Skin and Bones (12 page)

“It’s my body,” she said. “Besides, do you think I’d hurt myself? With auditions coming up?”

He shook his head. “You can’t live on this.”

“Just another five pounds,” she said in a voice that was both entreating and vulnerable.

“Right. Then another five. Same old story and you’re back in ICU. Sorry, Alice, I’m not Dr. Kevorkian.”

“What do you know about it? You think it’s easy to train without a studio? That’d be like you trying to cook without a stove. Shit, I don’t even have a decent mirror, and I have to use the bed for a barre.”

“Fame…” he muttered.

“Now who’s being a pompous ass?” Alice dumped her tiles on the board before knocking the whole thing on the floor. “Sometimes I just hate you!”

“Yeah, well.” Lard stood up quietly. “Teresa, wanna help prep dinner?”

Teresa studied the scattered alphabet, evidence of how quickly life on the ward could turn sour. “Okay.”

“God, I need a cigarette,” Alice said after they left. She leaned forward and her leotard stretched even tighter over her chest. “I bet you wouldn’t have said no if you worked in the kitchen.”

“Uh, well, no.”

“You mean you’ll do it?” She appeared to be deciding exactly what to say before saying it. “If you get caught, you’re toast.”

“I won’t get caught.”

Her dark eyes danced. “Really?”

“Clandestine is my middle name.”

“An extremely attractive trait.” Alice smiled, fresh and radiant. “Gumbo keeps this box on the kitchen counter. Inside is a file with all of our menus. Signed, sealed, and delivered by Chu Man himself. It shouldn’t be that hard to swap them.”

And Bones knew just how he’d do it.

An hour before lunch the next day Bones stepped into the noisy, stinky steam of the kitchen with its violently hissing pots. It smelled like something that had been dead too long. Cattle, pigs, chicken, fish, all of the above.

“If you’re here to complain that the food is overpriced or the service is too slow or…” Lard shot over his shoulder.

“The portions are too big,” Bones said, scanning the cluttered counter. His eyes stopped on the file box of menus sitting by the cookbooks. Not exactly in plain sight, but not hidden either. He’d have to be careful. If Lard caught him he’d be cooked alive.

Gumbo shouted at Lard from a chopping block. “Rinse the pasta!”

Bones got out of the way while Lard tugged on oven mitts and grabbed an enormous pot. In one slick move he dumped the pot into a strainer and cranked the cold water handle. “What’s up?” he asked.

Bones shifted his weight hoping to seem his usual obsessive self. “Something’s assaulting the green beans in the garden. Like, seriously.”

Lard turned, his face red and sweaty. “What can I do about it?”

“Looks like a scourge, maybe red-bellied beetles,” Bones said, feigning concern. “Once the beans are wiped out the little bastards will move on to the tomatoes.”

Bones registered a flash of panic in Lard’s eyes. “I could make a spray,” he said quickly. “Black pepper with dish soap should do it.”

“Spray bottles are on a shelf by the freezer,” Gumbo hollered out.

While Lard and Gumbo sliced and diced in a frightening frenzy, Bones filled a spray bottle with water and poured in soap. When the other two were at the stove tossing veggies in frying pans, he did what Alice had asked, swapping the menus she’d filled out with the official ones.

Which as it turned out, was a grave mistake.

Bones paced in his room trying to figure out what to do with Alice’s menus—the real ones he’d taken from the box in the kitchen. In the end, he tore them up and flushed them down the toilet. Bye-bye, Brussels sprouts. Farewell, garbanzo beans. Adios, toasted rye crisps. He’d just finished the last flush when he heard Lard in the bedroom. “Hey, man,” he said. “I found more CRAP.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll put it on your desk,” Lard said. “Back in a sec.”

Calvin wondered, not for the first time, if being CRAP meant you were a little bit crazy. If allowing yourself to have feelings, like they said, was the definition of madness. “Where did you come from?” he asked the girl.

“Womb-X,” she said, seemingly ashamed. She rolled onto one side, pulling her knees up, hugging them close, as if trying to disappear altogether.

Calvin stared at the curve of her back. Perfect, unflawed. He’d purr her name if he knew it.

He stepped lightly over her. She seemed confused to see him still there. “I hear there are others like us,” she said in a dreamy breath. “Up here. Hiding out.”

