The Devil in Silver (10 page)

“It’s your favorite neighbor.”

“Gloria?”

“That’s funny. It’s Pepper.”

She paused.

“Hi, Pepper.”

“You sound as tired as I feel.”

She paused again.

“Were you worried about me?”

“I was worried about what you did to Griff.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s okay. I guess. I don’t talk to him if I don’t have to, but since the police haven’t come here and arrested me for conspiracy, I figure he’s not dead.”

“You want to know where I am?”

“Why did you have to do that, Pepper?”

“What? You told me he was threatening you, so I figured you wanted some help.”

“I was just
talking
about it with you, Pepper. You know? I thought you were being my friend. I wasn’t asking you to fix anything.”

“You don’t tell a gentleman about a problem and expect him not to help.”

“So I guess it’s my fault, right? You went to my
job
.”

“
His
job.”

“It’s the same place! God! You know how it looks now? Like I hired a man to come to my job and beat up my ex-husband. What does that say about me? I teach seventh-grade Spanish!”

“I went to Van Wyck to tell him to keep his distance. That’s
all
.”

“I can handle myself!
I’ll
call the cops if he really tries to hurt me. But that’s
my
business anyway. I was just talking! But now you make me look like … My students saw you hitting him in the parking lot. How do you think they’re going to look at me at school on Monday?”

“Why would they know it has anything to do with you?”

“Teenagers
know
. I’m telling you. I’m trying to act like a grown-up and you make me look like a fool. How am I supposed to teach them how to act if I can’t keep my own life in order? This is my job, Pepper. It’s like you’re trying to get me fired.”

“I meant to do something good. For you.”

“Look, Pepper. I don’t know how else to say this. I’m sorry to say this. But it’s not going to happen like that. Between
you
and
me
. I’m not trying to be mean, but you have to hear me.”

“Do you know where I am now? Your ex-husband … who the hell is named
Griff
anyway? Your ex-husband was the one who tried to get tough with
me
when I asked him nicely to stop threatening the mother of his child! He threatened to sue me. For
menacing
. Is that a crime? Okay, I admit, I lost my temper at that point. I smacked him one. So then we both got into it. Then three guys drive up in a Dodge Charger and I’m supposed to know they’re cops? In a Dodge Charger? I
assumed
they were meatheads. But they were fucking cops. Patrolling a school zone. Now I’m in a
hospital
behind this shit. And last night I was
attacked
! I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,
so I’m sorry but I called thinking that if anyone might give me a little understanding it would be the woman I was trying to look out for!”

“I’m sorry about all that, Pepper. I
really
am. But I don’t know what you want me to do. You wanted to help me, but you never asked me what kind of help I needed. All I wanted was to talk about it. It was nice to do that with you down in the laundry room all those times. You were already helping. I don’t think that mess with Griff was about me at all. It was about
you
.”

“Marisol.”

“You have a brother, right? Your family is who you should be calling if you’re in a hospital.”

“You mean Ralph? I haven’t spoken to him in six years. Maybe more.”

“But he’s your brother.”

“It’s not going to happen, Mari. I’m not calling him. And he’d probably hang up as soon as he heard it was me.”

Mari sighed into the phone. Pepper was going to make even coming to his aid into a hassle. She said, “Hold on and I’ll find a pen.…”

Well that was depressing.

But also just
confusing
. How could she and Pepper see the same actions so differently? It made him wonder if the cops, or that dick-head Griff, had spoken to Mari and explained the fight in a way that made him seem as terrible as possible. Speaking to her about it forced him to see the same afternoon from a new angle. A big guy stomps into a parking lot and beats up a teacher. Then he beats up three cops. Good God. He’d begun seeing this version of himself—a thug, a marauder, a monster—when Mari mentioned calling his brother, when she asked him to hold on while she found a pen.

He had no choice. He told her Ralph’s name. And that he lived in Maryland now. But when she asked him for the actual number, he couldn’t give it to her. His cell phone knew the digits, not him. She said she’d go online and find Ralph’s number and give him this one and explain as much as she could. She wished him sincere good luck.

