The Normals

by David Gilbert

  Entering the cafeteria requires a swipe from the ID followed by a push through a turnstile, an operation some people have problems with. (See Do, who swipes and swipes and swipes, a bottleneck developing behind him, and still he swipes—fucking moron—until Billy comes over and properly aligns the magnetic strip.) The cafeteria is like any other cafeteria except for its abundance of color. Trays come in blue, red, green, yellow, and orange, as do the meals, served from platters flagged blue, red, green, yellow, and orange, as do the tables, arranged in sections of blue, red, green, yellow, and orange. It's like a rainbow segregated.

  Billy sits with Rodney, Do, Lannigan, and a couple of already seated greens who nod the newfound company hello. Nearby Billy notices a table of orange normals. They eat with little joy. Their bodies seem to have retained every drop of water. Cheeks are near bursting. Necks distend below jawlines like snakes digesting a pair of tube socks. Hands are hands children might draw. Billy watches these bloated faces float above photo IDs—they could be nasty cartoon balloons proclaiming, "This is not who I normally am."

  "Probably some sort of dipine," Rodney says.

  "What's that?" Do asks.

  "A calcium-channel blocker, pretty cush except for the obvious swel­ling."

  "That's not swelling," Billy says. "That's five words worse."

  "It's not that bad," Rodney assures, glad to be the man in the know.

  Dumpsters are no longer his metier. That black skid on his nose takes on the qualities of a sagacious birthmark.

  "I wonder if it does the same to your cock?" Lannigan cracks.

  "Not sure about that."

  The table settles into their meal: iceberg lettuce, chicken parmigiana, cherry Jell-O.

  Nobody complains.

  Billy takes in the other colors. The reds are sweating, sweating into their meatloaf, sweating, sweating—Christ, they're sweating. Their forks might as well weigh a hundred pounds, the main course the second leg of a triathlon. And how about the blues? They're all wearing sunglasses, or rather, protective anti-light shields—massive black bars of privacy against all things illuminated. The yellows, three, four, five of them, are puking. Luckily, they're equipped with vomit bags. Wherever Billy looks, there's a strange burst of color. Three reds start laughing. Two yellows clench their stomachs. An orange swoons. A blue takes off his sunglasses, squints, rubs his eyes as if flashbulbs are popping. A red shoots milk from his nose, either a side effect or giggle reflex. More reds laugh and sweat. A blue has an unnoticed nosebleed. A yellow gets up and rushes toward the bathroom. A red eats his whole dessert—a bowl of chocolate pudding—in a single sweaty slurp. An orange is crying without the luxury of tears. A yellow drips milk into a glass of water, mesmerized by the liquid trail of fat.

  After dinner, the greens go through orientation. During this time, as Ms. Longley stands and greets them officially and introduces the staff for their study, the nurses and doctors and phlebotomists rising up under the power of half waves, their smiles brief, their postures still holding the contour of their seats, their asses not escaping the gravity of indifference—yes, hello—as Ms. Longley moves onto the business of being employed under care, mentioning the rules and regulations as well as the grounds for expulsion—smoking, drinking, drugging other than the sanctioned drug—plus the fines, fines for lateness, for rudeness, for general misbehavior, all contained under section four of the informed consent, enclosed within the information packet, presented upon arrival, right, right, right, whereupon she segues into a discussion of the IRB for any complaints, physical or psychological or monetary, which leads into the daily schedule, so important, knowing the where and when, especially on PK day, so please pay attention and, no matter what, listen to the staff, the staff nodding if only, Ms. Longley telling the group this will be routine soon enough, smiling as if milk and cookies are being discussed, a giant two-week recess—during this time, as the meal digests and her words describe the days ahead in the stock language of motivation, the communal spirit of the project, the well-balanced dinner proving too much for some stomachs, hence the farts, smelling of digestive mothballs, most silent though a few squeak free and punctuate Ms. Longley as she mentions the proud history of safety at Hargrove Anderson Medical and the real desire for communication, for dialogue and partnership, the doctors and nurses and phlebotomists checking watches with why-do-I-have-to-be-here brows, the cafeteria crew protesting the holdup by loudly scraping the serving pans into the trash—during this time, Billy surveys his fellow greens.

