The Devil in Silver

by Victor Lavalle

  Dorry poked Pepper’s belly again.

  “Dr. Anand thinks I’m a raging slut,” she said.

  Dr. Anand stepped all the way into the hallway and waved his arms as if clearing smoke. “I never said that, Dorry! Now come on.”

  Pepper couldn’t help it, he laughed. The old woman made him feel at ease. The blush burning across Dr. Anand’s brown face also helped. Pepper decided to join in the banter. He set one hand on Dorry’s shoulder and said, “Maybe me and her will just run away together.”

  Dorry quickly slipped away from Pepper’s hand as Dr. Anand stepped toward them with surprising quickness. “There is no intimacy allowed between patients on the unit. Do you understand?”

  Pepper wanted to point out how ridiculous the warning was. What they were just doing counted as intimacy, too. But he knew, from past experience, no one likes a nitpicker. Especially not one who looked like him. Such a small act as begging to differ, from such a large man, tended to make people particularly angry. In general, people thought he took up too much room on the subway and often sighed or grunted to let him know. The only benefit to his great mass was that he could lift heavy things. He’d been a professional mover for eleven years.

  As Dr. Anand continued to glare, Pepper stepped back an arm’s length from the old woman. Then he stuck his arm out and wiggled his fingers to show the distance. The playful moment over, Pepper again felt the gravity of this night—I’m locked in a mental hospital—as dead weight in his legs.

  Dr. Anand nodded at Dorry. “He’s in five.” The doctor reentered the conference room and shut the door behind him with a click.

  The old woman was right beside Pepper, pinching the back of his left hand. “I thought you were going to tell him about how you kissed me next.”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t insult a lady.”

  Dorry’s hunched back only made her look smaller than she already was. She had wiry white hair that clearly hadn’t been combed in days. It shot from her scalp in fifteen unflattering directions, like a feral child’s. Her faded blue nightdress came down to her shins. On her dry, bony feet were faded blue slipper-socks. She wore gigantic glasses, big plastic Medicare frames. Their lenses so thick they looked slathered with Vaseline. Even if you didn’t know this woman was crazy, you’d think she was crazy.

  Pepper said, “I’m sorry for grabbing you. I didn’t know you were a woman.”

  Dorry frowned. “What the hell kind of apology is that?”

  Pepper gripped his hands together. “I didn’t mean it like that! I’m sorry, that’s all. All right?”

  “Let’s put the past behind us,” she said. “I always greet the new admits. You should see a friendly face first.”

  Then Pepper pointed one finger at her eye, though not too close.

  “That was you!” he said. He realized she really had been the first person he’d seen.

  Dorry took off her glasses and the resemblance became exact. She winked at him.

  “I’m always getting recognized by my fans.”

  Pepper pantomimed applause. He didn’t actually clap because he didn’t want to give Dr. Anand another reason to step into the hall.

  Dorry reached out and wrapped her left arm around Pepper’s right elbow. She looked up at him over the tops of her glasses. From here he could see the off-color band around her iris. She clearly wasn’t blind, but maybe blindness wasn’t too far off.

  He was surprised to feel grateful for the tenderness in the touch.

  “Let me give you the tour,” she said.

  “They call this building Northwest,” Dorry began. “That’s just because it’s located in the northwest corner of New Hyde Hospital’s grounds. So much for creativity, right? Anyway, there’s three buildings at the center of the hospital campus and that’s the heart of the operation. Emergency room, surgery, children’s unit, geriatrics, ICU, almost everything is in those three buildings. Everything but us, really. You’ve got those three buildings, then the main parking lot. A couple hundred parking spaces. Then, you’ve got us crazybirds, tucked into the northwest corner. Some people say we’ve been exiled out here, but I prefer to think our building is exclusive. You’ve got to have a special invite to enter Northwest. They’re called commitment papers! I’m just kidding.

  “So Northwest is the psychiatric unit. No other kinds of patients. It used to be an ophthalmology ward but that was over fifty years ago. Before I even got here, and that’s saying something. Fifty years ago they made Northwest a psychiatric unit and moved all the old ophthalmology equipment up to the second floor. It’s just a big attic. The layout of the second floor is exactly the same as the first, but none of us has any business up there.

