Drafts of a Suicide Note

by Wong, Mandy-Suzanne

  ME: Dr. Caines, why did you become a drug dealer?

  MYSELF: So I could have a dangerous secret.

  ME: Is that all?

  MYSELF: Rather talk about how my family betrayed me in my time of need, crushing all my dreams forever?

  ME: No thanks. I’ve heard all that before.

  MYSELF: Exactly.

  ME: Can you describe some of your products? Or would that ruin the surprise?

  MYSELF: They’re all synthetics. Hundred percent original, invented and manufactured by [NAME REDACTED], the famous medicinal chemist up in Boston. He’s done work for [INSTITUTION REDACTED] and [PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY REDACTED], other places like that. Besides Boston, you won’t find our products anywhere except Bermuda. He and I like to keep things intimate, you know, on a scale we can supposedly control. But do you know I sell more than his Boston broker?

  ME: Go long, bye.

  MYSELF: [Laughs.] I’m telling you. Americans like coming here to get hooked up. Adds a whole sort of exotic flavor to the experience. And the locals, you know. It’s easier for them to get to know me and the products than it is for Bostonians to get to know my counterpart there. This has to do with the size of our community. Anyway, our most popular products right now are Empyreal and Hallelujah. But I mean you have to understand this is an industry that changes very, very quickly, even quicker I would say than the tech industries, but of course I wouldn’t quote me on that. What I mean is that Empyreal, for example, might be our biggest thing right now, but tomorrow or the next day some hotshot will make some kind of discovery, and the next thing you know such-and-such compound, the backbone of the drug, will become illegal—well, like [chuckles] impossible-to-get illegal—which means the chemical composition of Empyreal will have to change and I’ll have to start calling it, I don’t know, Imperial or something. What’s important is staying a step ahead, which to be sure involves keeping the compounds innovative but requires first and foremost preventing inconvenient discoveries.

  ME: And what do you personally bring to the operation?

  MYSELF: Well, okay, what’s missing from designer drugs like Bath Salts, which come in little plastic bags looking like bits of dried fruit? Or what’s missing from Spice, another so-called designer drug that you can buy in what? Convenience stores? Excuse me? What’s wrong with this picture?

  ME: It does sound kind of tacky.

  MYSELF: Thank you, so we agree on something. What’s typically missing from designer drugs is the design. Design in the sense of style. Class. Sophistication. And for high-end clients, that’s so important. That’s what I bring. My clothes, my car, my intellect, the kind of elevated conversation that I’m capable of, even my face—which will always be exotic no matter where I go—all of it says to the client: this is a guy like Bruce Wayne and Mr. Spock. Like Beyoncé in The Fighting Temptations. Too much class to be here, and yet here he is. Clients want the attention and approval of people like that. Just being in the presence of that kind of cooler-than-thou, so to speak, puts people in awe of themselves. I flatter them just by being around, and I make them want that feeling to last. So there’s the marketing side of it. I’m a sort of preview to the product.

  [Flicks dust mote, perhaps invisible, off of spiffy suit.]

  There’s also the security side. Here in Bermuda—in the US too, only it’s more pronounced here because our bureaucratic machine isn’t big enough to cover itself entirely—if you do something in style and with a big old grin, right in front of every camera you can find, you will get away with it no matter what it is, even if it’s putting other people’s children up for sale. Like for example: little Filipino girl rips off BF&M for seventy-five G’s; she does it in secret, so it looks underhanded and smells dirty. She gets caught, sent to jail. Meanwhile Premier So-and-So been milking the whole country for way, I mean, way more than that and faces no repercussions, zero, because he does it in style. Not to mention Minister Whatshisname harassing that lady like a pervert and going international with it on social media, broadcasting his contempt for Bermudians by telling us he figured we’d all get the joke. Anyway, nobody wonders what I’m doing waltzing into Parliament in the middle of a Friday afternoon because I look good. A man looks good in Parliament, why shouldn’t he be there? I’m not saying I’m not discreet, I was born discreet, but you want to go hiding stuff in paper bags under a rock, tell some idiot come pick it up in the middle of the night, that’s how you get caught. You mix up with the gangs, you end up worse than getting caught.

