Kzine Issue 15

by Graeme Hurry

  The doctor nodded. “It must be stressful, to be twenty-eight and not have a solid direction.”

  I nodded. “Yeah—I mean, my parents always blamed it on me being a schizo, but sometimes I think I could have accomplished more by now if they just treated me normally.”

  “I was a bit surprised your mother and father didn’t come with you to Gaustad, but that seems to happen here a lot. A lot of our patients are adults themselves.” Doctor Asleson sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Margaret, it looks like you are very susceptible to suggestion— which can offset your treatment. The suggestion of no stability with your boyfriend caused an outburst. The suggestion of your parents writing you off has caused a lifetime of no goals for you. You’re a smart girl—you graduated from an Ivy League university…”

  “Just barely.” I said. “I got involved with an eco group and we set free a bunch of monkeys they were going to do testing on. I almost got arrested.”

  The doctor nodded. “Well, that fits your profile. A group atmosphere and you felt like you were a part of it. Did you feel very strongly about that cause?”

  I shrugged. “Not particularly.”

  Doctor Asleson shifted her weight towards me on the couch. “Margaret, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I feel like I should have an open line of communication with you. I want you to have a productive stay here and I feel like befriending Lucy might disturb that.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, recalling the warnings from Lucy about the “evil doc”.

  Doctor Asleson sighed. “Well, it’s just that Lucy has a bit of a reputation here. Two of our patients—two girls, about twenty-years old each, well they started to act erratically once they became friends with Lucy. We can’t totally pinpoint when it all started, but she became sort of their leader—they would do all kinds of things for her like steal her food from the kitchen, sneak her cigarettes, things like that. They were totally under her control. She wasn’t putting them in any real danger—she was just manipulating them. My theory was she was seeing just how much control she had over them.”

  “Lies. Lies. Lies!”

  “Anyway, one day one of the girls upset Lucy—she did something, I’m sure of it—she did or she said something to these girls. One of them…”

  Doctor Asleson looked to the wall, and wiped away a tear forming in the corner of her eye.

  “One of them jumped from the roof and impaled herself on the fence, which we had removed. Everybody saw—and the other, well she purposefully overdosed on her medication and had a seizure. She died choking on her own vomit. She had barricaded herself in the bathroom and one of our patient’s visiting children found her.”

  The doctor stood up and went over to her desk, withdrawing a newspaper—the same newspaper Lucy had shown me earlier.

  “It was all over the news here, so our hospital suffered a bit.”

  She handed me the paper, which I gave right back to her.

  “How do I know that? I don’t speak Norwegian… how do I know this doesn’t say the hospital was responsible?”

  “That’s right lovely girl—make her tell you the truth.”

  “When I first got here, it seemed like it was so nice—but now it just looks like you put it all on for a good first impression. This place isn’t clean or good at all!”

  Doctor Asleson looked taken aback. “This hospital has not changed in the few hours you’ve been here!” She thought for a moment. “When did it start to look different for you? Was it when you met Lucy?”

  “Stop!” I jumped up from the couch. “Maybe she isn’t the problem—maybe it’s this place. I can’t breathe in here!”

  “Keep going!”

  “I want to go to my room. Can I go now?” I noticed Doctor Asleson advancing towards me. She looked about seven feet tall.

  “Margaret! Listen to what I’m telling you!”

  “NO!”

  “NO!” I put my hands in front of me and shoved the doctor away from me. She looked at me startled as she backed away. The paper that I had given back to her lay behind her feet— she had dropped it when she got up to face me. As she stumbled back from my push, her heel caught the middle, and she toppled back. All eight feet of her now crumbled like a mountain— as she went back there was a loud SMACK as her head hit her black desk.

  She crumpled onto the ground—she was normal sized once more. Blood pooled around her bun, staining her platinum blonde hair a very dirty reddish-brown.

  “Oh God! NURSE!!” I fell, shaking over Doctor Asleson. “Oh my God I am so sorry… NURSE!!”

  I screamed towards the closed doors.

