It's Kind of a Funny Story (15 page)

twenty-two

What are the chances, in picking a meal for me, that Argenon Hospital gets the one thing I can handle right now? Between fish nuggets and veal marsala and a Technicolor quiche and other items of disgust I see handed out on trays to other people (Armelio, the President, hands out all the trays, announcing people’s names as he does so: “Gilner, Gilner, that’s my new friend!"), I get curry-flavored chicken breast: it doesn’t have real liquid curry, just a lovely infusion of yellow spices and a plastic knife and fork to cut it up. It also has broccoli, the vegetable I like best, and herbed carrots on the side. When I open the plastic lid, I grin, because I know something has shifted in my stomach—not the big Shift, but something concrete—and I am going to eat this. Besides the chicken and vegetables, the tray has coffee, hot water, a teabag, milk, sugar, salt, pepper, juice, yogurt, and a cookie. It’s as good-looking a meal as I can remember. I start to slice the chicken.

“Does anyone have extra salt?” Humble, across my table, stretches his neck to the room.

“Here.” I split him off my salt packet. “I would’ve hooked you up.”

“See, you didn’t speak to me,” Humble says, pouring the salt on his chicken, looking at me through eyes surrounded by thin and purple-hued skin, as if he got punched in both a week ago. “So naturally I assumed you were one of those yuppies.”

“I’m not.” I put chicken in my mouth. It tastes good.

“There’s a lot of yuppies in this place, and you have that look about you, you know—the yuppie look of people with money?”

“Yeah.”

“People who don’t
care
about other people. Unlike me. See, I genuinely care about other people. Does that mean that I sometimes won’t be inclined to beat the hell out of somebody? No, but that’s my environment. I’m like an animal.”

“We’re all like animals,” I say. “Especially now, when we’re all in a room eating. It reminds me of high school.”

“You’re smart, I see that. We’re all animals, high school is animals, but some of us are more animal than others. Like in
Animal
Farm, which I read, all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others? Here in the real world, all equals are created animal, but some are more animal than others. Hold on, let me write that down.” Humble reaches behind him to the one window in the dining room, which has board games stacked up under it. He pulls Scrabble off the top of the stack, fishes out a pen from the box, removes the board, flips it over, and writes on the back of it, which is already covered with scribbling—

“Humble!” Smitty says from the door.

“Hey, hey, okay!” He throws his hands up. “I didn’t do it!”

“How many times do we have to tell you, no writing on the Scrabble board! Do you need pencil and paper?”

“Whatever,
“ he says. “It’s all in here.” He points to his head, then turns back to me as if absolutely nothing had interrupted our conversation. “Me and you, we might be equals, but I’m more animal.”

“Uh-huh.” I clearly picked the right place to sit.

“I need to be the alpha male in any given situation. That’s why as soon as I noticed you I made a few judgments. I saw that you were very young. Now in the wild, the lion who sees new youngsters from another pride, another breed, he’ll kill and eat those youngsters so he can breed his own offspring. But here"—he gestures around, as if you need to elucidate what “here” is, as if you don’t just take it for granted once you’re inside—"there unfortunately appears to be a distinct lack of women accepting of my breeding potential. So in your youth you are not a threat to me.”

“I see.” Across the room, Jimmy is trying to open his juice with one hand. The other hand stays at his side; I can’t tell if he can’t move it or just doesn’t want to. Smitty comes over and helps him.

“It’ll come
to ya!”
he says.

“Do you feel that I’m a threat to you?” Humble asks.

“No, you seem like a pretty cool guy.” I munch.

Humble nods. His food, which was sitting on the plate in front of him, very innocent and oblivious, gets destroyed over the next twenty seconds as he eats half of it. I continue my slow and steady pace.

“When I was your age—you’re fifteen, right?”

I nod. “How’d you know?”

“I’m good with ages. When I was fifteen, I had this chick who was twenty-eight. I don’t know why, but she
loved
me. Now, I was doing a lot of pot back then, my whole life was pot. . .”

It’s weird how your stomach can come back around. As I tune Humble out, I eat not because I want to, not because I have to overcome anything, not to prove myself to anyone, but
because it’s there.
I eat because
that’s what people do.
And somehow when the food is put in front of you by an institution, when there’s a large gray force behind it and you don’t have to thank anyone for it, you have the animal instinct to make it disappear, before a rival like Humble comes along and snatches it away. I think, I think as I chew, my problem might be too much thinking.

That’s why you need to join the Army, soldier.

I thought I was already in the Army, sir!

You’re in the mental army, Gilner, not the U.S. Army.

So I should join?

I don’t know: can you handle it?