  ME: And the recession?

  MYSELF: Cha. Listen, bye, I won’t lie to you. The 1980s, 1990s, when kings and sheiks visited Bermuda and rented out entire floors, when college kids came out in droves for spring break parties and international companies installed their biggest big-shots in Tucker’s Town, that was the time. I would’ve had a yacht. People would’ve had to come to me, make a fackin appointment, and I would not have been caught dead dealing with Javon Bean, Tony Trent, low income, low on brains, obsequious little animals. But Empyreal and I, we were born too late. At least the last five governments screwed this island and left her naked and bewildered with nothing but her beauty and an utter dearth of true allies, written off even by the people who set down our flag. The screwups and the screwed remain, picking up the pieces, growing desperate. Makes the risk that much greater, doing business that much harder. And do you know we’ve got a reputation now? I mean, [NAME REDACTED] and I do what we can, trying to change it, but it’s a struggle. Bermy’s got a reputation for high markups on low-quality products. Ditch ganja, going crazy with the baking soda, you know.

  [Pause.]

  ME: I’ve asked you this before, but if you don’t mind I’d like to go over it again in light of what happened this weekend in St. George’s. That all right with you?

  MYSELF: By all means. Chances are it’s been on my mind too.

  ME: All right, then. Is it worth it, Dr. Caines? I mean really. You are decidedly alone. There’s this sort of ghost of a limb that you and [NAME REDACTED] cultivated, sort of, halfheartedly? Maybe that’s not the right word, but you went out alone on that gossamer limb. Yet it’s more his than yours, I mean [NAME REDACTED]; he’s got the compounds and the formulas, so if that limb fell apart, he could move on, but you’d have nothing. You’re on painkillers, aren’t you?

  MYSELF: On and off. Mostly off.

  ME: Rule number one of pharmaceutical brokerage. Don’t become an addict.

  MYSELF: You’re in a fine position to wag your finger at me. Zohytin’s a prescription drug. By prescription only. As in not in our catalog, understand? And I’m not an addict, I said I’m mostly off.

  ME: It’s a drug for dying senior citizens. Real stylish.

  MYSELF: You need a slap upside the head, you know that?

  ME: So my question?

  MYSELF: [Sighs.] Is it worth it?

  ME: Well, is it?

  MYSELF: [Sighs.]

  Nabi asked me to wait for her. She needed a sit-down with Wayneesha. She thought my presence might intimidate her young receptionist and assistant, so I sat in my car beside the harbor. I thought about handbags and drugs and the ceiling closing in. Finding myself thinking of Doreen made it worse. Till Nabi called and I jumped up, sped up Queen Street, zigged to Par-La-Ville and then the roundabout and Bull’s Head; Nabi spied the MG and started bouncing up and down, high heels and all, hopped in and cried, “Hi, baby!”

  She squeezed my hand in both of hers, bubbling me up so I felt like Coca-Cola and couldn’t hold it in. “I got you a present.”

  She gasped. “You got a puppy?”

  “No. No animals.”

  “Boo. What is it?”

  “You’ll see when we get home.”

  “What is it?”

  I refused to say another word even when she tickled me. She bugged me all the way home, where I gave her the keys and said, “You get to unload t
he car.”

  “Wow. Thanks.” She opened the trunk, saw the package from Vuitton, and squealed.

  “That one means I miss you.” I had her in my lap as she unwrapped the little agenda.

  “I miss you too. Baby, you can’t afford all this.”

  “Sure I can.” Bull’s Head Shreds pays me quarterly dividends.

  “Thank you, baby, it’s perfect.”

  “The other one means I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” she said as I used my cheek to rub her shoulder. “Sorry for what, baby?”