And that was it.

Pepper left the phone alcove, despondent. In part because he knew, even if Mari actually did track down his brother, Ralph wouldn’t call. He probably wouldn’t even tell their mother Pepper was in the hospital. Pepper had entered the alcove thinking he had at least one ally. He left knowing he had none.

He left the alcove and looked toward Northwest 2 and the room waiting there. Another day and a half. How many more chances would that give last night’s visitor to drop in?

He looked to his right and saw that unclassifiable trio—woman in her fifties, man in his thirties, teenage girl—walking from the television lounge and down Northwest 5. He watched as they entered the room at the hub of Northwest and circled around the nurses’ station. They barely spoke to one another but didn’t look angry, really. Maybe just a little worn out. The time spent getting ready for the visit, traveling to the hospital, sitting around with your loved one inside a sealed (if sunny) room. That’s going to get you tired. Now they spoke to one of the staff. A nurse led the family to Northwest 1, toward the secure ward door. She moved ahead of the family, already picking through her ring of keys for the right one. The one that would let them leave. Pepper watched all this carefully.

He felt so low just then, at a complete loss. Dogged out. Abandoned. Without the willpower to be prudent, to check himself. A feeling known, generally, as
fuck it
.

Pepper trailed behind the family who trailed the nurse. No alarms went off as Pepper moved closer. No one even noticed him.

The nurse had her back to the hallway and the proper key in hand. She pulled it forward, moving it toward the lock, and the red plastic cord squeaked faintly with the stretch.

It was then that Pepper realized he was really going to try to escape. He worried about the dude in his thirties, but not that much. The guy was doughy, not very tall; the kind of man who made a living but rarely worked. And, for all Pepper knew, heavily medicated. Pepper could get past him. His slow walk turned into a trot.

The nurse slipped the key into the secure ward door and this is the moment when she got a bit lazy. She should have looked over her
shoulder to be sure there were no other patients crowding close. In fact, the orderly should actually have accompanied her and the family to the door. All this was basic training. But there was only the one young orderly on shift, and he’d gone to the television lounge to let people know visiting hours were about over.

The nurse stood at the door alone. She’d offered to go open the door for this family just to avoid the damn charting for a few minutes. The most pleasant part of her job for the next few hours would be these moments when she got to usher visitors out. She took some pride in smiling at them as they left, like a good hostess. She was new, on the job for only two months. She unlocked the secure ward door and pulled it open.

A moment later Pepper rear-ended her.

The big man was
fast
when he had the proper motivation. Like getting out of the nut hut. Like stepping outside and breathing fresh air.

Pepper moved toward the door. He reached that family and mushed them out of the way. First the man: it was like brushing past a sack of dirty laundry, that’s how soft the man’s body felt. The guy slipped and went down. Then Pepper made his harshest decision. He chose to vault over the woman in her fifties. He thought this was better than barreling through her. But the man was no kind of athlete. Pepper had no ups. If he went three inches off the ground it would be an all-time best. He bum-rushed that poor woman and she went stumbling forward, plowing into the nurse’s back. The two smashed into the wall just to their left.

No time for apologies. The door was completely open. Look at that lavender wall paint in the hallway right outside! Pepper could’ve maneuvered a Zamboni machine through the doorway. He was free. He was free. Even if it was the worst idea he’d had, in a week of
lousy
ideas, the man could still escape. He made it past everyone.

Except the teenage girl.

She didn’t have Pepper’s size or weight, obviously, but what she did have in her favor was rage. She had the Crazy Strength. (Retarded folks are rumored to have powerful—nearly mythic—strength but don’t shortchange the mentally ill. In the proper state they can bring the ruckus.)

This teenage girl was the patient. The woman in her fifties, the mother. The soft-bodied man in his thirties, her brother. Pepper had guessed wrong, and he would pay for it.

The kid mounted him from behind. She grabbed his shirt right by the waist and planted her feet on the backs of his shins. Even though she didn’t weigh that much, Pepper couldn’t stay upright with that pressure on his calves. With that surprisingly simple move she toppled the big man.

