“Really,” said the Twelve-tongued God. She reached down and unclenched my fists. “Are you really trying?”
“You have no right to—”
“I am the right to,” the Twelve-tongued God said. “Aren’t I the one who made you something? Or maybe you’d rather cook on a hot plate for the rest of your life?”
“No,” I said. I was on the verge of tears. The Twelve-tongued God sighed deeply. I was, um . . . a burning pulled at the corners of my eyes. “It’s not easy for me. I need more from you. I need more tongues. I’m not good enough yet. I want to go all the way.”
“Then go all the way,” the Twelve-tongued God said to me. “Make what you want to see.” The Twelve-tongued God reached down and kissed me on the forehead. “Really?” said the Twelve-tongued God.
I focused. I imagined what I wanted and what should be. And as I did, I saw that actually, no, the Twelve-tongued God hadn’t kissed me on the forehead. That didn’t happen. Instead, she grabbed me by the face and pressed a long hard lick up my neck, stopping at my ear. It felt warm and wet, like so many good things. My XII glowed and pulsed. “Don’t be boring,” the god said as she started to leave. I wanted to ask, When will I be a winner? And though the thought never reached my throat, the Twelve-tongued God turned to me just before disappearing through the double doors, and said, “When you win something.”
I felt the power of the Twelve-tongued God spinning in my gut, looking for a place to go. I got up, carrying my father’s coat in my arms. I needed to feed the meter. I wanted to check in with my father but realized he’d left his cell phone in the jacket. I sighed. Then I remembered that there were people around me who might not see their loved ones ever again. I walked out through the double doors.
The Italian family was still there, though I could tell that since I’d seen them last they’d either heard the terrible news they’d been anticipating or that the lack of any news at all had finally broken them. One woman in the family was crying into another’s chest while a younger man rubbed both of their shoulder blades. I slipped by them quickly. If there was a ticket, it would be my fault.
The old men in radiology were as forgotten as ever. I made a point of noticing the old white guy exploding with tubes and the empty-looking black man because I felt like their not giving me anything meant I was to forget them, and I did not want to forget them yet.
The security guard who took pleasure in not helping me was adjusting her belt and strolling along a tiny circle. Outside, it was alive and sunny in stark contrast to the hospital, which was bright but dead. There were people walking around everywhere. None of them had any idea that maybe my father was sick and damaged. I swapped the old ticket for a new one. Adulthood is paying the meter on time, I thought. I walked back toward the emergency room.
Inside, the security guard was now arguing with a woman in a tight suit who seemed to want to make a show of things. I was happy to see angry people.
Back in radiology, the old men were still dying. I continued to the emergency room. On the way, the colorful nurse walked by; she yawned into her clipboard then looked at a watch on her wrist. I tried and failed to make eye contact.
The Italian family was with a doctor now. They huddled around him, as if he were a quarterback explaining the face of the next down. I stood away from them. Nurses and doctors rushed around. Trying to help when, really, what could they do? From the looks of things, that’s what the doctor was telling the family: he wasn’t a miracle worker despite the white coat and the machines. Then, suddenly, he rose up out of the huddle and pointed at me. He said, “That young man there can end your suffering. He is putting you through this. Maybe for no reason at all. He doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t even have the heart to end it. He’s just going to—” I pretended I didn’t hear the doctor say anything and continued back into the emergency room. I felt Twelve-tongue’s hand like hot oil washing over my back. I wanted to tell the family that they mattered and weren’t just grim decor. I didn’t know how to tell them that, so I sat down and opened my notebook and tried to direct the fear and fire I felt in my body onto the page.
I looked up from the notebook.
Another older woman was coming in with what had to be her husband. They’d been together so long they were basically twins. The same hunched backs and thick glasses and drooping, tired faces. She used a blue rolling walker. I tried to ignore the couple and think. The old lady with the walker told the woman at the information window she’d been feeling very faint for the last three days. I could see that she and her husband were pretending they didn’t know the “faintness” was her soul stretching out before a great marathon.