  “For, I guess… For everything, I don’t know.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  I tried to get off the subject by kissing her throat. That’s my way of pretending limbo is a myth. But Nabi turned and watched my eyes. As if to magnetize the truth and draw it out of me.

  “I’m worried about you, baby.”

  “I’m okay, nikkou.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. The same.”

  “You mean you’re still working on that suicide note thing?”

  I couldn’t say no. Nabi frowned.

  She put her arms around me, her head against my shoulder. “Kenji, you remember when you got your bike?”

  She meant when I turned sixteen, couple months before she did. I rolled my new Yamaha out of the garage, picked her up, and we zipped and dipped across the island, one end to the other with bugs getting in our faces. West to Dockyard, east to Ferry Reach, the wilderness of St. George’s parish.

  Nabi looked so cute in her black crash helmet. We lauded the triumph of my bike, our new, shared freedom. We anticipated college, launching ourselves into the world beyond our narrow isle. We spoke excitedly of Europe, particularly Greece, where I’d once been with my family on the way to Japan.

  We sat on a low bridge, looking down into the water for bioluminescent sea-worms. We’d go to Greece, we decided, give tours at the Acropolis and Mount Parnassos, and have chocolate chip tsoureki with ouzo every night, and the Yamaha could come too! Our conversation flew to the apogees of the world and deep recesses of our minds. We shared a bunch of secrets we hadn’t realized we still had.

  I should’ve kissed her. It would’ve been our first time. Nabi looked at me like she was expecting something.

  Of course I’d tell myself we would not have risked our friendship for anything in the world, not even the chance to make something more of it. Truth is I jabbered about glowworms out of pure cowardice.

  Couple weeks later we were at my house, GCSE cramming underway. I convinced Nabi that she needed an A* in French if we were going to Europe; she grumbled that she wished Warwick offered Greek instead. Then Masami came in; I don’t know how she got onto this subject, but she made it clear that Europe was no place for kids like us. Erik and I were destined for America, and Nabi, decreed the all-knowing maternal figure, would remain at Bermuda College.

  Nabi and I looked at each other. “Let’s go. Now. To Greece. Right now, Kenji,” she whispered. And I’ll always remember how her eyes grew huge as Masami called us to dinner and another opportunity vanished into time’s shifting mists. Nabi never mentioned Greece again. Not even on that night, almost twenty years later, when all she meant was that there should be no secrets between us.

  That night I watched her sleep. Naked on her belly. My hand moved through her hair, black and shiny like a night in which everything is clear. And I ached to wake her and ask why she’d given up on me. Especially if she wasn’t going to give up altogether. Purgatory was becoming unbearable to me, but I couldn’t help wondering if Nabi found it somehow sweet. Limbo sweeter than Greece. Like it says in Desperate Remedies: With all, the beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever.

  It was a sick idea. It was unworthy of Nabi. So I guess it was just like me.

  Took forever to fall asleep. Stuck on Hardy’s word, elusion.

  Panic in the labyrinth—I forgot where I was trying to go and woke up with a cry before Masami cut me off. Nabi was shaking me.

  My first conscious instinct was to jump up and secure the hurricane shutters against a nonexistent wind. Nabi pressed down on my shoulders and I struggled—I struggled because I thought she was Doreen, and had she been Doreen, I now believe I would’ve called her something else; but she turned on the lamp and I saw her, my Nabi’s frightened face. I clung to her as one dangling from a cliff would grasp the edge.

  Almost drove my fist into the bathroom mirror. Instead I turned on the water, sneaked out to the library where I keep my Zohytin, cut a pill into four pieces, and took one. I splashed my face, went back to bed. Nabi made me lie on my chest, my face in the shadow of her body as she propped up on an elbow, rubbing my back.

  Zo dissolves anguish into aches. Rage and the agony of regret melt into terrifying sadness into anguish, which by then should be easy. After great pain, a formal feeling comes… Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go… The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs… Emily Dickinson must’ve dreamed Zohytin.

