The Normals

by David Gilbert

  "He did Nosferatu, right?" Billy says.

  Stan nods with critical indifference. "His most commercial film. I, for one, prefer Murnau." Stan pauses, sort of simulates a burp as if digestion is a personal quirk. "It's not cinematics, if that's what you're thinking."

  "Thinking what?" Billy asks.

  "About my dissertation."

  "Oh."

  "And it's certainly not economics. Now Gretchen, let's go. Kinski awaits."

  "We're watching it in my room," she tells Billy.

  "My roommates are only interested in Tom and Jerry," Stan explains.

  "Join us," Gretchen says.

  Billy shakes his head. "That's all right." And off they go, Stan shuffling along, Gretchen falling in behind, Stan glancing back as if Gretchen is a scribbled note he fears has slipped his pocket. Billy watches them disappear into her room, Billy alone in the hallway, the self-styled outsider, surrounded by images of anxiety and relief, by the man who holds his throbbing elbow instead of a golf club, by the woman who takes a deep liberating breath on a mountaintop—Welcome home©.

  14

  BILLY JOURNEYS into the lounge where the more social normals gather. They sit on couches and chairs that are durably comfortable and designed for the mildly deranged. It's arts and crafts meets Bellevue, a Mission-style institutionalism. As with all the rooms, the nexus is the television, though this television is equipped with a VCR and a collection of movies, mostly action-oriented. A few people play cards. Dominos as well. Betting is done on credit. Billy's arrival is barely greeted. Nobody talks about potential side effects, not yet, but the slightest shift in physical current (foreheads touched, joints cracked, skin scratched) is noticed, always tangential and never commented upon, like a footnote in sign language.

  What they do talk about is money. Or the promise of money.

  "I'm going to buy a car. Nothing fancy. Just good solid wheels, maybe a pickup," says Stewart Slocum, who rocks his left foot up and down, probably a preexisting condition from the onslaught of adolescence. Stewart (he prefers "Stew") has the kind of metabolism that excites the air around him. Calories get burned through his tongue. "A rig that'll work for me, oh yeah, something sweet." He punctuates his speech with odd nonsense interjections—Be-baa! and Yoopie-do!—as if the Marine Corps has a special clown unit.

  "What kind of vehicle can you get for two grand?" asks Yul Gertner.

  "A decent one."

  "I'd rather take the bus and keep the cash," Yul says. His head is shaved like his famous namesake, but instead of the King of Siam he resembles a thumb on constant futile hitchhike.

  Rodney Letts struts in, beelines for Billy. "I just took a half-hour shower," he announces like this is big news. When wet, his hair is disturbingly long; when scrubbed, his skin is newborn-rodent pink.

  "You missed your nose," Yul tells him.

  "That's a permanent thing."

  "Oh."

  "You know the problem with buying a car," informs Craig Buckner, midthirties, the guy shuffling a deck of cards too many times, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, cutting the deck then shuffling some more, enjoying the shuffle more than the idea of dealing and playing cards, every fffflllllppp and cheheeheyip causing his fellow players a wince of impatience. "The second you put your money down your investment is halved if not quartered. You buy a new car and you own a used car. You buy a used car and you own shit."

  Luke Sillansky groans, "Just fucking deal."

  "Who's the one who dealt a straight flush?"

  "That was pure chance."

  "Well, I'm just being thorough."

  "I'd rather hold cards," says Luke Sillansky, of the plain face battered into something interesting, like a hubcap hammered into a bowl.

  "I bought a car on three weeks' worth of dylazphil bendotrine," Herb Kolch tells them. "Dytrine was what they were calling it. Paid three grand. I got a Jetta."

  "Jettas suck," Yul says.

  "It was a good car."

  "Please."

  "I was thinking of a Honda Civic," Stew says.

  Yul shakes his head. "Civics suck, too. I'd rather blow my three grand on fun."

  Freddie Melendez, looking over the movies, suggests The Thing.

  Everybody's seen it a hundred times and Freddie moves on, disappointed.

  Rodney Letts eyes Herb with competitive respect. "You did Dytrine?"

  "Yep."

  "In Austin?"

  "Yep."

  "I heard about that one."

  "Well, I was there, dude." Herb's tongue holds a dose of braggart. He's middle-aged, with long salt-and-pepper hair and a pre-trendy tattoo, faded blue like a nasty nautical bruise.