  They number twenty-six: twenty-five men, one woman. All of them listen respectfully, or pretend to listen, nodding their heads even when there's nothing to agree on. Personalities have been shelved for the sake of good first impressions. They look like novices in a monastery, Billy thinks, with their green frock (the particular shade all wrong for their complexion; colorwise, they're winters wearing spring) and their earnest unripe air. Arms wear the stigmata of cannulas, fingered like self-doubting Thomases. IDs dangle from necks with the sanctity of security-clearance crucifixes. They inspect the laminated photographs as if they're wearing their old wicked selves. They seem newly proud. This used to be me. This asshole. They hear about the communion of doses and blood draws, transubstantiation in terms of hard cash, and for this earthly promise they'll kneel for days. Sin finances forgiveness. Money will cleanse their soul. For normally they are the uninspired, the unnoticed, the forgotten five minutes from now, scrub people who grow in places with little sun, who fill the landscape with nothing special, the backdrop of bus stations and fast-food restaurants, the folks you deny as your own when you stand in line with them, holding a twenty-four-ounce soda and microwaved burrito supreme, not me, but them, people who fight with loved ones in public, who walk around shirtless and talk too loud, who are forever the injured party. If you made a composite of their faces, you would find a person with wary eyes and suspicious lips and a forehead believing in expedience no matter the price. A victim thumbing through a book of mug shots might pause for a moment and think this person familiar, something in the features, until realizing that the nose is all wrong and the chin is different and no way with those ears. But their innocence is often mistaken for guilt. They are the rarely believed, the easily blamed.

  "Any questions?" asks Ms. Longley.

  Billy sees Gretchen, two tables away. Not really that attractive, not right now, not from this distance or this angle. She's a wedge of face, more defense than offense. Never graceful but scrappy, her mouth seems formed with a mouth guard in mind.

  Hands shoot up.

  "Can we get paid in cash?"

  Ms. Longley: "No, only checks."

  "Check checks or money orders?"

  Ms. Longley: "Certified checks."

  "Where can we cash them?"

  Ms. Longley: "Most any bank."

  "Do we have to have photo ID?"

  Ms. Longley: "Probably."

  "Can you vouch for us?"

  Ms. Longley: "No."

  "So there's no chance of cash?"

  Gretchen, bored, reaches for her empty bowl of Jell-O and runs her finger along the bottom for the last remnants of whipped cream, certainly a sexy gesture, but it's not the licking of her finger that fires Billy, it's a few moments later, when she inspects the bowl again and makes a pout of nothing more and then lampoons her own girlishness.

  Billy wonders if Gretchen knows he's watching.

  "Can we get direct deposit?"

  "Can we get some cash up front?"

  He wonders if Gretchen even cares.

  11

  ROOM 306 breathes with sleep and central air. Do's asleep. Lanni-gan's asleep. The TV has long since cooled from the last bits of news: Chuck Savitch and his anthropomorphic brain tumor seen waving from the bay window of his mother's house, the crowd outside expressing their gratitude in the currency of camera flashes. The before-bed conversation (Do: "I wonder how we're going to feel tomorrow night?" Lannigan: "I hope we'll need those big dark glasses like the b
lues.") has degraded into snores. Thanks to the heavy curtains, the room is impressively closed-in with darkness. It gives Billy the impression of being trapped, like he's in a cave and every lightless particle is a rock pinning him down, and nobody knows he's missing, dying while they frolic above him, hand in hand, on the warm green grass. Billy moves his legs as proof against paralyzation. Are those dogs barking in the distance?

  The digital clock glows red.

  12:02 A.M. 12:23 A.M. 12:52 A.M.

  Lannigan asleep. Do asleep. And Billy wide awake.

  Not dogs, just the suggestion of dogs in the hum of central air.

  1:00 A.M. Six hours until the alarm.

  1:28 A.M. Five hours and thirty-two minutes until the alarm.

  His brain is frantic with the awful math of diminishing sleep.

  He counts backward from a hundred; he tenses and relaxes the muscles from his toes to his forehead; he tosses himself into dreams (I'm flying . . . Fm stuck in molasses); he rolls around for a comfortable position, stomach, left side, back, right side, repeat.

