The Devil wanted Glenn?
Well, it couldn’t fucking have him.
Pepper held on tight and leaned backward. That brought Glenn’s body back down again. But this time, the sheet stayed tense, and the grunting in the crawl space was followed by a scratching sound, like the Devil was bearing down, and the sheet slipped from around Glenn’s shoulders. But it caught around his throat. It had become a noose.
Glenn opened his mouth to shout but only spit came out. The man’s cries were being choked off. Pepper didn’t have enough weight to win this tussle alone.
But he wasn’t alone. Now Sue was with Pepper. She clambered around him until she’d grabbed Glenn’s ankles. She squeezed them in her arms just like Pepper did with Glenn’s thighs. And in the darkness of the crawl space they heard another snort, but this time it sounded weaker.
And in a moment, Glenn’s body fell toward them. Pepper and Sue tried to hold him up but he slipped and his back slapped hard against the tiled floor. At least it wasn’t his head. The sheet came spooling down after him. It gathered over Glenn, cloaking his face. Sue let go of his ankles and Pepper set his legs down. Sue pulled the sheets from Glenn’s face. His mouth lay open, his tongue fat. His eyes were closed and his skin as purple as a plum. Sue put her fingers under his nose and held them there. She whispered, “He’s breathing.”
Sue and Pepper were on their knees like attendants preparing Glenn’s body for mummification. The sheet remained tied around Glenn’s neck. Sue touched it, but wasn’t sure if she should untie it. Would that hurt Glenn more?
“Now how you like this?”
Pepper and Sue found Miss Chris there in the doorway. The red plastic key chain was around her wrist, and the keys dangled near her knee. They swung loosely and clinked against the door frame.
Pepper and Sue hopped to their feet. Naked, they looked like John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of Two Virgins. But less attractive. Pepper said, “We found him like this.”
Miss Chris looked at Glenn, who looked dead. Miss Chris’s face betrayed no emotion. She alerted the rest of the staff by calling out the code for a suicide attempt.
“Red Jack! Red Jack! Red Jack!” she yelled. “Northwest Two! Room six!”
Miss Chris waved Pepper and Sue out of the room. “Move now!” she said. “They coming with the cart.”
Pepper and Sue did as told. Miss Chris grabbed Sue’s arm as they passed her.
“You get dressed and you come back to me, hear?”
Sue dropped her head and nodded.
Miss Chris now ran into Glenn’s room. She kneeled, she looked into his eyes, and grabbed his wrist. Pepper didn’t keep watching. He went back into his room with Sue. He pushed the door shut.
“You think he’ll live?” Pepper asked as they dressed. His eyes were bright and wide. He still felt charged.
“I guess he’s got a chance,” Sue said. She almost sounded jealous.
Pepper held her. He slouched so his chin rested on the top of her head. She pressed her face into his chest so she could smell him.
Miss Chris walked into the room without knocking.
“Let’s go now. Let’s go.” She had one hand on her hip but her voice hardly sounded angry. Just tired, like an aunt who’s been put in charge of her fast little niece.
“I have an idea about your sister,” Pepper said. “It’s kind of wild, but Coffee—”
Sue kissed Pepper. Even while Miss Chris watched. Pepper laughed and returned the kiss. He squeezed her with the kind of hug that nearly every human being loves. An embrace.
When she pulled away, he said, “Coffee had this number. It was in Oakland.”
Miss Chris grabbed Sue’s wrist and led her away.
He said, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if …”
But now Pepper spoke to an empty room.
It didn’t matter. He figured he’d get in some trouble for sneaking her in—maybe they’d throw him in irons for a bit—but they’d probably let him up for dinner. And he’d have Coffee’s binder with him, the one Coffee left behind. He’d pull Sue into the phone alcove and show her the last phone number Coffee had scrawled on a sheet of paper: 5102821833. It would be Sue’s sister. Pepper believed it. And Pepper would help Sue with the conversation, just in case she got confused. He’d put the two sisters back in touch and the older sister would come through. How would that save Sue? He couldn’t guess yet. Not exactly. But he’d listened to Sue. Heard what she needed. She needed her sister. Good enough. He’d get her that much. And let the sister do something he couldn’t manage from in here.
