Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"You believe that?"

"I felt it. But now…" Her eyes narrowed to fury. "He's scum! I hate him! He wouldn't even buy condoms himself- told me to buy them, 'You buy the condoms, to learn to take responsibility.' He kept them in a Ziploc bag under the head of the couch. And… I mean, bananas? His fetish with bananas? I feel so… dirty."

"When you went to see him, you were incredibly vulnerable, and-"

"Yeah, but I'm a big girl, I knew what I was doing. 7 did it." She sighed. "Can I…" She paused. "This is really hard to ask…"

"Go on."

"Can I come back? See you again in therapy? I think maybe now, after all this, you could help me. Don't you think?"

"Yes, I think so. Sure."

She let her breath out in a whoosh, as if she hadn't been breathing for a while. I too breathed out fully, unclenching a breath from around my ribs.

"Thank God. I was sure you wouldn't." She fell silent. Neither of us knew what to say. Finally she went on, "I… I'm afraid to be alone tonight. But it feels weird to be here too. Can we just keep talking a little longer?"

"Sure. Maybe we can do something about him."

"Who would believe me?"

"We would file a complaint together."

"Who'd believe its'? I could never go through it in public, no way. Maybe he just lost it this once, with me, right?" I thought about telling her that she wasn't the only one, but it seemed, just then, too brutal.

We sat. For a rare few moments in the suburbs, things were still.

"Amazing," she said. "When I was a girl, my aunt Bev always said that this kind of stillness, at this time of night, means that there are angels passing overhead." She smiled, shyly, and I smiled too. "I'm okay. I'll leave now, okay?"

"I'll walk you out."

MY FIRST CALL the next morning was to the information operator in the 701 area code, North Dakota. I got the number for Ideal Cleaners in Mandan, and dialed it. A woman with an accent I'd never heard before answered. I could barely hear

her over the intermittent hisses of what sounded like big steam presses going full blast.

"Solini!" I shouted. "I'm looking for Henry Solini!"

"One minute," she shouted, and then shouted even louder out into the cleaning establishment, "Hey, Little Hawk! LITTLE HAWK!" The phone went clunk, and I waited for Henry "Little Hawk" Solini. The phone was picked up.

"Yeah?" a voice shouted.

"Solini?"

"Yeah? Who's this?"

"Roy."

"Roy?" he shouted, astonished.

"Little Hawk?'"I shouted back.

"That's my Sioux name, out here. You know how it is. How the hell are you?"

"Bad."

"Sorry to hear that, man."

"How are you?"

"Cool. Everything's cool. Lemme get on the cellular phone and go out back in the alley so we can have some privacy."

We talked for a long time, about everything. I asked him what had happened after I'd dropped him off at his analyst Ed Slapadek, the last time I'd seen him.

"I was in rough shape, man, with Hannah tryin' to kill herself and the Slapper telling me I was gay-latent. I flipped out on Toshiba and I went to Ed needing some help. But he just kept confronting me about how I felt about him. So I tell him he reminds me of my father. He goes, 'Let's work on the father-transference,' and I go, 'No, you really are like him, short and authoritarian and bigoted.' So he calls me 'gay-latent.' That did it. I go, 'This is ridiculous!' He goes, 'What comes to mind about "ridiculous"?' I say, 'What comes to mind is "Fuck you, Ed!" ' I get up and veer off into the kitchen and go out the back door and run into the woods. I had my wallet-he demanded a hundred twenty dollars cash at the start of each session-and I used my Visa to get back to Mandan, back to Ideal Cleaners. And y'know what I found out, right back here in Ideal Cleaners?"

I said I did not know what he'd found out back in Ideal Cleaners.

"That there's nothin' wrong with me! Or my old man! Or

Ideal Cleaners! Nothin'! We're all cool! It's rough, man, when you shine the high beams of analysis on reality. Everything looks different, and a lot worse than it really is."

"Good for you, Henry Solini!"

"Roy-babe, I am gonna make my move!"

"Awrightl And what's your move?"

A pause. "Dunno yet. The market for white reggae singers in the Dakotas is a little slow this time of year. I'm a little bored here already. What's up with you, babe?"

I told him what I'd been going through, about Schlomo and Zoe and Lily, and said I really needed his help and maybe he could come back to Misery, at least till the end of the year, and help me figure out what to do.

"Cool, Roy," he said without hesitation. "Von Nott put me on a leave of absence, so I can still come back, yeah. Yeah," he said, considering, "maybe before I quit shrinking, it'd be cool to stick it to those assholes. Yeah. Okay. I got a few things to clean up out here, with Everett and my ex and a motorcycle, you know how it is, but I'll be there, babe, maybe like next week."

"Great."

"Yeah, see if you can find my car, okay?"

"It's still where you left it, in the parking lot up in the Hei-delbergs, but the tires are gone. I'll get it fixed up for you."

"Cool. One thing, though. I'll call Hannah, in Wyoming. She needs to get some damn closure on this Misery-shit too."

"Cool," I said. "Love you, Little Hawk."

"There it is. Hang loose."

I TRIED AGAIN that same morning to talk with Lily Putnam, but she was still too out of it, lying there with those same stuffed-animal eyes as all the others on the West, stuffed not like a child's fuzzy toy but like a taxidermist's dream. I realized that somehow I had to get her completely off drugs.

I searched out Mr. K. One night on call I brought him to the West. He showed Lily how to tongue her pills. She watched him, mute and confused, but maybe she understood.

Two days later on the hall, the Man Who Thought He Was a Kernel of Corn came up to me. He looked less weirded out. To my surprise, he actually talked.

"Just one more test and I'm going to be discharged," he

said. "Dr. Cynthia Krabkin says I'm ready to go back to my

chicken farm in Bangor."

"Congratulations. There must be a lot of pleasure in farming."

"I know now," he said, firmly, "that I am not a kernel of

corn."

"Good luck." Lily Putnam, with a lifeless trudge and blank stare, came up and slipped me a note:

This is fake. I'm better. Meet me in my room tonight.

That night, without drugs, she was pretty much back to her usual serf, alert, bright-eyed, appropriately sad. And angry. "Get me out of here!" "Are you suicidal?"

"No. I've never been suicidal. I've got my children to think of. That maniac Dr. Cabot showed up at my house with a pink paper and a syringe full of hell and I've been in la-la-land ever since. I'm worried to death about my children. Can you get me out?"

"Let's go." "Now? Right now?" "I'll sign the discharge order myself." "Oh." She hesitated. "I… Is it quite okay, I mean to do this?"

"I'm with you. Get your things. Walk like you're drugged up, to the door."

"But how will I get home?" "I'll drive you."

I went to the chart rack, worried that someone would notice. The night staff were relaxing with glossy magazines in the stressless chairs behind the glass booth, eating and drinking and reading. Nonchalantly I wrote the discharge order and closed the chart. It would be a while before it was read.

As I came back to the Dutch doors, Lily was walking past, faking a drug-trudge toward the door. I went out onto the ward, as if going to talk to her. I talked. She, shuffling her feet, pretended to take no notice. As we neared the door, Deedee the nurse glanced up. Our eyes met. I froze.

But even from across the room and through the glass, her eyes showed a glaze-from whatever drug she was eating. I