I don’t know.

Well, you seem to know that you like order and dis cipline. That’s what the Army offers young men like you, Gilner, and that’s what you’re getting here.

But I don’t want to be in the
Army; I
want to be normal.

You’ve got some considerin’to do, then, soldier, because normal ain’t no job as far as I’m concerned.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Humble asks.

“What?”

“Do you? Somewhere out there. You got a hot little fifteen-year-old?” He points his food-colored fork at me.

“No!” I smile, thinking of Nia.

“They got cute ones, though.” Humble runs his hand through hair that is no longer there. He has hairy dark arms with tattoos of jokers, swords, bulldogs, and pirate ships. “They just keep making the girls cuter and cuter.”

“It’s all the hormones,” I say.

“That’s right. You’re very smart. You got any sugar?”

I hand over a sugar packet. I’ve finished my chicken and I could eat more, frankly, but I don’t know who to ask. Might as well make the tea. I open the teabag, which is labeled “Swee-Touch-Nee,” a brand I have never heard of and am not convinced actually exists, and stain my water with a bunch of deep dips. As I’m finishing up, Smitty approaches with a second tray of food, identical to the first.

“You look like you could handle some seconds,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Eat up.”

I tackle the second chicken. I am a working machine. Part of me works that didn’t before.

“The girls, they drink all this milk with cow hormones,” I say between bites, “and they develop a lot younger.”

“You’re telling me!” Humble says. “The crazy thing is how the girls in my day were a lot better than my father’s girls. I wonder what the next generation will be like.”

“Sex robots.”

“Heh heh. Where you from?”

“Around here.”

“This neighborhood? Nice. Must’ve been a quick ride.
If
you came by ambulance. And I’m not assuming and I’m not judging. I’m just being curious.” He eats two gigantic bites of his food, chews and continues, “How did you get here?”

He’s broken the rule of Six North. But maybe it’s not a rule. Or maybe eating with someone breaks it.

“I checked myself in.”

“You did?
Why?”

“I was feeling pretty bad; I wanted to kill myself.”

“Buddy, that’s what I told my doctor the other week. I told him, ‘Doc, I’m not afraid of dying; I’m only afraid of living, and I want to put this bayonet through my stomach,’and then I stopped taking my blood-pressure medication. Because I have high blood pressure on top of everything else, on top of the drugs they have me on here that keep me
whacked out of my mind;
if I don’t eat lots of salt to regulate my blood pressure I’ll die, so when I told him I wasn’t taking my medication he said ‘What, are you crazy? Are you trying to
kill yourself?!
And I looked him right in the eyes and said ‘Yes.’And they carted me off here.”

“Huh.”

“The problem is I’ve been living in my car for the last year. I have nothing; I have the clothes on my back and that’s it. The only thing I have is the car and now the car has been towed and all my stuff is inside. There’s thirty-five hundred dollars’worth of film equipment in there.”

“Wow.”

“So over the next few days I have to call the police station, the tow yard, get myself into an adult home, and talk to my daughter. She’s about your age. The mother I’m completely over but the daughter I love to death. The mother I’d like to love to death.”

“Heh.”

“Don’t do me any favors; only laugh if it’s funny.”

“It is!”

“Good. Because right now I don’t have you pegged as a yuppie. You’re something else. I’m not sure what you are, but I’m going to find out.”

“Cool.”

“I’m gonna go get my medication so I can sit through this afternoon with my head completely
whacked.”
Humble slides away; I finish eating the chicken. When it’s done—clean plate—I feel better than I have about anything I’ve done in a long time, maybe a year.
This
is all I need to do. Keith was hes itant at the Anxiety Management Center, but he was right—all you need is food, water, and shelter. And here I have all three. What next?

I look across the dining room, and three of the younger people—the big girl, the girl with dark hair and blue streak, and the blond girl with cuts—are all sitting together.

“C’mere.” Blue Streak beckons.

twenty-three

It’s been a while since a bunch of girls asked me over to their table. First time, really.

“Me?” I point at myself.

“No, the other new guy,” Blue Streak says.

I’m not sure what to do with my tray. I get up, then turn back, then turn toward the girls, then swivel—

“On the cart,” Blue Streak says. She turns to the big girl. “God, he’s so
cute.”

Did she just say that? I put my tray on the cart and sit at the vacant seat with the girls.

“What’s your name?” Blue Streak asks.

“Ah, Craig.”

“So what’s it like to be the hottest guy in here, Craig?”

