The Normals

by David Gilbert

  "I promise you won't feel anything. We'll knock you out. It'll be like having your wisdom teeth removed. Then we'll flush your aortic artery with something we've developed called Sal-Gid, a solution we chill to forty degrees Fahrenheit. Then we'll wait. Your body will start to shut down all unnecessary function and just service the essential trunk. Vitals will slow down to almost nothing, an in-between state, a stasis. We'll keep you this way for thirty minutes, and then we'll start bringing you back, gradually, by degrees, until you're like all the happy dogs we've seen who are none the worse for wear."

  "So you kill me."

  "No, not at all. Or if so, just barely. It's like we're pushing the Pause button. The things we've done to dogs and chimps, inflicting massive trauma on them, breaking them up pretty bad and then flushing them with Sal-Gid and putting their demise into a sort of superslow motion while we move twenty-four frames a second, it's like that but without the trauma."

  "Do you know Frank Gershin?" Billy asks of the man and his canvas of scars.

  Honeysack nods. "Unbelievable, huh? See, Sal-Gid would be a perfect application for military use, for hospitals in the field, for people just like Frank Gershin coming in all shot up, of course in his case by friendly fire, but that's beside the point."

  "Frank Gershin?"

  "Yeah, he got those wounds in Desert Storm."

  "He was in Desert Storm?"

  "Yeah."

  "I thought it was something else," Billy says, curious where the truth lies, Kuwait or Queens, if the truth even matters. "So when would you do it?" Billy asks.

  "Our window is Friday afternoon, the day of your discharge."

  "That soon?"

  "It's that or nothing."

  September 3, Billy thinks, the day before his parents' scheduled death. He could beat them to the punch and be spared the news, spared the survival, spared the rod of their spoiled life. Funny how stars can line up, how circumstance can scream. If he lives, he lives, and maybe in recovery, whatever recovery that might be, he'll know what they felt, heart stopped, heart restarted, and he'll feel in that banal but awe-worthy repetition, beat upon beat, a sense of who they were. "What would I get paid?" Billy asks.

  "We might be flexible on this but we've come up with thirty thousand dollars."

  A thousand dollars a minute for thirty minutes of death, Billy calculates.

  "We think it's a good offer. There's a chance something could go wrong."

  More than sixteen dollars a second.

  "There's a chance you might die, not a big chance in our opinion, but a chance."

  In the other direction, sixty grand an hour.

  "And death would be a big problem for us, for you, of course, but for us as well."

  $1,440,000 a day.

  "Particularly in terms of explaining your death."

  $10,080,000 a week.

  "We might be able to chalk it up to a coronary occlusion or thrombosis or something. That's a thought. You just dropped dead, sudden death syndrome, something congenital. We could do the autopsy ourselves and nobody's the wiser."

  $40,320,000 a month.

  "But we want to cover all the bases."

  $483,840,000 a year.

  "So what we were thinking, me and my colleague, is that on top of all the release forms we're going to want you to sign, if maybe you could"—Honeysack grins as if the words about to be spoken must be summoned from his bowels—"well, if you could write us a suicide note. Just in case. That way, worst-case scenario, we could chalk this whole thing up to a depressed man. That's what we were thinking. A classic overdose, which we could pull off no problem. Nobody's suspicious of a dead body in a hospital. We would simply bypass the normal operating procedure. Keep it internal. My colleague would do the death certificate, and we'd notify next of kin and give over the suicide note and there, done, finished. Because at the end of the day, a doctor is as good as a cop."

  $174,182,400 in federal taxes.

  "But you're not suicidal, right?"

  $58,060,800 in state and city taxes.

  "Because that's very important, that you're of sound mind and body.

  Otherwise it'd be unconscionable for us to let you do a test of this severity." The small office is ripe with Honeysack, a bitter, soaked-in smell, the brown rings on white Oxford armpits like a half-drunk cup of coffee forgotten on a radiator. "You're not suicidal, right?" he asks.

  "No," Billy answers. "I'm sane."

  Honeysack smiles unnaturally. "That's what I thought. You're as sane as they come. You're just playing the percentages and you understand the odds are in your favor, hugely in your favor. You're perfect for our test. Smart, educated, sensitive to the need for extreme secrecy. Because we have a window where we can actually do this, a small window that's about to close for good."