Is the family of—I heard something like my last name over the screeching PA system and decided it must be my turn to speak with the lady at the information window.
“Hi.” I told her my name and that I was the son. I smiled at the old couple. That was my way of pretending with them.
“Do you have your father’s insurance information?” the woman at the window asked.
“I don’t,” I said. “I can go find him and get it,” I added quickly. “But I’m not sure where he is, exactly.”
“He should be in bed fifteen,” the woman said. “Just down the hall.”
“Fifteen?” I asked. “Like, he’s in an actual bed?” I could no longer pretend I wasn’t afraid.
“Bed fifteen,” she repeated.
As I passed the Italian family, I put my notebook, the journal, and my father’s coat down and did a cartwheel to show them that kind of thing was still possible. They looked up at me, unamused. Then they returned to their sorrowful hugs and mutterings. I picked my stuff back up. I found my father wearing a dotted hospital gown. He’d spent most of his life in a tie. We stared at each other for a while. There were beeping sounds everywhere. He was carving out the last of a cup of Jell-O.
“They gave you food?” I asked.
“Well,” my father said. “I was hungry.”
“So what’s happening? I need your insurance stuff.” My father asked me to find his pants, which were somewhere beneath his hospital bed. I pulled two cards from his wallet and waited for him to answer me.
“I’m still waiting for the—well, there she is now.”
The colorful nurse trotted toward us in a way that made me uneasy. She rubbed the back of my neck as she walked by me.
“Is this your son?” the Twelve-tongued God said to my father.
“Yes, can’t you tell by how handsome he is?”
“I can, I can,” said the Twelve-tongued God. She winked at me and I saw diminished blood cells, emaciation, chemotherapy, hair loss, diapers, more chemotherapy, fading fathers and heartsick sons grabbing, grabbing with weak hands for anything. Words that tried to make something pretty out of shit. “You must be wondering what’s going on?” the god continued.
“We are,” my father said. He laughed weakly.
“Okay, it looks like”—the Twelve-tongued God seemed to be looking at her clipboard, but she peered over the edge—nothing is more boring than a happy ending, her eyes said. I stared back and tried not to flinch from the gaze of my creator. I took a deep breath.
“Your blood pressure was a little higher than we’d like, so we checked that out, but other than that, everything looks great. After you give them your information, you’ll be free to go.” The Twelve-tongued God smiled at my father, then looked at me with a face both bored and disgusted.
Once my father was dressed, we began to walk back to the emergency room to handle his paperwork. “I can do it,” I said. “You go back; the meter’s almost up.”
“Okay, good idea,” he said, and disappeared in the direction of radiology.
For what I hoped would be the last time, I walked by the grieving family. I stepped into their family circle. The pain in my back, the fire of the XII, made it difficult to walk. I spoke clearly. “Whoever you think you’ve lost is not lost. Go home.” They looked at me like I was a static-garbled television. �
��Go home, whoever it is, they’re alive and well.”
“How?” a woman said.
“It just is. They just are. Strange miracle. And now you’ve realized the power of family bonds. Everyone wins.”
“It’s so unlikely,” said a man, who I assume was some kind of uncle. “Feels almost cheap?” he said, grinning despite himself.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “It is what it is.”
The colorful nurse walked by. “Coward!” she screamed at a nearby doctor. I skipped into the emergency room. All of the broken people there groaned and groaned. I made my voice big and announced to the masses, “There’s been a great miracle. None of you are hurt. Go home.” They looked up at me and blinked. Some smiled weakly, but none moved.
“Please be decent,” the attendant hissed. He looked at me with pleading eyes.
“Please, sir,” said the clerk at the window who needed my father’s insurance information.
“Here you go,” I said, and threw the insurance cards at her. She stared at me, and then went to pick the cards up from the floor. While she was bent over, I leaned over the threshold and punched the intercom. I spoke into it, and my voice flew all over the hospital. “You are all healed. Go home. This is the hospital where sickness ends. Everything will be fine, and you are happier than you’ve ever been. Leave. Everyone is good. Especially you.”
