The Devil in Silver

by Victor Lavalle

  Pepper felt a pang similar to the one he’d had when he remembered the Coinstar. YouTube! How quickly that silly phrase sounded like a high point in human culture. To go online and witness someone’s ugly kid doing something cute. To watch snippets of great movies that had been overdubbed with grating music by some moron who thought they were improving the film. To stumble across human beings with insipid thoughts, video cameras, and the utter lack of humility that made them use one to immortalize the other! Of course, Pepper should’ve registered Josephine’s remark about the sharks. The horror of those numbers. The outsized power of fear and the way it reshapes reality. But instead, Pepper felt a throbbing nostalgia for YouTube, and it was, sad to say, the detail that made him decide what he was going to do tonight. Dorry was right, he could fit back into the outside world. And that’s where he wanted to be. Tonight, when the other three ran toward the silver door, Pepper would be walking out.

  Pepper said, “I’d like to take you up on that offer. The books you bought for us.”

  Josephine exhaled happily. Another chance to avoid that computer.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  She led him to Northwest 1, but when they reached the door where the cart was kept, she waved Pepper backward until he stood against the opposite wall. “You wait there.”

  Josephine came out a moment later, pushing the three-tiered book cart. Pepper touched the side of the cart as they returned to the nurses’ station, as if they were guiding the vessel together. Josephine popped inside the station to find her handbag, from which she pulled out a small spiral notebook with a plain green face.

  On the front she’d written two words: “Washburn Library.”

  “What’s that mean?” Pepper asked.

  Josephine shrugged. “I paid for the books, so I figured the library should be named after me. Josephine Washburn.”

  Pepper looked at the books. “What did you pick?”

  Josephine brushed her hands along the top tier of titles. Like many books bought at library sales, these were a bit battered. Mostly hard-covers, a few paperbacks.

  “Believe it or not, I really did listen at the last Book Group. What Dorry said. I tried to pick books that were more about people like you.”

  Like me?

  But rather than protest, Pepper let her comment pass. He looked at the books instead.

  Ariel, Darkness Visible, The Noonday Demon, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Golden Notebook, Wide Sargasso Sea, Hard Cash, He Knew He Was Right, Angelhead, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. And more.

  “I don’t know any of these,” Pepper said, feeling embarrassed.

  Finally, he found one book that at least carried a name he recognized. A paperback. He straightened and Josephine went onto her toes slightly, to see the cover.

  “Is this a book of his paintings?” Pepper leafed through the pages but found only a handful of images, toward the center of the book. All in black and white.

  “Letters,” Josephine said. “He wrote lots of letters in his life.”

  Pepper weighed the book in his open hand. The cover showed a painting of the artist’s face; at least this was in color. The man looked both dour and vibrant, somehow. Pepper thought, strangely, that he recognized the expression on the guy’s grill. “I want this one,” he said.

  Josephine felt more gratified than she could say when Pepper tucked the book under his arm. It seemed to erase Dorry’s dismissal from the week before, and the frustrations of the computer program and the always-curt Miss Chris. Josephine took this job because she needed the paycheck, but she chose this line of work—nursing—because she thought she was good at helping others. She’d had very little chance to prove it since she’d started at New Hyde. The job often felt like triage, not care. Under such circumstances, lending Pepper this paperback seemed like a small victory. Take them wherever you can, Josephine.

  She opened her spiral notebook to the first page and wrote out the title in full: The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his Brother and Others (1872–1890).

  “Just put your initials here next to the title,” she said.

  Pepper looked at the pen in her hand, the page of the spiral notebook, but hesitated.

  “It’s a library, right? You don’t keep the books. You borrow them.”

  She didn’t say this with an attitude. More like this was another part of the fun, the game. So Pepper wrote his real initials—“P.R.”—and Josephine watched him do this with a grin.

  “You can keep it as long as you like.” She snapped her notebook shut. “No late fees!”

  He appreciated Josephine’s enthusiasm. She saw this book as a loan, but Pepper knew it was more of a parting gift. He’d be taking it with him tonight and he wouldn’t be back to return it.

