The Normals

by David Gilbert

  Whatever.

  Whatever in your room, the lounge, the hall, the pay phone.

  True time is only measured in pills and blood.

  Otherwise whatever wherever.

  Lannigan works out a complicated custody settlement for the remote control. On paper he calendars the days then divides them into viewing periods: morning, afternoon, evening. They draw numbers, he fills in the slots. "Totally fair," Lannigan says. "If you have prime time on Tuesday, on Wednesday you'll have the morning and on Thursday the afternoon and by Friday prime time again." He places the schedule on the bureau. "If there's a certain show you have to see, you can always barter with somebody. Okay?" Lannigan is the only one who truly cares, so he agrees with himself and tells Do he's got the helm.

  "Problem," Billy says.

  "What?"

  Billy lifts the remote that's tethered to the wall near his bed. "The remote only reaches the middle bed, my bed."

  "Aw shit, that's right. So maybe we switch beds, maybe the beds can be like the ladder, part of the rotation."

  "Sorry, but I'm not switching beds."

  "So the person has to stand by your bed? That's not fair."

  "Well, I'm not switching beds."

  "Then what?"

  "How about I change the channel. You tell me and I'll change."

  "So you'll be the middleman," Lannigan says. "Our thumb."

  "I suppose."

  "Okay. So Do, you're in charge."

  Do, who up till then has been quietly reading his comic book, all huddled in bed, knees by his chin, crash position meets cannonball, rocking slightly—he glances up toward the television where a Saturday morning educational program explains the nature of the universe in kid-friendly terms. Do asks, "What do you guys want to watch?"

  "Your call," Lannigan tells him.

  Do meekly says, "You can change the channel," then looks toward Billy and Lannigan for tacit approval. After a full circuit through premium cable, he stops Billy on cartoons.

  12:34 P.M.

  Lunch is sloppy joes with potato chips and lemonade, and Billy thinks of the atypical antipsychotic diet as being childhood based, as if the cafeteria has Mom in the kitchen and the action of Allevatrox is backward, to a time of sweeter voices inside your head. Billy hoped that the empty seats on either side of him might land Gretchen, but no, she eats with Peter Swain. Instead Billy gets Ossap and Dullick. Ossap greets the table with, "Fuckers," and Dullick drops his tray from a loud enough height.

  "Guys," Lannigan says. "How're things?"

  Dullick answers, "Peachy," with faggot undertones.

  "Fuckers tripping yet?" Ossap asks.

  "Not yet."

  Dullick turns to Billy. "Pass the salt."

  "Yeah," Ossap adds, "and pass me some fucking ketchup."

  "So, you guys friends?" Do asks.

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "No reason really."

  "We're . . . acquaintances."

  "Associates."

  "Family."

  They tap cheers with lemonade and dig into sloppy joes.

  Ossap, "These are the best."

  Dullick, "I love my meat."

  Ossap, "Oh yeah, love the meat."

  Dullick, "Meat meat meat."

  Ossap, "And more meat."

  Dullick, "But I think the meat needs more spice." He aims his cannula towards his bun and makes a spurting squeeze-bottle sound. "Much better." This inspires Ossap to scoop his finger inside his bun and spread the mess around his cannula. He pretends infection, gangrene—

  "Aaaaah!"—and then licks the gore away.

  They both cackle. High-pitched (Ossap), deep-toned (Dullick), it's an odd counterpoint of hee-hee-hee-ho-ho-ho, sort of bogus, sort of genuine, like fools who fake laughter until they fall apart on the floor.

  1:11 P.M.—6:13 P.M.

  More television via Lannigan's tongue to Billy's thumb.

  "Change."

  "Change."

  "Change."

  By chance, a film version of Hamlet is on, and Billy assumes Lannigan will want to stay put, but Lannigan quickly—"Please God change!"— barks.

  Billy lingers. "Should we wait for Voltimand's appearance?"

  "Nah, just change."

  "This could be research."

  "Look, change the channel, okay."

  "Let's at least see who plays Voltimand."

  "They cut the part for the movie, okay." Lannigan gets up and grabs the remote. "Now we have rules," he says. "And I'm in charge and when I say 'change,' change." Lannigan changes the channel. His viewing habits lean toward shows heavy with teenagers.