  There was laughing in my head now. Deep, dark laughing. “lovely girl.”

  Doctor Asleson lay unconscious. I tried to slap her awake but there was no response. “Oh please, please don’t be dead!!”

  “She slipped. I saw the whole thing.”

  I spun around to see Lucy leaning on one of the open doors.

  “How—how did you get in here?” I asked, still trying to hold up Doctor Asleson’s head.

  “I was here the whole time, lovely girl.” Lucy smiled-this wasn’t her sweet childlike smile from before, this was a curled snake that rested comfortably under her narrowed eyes.

  “Get the nurse!” I screamed. Lucy just stood there, smiling at the scene.

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s coming,” she hissed at me.

  Moments later, the plump nurse ran in with a large man in scrubs.

  “What happened here?” The nurse found Doctor Asleson on the ground and gasped. She and the large man ran over to her, knocking me out of the way.

  “She has a pulse.” The man, an American said. He looked at me and then at the doctor. “What happened?!”

  “Sh-she was backing up and slipped on that.” I pointed to the paper. “I just pushed her away and she didn’t see it was there—is she okay? I didn’t mean to hurt her—I swear to God! She dropped the paper and…”

  Before letting me finish, the man, who was quick as a cat for his large size grabbed both my arms in one hand and forcefully led me out of the room. He shoved me into the arms of two men waiting outside the doors, who held both my arms tightly.

  “Is she going to be okay?” I screamed into the room.

  The large man looked at Lucy who was standing with her arms crossed, observing everything with a knowing look on her twisted face.

  “What are you doing here?” He asked. “Did you see what happened?”

  Lucy nodded. “I was passing by and heard a struggle. The doctor was advancing on her and she simply pushed her away. Then the doctor slipped on that paper there and hit her head on her desk.”

  Lucy smiled sweetly at the large man. “I hope the doctor will be all right?”

  The man ignored Lucy’s inquiry. Over the doctor, I could see the nurse checking her heart and saying quiet prayers. When the nurse looked up and saw Lucy at the other end of the room, I distinctly heard her mutter “djevelen.”

  Lucy must have understood the word because she smiled at the nurse before the second of the two men holding my arms went to retrieve her. The large man told them to lock us in our rooms for the night.

  The walk down the hallway was the darkest yet. I could barely see the doors anymore and the entire way, the same words were repeated in my head.

  “The lovely girl, the lovely girl. She doesn’t think for herself. The weak mind and the lovely girl, they sit pretty on the shelf.”

  I couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t just the smell anymore. As I was being led to my room, with Lucy grinning by my side, I realized that air couldn’t make it in and out of my lungs.

  My mind started to fade and the hallway went from dark to black as I collapsed. The last thing I remember hearing was Lucy’s girlish giggle turn to a very dark and full laugh.

  Doctor Fisk was starting to get impatient with me. I realized that I had been quiet a very long time and he had looked at his watch more than once in the past ten minutes.

  “Maggie
, if you aren’t going to tell me exactly what happened in there, I don’t know how to help you. Why are you so convinced this woman—this…” he took out a sheet of paper from his leather bound journal, “this Lucy woman was the devil?”

  “She was— I just— I know it. I would never have pushed someone like that. I never would have hurt someone like I did.”

  Doctor Fisk sighed. “Well, you haven’t had any outbursts since then, and technically Doctor Asleson did trip accidentally. She’s not pressing any charges on the condition that you meet with me three times a week, and we monitor your progress religiously.”

  I nodded. “That sounds okay.”

  “She also is making family counseling mandatory. So one of these three times, your parents will also be present. Basically we are going to be working with your family to ensure your success. I feel confident we can get you back on your feet and living a normal life. It says here you are considering going to law school?”

  “Yes— I was thinking about it.”

  “Great, a goal is very important on the road to well-being. I think our time is just about up, but I will be seeing both you and your parents tomorrow.”