  "Friday afternoon?" Billy asks.

  "Yep, from three to six. Three hours but we'll only need one."

  "What happens afterward, if everything goes well?"

  "Worst-case scenario, and I mean that in the best case, you'll go to my colleague's house for observation. He has a nice guest room. Best best case you'll be groggy and sore and probably still spend the night in his guest room, just in case."

  "Okay then," Billy says.

  "You'll do it?"

  "Yes."

  "This is great." Honeysack rah-rahs his fists.

  Billy wonders if he should bow. Honeysack has never been so animated, not necessarily a positive development. His face is more suited for a courtroom sketch. And what has Billy done by saying yes to this suddenly giddy doctor? The chances of death churn like the reels in a slot machine, the payout tray ready for 120,000 quarters. Yes, the money would be nice, and the odds are more than decent. Absolutely, the money is the thing, Billy thinks. Pay away a large chunk of Ragnar and gain peace of mind. But in the spinning cherries, oranges, lemons, bars, and bells, there is another symbol, a metaphor, a cheesy image of almost dying, of being reborn. Should he endorse such hackneyed crap? Should he allow himself such self-indulgence? There must be a special level in hell for those who die for the sake of their own gesture, perhaps the eighth level, among the fraudulent. No, the money's the thing, Billy assures himself, good old-fashioned greed. But in that deep breath, as the coin slips in and the lever is pulled and the three wheels blur blue-red-yellow-orange-blue, there's the other thing, the thing that speeds between loss and gain.

  Billy gets up from his seat. "So Friday."

  "Friday it is."

  As Billy leaves, Honeysack stops him. "Billy?"

  "Yes, doctor?"

  "Don't forget that suicide note."

  35

  THROUGHOUT THE day, Billy thinks about his theoretical suicide note. He borrows, rather begrudgingly, a pen and a few sheets of yellow tablet paper from Nurse Clifford/George, who seems to fear a prank with the pen, who hands over the pen like its future debasement is dangerously close to her fingertips.

  "You can keep it," she says.

  In the newfound privacy of his room, Billy arranges himself in bed with The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations acting as desktop. How should the note go? What should its tone be? Good-bye cruel world or the world is too much with me or I have not loved the world or O world! O life! O time! The pen conducts the air over the paper. God knows what his father is composing back home, probably a three-hundred-plus-page note with chapters and illustrations. That whole house is a suicide note, Billy thinks, their whole life a sentiment of adieu adieu on a fog-heavy marsh as vengeful family approaches with torches blazing and dogs barking. Theirs is the sorrow of impossible love that's moved to Cincinnati. Billy figures they're doing what they should've done a long time ago, when they had the power to truly devastate family and put a notch on the annals of grief. Now it's too late.

  Billy wants his suicide note to be explanatory and apologetic, to carry a sweet sense of nobody is to blame, this is the best thing for everybody concerned. But who is his nobody; who is his everybody? Who will mourn his death? Who will
even remember his life? Who will do anything more than mutter "too bad"? Sally? Ragnar? Friends in New York, friends from college, friends from high school, all of whom knew Billy as the friend of friends, always on the periphery of the group, the eighth, ninth phone call, hearing news third-hand, never an usher or groomsman, but, if a big enough wedding, why not invite Billy Schine? He's the perpetual alternate. What should he say to these friends? Guess what, I'm dead. Who will read this suicide note anyway? It's not likely to be published in Class Notes. At best, his death will register an In Memoriam, a small jab of mortality within those words of self-regard.

  Billy is interrupted by Gretchen. "You excited for tonight?" she asks standing in his doorway wearing bunny rabbit slippers and her silk peach bathrobe. She resembles morning gone eccentric, a younger Miss Havi-sham who's been jilted from bed.

  Billy, flustered: "Excited?"

  "For the big Chuck interview."

  "Oh yeah, that's tonight."

  After all the heavy promotion—Finally, Chuck Savitch will speak, and believe us, you won't want to miss it—the idea of not watching the interview seems impossible. It's like rubbernecking in traffic and you screaming from a distance but as you get closer you slow down and participate in the mess because you deserve your due after all the waiting, the sea of red brake lights teasing you with the same halting solemnity as the voice-over artist—Chuck Savitch, in his own words. Hear what he has to say.