  6:34 P.M.

  Grilled chicken and mashed potatoes and string beans are served with butterscotch pudding for dessert. More important, Billy sits with Gretch­en, having sprinted for the free spot near her chair. Much of their discussion revolves around dinner at this early hour, the well-balanced meals, the reversion into a steady, timely diet.

  "I feel like we're in an orphanage," Billy says. "Like we're the unadoptable who've grown up and can't quite leave the place."

  The man on the other side of the table rolls his eyes. He has a fine-enough face, if a tad broken, particularly around his oblong chin and mansard forehead, as if they were slammed in youth and the pieces never quite grew right. Whatever accident lay in his past aggravates his orbit, but the damage plays as exotic. His ID reads Luke Sillansky.

  "What do you think, Luke?" Gretchen asks.

  "I'm not waiting to be adopted, that's for sure."

  "You don't want a new mommy?"

  "Depends on the mommy."

  "No," she tells him. "You're more like Fagin, Fagin by Calvin Klein."

  "Now there's a scent," Billy says, eyebrows a go-go.

  "I'm not faking," Luke answers. "I'm true to the bone."

  "She meant Oliver Twist," Billy nips, hoping he might impress Gretchen and humble Luke. But nobody seems to have heard him.

  "I've lived a life, that's for sure," Luke continues.

  Billy forms his hands into a bowl. "Some more, please," he says.

  Still, nobody is listening, not even Gretchen, who rolls her head toward Luke Sillansky as if her eyes are harder than a windshield, or a lead pipe, or whatever it was that smashed up that face.

  Billy thankfully stops himself from singing the opening of "Food, Glorious Food."

  6:59 P.M.

  Another dose.

  7:17 P.M.

  Another blood draw.

  7:54 P.M.

  More television.

  10:32 P.M.

  The night nurse walks in, draws the curtain like a sail in the horse latitudes. "You have to stay in your room until the morning," she says. "No wandering." From her pocket she produces an electronic thermometer and she goes from bed to bed and sticks the funnel-like nubbin into ears, a fresh nubbin for every ear. Billy is thrilled with the slightly invasive touch, as if this device is a soft whisper of "how do you feel" and somewhere inside his head is the answer.

  11:37 P.M.'

  Lights out and darkness bursts with black firework flare. Billy hopes he'll be able to sleep tonight, hopes he can avoid another tryst with the sink. A flashlight would be handy. Then he could huddle under the sheets and read quotes, a tick growing fat on the perfect words of others.

  A voice. "You guys feeling anything yet?" It's Do.

  "Not yet," Billy says.

  "Like what?" Lannigan asks.

  "I don't know, like anything."

  "Like an itch you can't scratch, like deep under your skin, like on your bone, a bone itch, and it kind of spreads everywhere so your hair feels carbonated, like every pore is a bubble, like you need to rip your flesh apart to get to that itch because it's driving you nuts and there's no way your fingers can reach that deep without drawing blood, like maggots are under your skin, like that kid you heard about in grade school with the broken leg and the cast and all that itching and when they cut the plaster away there was a squirming mess undernea
th. Something like that?"

  11:48 P.M.-11:51 P.M.

  Lannigan puts on a show of dying in bed.

  11:58 P.M.

  Lannigan dies again.

  13

  ON SUNDAY, after the morning feed and bleed, there's an optional ecumenical service in the dose room, which Billy skips in favor of a nap followed by some wandering around the third floor. Routine is already plowing a path under every footstep. Mundane prescience hangs over time. Everybody knows what comes next: lunch. Passing rooms, Billy sees bodies stretched on beds, their eyes staring toward the television's event horizon. They could be adrift on rafts, the floor filled with atypical antipsychotic sharks ready for the slightest slip of ankle. In the spaces between these doorways hang framed posters, not from museum exhibitions or world-famous destinations. No, they are HAM inspired, advertisements blown up and proudly displayed like family photographs if the family in question celebrated medical adversities rather than graduations or weddings. The people pictured are good average folk, their faces occupying the middle beauty bracket, their features rubbed from the Rosetta stone of physiognomy. Cut and paste and you could collage anyone. Billy browses them, the Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham of erectile dysfunction and vaginal dryness, the Richie and Joanie of attention deficit disorder and social anxiety, the Fonzie of acid reflux. But these are very special episodes in otherwise happy days.

