Placebo Junkies (5 page)

As usual, he bears news. Scratch is the human equivalent of a tabloid magazine—all things conspiratorial and scandal-adjacent will find themselves embellished by his fuzzy tongue. Today is no different, and he's practically panting to get it out.

“Yo, guess who's back in town?” he says, dabbing at a bleeder on his neck with the collar of his T-shirt. “The Professor. I ran into him last night. He says he'll be getting back to work this morning.”

Jameson groans. “God, I was hoping he'd disappeared for good.”

Charlotte, on the other hand, cackles and then rubs her hands together. “This,” she says, sinking back into the couch next to me, “is gonna be fun.”

By the time I get dressed and head over to the labs, everyone else has already left, presumably to entertain themselves by messing with the Professor en masse.

Back when I was a kid, I don't know, maybe eleven? Anyway, I had this friend, Krissy. I liked hanging out at Krissy's house because she lived with just her dad, who was one of those benignly negligent parents who just sort of assumed Krissy'd let him know if she needed anything, but otherwise left her alone. There was never any food in her house, but her dad was good about leaving cash. Whenever we got hungry, we'd walk over to the neighborhood convenience store and load up on all the junk food we could carry. That's one of the great things when you're a kid—you can stuff your face full of ten pounds of Pop-Tarts and licorice and whatever other high-fructose un-food you can find on the shelf that's never come within a hundred miles of any naturally occurring substance, and you never even get sick. You just stuff that processed shit in your face until you can't, and then you lie in a stupid, happy little sugar coma until it's breakfast time the next day, and then you just start it all over again, but this time with syrup on top. It's awesome to be a kid sometimes. Or at least it was awesome to be a kid at Krissy's house.

Anyway, we used to take a shortcut to the convenience store, because otherwise it was a really long walk. We'd crawl under this chain-link fence someone had cut through at the bottom, jump over a muddy ditch full of used condoms and empty beer cans, and then walk along the railroad tracks for about a quarter mile until we got to the rear of the store. This one time we were heading back right around dusk, and as usual we weren't paying attention to much of anything, when all of a sudden we heard a guy's voice calling out to us,
hey, girls,
or something generic like that.

We turned around, and there was a man standing there on the tracks behind us with a weird smile on his face—not threatening or anything, just more like he was waiting for us to hurry up and get the joke. I remember I was staring at him, trying to figure out what he wanted, when he started moving a tiny bit—not walking toward us, but just sort of fidgeting where he stood—and part of my brain started to catch on that something wasn't right. I kept staring at him, but another few seconds ticked by before my attention finally zoomed off of that weird smile on his face and panned out enough to realize exactly what it was that was strange about him. It was his pants. His pants were off, or at least unzipped, and he was grabbing at himself, tugging and jerking a little, and then a lot.

I was still young enough that I didn't even really have the words to go along with what I was seeing. I mean, I
knew
what he was doing, but I'd never seen it actually happening right in front of me. So I was staring, Krissy's staring, and the guy was grinning back at us, jerking himself off even faster, and it was like we were in some weird time warp for what felt like hours, until finally I snapped out of it. I grabbed Krissy by the arm, and ran like hell.

We ran as fast as we could, at least I thought we did at the time, but maybe not, because when we got back to Krissy's house, she still had the two-liter bottle of Hawaiian Punch tucked under her arm, and I still had the Cool Ranch Doritos and the Double Stuf Oreos. I mean, you can't exactly say we were running for our lives if we managed to hang on to the precious goddamn snacks, can you? We shrieked about it for a couple of minutes,
oh my God, did you see his
thing
? Soooo disgusting.
But then our TV show came on, and we just sort of forgot about it. And the funniest thing is, I don't think it even occurred to us to tell anyone about it, not even Krissy's dad when he got home a few hours later. It was like it never happened. The guy must not have put up much of a chase, since he obviously didn't catch us, but still—you'd think we would have locked the doors to the house or called the cops or something instead of shrugging it off to watch some stupid sitcom. Maybe we just instinctively calculated that the guy wasn't a real threat, and discarded all thoughts of him without getting hung up on all the
could'ves
and
might'ves
and
almosts
that start following you around once you grow up a bit.

Or maybe we were just too young and too fucking stupid to get it—our brain waves temporarily shorted out from our turkey jerky and Top Ramen diet plan. To this day, I can't decide.

Anyway, I think I feel about the Professor the same way I did about the wanker on the train tracks. My brain tells me there's something vaguely threatening about him, but I just can't get worked up enough about it to drop my munchies. I mean, how much harm could he possibly do? He's about the least menacing person you've ever seen, too. He's shorter than me, probably five four, tops, and with his ridiculous white beard he looks, no shit, exactly like a garden gnome.