My body hitches and jerks up as if on a pulley system. She’s got it all wrong—
she’s
the hot one. It’s tough to tell whether her skin or teeth are the more perfect white. Her eyes are dark and her lips pouty and open; the blue streak accents the contrast of hair and face, and she smiles at me—that’s defi nitely smiling. I don’t know how I didn’t notice her hotness before, when I looked into the dining room.

“Jennifer,” the big girl says. She leans toward me. “I’m Becca. Don’t take advantage of Jennifer; she’s a sex addict.”

Jennifer smacks her lips: “Shut up!” She turns back. “I’m only here for one more day.” She slithers forward. “You want to spend it with me?”

I think about what Humble would say. He would say
Yeah, absolutely,
because he’s the alpha male. I try to develop and drop my words, keeping my voice deep and level: “Yeah, absolutely.”

“Good,” she says, and there’s a heat on my knee and a hand moving up my leg. She leans in. “I think you’re really
hottt.”
The hand encloses my thigh. “I have my own private room because I’m so messed up they won’t let me sleep with anybody else.”

“You have your own private room because you’re a slut!” Becca corrects, and Jennifer kicks her.

“Ow!”

Without warning, the blond girl with the cuts on her face gets up and speed-walks out of the room. I look through the window for her: nothing.

“Forget her,” Jennifer says. “She’s no good for you.” Then, sparking an out-of-body experience that truly makes me question whether I’m dreaming this, or have died and gone to some kind of awesome hell, she flicks her tongue around her lips in a perfect O.

Something flashes out in the hall. The blond girl streaks to the window. I can’t be sure it’s her. I mean, it is
a
her—it has breasts. And I think I recognize her small body and wife-beater. But I can’t see her face because she presses up a piece of paper against the glass:

BEWARE OF PENIS

The sign slides down as if on an elevator.

“What are you looking at?” Jennifer asks, turning back. I eye her body as she swivels; from the waist up she doesn’t look like she has a penis. I keep my peripheral vision on the hall in case the messenger returns.

“Ha!” Becca is like. “Noelle did it to you again.”

“She what?” Jennifer stands. She has a round and totally female shape. Her legs are encased with jeans that have frills around her butt.

“I can’t be
lieve
her …
hey.”
She turns back. “You looking at my pants?”

“Yeah,” I gulp. I’ve lost all alpha maleness. Could I be like a theta male? They have to get lucky sometime. Being on top of the sexual food chain is a lot of pressure.

“I made them myself,” she says. “I’m a fashion designer.”

“Wow, really? That’s like a real job.” My mind spins; it’s somehow fallen off the sex track into grade-school logic. “I thought you were
my
age; how’d you learn how to design clothes—”

“All right,” Smitty strides in. “Playtime’s over. C’mon, Charles.”

“What the hell!” Jennifer jumps a few inches in the air and stomps her feet. Then, horror of horrors, her voice drops two octaves. “You guys won’t let me have any fun!”

It’s a bad voice, even for a guy, like a frog croaking. Becca laughs and laughs, doubling over on herself, and all I can do is catch my breath and stare goggle-eyed at Jennifer for signs. It can’t be. She’s flat, that’s all. She has big hands; lots of girls have big hands. She doesn’t have an Adam’s apple—oh, wait, she’s wearing a turtleneck.

“C’mon, don’t bother Craig,” Smitty says.

“But he’s so cute!”

“He’s not cute, he’s a hospital patient like you. You’re supposed to get out tomorrow; don’t jeopardize it. Have you taken your medicine yet?”

“Hormone treatments.” Jennifer/Charles winks at me.

“C’mon, enough.”

Becca laughs, sighs. “Oh, she got you good. I’m getting my meds.”

I look down at the table as they leave. I need some meds. I glance up and see patients lined up at the desk next to the phone, the nurses’station, eagerly passing the time in their own little ways— President Armelio bopping from foot to foot, Jimmy holding the hand that refuses to work—before getting pills in little plastic cups. Jennifer/Charles and Becca eventually appear at the end of the line, chatting and gesticulating, and Jennifer/Charles blows me a kiss. I don’t think I need to be in line behind them right now. Besides, all I take is Zoloft in the morning; if they wanted me on something midday, they would have told me.

When Becca and J/C are gone and I’m still sitting shell-shocked at the table, another sign appears at the window, this one inching up from below as if hoisted by spider threads:

DON’T WORRY. HE/SHE/IT GETS EVERYBODY, WELCOME TO SIX NORTH!

When I go out to find her, she isn’t there. I ask the nurse wrapping up her dispensing duties if I need any meds, and she says I’m not scheduled for any. I ask her if I
can
have some. She asks what I need them for. I tell her, to deal with this crazy place. She says if they had pills for that, they wouldn’t need places like this in the first place, would they?