“Sir,” the attendant said. But I was already running toward radiology. The tube-tied old man was very, very slowly pulling himself free of the plastic. The other man was also sitting up, eyes opened and locked on me. I felt my XII like it was a new brand.
“That’s it,” I said. “Go forth and be healed. I’m trying to help you.” I was happy. As happy as a sunflower in a field of other less radiant sunflowers. The man with tubes crawled to the edge of his bed, then fell flat on his face toward the tile floor. I screamed, “No.” And the man, dislodged finally from all the tubes, froze in the air, a weightless icon, a displaced swimmer who waded in the open air. With great effort, he looked up at me as he floated. “This is the hospital where the affliction is flight,” he said. Then he returned to the call of gravity and fell hard back down to the ground.
He did not move once he was there. The other man never took his eyes off me. “This is that place,” he said.
I ran away toward the entrance. A sea of hospital-gown-wearing humans surrounded the security guard. She tried desperately to direct groaning patients back to wherever they belonged. She caught my eye and scowled as I ran by.
“Please, no running,” the security guard yelled.
Outside, my father was sitting in the driver’s seat. I was relieved to be a passenger. From all the entrances and exits of the hospital, hobbled, hurt people were emerging. They were mostly old, anywhere else they’d be untreatable, and still they made their way out into the sunshine. The affliction is flight, I thought with a hazy focus, the only kind I could muster with the exploding pain I felt in my back. And suddenly, just as they stepped through the threshold into the outside, the old sick bodies rose into the air and floated a few inches above the ground; there they hovered, weightless, immaculate, wearing thin hospital gowns and colorful socks. They were in the air for almost ten seconds, taking careful steps forward before they fell back to the earth. Their ankles gave out immediately. On the ground, they crawled like babies, if they moved at all. More stepped forward, flew, then fell. It kept happening. It kept happening. I turned to my father.
He stared at all the people flooding and floating out of the hospital. He shook his head and said, “What have you done?”
“It’s about a hospital where people can fly,” I said.
“What have you done?” he begged.
Zimmer Land
“Welcome to Zimmer Land,” Lady Justice says.
I flash my ID badge at Mariam. She frowns at me from her chair in the front box office.
I use the employee entrance behind Lady Justice—all thirty feet of her. When it’s quiet, you can hear the gears that move the huge scale she’s holding up and down. The sword she has in her other hand is longer than my body, and it points directly at you when you’re at the ticket booth.
I sprint to Cassidy Lane, a cul-de-sac module with working streetlights and automated bird chirps.
When I get to the back door of house 327, the fourth house on the lane, I’m sweaty, which I can work with. The bathroom in house 327 is the primary player’s changing room. There’s a timer above the toilet that lets the primary player—me most of the time—know when patrons expect to start getting their justice on. Two minutes. I strip down to my briefs, then I put on my armor. We use outdated versions of the exoskeleton battle suits that the marines use. I start with the mecha-bottoms: a pair of hard brown orgometal pants that make me limp before they’re activated. Once they’re activated, I can squat a half ton. Once I have the mecha-bottoms on, I jump into baggy jeans. Then I latch into my mecha-top—two orgometal panels that snap together over my chest and back. It feels like a skin-on-skin hug that doesn’t stop. With my top secure, I open a pack of stretchy white tees. There are three in the bag; I’ll go through at least two bags this shift. I throw on boots, and I put on dark sunglasses to protect my eyes. I take a deep breath. The mirror in the bathroom is two panels. I check myself out on one side, make sure I look the part. The other panel is a large receiver screen that shows me the inside of house 336 and the patron/patrons I’ll soon be introduced to. I tighten my belt. I touch my toes and swing my arms a few times. The last thing I do is grab what looks like a skinny joint but is actually the remote to activate the mecha-suit.
I locate myself in Cassidy Lane’s primary player: a young man who is up to no good or nothing at all.