  Maybe it's sunburn, but no, it's winter.

  Maybe it's skin irritation, but you're rarely this red.

  Maybe it's an allergy, but usually you just stuff up.

  Maybe it's acne, but you're forty-six years old.

  Maybe it's rosacea, an unsightly epidermal condition that affects over 13 million Americans. Talk to your dermatologist today about a topical therapy that can really make a difference.

  These are the kind of ads plastered in subway stations and bus stops, in places where literate boredom resides, where you read without intention, you the sucker always deciphering, always linking letters into words. If only you could pause comprehension, Billy thinks, push your temples and become illiterate and revisit that time when billboards carried the mystery of John Donne. What's that mean? But it's incurable, this viral comprehension, and it starts with cereal boxes and the fun facts of milk. All this information jammed in front of your face and you're the cornered prey. No matter what, the words have you nailed.

  Now men who despair over the frequent nightmare of nighttime urination can sleep snug like a baby. No more endless trips to the bathroom. No more worries of an embarrassing accident. No more time taken away from your important rest. Because benign prostatic hyperplasia, a common noncancerous enlargement of the prostate gland, shouldn't be something to lose sleep over.

  The afflications are photographed in gauzy near-death light, in the magic hour when pollen is alive, when liver spots glow like honeydew, when you're no longer as young as you think and you're older than you realize. That ache, that throb, that funny feeling, it's telling you something. Forgetful? Irritable? Uh-oh. Billy absorbs these images as if they are old master canvases painted with patented morbid affection. Of course those afflicted are just actors impersonating discomfort, the fourth estate of performers who inhabit the pits of print advertising. They pretend to search for answers. All they want is a cure.

  "Billy?"

  He turns and sees Gretchen in the doorway of her room.

  "What're you up to?" she asks.

  "Just taking in the artwork," he tells her.

  "Uplifting, isn't it?"

  "Yes." He invests his answer with the sight of her in a silk peach bathrobe. A pair of glasses, nerdy chic, hedges her eyes like a collaboration between warring instincts. "I didn't know you wore glasses," he says.

  "Yep."

  "Not that I know you well enough to know anything."

  "Well, glasses can be the first surprise."

  Billy smiles, the verb hardly doing justice to the thrill in his lips, the vestibule, the commencement of what might follow, of what is already churning in his lungs.

  "I love this one," Gretchen says gamely. She goes over to a glossy young woman laughing among a group of female friends.

  A birth control pill proven to better your skin. A fantasy drug, right? Too good to be true? But it is true. Introducing a birth control pill that can help reduce mild to moderate acne and prevent an unwanted pregnancy. Nearly nine out of ten women saw a significant change in their complexion while being 99% certain of contraception when taken correctly. Now a perfect choice for women who have reached menstruation, are seeking contraception, have no known contraindications to birth control pills, and are unresponsive to topical acne medication. Now you can be confident inside and out. So clear your mind as well as your skin. See, miracles can happen.

  "You know what Madison Avenue calls this woman," Billy says of the clear-skinned, ovum-independent woman. "She's a Merry Andrews. All these people are Merry Andrews and they populate the piggy spots, which is industry code for the pain-is-good approach. Nice, huh? And fake doctors in lab coats are grinders, and product is kickapoo, and Middle American appeal is called P&G, after Procter & Gamble. Pretty perfect for this country, huh? The puritan and the speculator."

  "Thanks, professor," Gretchen says.

  "I've done some temp work in the advertising field."

  "Lucky you."

