Victor Lavalle - The Devil in Silver

Pepper had to think about what other subjects there might be, the ones that really mattered to Coffee. It didn’t take much longer to guess. He sighed.

“Who were you trying to reach? On the phones.”

Coffee smiled into his lap. He stopped tapping. “You really want to know?”

Based on that grin, the width and brightness of it, now Pepper wasn’t so sure. If this guy ended up saying he’d been trying to ring up the Illuminati or Reverend Al Sharpton (Okay, Pepper, now that one was a little racist), Pepper wouldn’t want to hear it. It would just be too sad.

Coffee said, “I was trying to reach the mayor’s office.”

Was that sane? Pepper couldn’t quite say. Ambitious, but not necessarily nuts. Lots of people called the mayor with problems. Pepper picked up the small orange, the size of a handball. He closed his fingers around it and it disappeared.

“The mayor of … where ?” he asked.

Coffee finally snapped the tab of his Sprite can. When the top opened, it sounded like a sizzling pan.

“The mayor of New York City. Who else?”

(Mayor McCheese?)

Pepper opened his hand and bit into the top of the orange skin. He spat the chunk onto his tray and peeled the rest. “And why were you trying to reach him?”

Coffee drank half his can of soda in slow gulps. When he finished, he looked at Pepper directly. Each man sat on his own bed, with his lunch tray on his lap. They looked like kids bunking at sleepaway camp.

Coffee said, “I had to let him know this place is dangerous. I’ve seen its true face.”

Pepper dropped the rest of the orange skin on the tray and tore the fruit in half.

Pepper held up the orange and said, “I’ll trade you for a can of soda.”

Coffee set his tray on his pillow, rose from the bed, grabbed another Sprite from his dresser and exchanged it for half the orange. He wobbled slightly as he moved across the room. Coffee leaned down so he could be close to Pepper’s face. So close that Pepper leaned backward. There had been the faint accent, and now this complete ease with closeness. Pepper felt sure this guy hadn’t been born in the United States. While the rest of the world seems happy with only a membrane of personal space, Americans need a bubble.

Coffee said, “The mayor ought to know it’s killing us.”

“And you think Bloomberg can do anything about that?”

Coffee tore off a slice of the orange and slipped it into his mouth. He hardly chewed before he spoke. “The man got three terms in a city where two terms are the law! He changed the law to help himself, so why can’t he do it to help others?”

“But why would he want to?” Pepper asked. “What would he get?”

Coffee laughed quietly as he went back to his bed. He pulled the lunch tray onto his lap and lifted the tuna sandwich. He sniffed at it, then set it down again without tasting.

Pepper ate his sandwich in two bites, damn the funny smell. And if Coffee didn’t eat his soon, Pepper would offer to eat it for him. As bad as it tasted, all this would help get his strength up. The morning pills weren’t making his mind drag anymore. They had worn off. His body no longer drifted. A little fuel, any fuel, would fill his tank.

The rain had stopped and the clouds parted. The sun reappeared. Bright out. The windows were still slick with drops but they dried fast in the daylight.

“You ask why the mayor should care.” Coffee pointed at Pepper. “You’re an American. That’s right?”

“That’s right.”

“I am not. That is why I know what you cannot believe . This country might look like it’s about to break down for good.”

“That’s the truth,” Pepper said, as he choked down the tuna. Just then, even a bad job was a good job in this woefully unemployed country.

Coffee raised his Sprite as if he was giving a toast.

“But listen to me because I’m serious. America is not broken yet.”

Pepper wanted to argue. To educate this outsider. He knew the way systems ran in this country. For instance, he wondered how long it would take for Coffee to reach the mayor. A week? No chance. How about a thousand years? And then to be heard? To have something done about New Hyde? Count that shit in eons.

He wanted to say all that, but maybe he should’ve been more concerned about the sound of Miss Chris’s shoes coming down the hallway. In one hand she carried a small white plastic cup. In that cup were two small pills for Pepper. His midday meds.

Miss Chris plus Haldol plus lithium. A recipe for bed rest. He’d lost the morning and now it seemed he was going to lose the afternoon. She entered the room, ignored Coffee (because he’d already gotten his dose), and practically tossed the two meds down Pepper’s throat. As he drifted away, it occurred to him that he might end up spending the entire seventy-two-hour observation period with his eyes shut. Practically comatose. Then it occurred to him that this might be intentional.

So he slept through the afternoon, and in the evening Coffee did Pepper the kindness of bringing the dinner tray. A scoop of macaroni and cheese, a spoonful of green beans, two slices of plain white bread, a plastic container of apple juice. (Again with the apple juice?) And another sugar cookie with a beet-looking blob stuck in the middle. This dessert, like the afternoon’s, would remain in its plastic.

Pepper ate the food, and a nurse, one he hadn’t seen before, came in to bring his nighttime meds. New nurse, same pills. He was knocked out even before the nurse had returned to the nurses’ station.

And that, friends, was almost all of Pepper’s first full day on the psychiatric unit.

The last thing to happen was this:

He opened his eyes at 2:45 a.m. He was on his side, facing the door. He saw Coffee under the covers of his own bed. The room’s lights were out, the door shut; behind Pepper the moon was up. Pepper got up to use the bathroom and this took a little while. He had to roll himself off his mattress, and then he spent a few minutes on his hands and knees on the floor. The tiles felt cold against his palms and even through his slacks. He planned to stand up and walk to the toilet, but he just couldn’t coordinate his muscles. So he crawled to the bathroom on his hands and knees while Coffee watched in silence.

In the bathroom Pepper clutched on to the sink to pull himself up. Who was that in the bathroom, grunting and groaning? It was him, but the sound seemed so far away.

He splashed water on his hands and face. He peed. He washed his hands again. He returned to bed. This time he lay down facing the windows.

The view wasn’t so bad at this hour. Pepper could see the tops of the trees outside and the starless dark sky and the moon, nearly full. He couldn’t see the chain-link fence or the barbed wire at the top or make out the headlights of cars in the distance. It felt good.

Which is why the intrusion bothered him so much.

Pepper heard a muted thump . It could’ve been something dropping from above, but Pepper couldn’t figure out what that might be. Then he thought of a set of bedcovers being tossed to the floor, and Pepper assumed that Coffee had climbed out of bed.

Next there was a shuffling back and forth on the tile floor, and Pepper remembered Coffee’s routine from the night before. He imagined Coffee was getting up the courage to ask Pepper for the coins in his pocket. Maybe he’d only been bringing the food so he could ask for even more money. No kindness without a cost.

Finally a shadow moved across Pepper’s top sheet.

He smelled an unclean body. Something sour. Like the ammonia-haunted corner of a subway platform that has never been truly cleaned.

Pepper kept his back to the room. Hadn’t he and Coffee made a sort of truce? Talking, eating together, sharing soda and oranges — didn’t that earn Pepper a night without panhandling? The more Pepper thought this way the angrier he felt. The more Pepper anticipated that tap he was about to feel against his shoulder, the more he wanted to finish the fight they’d begun in the phone alcove.