligo of who knows how many hands wishing for a break.

  "I'm not going near that," Billy says.

  "You've got to."

  "No I don't."

  "Why not?"

  "I'm just not."

  "Oh, come on," Gretchen says. Her tone is already familiar and flirtatious, spreading a thin layer of pucker all over Billy. She reaches up and pats the surface. The hollow insides sing. "I feel like Fay Wray," she says. But Billy is thinking of Louise Brooks, not so much in appearance but in attitude, improvising a scene from Pandora's Box (a movie he's seen in poster alone). "Just touch it," she tells him.

  "No thank you."

  "Scared?"

  "Not scared," he says. "Just not tempted."

  He has to admit, the sculpture is impressive. Rendered muscularly, all flex and strain, it transforms the act of pointing into heavy lifting. No detail is lost. Every line, every wrinkle is represented, hangnails, calluses, the cross-hatching of lived-in skin. The sun seems to radiate from the bronze in a hot clap.

  "No good luck for you," Gretchen says, hopping down.

  "You know, the time's not even right. It's three hours slow."

  Gretchen squints. "Maybe it's using the wrong finger," she tells him, and Billy swears she's squinting the space around his chest and leaving his lungs short. Her whole imperfect face seems to rally around that squint.

  Up ahead, the group has come to a stop within the building's embrace, and when Billy and Gretchen catch up, they hear the reason for the pause: a rap-rap-rap of fists against the windows of the north wing where faces peer down, pressed hard against the top five floors like slide specimens holding small samples of insanity. Mouths and eyes contort, writhe, and buckle, like air is acid; lips kiss glass, tongues frenching with eroticism gone wrong; fingers claw skin and hair; foreheads slam a numbing rhythm; voices scream, the words unintelligible but the message clear: run away while you can!

  Billy watches this Grand Guignol, dumbfounded.

  "Your welcoming party," Corker says.

  Billy is struck in particular by a window on the fourth floor. Within it a person shakes as if in seizure, his features convulsing, his mouth drooling, now spurting, water spraying down his chin and chest, spraying against the window, spraying a finale of death. Billy recognizes this modest special effect from his boyhood days when he would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and make believe some violence against him: a fist, a bullet, a knife, rabies if he were brushing his teeth. He'd gush and gurgle as if tap water were life-slipping
fluid. He could die like that for hours.

  "Every new group gets this show," Corker tells them. "And guess what, tomorrow you'll probably be doing the same."

  Behind them, they hear barking, howling really, like an honest echo of pain.

  "And those are the goddamn beagles who never shut up."

  "Animals are in that wing?" Ossap asks, intrigued. "Monkeys and stuff?"

  "Yeah. And the beagles are loud as hell."

  "Because of their broad chest and manageable size," Ossap says.

  "What's that?"

  "That's why they love beagles, right, for research?"

  "I really don't know."

  Ossap's upper lip curls in what can only be assumed is a smile. "Beagles are the best because you can just crack them open and get to their hearts, and they're small, unlike your other broad-chested breeds. Beagles can fit into a standard-sized cage. They're docile. Obedient. Total suckers. This friend of mine, he thought about breeding them for medical research but got into minks instead."

  "At least they're good for something," Dullick says.

  Ossap agrees. "I fucking hate beagles."

  "Inject their fucking eyes with perfume for all I care," Dullick says.

  "Slice and fucking dice them," Ossap says.

  "Toss them in the fucking Cuisinart," Dullick says.

  "Mutate them." Ossap pauses. "The fuckers."

  Ossap and Dullick give phantom high-fives with their chins.

  "Snoopy is a beagle," Lannigan says.

  Dullick frowns. "Not Snoopy?"

  Ossap quickly jumps in with, "Snoopy fucking sucks."

  Corker ends this conversation by pulling open the AHRC's large glass door. He waves his passengers inside like they're smoke or some such substance lighter than air and soon destined to fade. As the door closes behind them, Billy swears its pneumatic hinge squeaks "Flight of the Bumblebee."

  9

  AIR-CONDITIONING is the governing principle inside the lobby. The walls hum sixty-eight degrees, and coolness drops down like confetti, at first thrilling, but then annoying, sticking to Billy's skin and leaving him goose-bumped. Dead ahead is the reception desk—an atoll on a sea of black marble—monitored by a woman on the phone. She glances up, sees Corker, hangs up, takes a deep BTU-infused breath, and smiles. Barely, Billy thinks.

  For some reason Corker greets her with a Cockney accent. "Hallo, luv."

  "She's on her way."

  Corker leans on the desk. "Two hours and five minutes. Not bad for a Friday."

  The woman nods. She has the long neck and ellipsoidal head of a Modigliani, her almond eyes embittered by an unpainted life of answering phones.

  "We left a little bit late so that's why we're a little bit late," Corker explains.

  "Okay."

  "Traffic wasn't too bad."

  "Okay."

  "You know, if you ever need me to get you something, anything, in the city, don't hesitate to ask, because I can, no problemo. I can even give you a lift, maybe on a day off. We could get lunch then grab a new batch of norms and head on back."

  The woman tilts her head as if she's just heard a pile of shit fall from a very great height. "You have a pickup at the train station," she says.

  Corker flinches. "I know that. Christ, I know that." He hands over the clipboard. "The seven-oh-two from Boston. Thirty-seven minutes from now, twenty minutes from here, so in ten minutes I'll leave and still be early, so don't worry about my end, okay, missy." Missy. He actually called her missy. Billy's shocked, pleased, embarrassed—the sort of reaction he usually has when watching afternoon talk shows. It's the trifecta of guilty pleasure.

  "Relax," the woman says. "I was just reminding you."

  "Well, I don't need reminding. Or relaxing."