  1:53 A.M. Five hours and seven minutes until the alarm.

  Shit. Shit. Shit shit. Fuck.

  Billy glances toward Do and Lannigan. Essentially, they're already awake, already greeting tomorrow morning, well rested, while Billy lags behind, knee-deep in yesterday.

  Sleep can be a competitive sport.

  He's tempted to scream, to make nightmare noises just loud enough to startle.

  But there's another option.

  Slipping free from the bed, Billy tiptoes toward the bathroom, the floor treated like twigs. He listens for disturbances in nearby sleep, stops, lets the silence resettle before continuing on. There's something calming, peaceful, about sneaking around in the dark, practically a childhood hobby for Billy, getting up in the middle of the night and stealing around the house, into his parents' room where he would watch them sleep, Abe and Doris intertwined like they were in a cold lonely place. He would try willing them awake by yelling Help! inside his head. He would crouch down until inches from their lips and smell their nighttime breath. More than once he would take something before leaving, a sock, a hairpin, or he would pop a button from a shirt, snap a shoelace, like a bitter ghost.

  Billy reaches the bathroom door, finesses it open, closes it.

  On goes the light.

  The available real estate is minimal for the chore at hand. Maybe the floor, but the space is tight and a tad unhygienic. Maybe the toilet, but the toilet has no seat cover and maybe he could manage the ass-saddle, but this area seems specifically zoned for defecation, plus sitting on the pot too long can cause hemorrhoids, he was once warned in his too impressible youth. Maybe the shower, often an ideal locale, what with the running water and nozzle massage and soaps and shampoos and easy cleanup, but a shower right now is out of the question.

  So Billy jerks off into the sink.

  Underwear down, hips leaning forward, testicles pleasantly resting against cool porcelain, Billy begins. The first dozen strokes are uninspired, like a rally before a tennis match. Thoughts of am-l-really-doing-this? cross his mind, though only briefly. He's never been the type who imagines models or actresses or girls next door or aloof classmates in eleventh grade who might suddenly be interested in his tongue. He has no fantasy woman, no pinup posters taped inside his eyelids. Instead, he prefers personal history, the physical memoir of women he's touched and explored. In particular, he alights on their small intimate details, the galaxy of moles, the whorl of pubic hair, the veins and scars and tan lines, the knobby knees, the fur creeping around thighs, the belly button, the ridge of vertebrae. He cherishes freckles and collarbones, pilosity in natural light. Tits and ass, while wonderful, are more like product placements, the crass commercialism of propagation, whereas a birthmark the shape of Sicily is something else entirely. And really, when all is said and done, after a few months of physical distance, the random stand and steady fling and all the versions in between occupy just one fuck-byte of memory, whereas the marginalia, the scrawl of the pen, the edits and corrections, can bring you back to that first moment.

  Boswell had his Johnson, Billy has his prick.

  In all, there are fourteen lovers he can choose from, from Melissa of the walnut mole on the inner thigh, to Wendy of the scar under the chin, to Lily of the dimpled knees, to Diana of the lunar stretch marks on the breasts. But the severe present participial—standing up and snapping a quick one into a sink—distracts Billy from the past. Usually such work is done on his back, in bed, often followed by a nap, though in his youth he could be quite adventurous. Anywhere, anytime, twice in a library bathroom after discovering Our Bodies, Ourselves, with its sweet illustration of that pubescent girl. Then there were those special masturbatory techniques, like binding your wrist with a rubber band so your hand would go all numb, or using ordinary household items extraordinarily, e.g., those yellow cleaning gloves turned inside out, or licking your own armpit for virtual cunnilingus, a trick a teenage friend taught him, the closest thing to eating snatch without actually eating snatch, he said.

  But Sally Hu, now his fifteenth lover, interrupts the past. Billy sees her reading the note, sees her saying Asshole, sees her puckering her lips which causes that single black freckle under her nose to disappear. Already she's slipped into abstraction. Yesterday morning might as well have been last year—Sally toweling the last remnants of her shower, Billy spying her from bed as she dried her legs, her thighs, her pubic wisp, with strange prosaic grace, then wrung her long black hair into one of those terry turbans women seem genetically gifted to engineer. Arms akimbo, she stood in front of the bureau and said, "Like I don't know you're pretending."