  "You're going to watch, aren't you?" Gretchen asks.

  "Probably."

  "Probably?"

  "I'll probably watch."

  "Oh," she says. "Because I'm definitely watching it." Gretchen sizes up the postmortem of the room. "You have a single now."

  "Yep."

  "I heard the amount of blood wasn't to be believed."

  "It was mostly ketchup."

  "I heard blood was shooting from John Rami's eyeballs."

  "Not really."

  "Awful."

  "That's true."

  "But now you have a single."

  "Lucky me."

  Gretchen bends down slightly, like she's watching her head against the low frame of a bad mood. "You all right?" she asks.

  "Medium," Billy says.

  "Medium what?"

  "A little depressed."

  "Well, it's almost all over."

  "Maybe that's what I'm depressed about."

  Gretchen does a degage with her cotton-tailed left foot. "About leaving here?"

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe you're coming down from the drug?"

  "I seriously doubt it. Can I ask you something, honestly?"

  "Honestly." Gretchen plants her left foot on the ground; she could be an allegorical statue, a sort of Eros trampling on bunnies. "Sure," she says.

  "You can ask me anything, honestly."

  "Seriously."

  "Seriously. Honestly. You might want to watch those adverbs."

  "I'm serious."

  "I'm getting that. And I should be honest. So go ahead and ask."

  "Are you really participating in this study or are you pretending?"

  "Pretending what?"

  "To be here."

  "That's the strangest question I've ever heard," she says. "I'm here. I'm like you. I'm like everybody else."

  "So you're not an actor?"

  "Please," Gretchen says with distaste.

  "Not that you would tell me if you were."

  "Acting is a great profession which is unfortunately made up of actors.

  But I'd tell you if I was an actor."

  "So you're not acting here?"

  "Like really acting? No, of course not. Why do you ask?"

  "I've heard things."

  "About me," she says with matter-of-fact terseness.

  "No, not about you."

  "No?"

  "About this place."

  "Not about me?" She seems almost disappointed.

  "About actors performing side effects," Billy says.

  "Why?"

  "To test their effect on people."

  "Why do they care about the effect actors have on people?"

  "To see how susceptible people are to suggestion."

  "By actors? I'm confused."

  "Never mind."

  Gretchen shrugs and smirks without smugness, nailing the prick of her loveliness. "I just came to see if you wanted to watch the Chuck interview. I always find it better if you have company for these kinds of things; otherwise, it seems pathetic. But obviously you have bigger things on your mind."

  "Just the two of us?"

  "If you want to bring some of your actor friends, be my guest."

  "What time?"

  "Any time before nine."

  "Okay."

  Billy skims his blank suicide note. "Do you know what Hart Crane said before he killed himself? He was on a cruise ship, drinking heavily, and he climbed up on the rail and turned around behind him and said, 'Good-bye, everybody,' then leapt. That's all he said. 'Good-bye, everybody.' Supposedly witnesses reported that he was last seen swimming strongly."

  "I'm embarrassed to admit I have no idea who Hart Crane is."

  "No reason you should. He was a poet in the twenties. Wrote this epic about the Brooklyn Bridge. Here." Billy opens the book of quotations and settles on Crane and a tidbit from The Bridge:

  "And why do I often meet your visage here,

  Your eyes like agate lanterns—on and on

  Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?

  And did their riding eyes right through your side,

  And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?

  And Death, aloft—gigantically down

  Probing through you toward me, 0 evermore!"

  Billy tries putting Gretchen's eyes in those lines, eyes that might span time, that might hoist the dread in his chest and swing him like a boy on wires imagining himself a bird, not Poe, but Warwick in the tunnel, on the rails, Billy reading aloud, knowing this is just a glance from the poem long ago read in college, long forgotten, Hart Crane mostly remembered as a romantic suicide, the delusion of a poet convinced of his failure, Whitman's doppelganger, the professor said, Billy looking toward Gretch­en as he finishes the lines deemed worthy of quotation, searching her eyes, thinking, despite the mixed metaphor, let your eyes hear me in these words, please, in the negation of a negation.

  "Pretty, I suppose," Gretchen says, unmoved.

  "It's just a piece of a much longer work," Billy tells her.

  "Well, not much without its context."

  Billy silently agrees.