Pepper didn’t realize he would never see Sue again.
Actually, that wasn’t quite true.
He would see her one more time.
In an article, clipped from a newspaper.
32
PEPPER WAS WRONG about his punishment, too. They didn’t snap him into restraints, lash him to the bed. Miss Chris had enough to do with inputting her notes about Glenn’s “episode” into the computer. The inappropriate program, Equator, had been swapped out for the proper record-keeping program, Equator Zero. Instead of “charting,” the staff would now spend much of their shifts “logging.” Even Miss Chris, the stalwart, had been trained well enough that she could log in, find “Incident Report” on the main menu, and type out, however slowly, the facts about Glenn. She left out the part about Pepper and Sue. As for the Devil’s role in this, she made no mention. She hadn’t seen it, after all.
The staff put all the patients on lockdown. Keeping them in their rooms for as long as it took to move Glenn to the ICU. Pepper spent the time clutching Coffee’s binder as if it contained ICBM launch codes. Inside he found the pages and pages of meticulously kept records. Coffee had done some formidable charting of his own. He’d reached out to government representatives at every level: neighborhood council members, community reps, borough presidents, city-wide officeholders, state and federal representatives. No success with any of them.
Coffee had reached members of the press as well. And had better luck teasing them with the catnip of exposé and scandal. Since New Hyde was a New York City hospital, he’d had particular interest from a reporter from The New York Times. A woman who, even from Coffee’s notes, clearly worked hard to use Coffee as a source. But inevitably, the ties were severed. Relationships with reporters lost. In his notes Coffee entertained the paranoid fear that all these journalists had been visited by thugs from “Coffin Industries.” Told to button up or, even worse, killed. What were the chances he’d come up with that company’s name randomly? Dorry probably spun the same tales to every new admit. The tour, the stampeding buffalo, the cliff, and Coffin Industries. Like a speech given to incoming freshman by a college president. The ward’s common myths.
But all that really mattered now was scrawled on the last page in the binder. Ten digits in blue ink. The last number Coffee ever dialed. Pepper could even hear Coffee just now.
Washington, D.C.! The nation’s capital. No that’s not where I am. That’s where you are! What do you mean “Oakland”? The President doesn’t live in Oakland.
Pepper spent the morning in the makeshift bed he’d shared with Sue. Every wrinkle in the sheets, each indentation in the pillows seemed to hold a trace of her. Pepper lay in the bed, dressed in his street clothes. The binder held tight in the crook of his right arm. When staff let all the patients out of their rooms for lunch and midday meds, Pepper was the first in line. He swiped his little white cup out of Scotch Tape’s hand. He swallowed the pills so eagerly that Scotch Tape and Nurse Washburn suspected a trick. After he slugged the pills, Nurse Washburn put her hand out. “I’ll throw out your cup.”
When Pepper handed it back to her, she peeked inside.
But Pepper felt too good to take insult. Today he was going to help Sue, and nothing could break his great mood. “You don’t trust me?” Pepper asked.
Nurse Washburn, the former Josephine, looked at Pepper coolly. She closed her fingers around the empty white cup, crush
ed it into a ball, looked over Pepper’s shoulder and said, “Next.”
Pepper went on his way, almost dancing toward the television lounge. Where he found a new orderly manning the lunch rack. Pepper accepted his lunch tray and took the far table. Where he’d first kissed Sue, first touched her. Pepper practically bounced in his chair. He didn’t even eat.
The regulars rolled through for their food. Wally Gambino bopped along and Heatmiser shuffled. The Haint appeared, somehow looking as spiffy as ever even though she wore the same purple pantsuit and matching hat every day. Yuckmouth showed up, too, took his lunch and sat alone. He might’ve been bereft at the damage done to his friend but who could say? His expression was as impassive as always. Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly arrived together. No one had claimed the television, so Mr. Mack flipped to the station, and the show, he loved most. Mr. Mack clapped when that stone idol, Steve Sands, filled the screen. Frank Waverly huffed like an agitated mutt.
