Victor Lavalle - The Devil in Silver

He reached the nurses’ station and found just one orderly back there, charting.

The orderly looked up from his seat, over the tall shelf of the nurses’ station, and nodded at Pepper. A thick folder of paperwork sat in front of him. The orderly had stopped writing to flex his aching fingers. Like the other staff members, he wore his keys on a short, red plastic cord around his wrist. When the orderly looked up at Pepper again and stretched his aching hand this time, his keys tinkled.

“Last night …” Pepper said, but he couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t want to say it out loud.

The baby-faced orderly kept watching Pepper, but his hand dropped back on the papers and the fingers searched blindly for the pen, working nearly autonomously.

“You need something?” the orderly asked.

How old was this guy? Twenty? And in this place he had almost total authority over Pepper, a forty-two-year-old man.

“Where is everyone?” Pepper asked.

The orderly jerked his head once, behind him, toward Northwest 5, the television lounge.

“It’s visiting hours.”

Finally the kid looked down and found his pen. He snatched it, then looked up and frowned, clearly unhappy to find Pepper still standing there.

Now the orderly leaned over and lifted a clipboard.

“You had your lunchtime meds?” He scanned the list but wasn’t sure of this patient’s name.

Pepper saw an opportunity. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I had those. Definitely .”

“What’s your name again?” the orderly asked, torn between the clipboard and the charting.

“Thanks!” Pepper shouted as he walked to Northwest 5, and the orderly just set the clipboard back down with a shrug. He clicked his pen and returned to work.

Even from halfway down Northwest 5 the lounge looked like it was jumping. Every table was occupied, handfuls of folks were forced to stand. The natural afternoon light flushed against every face. And most of the people in there weren’t even looking up at the television, though the television stayed on.

Pepper didn’t make it all the way to the lounge. Part of the problem was that he saw Dorry in there, at a table with a slightly tired-looking woman in her forties, and two enthusiastic kids under ten. The kids were in their chairs, on their knees, holding playing cards close to their faces. Dorry, too, though she kept dropping her hand theatrically and one or the other child would shout for Grandma to be careful! The woman in her forties had a hand of cards, too, but hers were facedown on the table. She looked out the window and seemed to wish she was anywhere else.

And Coffee sat at another table with a pudgy man in a tight white button-down shirt and wide tie. His suit jacket hung on the back of his chair. He and Coffee were hunched over documents spread out on the table. Filling the entire table. Reams of data of some kind. And the man in the shirt and tie looked exasperated. He’d take one form and hold it up and read it, then place it facedown on a growing pile. Then lift another, read through, shake his head, and place it facedown with the others. Meanwhile, Coffee merely slid yet another sheet of paper toward the man. Pepper wasn’t sure which of them he should feel sorry for.

There were meetings of various kinds at every table. Some folks had even brought in food. Chinese, or pizza from Sal’s, bottles of soda or juice, chips or cookies. Like they were having picnics on the psychiatric unit.

How could this place be so active, so lively, when last night he saw …?

Pepper chose to focus on one table with three people sitting around it. An older woman, in her fifties, a heavyset man in his thirties, and a teenage girl who looked to be about sixteen. He couldn’t figure out which of them was the patient. Why did that bother him just then? It was like he suddenly wanted to know . Like he should just be able to tell. He assumed it was the guy in his thirties but, if he was being honest, that was only because the man was kind of chunky. He assumed the woman in her fifties was the mother, but mostly because she kept handing out egg rolls and cartons of Chinese noodles to the other two. She pulled a board game from a shopping bag. Pepper realized that these “clues” also proved nothing. Only the teenager seemed the unlikely choice. She wore baby-blue Nikes and a matching light blue knit cap pulled over her head. The cap had two small light blue pom-poms that dangled from the top. Pepper imagined some celebrity, one he couldn’t name, had worn much the same outfit recently. The kid just looked so put together in that high-school high-fashion kind of way, where a fifteen-year-old tries to look like a twenty-year-old and ends up making herself seem like she’s twelve. He wished he could excuse her from this room, so she could just go out and enjoy the prickly fruits of childhood. At least until the next time she and her mother visited the chubby guy.

But this sleuthing didn’t really matter. From his place at the lip of the television lounge, Pepper could be sure of only one thing: No one was there to see him. He pitied himself.

But instead of indulging this emotion too long, Pepper went back to the pay phones. If most of the patients were here in the lounge, then maybe, finally, the pay phones would be free. He could make that call. The person he most hoped would visit didn’t even know where the cops had taken him. Time to call her.

“Mari.”

“Who’s this?”

“You can’t guess?”

“There’s a number but the caller ID just says ‘New York City.’ ”

“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!”