He kneeled, his neoprene against her flesh. She too had removed her auditory phone. Wires dangled dangerously from her ear. But he couldn’t believe she’d disconnected her feeding tube.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

She looked starved.

She unfolded her arms, straightening her legs. He bent down, gently inserting his tube through the slit in her uniform into her navel clamp, allowing his life juice to flow into her.

They had to get away from here.

The story was fascinating in part because it was so frightening. And it seemed a sign, albeit in a freakish way, that Bones wasn’t alone. It had to do with Calvin’s longing for the girl he’d just met, and like Bones and Alice, they were in the early stages of getting to know each other.

“Chu Man wants to see you in his office,” Lard said, sauntering back in. “Since it’s your weekly progress report, try to act like someone who’s, you know, making progress.”

Today Dr. Chu wore a light blue shirt and navy blue tie. It looked like a grape Popsicle had detonated in his mouth and splattered his shirt with purple juice. His face was shiny with some kind of cream that made it impossible to look at him without squinting.

He sat rigidly behind his desk thumbing through a thick file. Bones knew he was done for when Dr. Chu said, “I just finished a conference call with your parents.”

Since Bones couldn’t look at him directly without blinking unnaturally, he focused on the tie. “It isn’t their fault that I’m in here,” he said.

Dr. Chu didn’t change his expression. “I told them you were making progress,” he said.

Bones nodded because it seemed the appropriate thing to do. Besides, what could he say? Another fifteen minutes and the gang would be on the roof smoking it up. “My parents feel responsible for me being in here, which doesn’t make me feel that great.”

“Great?” Dr. Chu leaned forward, pen clicking. “Can you be more specific?”

“You know, responsible.
Guilty
.”

Bones wasn’t sure when
feeling
guilty had morphed into
being
guilty. Or when he’d started believing he didn’t deserve anything better. He’d hoped admitting this to himself would have made him feel better. It didn’t.

Dr. Chu closed the file. “I’d like you to write your family a letter,” he said. “And tell them what you just told me.”

Bones stared into his lap.

“But you don’t have to send it. And you don’t have to show it to me—just let me know when it’s finished. Fair enough?”

Bones did the nodding thing again. “Okay.”

“Oh, and you should know, we’ve decided to increase your caloric intake…”

(What a surprise!)

“Gradually, to avoid unnecessary health issues…”

(Fat is the new thin.)

“You’ll have a choice of a fat-free protein bar or a milkshake with vitamins and minerals…”

(Death by calories.)

“…every afternoon,” Dr. Chu said.

He might as well have said,
Lean forward so I can hammer thumbtacks into your head.

“How many calories?” Bones had to know.

Dr. Chu’s mouth formed two zeros. “About one hundred.”

A hundred calories equaled jogging in place twelve minutes.

Bones took the stairs to the roof, bursting through the metal fire door. He sprinted over to Lard and Teresa, who were sitting on the edge of the tomato bed. Teresa’s jeans were looser than ever. She was drawing a peace sign on Lard’s Band-Aid.

“How’d it go with Chu Man?” Lard asked. “Did you impress him with your humility? Toss out a few agonizing emotions?”

Bones was still jogging; three minutes to go. “Something like that.”

“That’s my man!”

Bones glanced at the door hoping Alice would appear in a leotard and tights with a sheer skirt tied around her tiny waist, the afternoon sun casting light on her strawberry hair.

Lard lit up and stared at the fat doobie between his fingers, as if the rich smoke came from the purest crop. That’s when Bones first suspected Lard was growing the stuff up here—maybe in with the tomatoes or hidden in pots behind old equipment.

Lard took another hit and gave Bones a look of mock contempt. “Just so you know, it looks like the green beans will live.”

Bones ramped up the last minute.
Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven…
Then he sagged in a chair, waiting for his pulse to return to normal.

Lard watched him rain sweat. “Don’t you like ever just kick back?”

“Or want a snack?” Teresa asked. “It’s okay to be nice to yourself.”

Ugh!

To relieve the stress Lard struck a false posture of power a la Dr. Chu and his cohorts. “It’s okay to act out, son,” he said in a mockingly serious tone. “Since you suffer from ARRD, otherwise known as Anal Retentive Regressive Disorder.”

“Constipation?” Bones joked back.