As he fell, time slowed, giving Pepper a moment to once again take in the painted trees in the framed pictures on one wall. The images seemed to move away from him now. Before his face hit the floor, he had one clear thought.

I’m a fucking idiot
.

When Pepper’s face connected with the linoleum tiles, his mouth opened and his front teeth connected with them and he heard one of his teeth crack, and small bits of enamel skitter through the doorway, to the other side.

The young woman ran
up
his back, clawing forward, until she grabbed the back of his head and pulled at his hair. Brown strands in her hands. And this whole time those two blue pom-poms on the top of her blue knit cap were bouncing and bobbing playfully.

“Put your hands on my mother again!” the teenager howled. “Put your hands on
my fucking mother
!”

The girl brought her right elbow down on the back of Pepper’s neck; her elbow stabbing right into the ball at the top of his spine. Pepper couldn’t even yell, he coughed violently and foamy spit covered his lip and chin. He dropped the side of his face against the floor and he huffed and heaved and snorted.

The woman in her fifties had found her footing by now. She grabbed her daughter and pulled her away. “That’s enough, Loochie! Come on now! Get off him! Loochie!”

The nurse and the girl’s brother got up, too. The orderly on duty and two other nurses stampeded down the hall and surrounded Pepper’s prone body.

“He hit my mother!” the girl shouted. “It’s not my fault!”

The orderly grabbed Pepper’s shins. Pepper kicked but there wasn’t
much power in him. The orderly then dragged Pepper backward, away from the open door and farther into the unit, like a roped steer. It took a great strain to move Pepper’s body just three feet. Then the nurse who’d opened the door shut it again. She locked it.

Pepper looked up at the wild child, to see her staring down at him, one arm hooked around her mother’s shoulder protectively. The girl’s brother shivered as he leaned against a wall.

A nurse arrived with Pepper’s punishment. When a patient fucked up this fully he wasn’t just given another pill. This time they brought the high-dose solution. It came in liquid form, inside of a needle.

THEY HAVE TO
keep patients medicated on a psychiatric unit. Staff are trying to get the patient’s illness back in control. If a person is in the hospital, it’s probably because his or her levels are off. Some meds are tried, a few work and others don’t but staff are always trying to find the exact right combination for each patient.

But the other reason they have to keep patients medicated, even sedated, is because life on the unit will scramble anyone’s brains.

What is there to do in a mental hospital? Watch television, sit in your room, wander the hallways, step out for a smoke break, attend group meetings. Every day, that’s all you get. It’s why visiting hours mean so much. Even patients who didn’t get along with their families on the outside are pleased to welcome them here.

Being stuck inside and doped up to the gills can make the place feel like a time machine, as Loochie knew, even by age nineteen. The distinction between the days, the weeks, the months, the
years
fade. It all seems like one long day. You just lose track. It’s shocking how quickly that can happen.

So if Pepper lost the next day or two because of the injection (plus the Haldol and lithium) well, it shouldn’t be all that surprising. It took him hours to swim back to the shores of consciousness. And
who was waiting for him right there on the beach? A nurse carrying a small white cup. Casting him out to sea again.

It takes time for a body to adjust to the meds. Really not all that different from building up one’s tolerance to alcohol. Once, one beer had your head wobbling loose on your neck, but in time, it might take five or six. You learn to hold your liquor. In the ward, you learn to hold your pills.

But it takes time.

Pepper’s seventy-two-hour observation period came and went, and he hardly realized its passing. Not that he forgot, he was just so busy swimming. Who petitions for his legal rights while trying desperately not to drown?

When he came to New Hyde, it was the third week of February.

When he finally shook off his medical haze, it was the middle of March.

PEPPER DIDN’T UNDERSTAND
how much time he’d lost until he wandered out of his room and down Northwest 2 and shuffled up to the nurses’ station. He put both elbows on the top tier like a man sidling up for a drink. He even smiled as he looked down at Scotch Tape, Miss Chris, and another nurse charting. He meant to ask how he could sign himself out of his padded cell. Seventy-two hours had surely come and gone.