  During dinner, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, Billy is in the midst of listening to himself give a long eulogy, an honest eulogy about himself ("He was not a particularly cheerful person yet he had a certain joie de miserables, a more individualized weltschmerz, a kind of schlock luftmensch, which, with its enthusiasm, was infectious if a tad taradiddlesome") when tablemate Luke Sillansky says, "Now she's just mocking me."

  She must mean Gretchen. Billy's ears perk into the conversation.

  "To go to Barry Pica," Sillansky says with disbelief.

  Billy spots Gretchen a few tables away, and yes, she's sitting with Barry Pica, laughing with Barry Pica, resting her hand on the shoulder of Barry Pica. Barry Pica, the not-ever-worth-mentioning? He's the dregs of the dregs, friendless even here, his desperation for popularity making him ill suited for even lackey status, only a few minutes of cruel fun. Historically speaking, he's the tap on the shoulder you dread, the reason you avoid high school reunions, the person you might feel sorry for if he had a nanosecond of self-awareness. Barry Pica, already nicknamed "That Fucking Idiot," seems to have his entire past unwittingly taped to his backside. The worse thing is that he's always happy and preternaturally optimistic.

  "It must be mercy," Stew Slocum says, his knee going nuts under the table.

  "You don't give mercy to a prick like that," Sillansky rants. "Give him an inch and he'll follow you forever. That guy makes mercy a d
angerous thing. A halfway friendly hello is like saving his life."

  "Aren't we touchy," Slocum says.

  Sillansky stabs a wedge of meatloaf and holds the fork near his mouth like a gruesome microphone. "All I can say is I'm glad I got my licks in early."

  Billy (what was that, what was that just said about licks, what's this small bit of information so casually dispensed that spins Billy, that blanches him if not publicly certainly privately, that recoils his insides and whiplashes the air he breathes, with Sillansky chomping away on spongy meat as if nothing has happened, as if the earth remains steady beneath his feet, while Billy rocks as if every atom is reforming, recasting him into a ridiculous state of flesh, his ID tick-tocking the twelve days before this second, now a few seconds ago, when Billy was naive, by far the worst offense) thinks maybe he misheard.

  But then Herb Kolch agrees.

  "But you were after me," Sillansky brags. "I was first. You got my sloppies."

  "You're like extra hot sauce. But Pica, man, he's anchovies."

  "I like anchovies," Rodney Letts says. "Maybe I should go next."

  Craig Buckner jumps in. "She's obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel."

  Rodney grins. "I like bottom scraping."

  "She only blew me," Buckner says. "But I'm glad."

  "Yeah, right," protests Kolch.

  "Yeah, right, that's right. I don't fuck sluts."

  "She let me pretty much do whatever I wanted," Stew Slocum boasts.

  "I hear Gertner had quite an experience," Buckner says.

  Sillansky curls his lip. "And I thought Gertner was the lowest."

  "That woman," Kolch mutters.

  "But Barry Pica is easily the lowest," Sillansky says.

  "How about if she does me?" Rodney asks.

  "You?" Sillansky's off-kilter eyes crumple. "She'd need a fucking jackhammer to get any lower than you."

  They all laugh.

  Billy sits dumbfounded during this exchange. Of course he's upset. Or not upset but disappointed. Okay, crushed. While he and Gretchen have never graduated from flirtation, he thinks maybe she likes him, and vice versa, and yes, he thinks, or thought, that maybe tonight, during the big interview, something will be said between them and fingers will intertwine like suspension cable, and Billy will forsake Honeysack for Gretchen's sake, the two of them meeting up after the study, yes, standing by that bronze sculpture, bags packed, two thousand dollars richer, and saying, "Where to now?" perhaps tackling this question side by side. Yes, he fantasized. Nothing sexual, nothing about her sharp nakedness and stern mouth and variety of moles and freckles on her arms and neck that hint at bigger mysteries. His fantasies had run more rose-colored, embarrassing in light of recent revelations. A silly montage. A love-will-save-the-day sort of thing. How could he be so dense? He dreamed of kissing her while everybody else, evidently, was screwing her. And these guys here, not quite the cream of the crop. How many have had her? Do they assume he's a statistic as well? Hearing them talk, their camaraderie, their locker-room misogyny, Billy senses he's missed something else. These people have evolved into chums while he stands half-formed, part acquaintance, part stranger.