Mr. Mack glared at his roommate. “Oh, hush.”
And there were the two new admits. The older women Pepper had seen on the night Dorry attacked Loochie. They weren’t Sam and Sammy, he could see that clearly. Older and a bit more professional-looking in their air. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Doris Roberts from Everybody Loves Raymond. That’s who they looked like. Sandra Day O’Connor and Doris Roberts.
They sat down one table over from Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly.
“Now everybody listen to this man,” Mr. Mack announced. He raised the volume on the set. “He grew up right here in Queens!”
“Yo,” Wally Gambino said, with a mouthful of macaroni. “How’s this motherfucker’s show always on?!”
“Language,” the new orderly said, but it came out weakly, like he was still practicing giving commands. Everyone ignored him.
“He’s popular,” Mr. Mack said to Wally. “That’s why they air his show three times a day.”
“When does this dude sleep?!” Wally pressed.
“The truth don’t need a rest,” Mr. Mack said.
Frank Waverly huffed again but Mr. Mack didn’t notice.
Steve Sands, as per usual, looked as though he’d just been thawed. Not soft enough to melt yet, but starting to bead.
“Welcome back to News Roll. And I’m Steve Sands. You might remember a month ago when I brought you the story of a mental patient who had to be put down by New York City Police when he tried to harm another patient. There was some outcry about the case. Some felt the police went too far, but I wondered if people wanted the police to wait until the man hurt or killed some innocent person before they stopped him. But we won’t get back into that debate.”
The picture of Coffee from the news piece appeared over Steve Sands’s right shoulder. It hadn’t become any more pleasant since the last time Pepper had seen it. If anything, it looked worse because now, projected on that flat television screen, the image was about the size of a magazine page.
“Well, I’d also mentioned in that piece that this man, Kofi Acholi, was an illegal. He overstayed his time in this country by abusing our work-visa program. And today, we’ve found out that his body will be shipped back to his home country. The nation of Ooganda. Am I pronouncing that right, Beth? You-ganda? Thank you. He’ll be shipped back to Uganda where he’ll be buried, or whatever they do over there.”
Pepper remembered sitting in his room with Coffee, each man on his bed, lunch tray in his lap. He looked down at the tray in front of him now. He peeled the small orange they’d given him. He’d traded a few orange wedges for a can of Sprite. Such a stupid, insignificant way to remember a man. And yet as Pepper ate the orange, his face softened. He looked at his lap and, very quietly, he cried.
When he looked up to the screen, the picture behind Steve Sands had changed from Coffee’s face to a giant green dollar sign.
“But here’s my question,” Steve continued. “Who’s paying to send Mr. Acholi back? You know the answer. The same people who paid for Mr. Acholi’s stay in the hospital. Where he enjoyed the finest health care services in the world. For free. Well, it was free for him. But for you and me? We picked up the bill for this man to spend a year getting medical care in one of our nation’s hospitals. So what should we call this plane ride back home? The tip? This system carries some of us, but it’s on the backs of the rest of us. That’s the ugly truth. Well, we’ve been used for too long, my friends. We can’t afford it. Every man for himself. Make sure your butt is covered.”
Doris Roberts and Sandra Day O’Connor frowned at each other as the show went to commercial. Doris Roberts said, “Well, I don’t like that.”
Mr. Mack sniffed at her. “I suppose you’d like it if we all go bankrupt taking care of deadbeats? Well, I’m about through with kicking back while our enemies prey on us.” Mr. Mack waved a finger at the ceiling. “Steve Sands is on my wavelength.”
Sandra Day O’Conner forced down a few bites of her tuna-fish sandwich, then she unwrapped her cookie. She bit into it and almost immediately spat it out. “That man makes more money in one year than you’ve made in your whole lifetime,” she said.
Mr. Mack nodded. “Yes. He’s very successful.”
Sandra Day O’Connor looked at Mr. Mack, bewildered, and he smiled back. Pepper couldn’t take the glee on Mr. Mack’s face. He shouted at the old man. “You know Steve Sands would deport you, too.”