  "What's Dytrine?" Billy asks.

  "An antispasmodic," Herb says. "I don't think it ever got FDA approval or maybe they're still working on it, but this was seven years ago and none of the trade rags are mentioning any further R&D." He leans forward, warming his hands on the campfire of a story. "In the beginning we were dealing with routine stuff: drowsiness, constipation, dry mouth, irritableness, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary."

  These suggested side effects flicker on the wall like a bear silhouetted on a tent. Stew licks his lips. Yul yawns. Craig finally deals, asking, "What are we playing again?"

  "Gin," Luke says.

  "How's that go again?"

  "It's fucking gin."

  "Is it like crazy eights?"

  "It's nothing like crazy eights. Don't tell me you don't know how to play gin?"

  "Uhm."

  "You're the best shuffler I've ever seen, a goddamn shark, and the only game you know how to play is go fish."

  "But," Herb continues, undeterred, "three days into the study, someone sneezes. We're sitting around, just like this, talking our shit, and this guy sneezes. No big deal, right? A sneeze. And this guy, he sneezes four times, still no big deal, and before anybody can say gesundheit, God bless you, whatever, this guy's going into some sort of seizure, twitching and groaning for like ten seconds, doing crazy shit with his face, and we're watching him and we're thinking, okay, the ball has dropped, a sneeze is going to kill us, explode our fucking brains or something. We all hold our noses and look around for a nurse, too freaked to even speak, and this guy, the guy who sneezed, he's going all loose like it's his last breath, like it's that death rattle you hear about, and he collapses in his fucking chair. It's like a shotgun blast to the head. The guy doesn't move. He just lies there, all crumpled up, and we're watching him and we're wondering what the hell should we do, because nobody wants to do anything that might trigger one of these suicidal sneezes. Then the guy, the fucker, he smiles. He's alive and he's smiling like he's happy but embarrassed. We ask him, You all right? What the hell was that? And he gets up and he's holding his pants, you know, that boner part of the pants, and he says he's had an accident and he has to get back to his room. We're like, What happened? And he says, I gotta go change my shorts. Now we're thinking he's pissed or shat himself—all possible with an antispasmodic—and that's been our biggest fear, incontinence, because there's no dignity in that, no matter how much you're paid, so we ask him which hole, and he's like, No man, I just blew a load into my pants."

  "No."

  "Come on."

  "Yeah, right."

  "I do not lie," Herb says, pulling his long hair back as if no secrets are hidden in his hairline. "He blew a load. And now we're all looking around like where's the pepper and everyone starts pinching out nose hairs and staring into bright lights and doing whatever tricks they've got for sneezing. Soon enough, the room's a circle jerk of sneezing. Forty percent had the side effect. The doctors called it spontaneous sternutatory ejaculation. SSEs. Unfortunately, I landed in the wrong percent. I just blew snot."

  "They should market that," Stew says.

  Freddie holds up Alien for a vote. Nay.

  "But we also shat blood for three weeks," Herb tells them.

  "Oh."

  "And some people went sort of blind in one eye. Temporar
ily."

  "But three grand for getting off. You should pay them," Yul says.

  "We actually qualified for minor unanticipated duress, two hundred bucks."

  "I'd take that MUD any day."

  Herb disagrees. "I mean, it was all fine and dandy for the first few days. People said it was the best orgasm they ever had, what they imagined multiple orgasms would be like, but by the end of the study they were wearing clothespins over their noses. Because after a while it became a hassle. When they felt a sneeze coming, they'd cover their prick with a Kleenex. It was like having a cock cold. They were blowing through underwear. I kind of felt sorry for them. They'd sneeze and sort of slump."

  "Still," Stew says.

  Philip Crouse, quiet until then, mumbles, "I once made ten grand on a MUD, but it was major instead of minor." He says this from the sofa, his head drawn back like his neck has no spine. Words seem to come in the form of bubbles that float above him then fall back and explode on the hard squint of his eyelids. The effort alone holds Billy's attention; he's a stutterer without the stutter.

  "Nobody makes ten grand on a MUD," Rodney objects.

  Herb Kolch agrees.

  "I still have the check," Philip Crouse says.

  "Now I know you're lying, because who wouldn't cash a check for ten thou."

  "It's my talisman."

  "I don't care what it is, man."