But I still keep my eye on him. And I understand why Jameson hates him so much. The way he always lurks around, listening in on everyone's conversations, makes you feel like you're under surveillance. Every so often you'll hear a rumor that he's some kind of undercover something or other. A DEA agent, maybe. Or, more likely, a private investigator for the pharmaceutical companies, digging up dirt on the competition. Jameson, who can be a little paranoid sometimes, swears the Professor keeps a file on him.

I sort of like the idea of someone keeping a dossier on me. It's like outsourcing your own diary. Let someone else do the writing while I focus on the living. Genius, right?

But the real story isn't all that interesting. The guy's nothing but a wannabe academic—some pseudo-legit branch of sociology, I think—and rumor has it he's been working on his bottomless pit of a research paper for so long now that his university sponsors forgot he exists. He mostly just hangs out and watches us, constantly scratching little notes. He's a male Jane Goodall, observing his subjects in their natural habitat.

Which I suppose makes us his chimpanzees.

Which is probably why Charlotte fucks with him so much.

“Hey, Professor,” she'll say. “Have I got a story for you.”

He falls for it every time. It's almost sad how desperate he is to cannibalize our lives, to live vicariously through our stories. He's the ultimate outsider. The consummate wallflower, never invited to dance. So whenever Charlotte offers him a little nugget, his eyes light up and he copies down every word out of her mouth, scribbling so fast he occasionally has to shake cramps out of his writing hand.

“Yesterday one of the doctors invited me into his office and told me he was developing a new breast-exam technique and he needed a woman's opinion. He told me to take off my shirt and bra first, so I did.” Charlotte feels herself up as she tells him the story, running her hands all over her chest, tracing slow, lewd circles around her nipples.

The Professor nods rhythmically as he writes everything down.

All the stories Charlotte shares with the Professor are about sex. All her stories are about being watched. She's convinced he's a perv like that. They're completely ridiculous, her stories—I mean, way over the top. Her whole goal in life is to rattle him enough so he either blushes or at least stops writing. But so far none of her stories have ever worked. So far, he's never blushed. And he never stops writing.

“They're testing sex toys in room 342,” she tells him. “The marketing people stand behind a two-way mirror and watch people masturbate. Today they're giving out gift certificates as a bonus, dinner for two at some steakhouse if you come up with a new way to use their vibrators that they can show in their promotional materials.”

This one might actually be true. You never know around here. Someone, somewhere has almost certainly been paid to test dildos.

“There's a peephole cut into the wall of the proctology lab. Someone set up a camera and they're live-streaming colorectal exams for subscribers in Asia who pay twenty-nine dollars a month.”

The Professor never cracks a smile, never stops writing. No matter how crazy Charlotte's stories get.

It drives her nuts. She storms around in a pissed-off mood for hours every time she fails. She thinks there's something wrong with him, that it's not normal to be so detached.

I don't feel as strongly as Charlotte or Jameson, but I still keep my distance. I stand back and watch the Professor watching us. Which is why it freaks me out when I run into him on my way into work and he calls me by name.

“Audie,” he says. “We should talk.”

“No! I swear, I have no idea what he wants. I don't even know how he knows my name.” I'm trying to cut through my chicken marsala while I tell Dylan about my run-in with the Professor, but it's not going well. “He creeps me out.”

Dylan loves hearing my guinea pig stories. It's like the world's grossest soap opera, he says. He can never keep anyone's name straight, though. “Wait, remind me,” he'll say. “Is Jameson the one with the mutant cold sore covering half his face?”

“No, doofus,” I'll say back. “That's Scratch. Seriously, how can you forget that? I mean, his name is freaking Scratch, for God's sake. There's your clue right there.”

“I beg your pardon,” he'll say, usually in a goofy British accent or something. Dylan does awesome accents and impressions. He can be funny as hell when he's not in pain.

The pain is why he's so lousy with names. He never says anything about it, typical guy, but it's obvious that it gets pretty bad sometimes. I can always tell. It's like someone unrolls a blanket of fog over him, and his voice and even his eyes just kind of go fuzzy. I love how he still shows up, though—how he still makes an effort, even when it hurts. I love that we still always manage to connect, even through that terrible haze.

Luckily, Dylan's having a good day today—no sign of fog.

“What did that poor chicken ever do to you?” He shakes his head at the mess on my plate, then before I can stop him he leans over and plucks two black olives off my salad and holds them up to his eyes. “Why, Audie,” he says in a Hannibal Lecter voice. “You're looking positively scrumptious.
We should talk.
”

He yelps as I kick him under the table, and the waiter glares at us again. He seems to be making a point of not clearing our dishes or refilling our water glasses.