I tuck the trigger/joint behind my ear as the buzzer goes off. I watch the screen.
The patron looks like he’s in his forties. He’s kind of fat with reddish hair and wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He sits on a couch. He has an orange bracelet on his wrist, which means he’s signed the waiver for full contact. Green means I can’t touch them. Orange means I can engage the patron with reasonable and moderate physical contact to enhance the module’s visceral engagement. Green or orange. I don’t know which patrons are worse.
The induction process begins: in house 336, a voice like warm gravy comes in through speakers shaped like books on a bookcase: “Welcome to Cassidy Lane, your home, your safe place.” The voice recaps how the patron has performed to that point, explaining everything in a tight little narrative that covers whether or not they succeeded in identifying who was stealing money at the Work Jerk module, how amazing it was when they stopped that terrorist plot during the Terror Train module (if they chose to pay an additional $35), and how now, finally, they can go relax, safe at home. That is until . . . the voice tremors with worry. “What’s this? It seems today isn’t just any day on Cassidy Lane.” Then an automation sends the blinds shooting open as if the house is possessed by a poltergeist. “He’s here again. The stranger. You’ve seen him walking around. Wandering closer and closer to your home. This week, you’re the head of the neighborhood watch. Maybe it’s time you asked him a few questions.” A chime goes off. Three holes in the wooden floor open and up pop three different pedestals. Pedestal A has a holophone that could be used to call the cops, family members, or anybody else. Pedestal B has a gun (a BB gun that sounds and looks like the real thing). And pedestal C is empty. It’s for the tough-guy patrons. Almost all patrons (84 percent when I’ve been on the module) grab the gun on pedestal B. Almost nobody uses the holophone. “Remember, this is your home, not his.” And then it begins.
I go outside, breathe in the fresh air, then loiter. I stand around and do nothing. I look at my phone, and once in a while I touch the joint behind my ear. And then I walk down the street slowly.
The patron opens his door.
He’s not smiling. The engagement protocol on the lane is response through mimicry. If he’s not smiling at me, I’m definitely not smiling back at him.
“Hey, buddy,” I say from the sidewalk. He’s in the street, coming toward me.
“I got a question for you,” he says, kind of jogging toward me.
“That’s all right,” I say. And make to walk away.
“Now you wait just a second. I want to know what you’re doing here.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask. The patron’s cheeks get red. Then his chest puffs out. He steps up onto the sidewalk so we can be about the same height.
“I live here. This is my home. I belong here.”
“So do I,” I say.
“You still haven’t answered my question. What is it you’re doing here?”
“You haven’t answered my question either,” I say.
He moves his head to look around, then focuses back on me. “I just did. I live here. That’s what I’m doing. Living. Now what are you doing?”
“Same,” I say. “Living.” Then I turn my back to him to keep walking away.
“You listen to me. I don’t want any trouble. I’m asking you a simple question.” He raises his voice, so I do, too.
“I’m not answering any of your questions,” I say, turning back to look at him. His hands hover near his waistline.
“Then I’m gonna have to ask you to get on outta here.”
“You in charge?” I ask. “You’re the boss of the world?”
“To you I am. Now fuck outta here.”
“What?” I say.
“I said get the fuck outta here!” the patron says. He’s screaming at me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say without raising my voice, ignoring engagement protocol.
“Listen, I don’t want any thugs out here. You have to go.”
I march a little circle around the man and laugh. “I’m going to do what I want.” His fist catches me under the ear, and it makes me shuffle back. He knocks the glasses off my face. I don’t usually get caught so off guard. I grab the joint behind my ear and put it in my mouth. I bite down on it, and the pressure triggers mecha-suit activation. The orgometal on my legs and chest expands, and I can feel it synching to my body. The orgometal hugs me tighter, and soon I can’t tell where the machine starts and the human begins. Everything gets easier. Activating the suit feels like stepping out of water into open air, like freedom. I had to do a week of training in the suit to get certified to use it.
Friday Black Page 8
