Victor Lavalle - The Devil in Silver

The guy hunched over him with a puzzled look. He scanned the length of the bed, saw the trap Pepper had sprung on himself, and dropped his poking finger. He crab-walked backward two steps just to take this ridiculous sight in.

“You look like an enchilada,” he said quietly. “How you going to give me a quarter now?”

Pepper said, “I wasn’t going to give you any damn money. I was going to smack you in the head.”

The man nodded, the top of his round head catching the dawn light.

“Well, you won’t be doing that, either.”

Pepper shimmied in the tight sheet.

“Just give me a minute,” Pepper said.

And the man did. He crouched and watched Pepper move. When the minute was up, very little had changed. “Now what?” asked Pepper’s roommate.

Pepper lay there, still tangled, but refused to ask this guy for help. Then he’d have to give the man a quarter. He’d rather lie here and starve himself loose.

The roommate leaned forward. “There’s an important person I’m trying to reach.” He looked over his shoulder, at the door to their room. “A man in the government .”

Pepper let out a long, slow sigh. Of course. Weren’t crazy people always trying to contact someone important? A man in the government. The Queen of Mars. The Knights Templar.

Pepper laughed to himself and relaxed and the sheets seemed to slip right off him.

“Patients are allowed to make phone calls?” Pepper asked.

“But it’s not free, Joe. You have to pay for the call.”

“That’s why you want a quarter.”

“Yes.”

“In the middle of the night.”

The man shook his head. “I want a quarter all the time.”

Okay then. Bonkers or not, the man had helped Pepper a little bit. Patients could make phone calls. Pepper had money — bills in his wallet and coins in his pocket. He wouldn’t call Mari this early, but it was good knowing that he could. He reached down into his pocket and felt the handful of coins waiting there, jingling a little.

“That’s it,” the man whispered. “Yes, yes, I hear the good news.”

Pepper found the coin he wanted to give, held out his hand, his fingers closed around the quarter. The man grinned.

As soon as Pepper released his fingers, his roommate snatched the quarter out of the air and ran from the room without shutting the door.

Pepper yelled, “And stop calling me Joe!”

But the guy was already gone. The lights in the hall filled the room like the headlights of a double-decker bus.

Pepper had to get up. He shivered in the slight chill of the air-conditioned room, cursed as he walked to the door and shut it, and bumped his shin on the metal frame of his bed when he reached it again. He flopped into his bed and, looking across the room at his roommate’s, wondered if the guy ever even slept there. Maybe he collected his alms around Northwest all night. Dorry had warned him that life in Northwest would be unstructured, but he would’ve thought the staff at least discouraged panhandling.

As the sun began rising on Friday morning, Pepper tried to fall back to sleep.

No luck. The door to his room blew open. Louder than an explosive charge. His roommate turned on the overhead lights, soaking their room with queasy yellow light.

“It’s a Canadian quarter!” he shouted.

Pepper lay still, faking the steady breathing of deep sleep. But underneath the covers he nearly laughed as he listened to his roommate pacing. Would the man escalate things? Would Pepper have to fight? That sure wouldn’t help to get him out of this place any sooner. Just that quickly, Pepper worried about what his roommate might do.

But the poking never resumed. The roommate finally turned out the light and went to bed.

From beneath his blanket, the guy whispered, “That’s cold, Joe . Real cold.”

Pepper slept until seven a.m.

PEPPER WOKE UP with the sun. He hadn’t forgotten where he was, but even in here, with an ache in his neck from the thin pillow, having slept in his street clothes, and even through sheets of shatterproof plastic, the sunlight sure felt pleasant. He practically purred in his bed, a great cat rousing.

But who the hell had drawn the curtains? Pepper thought of his roommate. He pictured himself sleeping deep and that guy standing over him long enough to tug the curtains. It just made him feel so vulnerable.

“Wake up! Wake up!” a woman’s voice sang. It wasn’t his roommate looming at his bedside, and not Dorry, either. A different older woman moved to the head of his bed and snatched his top sheet off. Didn’t even pause to check if Pepper had his pants on or off. (Thankfully, for all involved, they were still on.)

“I don’t plan to run a bath for you,” she explained tersely. She had a Caribbean accent. “It’s seven in the morning. Wake up! And get out of your bed.”

The woman’s actions screamed “Staff Member” but her wardrobe cooed “Casual Grandma.” A beige blanket sweater and shapeless jeans, comfortable black sneakers, and hair cut short. She had a batch of keys hanging from a plastic cord around her wrist. They jangled as she tugged the top sheet one more time, all the way off him.

“You’ll make your bed when I leave, hear?”

Those keys, that tone, the direct but disinterested stare, that’s how Pepper knew she was an employee and not a patient.

And Pepper nodded at her as he sat up. He almost said, Yes, ma’am .

“Now you take this,” the woman said. She opened a clenched hand. Two pills sat in her palm: a light green pill and a little white gelcap.

He looked at them with horror. As if she’d offered him poisoned Flavor Aid.

Remember who you are ! he thought.

Pepper unfurled himself and stood, knowing he was a big old banner of a man. People tended to crane their necks and read the sign: STEP BACK.

But not this time.

The woman didn’t move. The pills in her palm didn’t even tremble as his body took up so much space. She simply tilted her head back and cut her eyes at him. She was old but her face still remarkably smooth. She had that power. You could see it in the way her lips drew down now, her lower jaw jutting out like the Don Corleone of the West Indies. Her eyes went from mildly cloudy to suddenly, strikingly clear.

“You going to give Miss Chris the business, heh? Trust me, you a big man but a small potato! And if I have to leave here and get a doctor, I promise you I coming back to make mash potato.”

What was it about that accent and that set of the chin? That aura of threat and premonition? Miss Chris had struck fear into badder men than Pepper, he felt sure of that.

What was Pepper going to do anyway? He’d had a grandmother of his own. Different color, different country of origin, different personality, but just as fearsome. Nearly everyone could be undone by an old woman’s displeasure.

Miss Chris held her hand above her head, so the pills hovered just below Pepper’s chin. “I won’t make another request.”

Pepper plucked both pills and Miss Chris dropped her arm.

“At least tell me what these are,” he said.

“I’m your psychiatrist or your nurse? Because if I’m you’re psychiatrist I’m due a better paycheck.”

The light green pill was Haldol. The white gelcap was lithium. Miss Chris actually knew this, but was too vexed by the big man’s attitude to explain.

Pepper said, “I need to make a phone call.”

Miss Chris raised her eyebrows. “That’s a phone in your hand or two pills? Deal with what’s in front of you first. Then if you want to make a phone call, you go make your phone call. I’m here to dial the numbers for you? No! No!”