  “Think of the unit as a wagon wheel. That’s the easiest way to picture it in your mind. There’s one roundish room in the middle of Northwest and that’s where you’ll find the staff. There’s a big old desk unit in there called the nurses’ station. All roads lead there. It’s the hub of this wagon wheel.

  “Then you’ve got five hallways. They’re like the spokes, going to and from the nurses’ station. Like this hallway here, it’s the first one any new patient enters, so it’s called Northwest One. Northwest One has all the conference rooms.” She slapped one of the closed doors. “This is where you’ll have group sessions, mornings and afternoons. But don’t think of these as classrooms because then you’ll start thinking of Northwest like it’s a school, with schedules and activities and lots of structured time. But it doesn’t work like that! You can wander, watch television, or lie down in your room. That’s how people spend most of their day, every day, on the unit.”

  Pepper grabbed the handle of a closed door and tested it.

  “Come on. Stop jiggling that. The only way to open these conference-room doors is with a set of keys. And only staff members carry those. Keep moving.”

  She yanked on Pepper’s arm and he followed her.

  “Now here we are. The hub. And that’s the nurses’ station. Right in the center. Ugly isn’t it? And it’s not even real wood. Or at least it’s not good wood. It looks kind of like a Chinese food–restaurant counter, doesn’t it? I’ve seen enough of those!

  “I guess the biggest difference between those Chinese-food places and the nurses’ station is that this one doesn’t have those bulletproof windows separating the workers and customers. And there’s no Chinese people working back there, either. Mostly it’s blacks. Usually the blacks are on the customer side, am I right? Chicken wings and French fries! They love that chicken-wings-and-French-fries combo. And extra hot sauce, please! I’m just kidding. They never say ‘please.’

  “So you can see the five hallways from here. That’s Northwest. And while you’re in here, that’s pretty much the whole world. You’ll see. Northwest One, Two, Three, Five.”

  “What about Four?”

  Dorry stopped moving. Almost seemed to stop breathing. “Forget about Northwest Four, you understand me? You don’t go near Northwest Four.”

  “You going to tell me what’s over there, or can I guess?” He couldn’t take her seriously.

  “That’s where the buffalo roam,” she said absently. Dorry’s eyes lost focus, a thousand-yard stare.

  Pepper stifled a grin. “Oooooh-kay.”

  “Do I look like I’m joking with you?” she asked.

  You look bonkers, is what Pepper wanted to tell her. Instead he said, “No, ma’am.”

  Just as suddenly, Dorry’s glare disappeared. She smiled as if they hadn’t just had this little confrontation. She continued the tour.

  “Each hall has its own purpose. Northwest Two is for the men. All male patients sleep in rooms on Northwest Two. All female patients are in Northwest Three. They’re serious about that. No slipping past them. I’m the only exception. I’ve been here long enough so they trust me. And I’m so old they can’t imagine I’m going to screw anybody. Boy, are they wrong. Kidding!

  “Now here you are. Northwest Two, room five. I can open the door
for you but I can’t step in. Look! They’ve put fresh sheets and a pillowcase at the foot of your bed. And one of their finest pillows. Hah! The damn things are thinner than a throat lozenge, but don’t bother asking for a second one. They’ll write that you’re a ‘narcissist’ in your file. I remember the patient who was in that bed before you. He was discharged two weeks ago. Or is he dead? I forget.

  “Anyway, that’s the tour. Gratuities aren’t mandatory, but they are appreciated!”

  3

  HE DID NOT give her a tip.

  Dorry didn’t actually wait around to see if he would. She wrapped up her talk and left Pepper standing in the threshold of his new room. He watched her waddle off, hunched and surprisingly quick, and even when he turned away he could hear her padding down the hallway. From a distance—Northwest 4? Northwest 5?—Pepper still heard the television. Someone must’ve switched to another station, no more explosions or human howls, just the electronic snap of some teenage R&B number. Pepper didn’t recognize the song, but he knew the style because at least one or two of the guys on his moving crews were kids. At some point during a six- or seven-hour job, you could count on one of them to start playing loud music out of his phone. Pepper wished he had his phone now, but they’d confiscated it with his belt and laces.

