you at now, vis-a-vis the hospital?"
"Well, they don't tell me much, but as near as I can make out, I am stuck heresemipermanently. The court found me incompetent and ordered me held until I was.I can't get anyone to explain what competency consists of, or how I achieve it-- when I try, I get accused of being 'difficult.' Of course, escaping onto theroof is a little beyond difficult. I have a feeling I'm going to be in prettydeep shit. Do they know about the car?"
"The car?"
"In the parking lot. The one that blew up."
Doc Szandor laughs hard enough that his pacifier shoots across the room andlands in a hazmat bucket. "You son of a bitch -- that was you?"
"Yeah," I say, and drum my feet against the tin cupboards under the examinationtable.
"That was *my fucking car*!"
"Oh, Christ, I'm sorry," I say. "God."
"No no no," he says, fishing in his pocket and unwrapping a fresh pacifier."It's OK. Insurance. I'm getting a bike. Vroom, vroom! What a coincidence,though," he says.
Coincidence. He's making disgusting hamster-cage noises, grinding away at hispacifier. "Szandor, do you sometimes sneak out onto the landing to have acigarette? Use a bit of tinfoil for your ashtray? Prop the door open behindyou?"
"Why do you ask?"
"'Cause that's how I got out onto the roof."
"Oh, shit," he says.
"It's our secret," I say. "I can tell them I don't know how I got out. I'mincompetent, remember?"
"You're a good egg, Art," he says. "How the hell are we going to get you out ofhere?"
"Hey what?"
"No, really. There's no good reason for you to be here, right? You're occupyingvaluable bed space."
"Well, I appreciate the sentiment, but I have a feeling that as soon as you turnme loose, I'm gonna be doped up to the tits for a good long while."
He grimaces. "Right, right. They like their meds. Are your parents alive?"
"What? No, they're both dead."
"Aha. Died suddenly?"
"Yeah. Dad drowned, Mom fell --"
"Ah ah ah! Shhh. Mom died suddenly. She was taking Haldol when it happened, alow antianxiety dose, right?"
"Huh?"
"Probably she was. Probably she had a terrible drug interaction. Sudden DeathSyndrome. It's hereditary. And you say she fell? Seizure. We'll sign you up fora PET scan, that'll take at least a month to set up. You could be an epilepticand not even know it. Shaking the radioisotopes loose for the scan from the AEC,woah, that's a week's worth of paperwork right there! No Thorazine for you youngman, not until we're absolutely sure it won't kill you dead where you stand. Thehospital counsel gave us all a very stern lecture on this very subject not amonth ago. I'll just make some notes in your medical history." He picked up hiscomm and scribbled.
"Never woulda thought of that," I say. "I'm impressed."
"It's something I've been playing with for a while now. I think that psychiatriccare is a good thing, of course, but it could be better implemented. Taking awayprescription pads would be a good start."
"Or you could keep public stats on which doctors had prescribed how much of whatand how often. Put 'em on a chart in the ward where the patients' families couldsee 'em."
"That's *nasty*!" he says. "I love it. We're supposed to be accountable, right?What else?"
"Give the patients a good reason to wear their tracking bracelets: redesign themso they gather stats on mobility and vitals and track them against your meds andother therapies. Create a dating service that automatically links patients whorespond similarly to therapies so they can compare notes. Ooh, by comparing withlocation data from other trackers, you could get stats on which therapies makepeople more sociable, just by counting the frequency with which patients stopand spend time in proximity to other patients. It'd give you empirical data withwhich you track your own progress."
"This is great stuff. Damn! How do you do that?"
I feel a familiar swelling of pride. I like it when people understand how good Iam at my job. Working at V/DT was hard on my ego: after all, my job there was todo a perfectly rotten job, to design the worst user experiences thatplausibility would allow. God, did I really do that for two whole goddamnedyears?
"It's my job," I say, and give a modest shrug.
"What do you charge for work like that?"
"Why, are you in the market?"
"Who knows? Maybe after I figure out how to spring you, we can go into biztogether, redesigning nuthatches."
22.
Linda's first meeting with Art's Gran went off without a hitch. Gran met them atUnion Station with an obsolete red cap who was as ancient as she was, a vestigeof a more genteel era of train travel and bulky luggage. Just seeing him madeArt's brain whir with plans for conveyor systems, luggage escalators, cartdispensers. They barely had enough luggage between the two of them to make itworth the old man's time, but he dutifully marked their bags with a stub ofchalk and hauled them onto his cart, then trundled off to the service elevators.
Gran gave Art a long and teary hug. She was less frail than she'd been in hismemory, taller and sturdier. The smell of her powder and the familiar acousticsof Union Station's cavernous platform whirled him back to his childhood inToronto, to the homey time before he'd gotten on the circadian merry-go-round.
"Gran, this is Linda," he said.
"Oh, it's so *nice* to meet you," Gran said, taking Linda's hands in hers. "Callme Julie."
Linda smiled a great, pretty, toothy smile. "Julie, Art's told me all about you.I just *know* we'll be great friends."
"I'm sure we will. Are you hungry? Did they feed you on the train? You must beexhausted after such a long trip. Which would you rather do first, eat or rest?"
"Well, *I'm* up for seeing the town," Linda said. "Your grandson's been yawninghis head off since Buffalo, though." She put her arm around his waist andsqueezed his tummy.
"What a fantastic couple you make," Gran said. "You didn't tell me she was so*pretty*, Arthur!"
"Here it comes," Art said. "She's going to ask about great-grandchildren."
"Don't be silly," Gran said, cuffing him gently upside the head. "You're alwaysexaggerating."
"Well *I* think it's a splendid idea," Linda said. "Shall we have two? Three?Four?"
"Make it ten," Art said, kissing her cheek.
"Oh, I couldn't have ten," Linda said. "But five is a nice compromise. Five itwill be. We'll name the first one Julie if it's a girl, or Julius if it's aboy."
"Oh, we *are* going to get along," Gran said, and led them up to the curb, wherethe red cap had loaded their bags into a cab.
They ate dinner at Lindy's on Yonge Street, right in the middle of the sleazestrip. The steakhouse had been there for the better part of a century, and itscracked red-vinyl booths and thick rib eyes smothered in horseradish and HPSauce were just as Art had remembered. Riding up Yonge Street, the city lightshad seemed charming and understated; even the porn marquees felt restrainedafter a week in New York. Art ate a steak as big as his head and fell into apostprandial torpor whence he emerged only briefly to essay a satisfied belch.Meanwhile, Gran and Linda nattered away like old friends, making plans for theweek: the zoo, the island, a day trip to Niagara Falls, a ride up the CN Tower,all the touristy stuff that Art had last done in elementary school.
By the time Art lay down in his bed, belly tight with undigested steak, he wasfeeling wonderful and at peace with the world. Linda climbed in beside him,wrestled away a pillow and some covers, and snuggled up to him.
"That went well," Art said. "I'm really glad you two hit it off."
"Me too, honey," Linda said, kissing his shoulder through his tee shirt. He'dbeen able to get his head around the idea of sharing a bed with his girlfriendunder his grandmother's roof, but doing so nude seemed somehow wrong.
"We're going to have a great week," he said. "I wish it would never end."
"Yeah," she said, and began to snore into his neck.
The next morning, Art woke stiff and serene. He stret
ched out on the bed, dimlynoted Linda's absence, and padded to the bathroom to relieve his bladder. Hethought about crawling back into bed, was on the verge of doing so, when heheard the familiar, nervewracking harangue of Linda arguing down her comm. Heopened the door to his old bedroom and there she was, stark naked and beautifulin the morning sun, comm
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