  Billy gave up nothing.

  "To be all asleep, you faker. But I know you're watching me." She spoke with an endearing New York accent. Here she was, as exotic as a specimen from Captain Cook, cheekbones molded by muscular thumbs, eyes pinched tight, nose fashioned from the leftover clay, skin fired eggshell smooth, but if you inspected the hallmark you'd see Made in Brooklyn stamped on the underside. Her voice embraced the monoglot of the streets, the raunchy assimilation of stoops. Sometimes she seemed like an Asian actress as dubbed by a bleach-blond moll.

  Billy stirred awake.

  "You're a lousy fucking actor," she told him. Her family was an American success story, her parents immigrants from China with three disputed corners of the Korean deli trade. They hated Billy. Every week they visited with produce and untranslated pleas of leave him soon.

  Billy rubbed his eyes. Look at her. Even her breasts were imported treasures, perfect bowls with nipples unlike any he had ever encountered before: dark and cone shaped and fully realized on all levels of excitation. Pert Buddhas, Billy thought. He reached up for some spiritual enlightenment.

  "Way too fucking late," Sally said.

  "But it's early."

  "It's too late and it's too early."

  "Early late."

  "None of that now." Sally started browsing her closet. "So what's for breakfast, honey? Eggs and bacon? An omelet? French toast?"

  He tugged down the comforter and exposed himself. "Sausage," he said.

  Sally clipped on her bra. "What a seducer you are."

  Billy stomped his heels against the covers in spoiled protest. Maybe she would smile. Maybe she would humor him one last time. The sun transformed the dust motes and skin chaff into beautiful phosphorescence. We sleep in our own filth, Billy thought. Then he began playing with himself.

  "Are you really?" she asked.

  "I'm like a mountain climber."

  "I wish."

  "I mean in answer to the question why." He gestured toward his erection. "And you, you are my Sherpa."

  "I'm so flattered."

  He mused aloud, "Norgay Hu. Certainly more appropriate than Sally."

  "Fuck you," she demurred. "You told me Sally means princess."

  "Not 'Sally.' 'Sarah.' 'Sarah' means princess. In Hebrew. 'Sally' might be a form of 'Sarah,'
but it's also a sudden outburst, an attack by the besieged."

  "I know how that girl feels."

  "You sally me. I sally you. We sallied. Please. Let's sully the sheets, Sally?"

  "You're already exhausting me." Then she asked as cool revenge, "You working today?"

  "Yes," he lied. "I'm working."

  "Any plans tonight?"

  "Nope," he lied again. "You know, 'Billy,' 'William,' in German means, as you can guess, will, as in force of will, as in purpose and determination and desire, as well as helmet, as will as helmet. Anyway, one of those combined forms, as in armor for the head, as in"—Billy beckoned with his dick—"the will of my helmet or helm my will, please."

  "And you haven't even had coffee yet."

  ". . . !"

  "What?"

  "Help me out a little."

  "You should see your face." Sally went over and sat down on the bed.

  "Where are you working today?" she asked.

  "Signet," he lied.

  "Again?"

  "Yep. Half a day. A turn-and-burn."

  "And you really need a fondle? You're really that desperate?"

  "Yes," he answered. "Just so I know I'm not going at it alone."

  "You know, this is my second-to-last Friday of work," she said. "I really should've taken the summer off and traveled or something." As Sally talked, she reached down—"At least gone to the West Coast or some­thing"—and cupped his balls. She rubbed them, rolled them, weighed them. She edged her finger toward his perineum. "Silly not to have taken some time off."

  Billy closed his eyes around Sally at business school, in class with her hand raised, in a study group, in the library, old Sally Hu, her fingers doing his balls like a frantic commodity trade a minute before the exchange closes. "Could you at least pretend to miss me?" Billy asked. "Maybe think back fondly on me, all those business-school types, young CEOs in the making, and maybe you'll feel nostalgic for a person like me, maybe you might think he was the guy or the kind of guy." His tone was dismissive though he meant every word.