  I got up slowly from the whining couch. “Thank you Doctor Fisk.” I extended my hand to him, which he looked at oddly before taking. Clearly, I hadn’t earned his trust based on my past experience with doctors.

  “You’re welcome. Oh, and Maggie,” he leafed through his notebook once more. “This Lucy girl—I figure you should know—an orderly at Gaustad found her unresponsive last week in her room. No official cause of death yet, but, well I thought you should know. This girl wasn’t the devil. Okay? She was just a sick person, much sicker than yourself. The orderly told me she was just a sad, sick, lonely girl who very well may have committed suicide. Does that sound like the devil to you? No, right?”

  “Oh—I, oh,” I nodded my head and waved again at Doctor Fisk, unsure of what to say. I opened his office door to see my parents in the waiting room. My father was staring at an old copy of The New Yorker and my mother was talking to someone on her phone. When I emerged they looked at me with what I could almost deduce was worry. My mother covered it up with a wide, WASP-y smile and took my arm in hers as she got up from her chair.

  “What say the three of us go to lunch?” She asked, kicking my father lightly to awaken him from his daze.

  As we stepped out onto the sidewalk, the crisp fall air hitting us pleasantly, I almost felt okay again. I didn’t mind living with my parents—especially if it meant that I could try to start my life over. I breathed in the leaf-scented air and smiled, genuinely for the first time in years.

  “Hello lovely girl—I hope you didn’t forget about me.”

  PRODUCT

  by Richard Mark Glover

  I got off the 26 and walked toward the surf, through the sand, peeling off clothes, dodging fat bankers from New York, lawyers from Minnesota. The jeans drop and now I’m in my green Speedos, no longer pro tem, but permanently attached these days. I march on toward water. Showers—you have to be ready. Hygiene’s important, and when you’re living out of a ‘91 Camry, essential. Every little step toward clean counts. The more soap, the easier it is to live in the grunge of the universe, play the ponies and take on ventures. I liked to step out of the cascade of city water, towel off in the sun, admire my parking space and think; I’m clean.

  I torqued the shampoo then returned a call to Louie Mavens down in Opa Locka. Mavens had a deal cooking with a shrimper who had a load of dope. Wanted me to drive to Flamingo, the end of the road in the Everglades, rent a houseboat like a tourist and run out to Florida Bay to rendezvous with his friend.

  “Louie, one more thing. My Camry’s dead. I need wheels for Flamingo.”

  “Jack an SUV—you need something big,” Louie said.

  “Let me use your Jag.”

  “Sal says you’re the right man but I’m beginning to wonder.”

  “Sal set this up?” I asked.

  “Got a van you can have. Meet me at Fidel’s on the river at three.”

  “Sal, huh? OK. I’ll be there. Ricky, my boy too.”

  Ricky called them galaxies, phosphorescent boils between the breakers, schools of shrimp giving off green sparkle in the dark. We’d pull in our throw nets under the Brickell Avenue Bridge, on those rare nights his mother entrusted him with me, make a fire and boil our booty under the moon, smelling the sea and listening to the click-clack of the cars across the iron. I told him shrimp traveled on the surface at night to navigate by the stars like the rusty freighters that passed occasionally under the bridge. I wanted him to know these things, not just the hygiene of the burbs, and that’s why I got the idea to bring him to Flamingo. Of course I had to get it by his mother.

  “Susan Marie Knotwood?”

  “I told you to never call me that. What do you want?”

  “Can Ricky come out and play?”

  “A child with a child?”

  “Fishing. Can I pick him up or not?”

  She used to call me Rick. I go by Richard now. We tried to make a go of it. Maybe we gave up too soon. Stayed out of prison at least. I never could give up the biz. Ran a chemical business front. Not what you think; light metals primarily, zinc, aluminum—food grade for the pet industry, dog food additives. Keeps them healthy. Yeah OK so if they shit on your lawn, you got some blue-white in the soil. No biggee, right? Better than lead.

  “Assertive these days,” she says finally. “Have him back by Sunday, no later than seven.”