“I said anal, not anus.”

Teresa adopted an expression of concern. “Tell us about your fetishes, son.”

“We want to help you psycho-bitch your babble.” Lard again. Then he slipped into his mellow stoned zone. “Relax, man. She’ll be here.”

Bones got up and jogged back across the roof. He made his way down the stairs to the dayroom where Mary-Jane and Elsie were sitting with towels draped over their shoulders. It looked like they were coloring each other’s hair with tomato juice.

“Anyone seen Alice?” Bones asked.

Mary-Jane said, “No, sorry.”

Elsie snipped, “She broke her leg and we had to shoot her.”

She had the brain of an empty jar.

Bones stood in front of Alice’s closed door. Doors were never closed.
Never
. Just then Unibrow came down the hall with a mop and bucket of cleaning supplies. “They wheeled her downstairs about an hour ago.”

“Hasn’t she given enough blood?” Even as Bones said it he knew that wasn’t it. He backed away, a big pulse of sickness thudding through him.

“That girl is a cardiac arrest looking for a place to happen,” Unibrow said. “Her heart was beating faster than the speed of sound.”

Bones flew down the corridor.
Downstairs
. What did that mean? The emergency room? He rounded the corner and slammed into an orderly he’d never seen before. “Hey!” the guy said. “What’s the hurry?”

Bones wasn’t about to stop to answer. When he reached the elevator, he frantically punched the
down
button.
Come on!
The door opened and he squeezed into a wall of people. Seconds later the doors opened onto a polished corridor marked emergency room.

The waiting room was annoyingly sterile and notably more depressing than the EDU. Bones just stood inside looking around at people who clutched plastic numbers as if waiting in line at a bakery for a doughnut. A TV was tuned to the Shopping Network, blasting loud enough to make him think of earplugs, but it couldn’t drown out the wheezing moans and fear.

He forced his feet in the direction of a chest-high window that kept the receptionist immune from bacteria. When he tapped on the glass a woman opened it from the other side. He thought she’d look more human without the hair net.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

Bones heard the whirring of life-saving machines behind her. “Alice,” he said too loud.

Crap! What was her last name?

Bones was beyond frantic. “They brought her down a few hours ago from the EDU.”

“Oh, right. They took her—” She paused to type something into her computer.

Took her where? OR? ICU? The morgue?

She looked up, eyes narrowing. “Are you related?”

He nodded. “Her brother.”

“Yes, I see the resemblance,” she said, head tilted. “She’s on the sixth floor.”

Bones didn’t bother to ask if she could have visitors. He knew the answer,
no
. He hit the elevator and got off on the sixth floor with its impersonal hallway and infinite linoleum. He rushed blindly past a nurse’s station void of nurses.

Crap, he’d forgotten to ask the receptionist for Alice’s room number. He took endless turns, peeking in and out of rooms. Oxygen tents. Respirators. Tubes in arms, noses, mouths. Everyone looked scared to death.

Bones found Alice in a room with a single bed. The startling paleness of her skin, smooth and light as if she’d been swimming in mayonnaise. Yet her cheekbones were too pronounced, her skin as transparent as parchment paper. She lay smothered in blankets. Light came in through the blinds, cutting her into slats.

He stood in the doorway, wondering about the many machines. An IV ran into Alice’s right arm, linking her with a bag of clear liquid. Her left arm had what looked like a blood pressure cuff. It connected to a machine with a digital screen that flashed her heart rate, blood pressure, and a number he didn’t understand.

Bones watched Alice purr before he took a quiet step inside. He was so relieved at seeing her he could barely breathe. He watched the line of her heart rate rise and dip into valleys.
Beep, beep, beep
. He couldn’t imagine losing her—his love, his life—after he’d just begin to live himself.

Her eyelids fluttered lightly. A finch fallen from its nest.

“Alice?” he whispered, now beside her bed.

“Bones?” Her voice was thin.

When he held her limp hand, she squeezed back. “Are you okay?” He inhaled her sweet air. “How’re you feeling?”

“That depends.” She smiled, her eyes still closed. “How do I look?”

“Like a delicately carved bird.”

“Come closer,” she whispered.

“Okay.” But he couldn’t get any closer without climbing over the bedrail.

“Tell me a story, Bones,” she said, her eyelashes watering. “Something to take me away from here.”