Mr. Mack, three tables away, narrowed his eyes at Pepper. “I’m an American citizen.”
Pepper pointed at the television. “Not his America.”
Mr. Mack glowered. Next to him, Frank Waverly grinned.
Pepper stomped out of the lounge and to the nurses’ station, where Nurse Washburn sat alone, logging, now that Miss Chris had finished Glenn’s incident report. There were four stacks of paperwork on the desk. All of it had to do with Coffee or Glenn. Nurse Washburn had been told to hurry and get all this information into the computer. The faster they updated the records, the faster they could move on to the next step, the whole point of Equator Zero.
But none of that mattered to Pepper.
“I’m looking for Sue,” Pepper said. “I thought she’d be at lunch since we didn’t get breakfast.”
Nurse Washburn looked up from the computer and stood up. “Repeat yourself,” she commanded.
“Xiu.” He tried her Chinese name but did no better with the pronunciation than before. “The Chinese Lady.”
Nurse Washburn looked toward Northwest 1.
“Oh, her. Yes. They took her this morning. She’s gone.”
Did Nurse Washburn take a certain pleasure in telling Pepper the news? Best to stop thinking about it before she had to admit the truth. Get back to the paperwork, converting paperwork into electronic files. Ignore the big man, who was leaning against the nurses’ station and moaning like an abandoned child
She’s gone.
Pepper stumbled into the phone alcove and found it empty. He took out his wallet, tried to use his credit card to make a call, but when he punched in his card number, an automated voice told him the card had been declined. He’d forgotten it was maxed out.
Then the phone rang.
Pepper picked it up so enthusiastically it nearly fell. He bobbled it like a football, but the pass remained complete. He held the receiver to his ear. Who would be on the other side? Sue? Her sister? (Somehow?) Maybe his brother, Ralph? The moment felt primed for magic.
“Hello,” Pepper said hopefully.
“Hey, there.” A woman’s voice. Cheerful. Bouncy.
“This is Pepper.”
“This is Sammy,” the woman said. “You remember me?”
“Sammy?”
“I was in there, too. Been gone about a month, though it feels like a lifetime!” She laughed into the line.
Pepper’s hand felt cold. He felt like he was hearing from a ghost.
“Listen,” she said. “I’m trying to reach Sam, but every time I call, people just get quiet and—”
He hung up on her.
Sammy was alive.
As soon as Pepper set the phone down in the cradle, he wanted to pick it back up again. He wanted to explain to Sammy. That everyone knew Sam had killed herself because she thought the Devil had taken her friend. And now, to hear Sammy’s happy laughter on the line, to think Sam took her own life simply because her best friend had been a little preoccupied? It was too much. It was absurd. Pepper almost couldn’t register the enormity of such a cosmic joke.
But he couldn’t explain any of that to Sammy because Sammy wasn’t on the line. Only a dial tone. How many times would Sammy have to call before someone had the presence of mind to explain? Pepper set the receiver back into the cradle. Remember Sue. It was too late to explain anything to Sammy. (And much too late for poor Sam.) But for Sue there was still time.
Pepper left the alcove and knew what he had to do. Regardless of pride. (And irony.) Nurse Washburn and Scotch Tape stood inside the nurses’ station now. After Nurse Washburn finished inputting a file, Scotch Tape took each one and tossed it into a blue plastic bag. There were two bags at his feet, already full. Paperwork that had been logged into the computer, and now would be sent out for shredding.
This sort of hurt Scotch Tape. Right in the wrists. Him and Miss Chris and all the staff who’d been working at New Hyde for a while. How many years had they committed to charting. Now it would all be turned into shavings. The same information saved with the press of a button. Progress, yes, but he wished it had come long before he’d developed some kind of early-onset arthritis.
Pepper shlumped up to the nurses’ station, giving Scotch Tape and Nurse Washburn a start. He leaned his elbows on the counter. He bowed his head before he met Scotch Tape’s gaze.
“Let me borrow a quarter?” Pepper said.
Panhandling is hard work.
The Devil in Silver: A Novel Page 29