  At Fidel’s, Louie gave me the keys and coordinates. I drank a Bud, Ricky, Mountain Dew. I looked at the freighter docked across the river. I thought about my chances. I thought about Sal and the money I owed him; ten grand and growing five per cent a week. I popped three beans.

  Ricky and I drove south out of Miami, past the Tamiami Trail, past the row of Wackenhut prisons.

  “Did grandpa go to prison?” Ricky asked as he watched the metro glide along the raised tracks, his hair curly with the morning fog.

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Why did he die?”

  “He gave up,” I said. “Don’t you ever give up.”

  “Give up what?”

  I looked out beyond the sea of saw grass wondering how to explain what the what was.

  “I thought grandpa died in the glades?” Ricky asked.

  “You can die more than once,” I said. “There’s a kind of death that’s not final.”

  We let-go the mooring lines at noon that day in a houseboat named Redfish and chugged through the tannin water of the everglades. Ricky counted alligators. Eight hours and a few snook later we crossed Little Shark River into Ponce de Leon Bay. The motor wheezed as we passed the mangrove islands in the late afternoon. The air was hot and thick and white herons floated ahead and occasionally the gray fins of a dolphin cut the surface following us in the wake. I studied the chart as Ricky steered toward the open water of Florida Bay.

  “Why can’t we go fishing every day?”

  “What about school?” I asked. “You don’t want to end up like me, do you? See that piling, steer toward it.”

  “Why?”

  “Cause we’re meeting some people there tonight.”

  “There are other people out here?”

  We dropped anchor 100 yards offshore. In the west the sun glowed red, then melted into the sea. We fried the snook.

  “I love you son,” I said, suddenly half-calm with myself.

  “I love you too, dad.”

  “I love you more than all the stars in the sky,” I said looking into his fresh eyes, vice-less orbs, at the beginning of the whole thing. “I love your chances. You’re going to knock it out of the park someday.”

  “You’re going to bust it up too, dad,” Ricky said.

  Ricky turned in and I stood on deck in the moon light with the wind blowing, a cold shiver in my veins, a pang of guilt knotting in my gut. Did I need a buzz to tell my son I loved him? Marlboro smoke curled in my l
ungs. What is the what? I took another shot of Jack then heard the putter of a diesel. I looked for running lights but saw only the yellow glow of Key West.

  No choice, I told myself, pull this gig and pay the vig, then a nice long shower.

  Last time I was really clean the Florida penal system offered to train me. Night school, they called it, after my ten in Campbell Soup’s tomato fields. It was a chance to get legit, clean you might say, and the money, according to the warden, was in electronics but I took biology and a course in business. I learned about evolution, mass extinctions, supply and demand and how laws protect businesses like Pfizer, Bayer and Goldman-Sachs.

  The moonlight caught the hull of a shrimp boat as it cut through the chop. It slowed and a shadow appeared on deck wearing farmer johns, white rubber boots and a scraggly beard.

  “You wanna throw me a line?” He asked.

  I toss him the white nylon and he marries up.

  “You the only one onboard?” He asked.

  “My son’s here.”

  “Where’s he at?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Bring him out.”

  “What the hell for? He’s ten years old.”

  The skipper looked at me then back at the fantail. Nets swung from the rigging, the wind gusted. Another figure appeared, dark skinned, dark clothed, bearded with a knife strapped to his leg.

  “You know anything?” The skipper asked.

  “Flim-flam,” I said. That’s the code.

  “Alright Flim-flam. Gonna swing some dope on your boat. It’s a ton so she’ll list, where you want it?”

  I point to the afterdeck.

  “Don’t you want it against the wheel house?”

  “No.”

  He signaled to the gypsy. The winch motor whined. The cargo hook floated down into the hatch of the shrimp boat.

  “You got my money?” The skipper asked.

  I lift the brown envelope from my pocket.

  “How much?”

  “I just deliver.”

  He looked at me. The gypsy winched up the bale of dope and it hung over the hatch.

  “You mind if I come aboard?” The skipper asked.