Victor Lavalle: The Devil in Silver

Pepper cut his gaze to the right, but was almost afraid to do it. What would be worse? Seeing a snorting, stinking beast there or nothing at all? All he found was one of the cops. Dewey. There was something strange about the cop’s face, though. His face was flushed. His nostrils flared. His stance was tense. Surreptitiously he, too, was peeking to his right. The snort came again. Dewey heard it! Had to be. Pepper almost cheered with relief. Then Dewey caught Pepper looking at him. Instantly he lost his fearful expression. He looked straight ahead, doing his best impression of tranquility. The snorting faded, along with the smell.

Dr. Anand said, “I think we’re ready to transfer him, officially.”

The cops undid Pepper’s handcuff, and Dr. Anand filled out some forms right there in front of everyone. Pepper tried to catch Dewey’s eye.

“You …” Pepper began.

“I didn’t hear nothing ,” Dewey said, cutting him off.

But when Dr. Anand opened the door, Dewey practically stampeded to get out first. The other two cops and some of the staff watched him with quizzical expressions. Then the doctor escorted Huey and Louie out the door. When they’d all left the room, the staff didn’t even look at Pepper. They pulled out their cell phones and clicked or tapped or viewed or listened to messages.

Then Dr. Anand returned and the phones were set facedown on the table, while the nurse walked over to take Pepper’s belt and the laces from his work boots. Pepper let her have all three items because he couldn’t quite believe the police had actually left him here.

Dr. Anand took the same plastic seat in front of Pepper. “Now what we want you to do is tell us a little about your family. Treat this like a celebrity interview. We’re the paparazzi and we want to know all about you.”

Scotch Tape chided him. “Act like you’re on TMZ !”

Pepper wondered if that paparazzi pitch worked on other people. Maybe younger ones. It sure didn’t mean much to him. But he talked about himself anyway. He talked so he wouldn’t hear the snorting. His shoulders remained so tense they would be a little sore in the morning.

He told them about his parents, Maureen and Raymond, who ran a video store in Elmhurst. Raymond died not long after VHS tapes did, and Maureen sold the business and lived alone for eight years. She stayed in Maryland with Pepper’s brother, Ralph, now. Ralph had a wife and son, and Maureen took care of the kid so the parents could work. Pepper couldn’t remember his nephew’s name just then and felt bad about that. Pepper graduated from John Bowne High School in Flushing and spent one semester at Queens College. His brother, Ralph, had the business sense of their father and owned a Wendy’s in Gaithersburg. Pepper had inherited his mother’s work ethic, a facility for the regular grind; she was the one who’d actually kept the family’s video store running day to day. Pepper figured that if he told them as much as he could they might realize the truth: He didn’t belong in here. He only didn’t tell them where he worked, figuring they might actually call. He couldn’t afford to be fired again.

“And what about relationships?” Dr. Anand asked. “Not with your family. Personal ones.”

“There’s a woman in my building,” Pepper admitted.

“And what’s her name?” the doctor asked.

“Mari.”

“And where is Mari now?”

“She’s probably in her apartment, with her daughter. Isabelle.”

“Is Mari your girlfriend?”

The word sounded so silly in Dr. Anand’s mouth. And even sillier applied to Pepper, a man of forty-two. “It’s early still,” he said.

What he didn’t add was that Mari was actually the reason he was in here. It sounds a little old-fashioned, but he’d been trying to protect her honor when it all went so badly so fast. She didn’t even know where the cops had taken him. He wanted to let her know where he was and even more, he wanted to hear that she was okay. And how was he supposed to be of any good to her trapped in here? Pepper didn’t say all this out loud. They’d ask him what he did, and why it all went badly, and the story would only make him seem even rowdier.

Never mind, though. Dr. Anand had plenty of other questions.

But the more Pepper told them the less he seemed to matter. He might’ve been relating the inventory of the truck from yesterday’s job. Dr. Anand and his staff weren’t listening, only gathering the necessary information to refine his classification. After forty-five minutes he was a case history; a new admit awaiting diagnosis; a subject.

After an hour Pepper was, officially at least, a mental patient.

WITH PEPPER’S INTAKE meeting finished, Dr. Anand walked him out of the conference room and back into the hall. Pepper expected some ceremonious next step, but the doctor just pressed him back against the hallway wall, as if he was about to use a pencil to mark Pepper’s height.

“Stay here,” Dr. Anand said, already turning away. “A nurse will be by quickly. She’ll take you to your room.”

And just like that, the doctor returned to the conference room and shut the door. Pepper felt like a fridge left out on the sidewalk.

The walls in this hallway were eggshell white like those in the conference room. The floors were cheap beige linoleum tiles. On the wall, right beside him, at shoulder level, hung a framed landscape painting. There was another across the hall. An empty beach by his shoulder; a path through empty woods across the way. Soothing images, by reputation. In truth, Pepper felt more comfortable around apartment buildings and even on subway platforms — maybe not beautiful, but his natural habitat. Not just his, but likely that of nearly every damn person associated with this hospital, from the staff to the patients to the cops who’d brought him in. So why decorate the walls with someone else’s dream of peace? Maybe they were just feeding that most natural human appetite, the hunger for somewhere else . A yearning Pepper could relate to just then.

No nurse appeared, and for fifteen minutes Pepper just repeated the same words to himself: seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours. You can stand anything for seventy-two hours .

The loud voices playing from a TV somewhere down the hall, deeper inside the unit, had changed to loud explosions. Maybe someone had switched the channel, or the show had come to a moment when the world starts blowing up. Pepper knew it was just a television show, but the sounds seemed to grow as they traveled from wherever the TV sat to where Pepper still stood in the long, empty hall of closed doors. The howl of human beings, the victims of those crashing sounds, played louder and louder. Like the people themselves were about to come flooding into view. Maybe not even people, but people’s parts. A wave of blood. Dismembered limbs breaking the surface of that wave like sharks’ fins.

Pepper knew this couldn’t happen, but his chest felt tight.

He looked to his right and focused on that secure ward door. What if Dr. Anand hadn’t locked it behind the cops? What if all Pepper had to do was give a little push?

Seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours .

He couldn’t stand this for that long. He couldn’t even make it twenty minutes before he tried to escape. Pepper lurched toward the big door.

He grabbed the handle and pushed lightly. But of course the door didn’t open. He pushed harder. He tried to turn the knob. It didn’t shimmy. He let go of the handle now and pressed both his meaty hands against the door and leaned into it. He set his broad, laceless boots down flatly, repositioned his large hands, and now he powered against that door, straining like a bull. But the damn door stayed secure.