  “Thanks,” he said. “And good-bye.”

  She pushed the Bookmobile back toward Northwest 1. “I’ll see you again on Monday,” she said. “Don’t be such a drama queen.” She laughed.

  Pepper nodded slightly and squeezed the book with two hands.

  “Sure,” he said. “What could happen between now and then?”

  19

  FIRST THING THAT happened after he said good-bye to Josephine was that Pepper ran into Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly. He was returning to his room, library book under his arm. The old men were out for their midmorning constitutional. As Pepper passed the pair, Mr. Mack pinched the sleeve of Pepper’s shirt and tugged at it. Pulled his coat, as old heads used to say.

  Pepper turned back and Mr. Mack spoke as if they’d already been conversing for a while. “Now the way I see it,” Mr. Mack began. “And I do see it. The big problem you face is how to stay hid once you make it out the front door.”

  Pepper pulled his sleeve away, took two extra steps, before he realized what Mr. Mack had just said. The larger, watchful Frank Waverly remained silent.

  Mr. Mack grinned and nodded at Pepper.

  “You escape out of here and they just go into your file and find out where you live, where you worked, who your people are. You told them all that at the intake meeting, am I right? That’s enough information for triangulation. They’ll snatch you back up before the sun rises.”

  Pepper looked past these two men. He saw Josephine at the nurses’ station. And at the far end of Northwest 1, Miss Chris, opening the front door, walking out and shutting it again. Neither one had heard Mr. Mack broadcasting Pepper’s escape plan.

  Mr. Mack slipped his hands into the pockets of his sport coat, which gave him a professorial air. “Now you could go on the run, leave the city or even the state. But here’s something they don’t tell you about being a fugitive. That mess is expensive. And you don’t look independently wealthy to me. No offense.” Then Mr. Mack snickered to show he certainly did mean to offend.

  Pepper hardly registered the slight. Who blabbed? That’s what he wanted to know. Not that Mr. Mack would’ve told him.

  “The trick, for you, big boy, is going to be getting your records. That’s where they’ll have all the facts you related on your first night. You go to another hospital and the record here will eventually make its way there. I’ve had it happen to me. So the trick, before you run, is to leave no records behind. No file, and you could settle right down the block. They would never realize you were you. I promise you that.”

  Mr. Mack squared up close to Pepper’s chest, like the two men were boxers meeting in the middle of a ring.

  “But whatever you do, you need to remember you’re taking the coward’s way out, big boy. Sound harsh? It is harsh. But I’m trying to get through to you. There’s only one thing that needs to be done with the motherfucker in that room. It won’t stop until somebody stops it.”

  “Why don’t you do it, then?” Pepper asked.

  “I’m an idea man,” Mr. Mack said. He poked Pepper’s beefy arm. “And my idea is that you’ve got the strength. But not the resolve.”

  With that, Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly walked off.

  Pepper returned to the room and posted
himself at the two large windows and surveyed the land before him. It seemed even more urgent that he work out his route if, already, some of the others were talking to patients freely. How long before word made its way to the staff? Rather than panic, he planned.

  The fence line around the basketball court had a barbed-wire buffer at the top, and the parking lot of New Hyde Hospital was (nominally) manned by an (underpaid) guard. So if he did get that secure door open, it would be smarter to slip around to this side of the building, pad through the grass in front of his windows, climb the sweet-gum tree right near the fence, inch out on a branch, and drop down to the sidewalk. Leave New Hyde Hospital and disappear into Queens. Maybe it would be smart to have his file tucked under his arm when he left. But how would he get it? Where to even look?

  All this planning turned Pepper a bit distracted, so he didn’t notice Coffee had entered the room until Coffee came to his side and set his precious blue binder down on the sill.

  “You told those old guys a lot,” Pepper said.

  Coffee looked out the window, too.

  “I’ve been making contacts, morning and night, on the pay phones. I haven’t even had time to sleep. So I sure wasn’t talking with anyone.”