We're used to it.

It's a dinner date. Italian. I'm letting Dylan make up for his disappearing act earlier, and I have to say, he's doing a fine job of it. His apology was a little vague on details, but that's okay. Real gentlemen don't make flimsy excuses—they just make things right. And right we are.

Besides, I don't think it's even possible to stay mad at a guy with an actual, real-life chin cleft. I mean, his eyes freaking
twinkle
when he reaches over to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, I swear to God. It's hilariously unreal.

Aren't we so suh-weet you could just puke? Yeah, we're kissy-face and crostini, a fucking lasagna baked for two—all except for Dylan's grayscale chemo-sheen and med-alert bracelet, that is. And then there are my hands, shaking so hard I keep rattling the fork against the plate and fumbling my knife, which makes the waiter harrumph behind me and look pointedly at the line of fresh needle tracks marching up my inner arm.

We probably should have stuck to the hospital cafeteria, but screw it. I'm a sucker for a good plate of pasta.

“Are you okay?” Dylan reaches over and gently takes my knife and fork, cuts my meat into little bites.

“Yeah, I'm fine. I'm just starving. Are you going to eat the last piece of bread?” I grab it and shove half of it in my mouth before he answers. Medically induced hypoglycemic state equals Very Hungry Audie. My stomach feels like an empty pit, a monster growling for prey.

I feed the monster. Fill the pit.
Have a cookie,
I tell the beast.
Un biscotto.

I'm more than fine. I'm
happy
. Italian with Dylan, and I added a nice chunk to the trip fund today. “This is nice,” I say, making sure my smile doesn't run away from me and expose the two chipped teeth on the left. Gotta get those fixed one of these days.

He smiles back at me, but he's barely touched his food. He moves penne around with his fork, makes figure eights in the pesto sauce. I try not to let him catch me staring at his plate, but now that I've noticed, I can't see anything else. I'm pigging out, shoveling carbs into my face like I haven't been fed in a week, and he's just sitting there, poking at the ice in his water glass now, playing with the pepper shaker next. Why isn't he eating?

My mind starts to grind with low-blood-sugar angst. Is he upset about something? Is he getting sick again? He hates it when I hover over him about his health, but he does seem a little thinner than usual, and with his history…

Stop, Audie,
I tell myself.
Don't go off the cliff.
I do that sometimes, I know I do. I get so much as a splinter of a bad thought in my head and it just starts burrowing in, deeper and deeper, until the only thing I can think about is the worst thing ever. I swear, I can go Zero to Catastrophe in seconds flat. I try to keep it to myself most of the time, hysteria not exactly being considered a redeeming quality in girlfriends these days.

I match Dylan's chewing pace until my heart stops pounding.
Chill the fuck out,
I tell my brain cells.
Just enjoy the evening.

“Can we get more bread over here when you have a chance?” Dylan calls out to the waiter, who slow-raises one sullen eyebrow in response.

Ten minutes later the waiter comes back—the scent of his cigarette break wafting across our table as he tosses down a basket filled with crumbs and mangled crusts. “Never mind,” Dylan laughs. “Can you just get us our check, please?”

I love that about him, how he doesn't get worked up over stupid things. How, as far as he's concerned, the past is truly the past. Dylan never brings up yesterday's argument. Dylan never loses sleep over last week's bullshit. The serenity of the almost-dead, he calls it, cancer being the ultimate
don't sweat the small stuff
 lesson, I guess.

I, on the other hand, don't have a terminal illness, so I tear open sweetener packets and spill-spell
twat
in swirly cursive letters across the table, and then grab every last mint from the bowl on the hostess stand as we walk out.

I still have my health, so I am permitted to embrace petty grudges and commit small acts of cheerful revenge.

“Audie,”
Dylan says as he opens the door for me, but he's kind of laughing, and I can tell he's glad I did it. I pop a mint into my mouth, then one into his, and then toss the rest over my shoulder as I stand on my tiptoes to kiss him. “God, you're awful,” he says, and then sweeps me up off my feet, spinning me around in a bear hug.

I force myself not to notice the new sharpness of his shoulder blades. I shift my embrace slightly to help me ignore the prominence of his ribs.

I focus, instead, on how effortlessly he lifts me into the air. I move my hands to less worrisome terrain. His chest. His biceps. His ass.

“Like what you find?” he asks, grinning, and then pulls me even closer.

He's strong. Solid.

Nothing to worry about at all.

You hear that?