Michael Christie - The Beggar's Garden

“Enjoy it,” Dan said, returning to his bedroom to let them alone, shutting the door as gently as he was able.

As he ate his lunch, Saul watched the stout Assassin feed Georgina — a stunted, moaning woman to whom God had accidentally issued a mollusk instead of a brain — guiding a plastic spoon of wobbling pudding into her mouth, with a little flick over her lower lip to catch what didn’t make it in. The Assassin was a short, rotund Latino, and his presence rang Saul with alarm as he pulped the crusts of his tuna melt.

Saul had recognized the Assassin because he was a self-taught detective, which meant he knew what to look for. He’d seen men like this night after night on the news: inflamed guerrillas and private militiamen, nationless killers and hooded butchers, all either shooting into the air or wailing mournfully, draped across the body of a fallen brother. Saul shifted a table closer and his suspicions were strengthened by a deep scar that tunnelled the length of the Assassin’s left cheek, the shape of a minnow, clean enough to be the work of a scalpel. A box-cutter duel in the steaming slums of Nicaragua, Saul suspected. Or perhaps he’d been a child soldier, his soul now turned mercenary and septic with hatred. All seemed equally possible.

He saw the man unlace Georgina’s bib and lift it from her limp neck. Had he come for her? But Georgina couldn’t even speak — not entirely true, she knew two words: one that sounded like bah, which meant “bad,” “hungry,” “bathroom” and “angry,” and the other roob, which was used for every other linguistic purpose. Saul’s thoughts were interrupted when suddenly she gurgled and whacked her plastic bowl from the table with a sharp pink elbow, slopping ivory pudding on the right tire of her wheelchair while she brayed with delight. The Assassin went scrambling for a mop, desperate not to publicize his incompetence on his first day.

Saul decided to launch an investigation. In the smoking room, he found Drew, who was relishing his 1:15 after-lunch smoke. At Riverview, all aspects of existence were subject to a schedule, an iron framework of meds, meals, sleep, bathing and activities over which the staff attempted to stretch the battered material of their ruined beings like the fabric of a tent. Staff controlled the smokes because patients like Drew would torch an entire carton in a day if given the chance. Not that he ever had.

“Who’s the new staff? And what does he want with Georgina?” Saul said.

“You mean the Latino guy wire tap water wings?” Drew said, blurting the words as a prefabricated unit. Drew’s mind had been shredded by wagonloads of methamphetamines and radio waves sent especially to him by his great-uncle’s ham radio. At some point he’d correlated the entire inventory of his brain into a useless fizzling web. Saul didn’t care to fraternize with Drew— one got tired panning everything he said for nuggets of sense — but he often divined things that others couldn’t. “Yes, the Latino guy.”

Drew shrugged and exhaled a globe of smoke. “Not sure footed the bill Cosby kids are all right now.” Then he scoured his face vigorously with his palm as if it were a blackboard and he couldn’t stand what was written there.

“He’s new,” said Kim later at the craft table, unfurling a battalion of paper angels she’d spent the last five minutes cutting, working her jaw unconsciously in time with her pink safety scissors.

“I’m aware of his newness,” Saul said, careful to control the annoyance he found scurrying in his voice, a displeasure that had in the past sent Kim wheeling into another of her depressive cycles. “But why is he here?”

“Oh, I dunno, the same as the rest of them, I guess … to help?” Kim set the scissors back in the craft box. “Here, I’ll call him over … Luis!”

“No that’s—” Saul said, too late.

The Assassin hurried over from his organization of the board-game cupboard, his hands stashed behind his back. Saul panicked and looked to the reflective glass of the nurses’ station for anything weapon-like in the Assassin’s grip.

“What’s up, guys?” Luis said in the simultaneously droning and cheerful way that Saul figured they must spend small fortunes on training these people to employ, and then to Kim, “Oh, I like your angels,” and then to Saul, “Are you helping Kim with her angels? That’s nice of you.”

“No,” Saul said, reeling from the Assassin’s attempted butchery of his self-respect. “We are — no, pardon me, were —conversing.”

Luis’s good nature was unflagging. “Okay, well, looks like fish burgers tonight, and maybe I’ll ask the duty nurse if we could watch some tube after dinner? You’re a real TV buff, aren’t you, Saul?”

Saul displayed the type of facial friendliness that was used as a currency on the ward, just to be rid of him. He watched Luis return to the board games and clumsily topple a whole stack to the floor. As Luis pressed his cheek to the tile in search of scattered game pieces, Saul realized his heart was galloping on the narrow plain of his chest. He’d been rattled by the Assassin’s knowledge of his TV habits. How could he have known this? Had he been studying him? Gathering intelligence? For what purpose? It seemed so absurd. No one on the outside even knows I’m here, he thought. Well, his parents, and one other person, an unmentionable woman whom he’d long ago scoured from his memory. Then came the dull thud of Luis’s head against the underside of the games table. The Assassin groaned, slowly, like he’d just heard crushing news. If someone really does want me dead, Saul thought, why send this amateur? A man so evidently a card-carrying fool? He’s no more an assassin than any other of the psych nurses, Saul concluded, then passed the remains of the afternoon on a puzzle that depicted a windblown Spanish castle dangling gloriously over a turbulent sea.

The next day, just to be sure, Saul requested a meeting with Dr. Darko Kraepevic, his personal psychiatrist of the past thirty-six years. Kraepevic was a fine man and brilliant doctor whom Saul admired deeply. A hawkish Slovak with a sharp goatee and cloudlike puffs of white hair that encircled an expanse of flawless, gleaming scalp. A man who, as if to manually punctuate his sentences, liked to double-click the gold pen that, as he’d once confided to Saul, his daughter had bought him for his fiftieth birthday. Saul shut the door.

“What’s this issue, Saul? You seem troubled,” Kraepevic said. The leather of his chair bleated and the doctor interlocked his fingers.

“It’s this Luis. Who sent him? I mean, where is he from? What are his credentials?”

“You are well aware, Saul, that I’m not about to discuss the personal histories of new employees,” Kraepevic said, no doubt quoting verbatim from a policy manual.

“Just curious,” Saul said. “I feel like I’ve seen him before.” He slackened his face and feigned nonchalance.

“Impossible. Luis is new to us here at Riverview. Look, we don’t want to have you getting overly interested in a staff member again, Saul. You’ve been doing so well since the Janet situation. All settled.” Kraepevic was referring to a former psych nurse who’d made inappropriate advances toward Saul, and against whom Saul had lodged a formal complaint. Rather than face disgrace, she’d relocated to another province, after which Saul had spent a week in the Quiet Room collecting himself and mitigating the stress of the whole ordeal.

Kraepevic could see Saul’s doubts still working away in his face.

“Without divulging specific information, let me assure you Luis has not been sent by anyone, and is qualified in every possible way for this position. He’s taking Margo’s shift while she’s on mat leave, and, like Margo, his job is to assist the psychosocial rehabilitation of you and the other patients here. Must I remind you, Saul, there are other patients here?” he said, clicking his pen. “And speaking of you, how are you doing? Because you seem a touch pale. Sleeping? Any intrusive thoughts? How’s the medication?”