  He stepped backward into the room and shut the door. The sounds of the television, Dorry’s footsteps, the general buzz of the hospital unit, were muted and now he was alone. He flipped on the light.

  This room had the same eggshell-white walls as in the hallways. It was about the size of the living room in his Jackson Heights apartment. There were two beds in here. The bed frames, industrial metal, twin-sized, were both unmade. But where Pepper’s had the sheets folded neatly at the foot of his mattress, the other’s sheets were tossed like a wind-ravaged sea.

  Pepper had a roommate.

  Besides the beds, there wasn’t much furniture. A pair of cheap, narrow dressers backed up against two opposing walls. They came up as high as Pepper’s shoulders. One looked unused, the dresser top bare, while the other, next to the messy bed, had eight soda cans sitting on it, stacks of newspapers, and a dozen old pens in a plastic cup, each pen cap chewed until it was warped.

  Pepper reached down to the handle of the closed door, looking for a lock he could turn. But the only way this room would lock was with a key.

  Pepper walked to the bare dresser, crossing the linoleum tiles. He opened each dresser drawer but found nothing inside. He sat on his bed. The mattress was long enough to accommodate him if he didn’t stretch out. If he did, his ankles and feet would hang over the end. A metal bed in a mental hospital. Now that’s some reality few folks are prepared to face. Pepper let go of the frame.

  Do something. Do something.

  He picked up the sheets at the foot of the bed and, to his own surprise, made the bed. It was something to do. The only thing he could think of. The sheets were whiter than the walls, crisp but far from plush. He snapped the fitted sheet on, pulling each corner tight. He slipped his thin pillow into its case. As he worked he heard Dorry’s patter in his head, but kept trying to forget it. He didn’t want to remember the layout of Northwest. Didn’t want to remember where Northwest was situated on New Hyde Hospital’s grounds. He didn’t want to wonder if the last patient in this room—in this bed!—was discharged or … not.

  Eventually he finished making his bed. What could he do to distract himself next? His bed sat flush against one of the long walls in the rectangular room. Above his bed were two tall windows. A pair of thin, yellowed curtains, were drawn back.

  Windows.

  Pepper immediately flashed back to the only thing he knew about mental institutions: the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. After Jack Nicholson got lobotomized then smothered by the Indian, hadn’t Big Chief used a piece of machinery to bash open one of the windows and go running off into the gray dawn? Couldn’t Pepper do the same?

  He climbed onto the bed he’d just made, and left some big old boot prints right on that white top sheet, but so what? He was inspired. When he stepped on the bed the springs yelped. He took a second step and the frame itself groaned. He leaned against the windows and wondered if he could use this bed frame as a battering ram.

  But then he saw the same white chicken wire woven into the window, and he recognized it as the same unbreakable plastic outfitting that small window in the ward door. He rapped on the surface, as if it was a door that might creak open. But that didn’t happen, of course. He would’ve bashed at the windows with his fists, his elbows, but what would be the point? That cop had been right; you couldn’t get through this shit with a bullet. Jack Nicholson and the Big Chief had lived in more breakable times.

  When Pepper pulled his face back from the window the chicken wire fell out of focus and the outside world became clearer. Nighttime in New Hyde. A lawn ran just below Pepper’s window, cut so low it was almost bald. It ran about fifty yards until it reached a chain-link fence that surrounded the whole New Hyde campus. The fence was topped with two rows of barbed wire. Pepper could see it from here, like unpolished silver in the moonlight. How bad would that stuff cut him, if he got out and tried to climb?

  With the door shut, the television silenced, Pepper could hear the sounds of traffic running along Union Turnpike, the largest roadway nearby. From this distance, the engines rumbled as one, sounding like a rushing river. Only some bleating car horns reminded him he was listening to a street. That people were in their cars, going elsewhere.