  Nabi kissed my temple and said, “That dream’s not about your momma, is it.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You know how I told you not to write about that suicide thing anymore? You know how I said it wasn’t good for you?”

  I remembered. I remember every word that comes out of her mouth and some that she can’t bring herself to say.

  “Well, baby, that’s when your nightmares got so bad. These aren’t like the bad dreams you had before, these are night terrors, Kenji. Baby, thinking about dying, even other people doing it—it’s not healthy. What’ve you been doing since we saw each other last?”

  It trickled out. Well, most of it. Clocktower, Masami, Myrtle Trimm. I didn’t talk about drugs or say much about Doreen except that she was a dismal soul who needed money—

  “Wait wait wait wait. Wait. Hold on,” said Nabi. “You’re telling me Aetna Simmons was writing fake suicide notes for an insurance company so they wouldn’t have to pay death benefits.”

  “Clocktower, right.”

  “But she quit for some reason. And decided, Lord have mercy, to expose the company. By leaving evidence on a flash drive or something that she—I mean, that she hid in her landlady’s stuffed cat?”

  “Czarina,” I said. “Only the daughter got rid—”

  “Inside the cat. Like, she stuck the thing down the cat’s throat. The dead cat.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Nabi, fuck the cat.”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t just talk to me like that, no you didn’t.”

  “Those two women might’ve died because of this. For all the fuck I know, Masami knows about it.”

  “You better calm down and apologize before you say another word. Because, baby, I’m here trying to help you, I’m been trying to help you, I’m been very patient, and I have to say it sounds like you’re using obscene language to my face.”

  I grabbed one of the pillows, threw it hard across the room so it struck the Miró.

  “Kenji!”

  In certain situations, a quarter of a pill doesn’t cut it. Clearly this was one of them. I threw out my arms, Nabi shuffled close.

  “Baby, I thought you were kidding! I mean about infiltrating that woman’s house—and the dead body of the—”

  “It doesn’t matter. You matter, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Then why are you doing it? Why are you still doing it even though I asked you to stop?”

  I couldn’t answer that. Not with the truth. Anything else, in that moment, I’d have given her gladly. But I couldn’t answer that. I thought of Ferry Reach and heard myself say, “I have to finish something. You know, for once.”

  That’s not what I wanted to say. I don’t
remember what I wanted but it wasn’t that.

  “Well, baby, some things don’t have nice clean finish lines with ribbons and all that. Kenji, all this stuff, if you listen to what you’re saying, what if—if it’s not true—or even if it is true, I don’t know, what will you do?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I twirled some of her hair around my finger and I said, “Maybe I’ll write a novel.”

  Maybe in that moment I meant it. Nabi had this way of making me feel I could do almost anything.

  “That’s a good idea, a novel.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and Nabi let me kiss her.

  “But look, if that’s what you want to do, then you have everything you need. You’ve got a story all lined up, you don’t need to do any more searching.”

  “I love you.”

  “Do you believe me now? That it’s not good for you?”

  “I said I love you.”

  “I love you too, Kenji. So look, you always say that when something has to be written, it just has to; but promise me, before you do anything else, promise you’ll think extra hard about whether this thing really has to. And talk it out with me, okay? Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  By mid-morning I’d no intention of doing any such thing. For the rest of the night we loved with urgent trepidation. We kept at it until we were so exhausted there was no way I’d be having any dreams. But Nabi dragged herself up at six as usual. And then I cornered her in the walk-in closet.

  “Leave him,” I said.

  “Baby, this isn’t the time.”

  “Please.”

  That day she wore deep turquoise, which set off the Infini. She looked at me with the pain of someone being torn in two. But also with the kind of pain that you’d reserve for puppies left to starve behind a fence. She smiled through it and touched my face. She let her clothes brush me (I wasn’t wearing any) and said, “We’d have to go away.”