  Rodney shakes his head. "I'm sorry but nobody makes that kind of MUD."

  "I have the proof."

  "Then show it."

  "Okay." But Philip Crouse doesn't move; instead, he talks, and everybody is held by the elliptical trail of words, by the slow descent of meaning and the splatter-back of memory. Billy imagines the Ancient Mariner in his youth, when he BB-gunned a seagull. "This MUD I would wish on none of you. Ten grand was cheap. It was a basic feed and bleed, same setup, same Phase One thing except this was through a uni—university hospital that got huge government grants to study such and such, which the university then sold to pharma—pharm—to companies for such and such and such and such, and so on, and yeah, recruiting students but paying with scholarship money, cost effective, like some people play football and some people play guinea pig."

  "That can't be legal," Billy says.

  "Football players got banged up worse. Usually we'd do a study a semester, sleep stuff, psycho mind stuff, occasionally harder stuff like this ACE inhibitor for high blood pressure. I can't remember what they were calling it. Flumox—can't be right. Flumoxide, Flumo—xidine, Flumox—celsior." Crouse puckers like he's trying to turn spittle into soap. "Early on, maybe the second day, yeah, I wake up dizzy with the whole bed, the whole room, spinning and there's no way I can walk or do anything but puke and puke and puke from motion sickness, imbalances in the inner ear, I guess. I'm crying it's so bad, spinning and crying and puking and wishing everything would stop. If I had a gun, I would've done myself in right then and there though I'd a missed a bunch of times and taken out a few doctors. Right away they pull me from the study, immediately off the drug, but this crap must've had the half-life of plutonium because it's done something to my—the head because two days later I'm still spinning and puking, and they don't have a clue, and slowly I'm going nuts and I'm pleading for like tranquilizers and morphine but they're scared about dangerous interactions—what a joke—so they give me nothing and tell me I have to tough it out. Three days, four days, still spinning just as hard, eyes closed, spinning, room dark, spinning. Fifth day this orderly comes in with a paintbrush, a can of black paint, and a stepladder. On the ceiling over my bed he paints a big black dot. He tells me this should help, and I'm like, thank you so much, who needs morphine when you have this, and he tells me to stare at the dot, focus on the dot, spot yourself on the dot, whatever, a focal point, he tells me. I'm so pissed because I want drugs not some crafts project. I would've strangled him but I'm spinning so bad, so fuck it, I stare at it, stare at this dot, and it actually does help, it's the only thing that helps. If I look away for even a second, I'm thrown around, and when I close my eyes, I'm back in the spin cycle." Crouse pauses and opens his mouth wide like a giant mama bird might fly down with a worm. "I don't really remember sleeping. I'm sure I did but it was like a deeper extension of that black dot. For five weeks I had a staring contest with the ceiling."

  "This is getting heavy," Yul says.

  "I prefer the sneezing story," Stew says.

  With great effort, Philip Crouse lifts his head from the back of the couch. Now the words seem to dribble down his shirt. "Try staring at one thing for five weeks, staring like your sanity depends on it. On the second week I thought I caught the dot moving, crawling a few inches like a big hairy spider kind of growing, and sometimes I swear the thing was dangling right over me, within my grasp, or its grasp."

  "This isn't shit I need to hear right now," Luke says.

  "Are hearts wild?" Craig Buckner asks.

  "Nothing's wild. It's gin."

  "I waited for this thing to come down and finish me," Crouse goes on.

  "Oh, come on," Yul heckles.

  "What about your parents, your friends?" Stew asks.

  "I talked to them on the phone and told them not to visit because I didn't think my black dot liked company. Then I start getting bedsores, and the orderly comes back with a paintbrush and paints black dots all over the room so I can move around, stumble to a chair, and begin staring again. He paints dots in the bathroom, in the shower, and I jump from spot to spot like it's a game and these place are safe."

  Freddie waggles The Thing again but nobody bites.

  "He even paints dots on the window so I can get some light, and I almost convince him to paint a dot on the tree outside. Then I ask the orderly to Magic Maker a dot on my forehead so I can see myself in the mirror, see what I look like. Not pleasant, I found out."

  "Maybe because you had a dot in the middle of your forehead," jokes Yul.

  "I'm smelling serious bullshit," says Herb.