  Pepper stepped back from the window, still on the bed. The reflection he now saw wasn’t his face, just a blurred circle. It looked like an enormous thumb had been pressed to the window from the other side. His blurry head the thumb pad.

  He stepped down off the bed and one of his boots slipped off his foot. Without laces they weren’t too secure. He kicked off the other one. It tumbled across the floor and stopped by the door. One tan steel-toed Belleville boot, size 14.5.

  Pepper noticed another door. He opened it and found the tight, windowless bathroom. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, standing in the dark without bothering to turn on the light. Eventually his eyes adjusted. He took in the stand-up shower stall to his right and sink to his left. A soap dispenser hung next to the sink, attached to the wall, like the kind you’d find in any fast-food restaurant’s bathroom. He fumbled for the cold-water knob at the sink and then listened to the water flow. The hiss of the water leaving the tap sounded like steam leaking out of those radiators in his apartment on Northern Boulevard. His home.

  He looked at what he thought was the mirror above the sink, but couldn’t find his reflection there. Just another blurry shape.

  He slapped at the walls, searching for the light switch now. He needed to see himself. To prove he was still there. But when he found the light, he saw the problem. No mirror above the sink, just a buffed metal pane. He stood before the semi-reflective surface with dismay. That was him? An elongated pink smudge? Vaguely humanoid. Hardly him. But when he tilted his head, that thing tilted its head, too.

  He smiled and the thing sprouted fangs.

  He finally turned off the tap but still thought he heard rushing water in his ears.

  Pepper moved to the toilet seat and closed the lid. He sat down and slumped to his right, resting his face against the cool wall. That felt nice. Even comforting. Maybe he’d stay here for a while, until he could figure out a plan.

  But soon enough he’d slid off the toilet and went down on his knees to pray. He’d been a churchgoing boy once, long ago, though he couldn’t even remember more than a few words of the Lord’s Prayer. He did remember shutting his eyes at prayer time and that always made the world slow down. He closed them now. Eyes closed, head slightly bowed, he breathed. His mind slowed.

  He’d fucked up tonight. The cops had brought him here without warning. He hadn’t expected that, nor being reduced to this. Two hours in New Hyde Hospital, 120 minutes inside Northwest, and he’d beco
me a guy who prays on the floor, in the dark. As close to panicking as he’d come as a grown man. Two hours was all it took to capsize him.

  But that was okay. Happened to nearly everyone sometimes. The fear just gets you. And in a place like this? A mental hospital? Anyone would feel thrown upside down. Even someone who belonged here. No need to feel crushed. He’d been scared, confused, but the feeling was passing. He just needed to control himself. He’d made the bed, and it was late enough, probably right around eleven o’clock.

  He got off his knees, returned to the bedroom, and turned off the lights. Only moonlight lit the room, coming in through the shatterproof plastic windows. He pulled the thin curtains shut. He was out of ideas, but only for tonight. He could get a little self-control going tomorrow. Stay so calm and gentle they’d release him by Saturday. A little rest was what he needed. He lay flat on his back and let his feet dangle off the edge.

  Did they give you one free phone call in mental hospitals, like in jail? That was all he needed to start correcting things.

  Tomorrow he’d call Mari.

  Around a quarter to four in the morning, Pepper opened his eyes.

  He might’ve been a workingman but he wasn’t this early a riser. Not naturally. But there he found himself, back to the room, facing the two large windows above his head, seeing the deep night fade into a faint purple dawn through the thin curtains.

  Awake. Why?

  Because somebody was jabbing him in the small of his back.

  As groggy as Pepper was, he remembered the incident from seven hours earlier, when he’d yoked that old woman. He couldn’t afford to risk something like that again. He wouldn’t be completely surprised if Dorry had a way of sneaking in here. Maybe she was after that tip. Maybe she had more tour-guide information to give. He turned his head slowly, expecting to see the old woman.

  Instead he found a man’s face. So close to his own that Pepper could smell the man’s turkey dinner. A broad, round face. Smooth skin, and practically bald. Brown complexion, darker than Dr. Anand’s. Not an Indian guy, but a black guy. There was no other way to put this: the guy’s head looked like a malt ball.