  “Did you burn out my card?”

  Coffee reached into the breast pocket of his pajama top. The “gold” card was really more of a muddy yellow. He dropped it on the windowsill.

  “All done. But it was useful.”

  Outside, the sun shone brightly and Pepper wondered at how good the air must feel. He put his hand to the pane and enjoyed the chill.

  Coffee said, “I tracked down his number.”

  Pepper nodded, not really listening, still imagining the fresh air.

  “His number,” Coffee said quietly.

  That broke Pepper’s spell. He looked at his roommate. “Come on.”

  “Well, not really his, but his social secretary’s. The private line.”

  “You want to get invited to a party at the White House? I hear you can just crash if you look like you’ve got money.”

  Coffee rolled his eyes at Pepper. “Don’t bring me gossip and tell me it’s news. I have the number for a real someone, not just that stupid switchboard. I’m not going to yell. I’m going to be clear. I know I can do that now. Without all the meds. I’ll explain our situation and then you’ll see what He does for us.”

  “I already know what’s going to happen,” Pepper said.

  Coffee looked up at Pepper wearily. His eyes narrowed. “You don’t know,” Coffee said. “But you will never admit that.”

  Pepper could see Coffee wouldn’t be swayed by anything he had to say, so he knocked on the cover of Coffee’s blue binder. “Why didn’t you bring this to Book Group?”

  “I don’t need it anymore,” Coffee said.

  “Because you have that new number?”

  Coffee shook his head. He placed his hand on the cover of the binder. “I have all these numbers. Memorized. I’ve called each one so many times. But until we stopped taking the pills, I couldn’t remember even one. Now, they’re all here.”

  Coffee pressed two fingers against his temple.

  “The numbers come to me fast, fast, fast now. I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it alone. I don’t think Dorry and Loochie would have, either. So I have you to thank for that. And I mean it.”

  Pepper did feel good to hear it. To know the lucidity in Coffee’s eyes was, at least in part, due to him. Vanity? Of course. But that’s okay. No one here was a martyr or a saint.

  Lunch and dinner passed without event. Pepper sat in the television lounge and read some of Van Gogh’s letters. He found he could drown out the television if he concentrated on the page hard enough. He liked being in the lounge, around others, instead of alone in his room. He had nothing more to say to Coffee. Not to Dorry or Loochie, either. They were only waiting for the overnight shift to begin.

  By eight thirty, all four members of the small conspiracy sat in the television lounge, though they weren’t together. Dorry and Loochie and Coffee and Pepper, each at a different table.

  Scotch Tape and Josephine were on the night shift. This was much to Josephine’s surprise. She was meant to be relieved by Miss Chris, but Miss Chris had walked out that front door earlier and hadn’t returned. When Josephine used her cell phone to call Miss Chris around dinnertime, the call went straight to voice mail. As did Josephine’s next five tries. To put it plainly: The old lady had bounced. Leaving Josephine to work a double until the next shift change, around four a.m. Josephine sure didn’t like this, but what could she do? Leave Scotch Tape alone?

  (Yes!)

  No.

  At nine, Dorry rose from her seat and beckoned the other three toward her. When they were together, Dorry said, “I think it’s time. Don’t you?”

  The words seemed to rest on each of their shoulders like a heavy cloak. They all stooped forward slightly from the weight. Dorry saw the burden and nodded. She was dressed just like she had been at Book Group. Well, almost the same. Pepper realized her sweater was on inside out.

  He looked at Loochie, who wore a bright red scarf tied around her head. He hated to admit it, but he felt relieved by this. The site of her patchy scalp had been depressing. He knew it was selfish, but he was happy she’d covered it. Then her right hand floated up and two fingers slipped under the red scarf. Loochie hardly seemed aware of the action. Then, as if waking up from a bad dream, her eyes shifted and she caught herself and pulled her hand back down to her side again.

  “Once we take care of the staff,” Coffee began, “each of us has a choice to make. I’m using the staff phone to make my call. After that, I’ll support whatever the group wants to do.”