  Philip Crouse slackens his jaw. "Fine, don't believe me, but this is the truth. The third week, the fourth week, and I'm like one of those wildebeests swiped down by a lion, all faraway and fine with it. That was me. I'd been pounced on and I was barely breathing, not thinking, hypnotized, peacefully waiting for the end. Then, on the fifth week, in the middle of the night and for no apparent reason, the dot turned back into plain old paint."

  "Oh, come on," Herb shouts.

  "The next day I was on my feet."

  "You're talking too pretty for real pain," Herb accuses.

  "After five weeks, all I could do was make it pretty. I remember being discharged and going down the hall and seeing these rooms with bedridden people, must've been four, five of them, staring at their dot. I knew everything around them was spinning. I understood. I was almost jealous of them."

  "And you were paid a ten-grand MUD?" asks Rodney.

  Philip Crouse nods.

  "With ten grand you can get a decent vehicle," Yul says.

  "But he never cashed the check," Stew says.

  "Now that really is too pretty," Herb critiques.

  "I could live a year on ten grand," Rodney says. "Two years maybe."

  "I'd hit Thailand and live like a king," Freddie says, fantasizing with Terminator in hand, the first Terminator, which gets a majority nod and is slipped into the VCR, the TV going from blue to black to the FBI warning against unlawful duplication.

  "I'm never cashing that check," Crouse tells them. "I don't know if there's a statute of limitations, if after a few years they clear the account or if it sits there, ten thousand dollars with my name and they're wondering when check one-nine-five-eight-five will land. I think you'd notice ten thousand dollars missing or not missing. Or maybe not. Maybe to them it's a dime. I don't know, but I'm not cashing it."

  "That's just stupid," Herb says.

  "You're probably right. Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money."

  "No shit."

  "It's just." Philip Crous
e leans down, depleted. "It does hit me that that's a lot of money, especially living like I do. But I need it alive," Crouse says.

  Just then Lannigan comes running into the lounge, hands on face, screaming, "My eyes, my eyes, Jesus, my eyes!"

  Panic slips from every mouth, motionless and speechless, peering from half-parted lips like children sinking low in nighttime sheets, a sliver of noise illuminated beneath the door. Billy rushes forward only in his imagination; otherwise, he stands still, gaping not so much at Lannigan but at implication, at the ullage between soul and bystander. "They, they burn!" Lannigan screams. In an awful instant, fingers curl deep within orbits and bring forth chunks of eye meat. Moans of pain-on-pain torment rip apart sight as white flesh crumbles. A fleck of yellow lands on the carpet. Body pure torment, Lannigan lowers his hands, slowly lowers his hands, and reveals—oh God, this is going to be awful—the gore of hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. "Got you," he says.

  "Fucking prick," Yul Gertner shouts.

  Lannigan licks his palm. "You guys should've seen yourselves."

  Luke Sillansky throws his cards at him. "Jerk."

  "Pretty good, huh?" Lannigan asks.

  The room is silent.

  "You guys really thought I was poking out my eyes?"

  But attention has roved toward the television where a cyborg from the future drops down into 1984—evident by the hairstyles, the clothes, the cars—and naked from time travel, approaches an unwitting Hell's Angel and separates him from his still beating heart.

  "Was it really any good?" Lannigan asks again.

  People cheer.

  Lannigan turns toward Billy. "Was I any good?" he asks, desperate to know.

  15

  THAT EVENING, Billy stands in front of the pay phone with defeat. A certain peace has existed without the phone. There's been no undercurrent of tinnitus in all things ambient (Is that the phone ringing?), no intimate electrical impulses invading his ears, no loud potential in Bakelite. The readiness for a dozen possible voices has been relaxed, and the guilt over losing contact has been put on hold. No messages to leave, no calls to return. No cult of the phone. Reach out and touch someone always struck him as a creepy religious campaign, a crusade against heathen incommunication where nobody is beyond saving for just ten cents a minute. Friends and family. I just called to say I love you. But here he is, in front of the phone, wondering if he should call, wondering if tomorrow the drug will take hold and turn him into a version of Philip Crouse. This might be his last opportunity. And he needs to talk to her, to Sally. He needs to explain himself, needs to apologize. It's not for reasons of guilt or shame. No, it's far more narcissistic, he realizes. It's the idea of a person existing in this world who might hate him. Billy can't abide that. His misanthropy has always been one-sided.