  Her "Sorry" has been trained in jujitsu.

  Corker is incapacitated. "I was just, maybe, yeah."

  There's a pause, the audience of eight wondering what will happen next, where this will lead. Corker can only look away for a few seconds at a time as if he's still driving and she's the road, and she seems to understand this and spreads her lips like the endless unreachable destination, and when Billy sees Corker stare into those flat blue eyes he thinks he can see Corker's whole story: Corker as an infant, a boy, a teenager, a young man, the entire physical evolution of Corker in four progressive steps, and in the gross Corker, Billy glimpses the mitigating circumstances of the person, the insecurities of the reptilian brain surrounded by millenniums of gray. Nothing worse than jerks with sudden souls.

  "I'm gone." Corker waves good-bye with his nose.

  He's answered with eyebrows.

  The receptionist says, "Strange, strange man." Her face loosens. Disdain suits her better. "Anyway, welcome. Your study coordinator will be here—" just then, stage right, a woman scurries in holding a stack of manila envelopes like freshly baked pies. She seems a generation removed from the family orchard, picking Post-its instead of produce.

  "Hello," she says. "I'm Carol Longley, your study coordinator."

  Billy's tempted to sing back, "Hello, Mrs. Longley," for she reminds him of his favorite grade school teacher: black curly hair, heart-shaped face, pair of glasses practically drawn on with a Magic Marker. She's the dream gal of eight-year-olds before their idea of beauty changes in high school. "Okay, we're in a bit of a rush, so if you'll grab your bags and follow me, we'll get you checked in as quickly as possible and settled before dinner, which, egads, is fast approaching." She even sounds like his teacher—enthusiastically high-pitched and able to shatter the most cynical of glass.

  "Quick like a bunny," she says.

  They follow her into a hallway where a dozen chairs are lined up against the wall, their scooped plastic shell assuming their asses. Mrs. Longley reads names and hands out the corresponding envelopes. "Inside you'll find copies of the informed consent, the drug protocol, the two-week schedule, so refresh your memory while waiting and prepare any questions you might have, because you'll be asked to sign the informed consent in the next few minutes. Those of you who've done this before—Mr. Letts, I think you're the only one who fits that bill—will find their ID necklace inside. The rest will have theirs done in the first station. Now, there are four stations in all. Enter the station, give the person your envelope, and do what they tell you. Once done, wait outside the next door until you're called inside. When you're done with the last station, return to your seat and wait for the rest. Okay." She claps her hands. "Let's go." Billy half expects her to pull out a stopwatch and stretch a yellow ribbon across the finish.

  Peter Swain is up.

  Brad Lannigan is on deck, stretching.

  Billy is last in line. He watches Rodney as he retrieves his ID from the envelope—under laminate, the man is six years younger, which must be like decades in drunk years. His nose was unmarked then. His eyes were clearer, if a bit more sour. Rodney regards the photo like it's an old friend long believed dead. He cups his hands over himself and whispers, "Please pass, please pass, please pass," his eyes closed, his body swaying, breaking your heart if you're the slightest bit pessimistic toward someone who wants something so badly.

  In the first station a woman steers Billy against a green backdrop and adjusts the mounted digital camera so his head and shoulders are officially framed. Composition seems to cross her mind briefly before she realizes she's wasting her time and steps toward the computer.

  "It's all done digitally?" Billy asks.

  "Uh-huh."

  "Cool."

  The woman might as well be typing Like I care.

  Billy, nervous, runs his fingers through his hair and wipes the layer of travel from his face. While he pretends to be casual about his looks, no big deal, rarely shaving, letting Sally cut his hair, trumpeting the occasional pimple and taking odd pride in dandruff, the truth is, he's terribly vain. Mirrors are a continual source of fascination—a staring contest follows every piss—and most shiny surfaces catch his attention. Car windows, storefronts, elevator doors
, silverware. But often their reflection feels two-way, as if on the other side stands the victim of false impressions who leans against the glass and shouts, Who the hell do you think you are? And cameras slay him. Whenever one is pointed in his direction, Billy puts on a jokey face and hams things up. He's rarely caught candid. Afterward he regrets these little displays—they seem so desperate, so phony, even if he's mocking the whole convention of the party pic, the group photo, the tourist snapshot. Still, you'd think he could be himself once in a while. Just smile. Just be. But no. Even worse, when he's presented with a sleeve of photos, he will speed-thumb through the Billyless images and only alight on himself—laughing broadly, gesturing slickly, winking cheesily, beaming bogusly, slouching sadly, gawking insanely—and wince. Focus a lens on him and he turns into an adverb.

  Billy stands there, smiles. Guilelessly.

  "Don't bother," the woman tells him. "You're already laminating."

  "Laminating? No 'smile' or 'on the count of three'?"

  "You looked fine. Now come over here." She asks for his left arm and wraps around his wrist a green plastic bracelet, unbreakable, the kind used in clubs to distinguish the legal drinkers from the illegal. A bar code is printed across the front. She shoots it with an optical scanning gun. The computer registers him like a can of beans. "Keep this on for the entire study," she tells him. Then she punches a hole in the upper-right-hand corner of his freshly laminated ID and slips through a cheapo chain. "And wear this at all times, outside your shirt, always in full view. For meals you swipe the magnetic strip before entering the cafeteria. If you lose it, it's a ten-dollar fine for a replacement." She dangles the ID in front of him like car keys for her son.

  The laminate is still warm and smells of toxic clean. The Billy Schine it contains is far from flattering; he looks bruised, bloated, drowned. "I think you've captured my corpse."

  "It's not that bad."

  "A suspected boating accident."

  "You look fine."

  "It's like I'm wearing my own memento mod."