  Dorry said, “Why don’t we try working together on this. First, Coffee gets his phone call. Then, I have a talk with the man behind the silver door. Then, Loochie gets to … What do you want to do, Loochie?”

  Loochie’s eyes had trailed off to the lounge’s windows.

  “Loochie?” Dorry asked again. “What do you want to do?”

  “I just want to be a girl,” she said quietly.

  Pepper almost laughed. “You are one!” he said.

  Her eyes drooped. She looked soul-tired for a moment. “I haven’t been a girl since I was thirteen. I’m just a diagnosis.”

  Dorry raised one hand for peace. “Loochie, I’m sorry, but that’s probably not something we can fix tonight.”

  Coffee sensed that they might be about to spin off into some grand philosophical conversation that would derail any concrete action. And he was ready to act. “It’s time,” he reminded them. “We’re ready enough.”

  He moved. Loochie got in step beside him. Dorry came around the table and pinched Pepper out of a moment’s paralysis. They hadn’t asked him what he wanted to do. Maybe they didn’t really want to know. Find my file. Find my way out. That’s what he would’ve said.

  Josephine sat at the nurses’ station. With paper and pen she filled out a complaint against Miss Chris. She wasn’t even looking up as Dorry, Loochie, Coffee, and Pepper entered the oval room. Scotch Tape was in Northwest 1, pushing the meal rack, and all those empty dinner trays, into the conference room that had long ago been repurposed as the storage room.

  Coffee knocked on the nurses’ station desktop and said, “I need to use the phone.”

  Josephine didn’t even look up. She was in the middle of writing the word negligence and had lost herself in the pleasure of using it to describe Miss Chris.

  While they waited on Josephine to look up, Pepper said, “Hey, Coffee. How did you get the social secretary’s private number? You never said. I’m sure the White House switchboard didn’t just give it out.”

  In the storage room, Scotch Tape slid the meal rack to its usual place near the back of the room. If he didn’t keep it far from the hallway door, the rats (he believed it was actually only one enormous, graying rat; he’d seen it so often he felt familiar with it), the rat might be tempte
d to slip into the hall and then it would be sprinting down Northwest 1 openly, causing panic among patients. And who would be sent to try to kill it again? Him. Clarence Green. (He didn’t refer to himself as Scotch Tape, obviously.) He’d been sent on that mission before, dropping poison pellets all over the abandoned second floor, and learned his lesson. That rat had the run of this building, more than any other living thing. (But what about the freak on Northwest 4? What about the …? Shut up with that, Clarence. Shut up with that, right now.) Scotch Tape got the rack to the back of the storage room and switched off the light and pulled the door closed. He locked it and returned to the nurses’ station.

  Where he heard Coffee’s answer to Pepper’s question.

  Coffee said, “I went online. That’s how I got the social secretary’s number.”

  Josephine looked up from her complaint form.

  “Coffee, you know patients make all calls on the pay phones.”

  Coffee pouted. “But I don’t have enough coins for a long-distance call, and Pepper’s card is maxed out. I don’t think he had very good credit.”

  Pepper said, “Hey!”

  Scotch Tape entered the oval room, saw four patients crowding around the station and said, “What’s going on over here?”

  Dorry ignored the question, imploring Josephine. “It’ll only take a minute, sweetheart.”

  But by this time of night, Josephine couldn’t muster any more goodwill. “Pay phone, Dorry,” she growled. “Pay phone.”

  Scotch Tape came around the station so he could see the group’s faces and they could see his. “I asked you all a question.”

  Loochie brushed him away with one hand. “Go mind your own business.”

  Scotch Tape roared with laughter. “My business is you. Now you can make it pleasant business … or unpleasant business.”

  Pepper touched Coffee’s shoulder. “Wait. How did you go online?”

  Josephine pushed her chair back so she could stand as well. Feeling edgy because of what Loochie had said to Scotch Tape. Her move left the staff phone unguarded on the desk. Boldly, Coffee grabbed the receiver.

  “Coffee!” Josephine shouted.