  Together, if not hand in hand then perhaps with sensibilities entwined, Billy and Gretchen peruse this rogue's gallery of remedy. The drugs themselves come in a variety of forms (creams, sprays, solutions, lotions, inhalers, suppositories, liquids, patches) but by far the preferred method is oral (tablets, capsules, pills), illustrated ten times actual size as if a jewel worthy of Elizabeth Taylor. Shapes and colors compose a digestible geometry: blue triangles, orange circles, pink rectangles, green diamonds. They could have been manufactured in a confectionery lab, consumed in a bowl of milk. Billy and Gretchen struggle in pronouncing their generic names: tretinoin emollient, omeprazole, sumatriptan succinate, azithro-mycin, trimethodenzamide hydrochloride, doxazosin mesylate, loratadine, raloxifene, pravastatin sodium, finasteride, norgestimate ethinyl estradiol. They sound ethnic in their morphology, immigrants fresh off the boat. But like movie stars—"like Norma Jean Mortenson," Gretchen says; "like Roy Scherer and Issur Danielovitch," Billy says—these drugs have brand names with the sizzle of Marilyn Monroe, the brawn of Rock Hudson and Kirk Douglas. Vigorous exclamation points seem sculpted in their meter, like weight-bearing spears. There's Suprax and Tigan, Orudis and Calan, Ultram and Hyzaar, Procardia and Orap, Rufen and Sansert, Videx and Ziac, Tonocard and Pen-Vee, Cozaar and Imdur, Voltaren and Lasax. Billy hears sacred undertones in the names, pharmaceutical spin-offs from the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Vedas, the Pali Canon, the I Ching. An equal-opportunity apothecary. And always there's the HAM corporate logo: the sun either setting or rising on the promised land of choice.

  "Hargrove Anderson Medical," Billy intones.

  "Tomorrow's Company Today," Gretchen finishes.

  Billy turns toward her, her pale hexagon of a face pictured in the lower-left-hand corner of his own unfocused malaise. She's in that tricky age, he thinks, often bemoaned by actresses, when their lives fold into no-great-roles-for-women-except-dutiful-wife-or-mother. There is, in the clothesline sag of her mouth, a worn sadness.

  "How are you feeling?" she asks.

  Billy almost mistakes this question for something else. "All right, I suppose."

  "Any side effects or anything?"

  "No, not yet."

  "Me neither."

  "I actually feel good," he says, Gretchen dissolving into his bloodstream. From down the hall a man appears, first in voice—"Gretchen"—then in body, slim and nebbish, though the neb has been honed to a studied point of tousled intellect, like a nib spewing love letters disguised as letters to the editor. "It's starting now," he says, fast approaching.

  "Oh yeah, already?"

  "Absolutely." The man stops in front of them. Fingers ta
p against thumb in a continuous four-part beat.

  "Billy," Gretchen says. "Do you know Stan Shackler?"

  "No.".

  "Hey," Stan says, his hand far too busy for a handshake.

  "Stan here has a Ph.D.," Gretchen informs Billy.

  "Not yet," Stan says. "Soon though. Now we really should go."

  "Whatever you do don't ask about his dissertation," Gretchen says.

  "That fascinating, huh?" Billy says.

  Stan Shackler puffs himself up, as if loosening a French cuff. "Actually, it is quite fascinating, and it's already getting attention within certain circles. I just don't want to talk about it. I think about it too much to want to spend a second of my time talking about it, talking about it with people who will have no idea what I'm talking about. I'd be the only person who understands the conversation."

  "How long have you been working on it?" Billy asks.

  Stan Shackler practically groans. "I really don't want to talk about it."

  "Sorry."

  "But I should be done soon. I have to be done soon or else I'll forever hate my career. But I really really don't want to talk about it. No offense."

  "None taken," Billy says, viewing Stan Shackler along the lines of a cat who wears a bell that warns potential prey, this shrill alert excusing the thousand leaps and swipes, the constant springing forward, the frankness of attack.

  "I'm sure it's brilliant," Gretchen says.

  "It's not, it's shit, okay. Now we have to go because it starts soon."

  "What's starting soon?" asks Billy.

  Stan fidgets. "Can we please just go?"

  "Fitzcarraldo," Gretchen says.

  "It's a film by Werner Herzog," Stan informs Billy.

  "I know," Billy says, then he asks, "Is it the movie or the making of?" though he's seen neither, though he knows both plots.

  "Not Burden of Dreams," Stan snips. "Fitzcarraldo."

  "The only Herzog I've seen is Even Dwarfs Started Small," Gretchen says.

  "The fact that you've seen that film is amazing," Stan tells her, captivated.