The Normals

by David Gilbert

  Nurse Clifford/George surveys the turned-down sheets, the decoy Do. His green jersey has been stuffed with laundry and his sweatpants have been shaped with toilet paper and towels. Headwise, he's an undershirt. Nurse Clifford/George picks up his ID necklace and reacquaints herself with the face of the vanished. The smell must be factored into her look of disgust, but mostly she's beady with suspicion, her chin weighted down with the early shape of the day. "If this is a prank," she tells Billy and Lannigan, standing side by side, sudden compatriots in the case of the missing roommate.

  "No prank here," Billy says.

  She gives Lannigan a long hard stare.

  Lannigan touches his chest, Moi?

  "You didn't hear him get up and leave."

  "Nope," Billy says.

  "You heard nothing?"

  "Groans," Lannigan recalls. "Oh, sorry, that was me. I had a good night."

  "Did he say anything about leaving?" she asks.

  "No, but he was upset," Billy offers.

  "Disturbed," Lannigan embellishes.

  "How so?"

  Billy takes the question, knowing Lannigan's opinion is not appreciated. "I think the drug was having a pretty bad effect. He was getting kind of delusional. He thought stuff was being put into his food, that he was being watched, that he was going to be institutionalized or something. He was really pretty manic."

  "Is that your professional opinion?" the nurse shoots back. Billy shrugs.

  "Sorry," she says, glancing down on the impersonation of clothes. Billy can picture her cutting onions and remembering all the times she should've cried. She has a How-did-I-get-this-way look, a when-did-concern-become-a-chore pout. Funny, how a whole life can slip through a glimpse. "Certainly reeks," she says.

  "Bloodhounds would find him in a second," Lannigan tells her.

  Nurse Clifford/George bends down and checks under the bed, the execution of which gives Billy an undeniable view of her backside, that slippery bit of skin between pant and blouse with its underwear elastic and last trace of vertebrae, the pale smooth small, the torso's nape, sexy in all cases though Billy must admit feeling lewd for noticing.

  "Do people sometimes hide under the bed?" Lannigan asks, thrilled.

  "If this is a joke."

  "Like scared little boys," Lannigan continues.

  That's when Billy sees it, near the front door, curled up like a worm dried by the sun—a particularly nasty worm. He picks it up, needle-side up, and says, "Uhm," knowing this is explanation enough.

  Lannigan stops kidding.

  The nurse puts on rubber gloves before accepting the cannula.

  "He really pulled out his cannula?" Rodney Letts asks during breakfast.

  "Oh, yeah," Lannigan says, relishing his first-hand status. "Pulled it right out." Lannigan has taken primary ownership of the story. The news spreads through the cafeteria, from color to color, all mouths on Do and all eyes and ears on Lannigan and Billy like they're the bereaved. "Weird because I thought I heard a muffled scream last night, but thought nothing of it, thought it was a bad dream, but now," Lannigan shudders. "Obviously."

  Billy only communes with his scrambled eggs.

  Let Lannigan bask.

  A cursory search of the premises has been conducted, the night staff rounded up and questioned—nothing—the surveillance tapes scanned— nothing—closets and storage rooms checked—nothing—all the normal hiding places checked and rechecked. Do is still unfound.

  "Think he's still here?" Rodney asks.

  "Definitely," Lannigan says.

  "Maybe he busted out."

  Lannigan shakes his head. "He didn't take his shoes or his wallet." This new information murmurs the air.

  Joy says to Billy, "I hear your roommate's missing."

  Billy nods. As always he's fascinated with her work, watching as she finesses his blood from the cannula, her hands so warm and soft, even under latex. "How much would it hurt to yank this thing out?" he asks.

  "If done right, not at all."

  "If done wrong?"

  "A little bit, if the vein pulls, if there's pressure." Joy racks his test tube.

  "You know, I don't think I can even picture this John Rami character."

  "He's the guy who smells."

  "Oh him. I remember him. He covered his face when I took his blood. Unlike you, he couldn't bear watching."

  Nigger, Billy thinks, terribly, nigger nigger nigger.

  A more thorough search goes on after breakfast. The HAM security team sweeps the building, led by Carlson Dickey, who seems to have taken this personally, huddling his team in the hallway and saying, "We've got to find this individual ASAP because every minute is a minute too late." The loudspeaker announces his disappearance and says thanks in advance for everybody's patience. "If anybody has information on Mr. Rami's whereabouts, please contact the floor nurse." But no luck. There must be hundreds of hiding places, Billy thinks. He imagines Do jammed in a closet, Do huddled in a pile of laundry, Do hearing all the activity inspired by his disappearance, no doubt confirming his fears and leaving him certain in his belief.

  "You have no clue?" Honeysack asks Billy. The doctor stands by the door and tries to look cool and casual, but he overthinks the masquerade with a series of minor adjustments, easygoingness as complicated as a golf swing.

  "No," Billy says from bed.

  Lannigan is in the lounge, the oracle of Do.

  "We've pretty much exhausted our search," Honeysack says.

  "All I know is he was in bed last night."

  "You think he's all right, mentally, I mean."

  "He made himself throw up after dinner because he was convinced you guys were putting something in his food. He was convinced he was going to be institutionalized. And with all this searching around for him, I bet he's even more convinced. The more you look for him the more he's going to stay hidden."

  "But we can't stop looking."

  "If you don't look for him, you'll find him," Billy says.

  "I'm too tired for that kind of logic."

  "I was thinking more along the line of quantum mechanics."

  "That's the last thing I need right now."

  "I told you he wasn't well."

  "Look around. They're plenty of unwell people here."

  "Just be nice when you find him," Billy says.

  Honeysack frowns. "Of course we'll be nice. You think we'll be mean or something? He's our patient, or our pseudo-patient; anyway, he's our responsibility. We just hope he doesn't do anything stupid."

  After lunch, Ossap and Dullick storm into the room, Ossap breezing past Lannigan's empty bed (Lannigan having embraced the search for Do the way a son embraces a mother's missing earring) while Dullick closes the door and barricades it with his bulk. "Your roomie has made everybody a little too nosy." Ossap speaks through a barricade of facial tics. "People are in our room, kicking around our stuff, looking for this jerk, this jack-off, this fucking"—he wavers—"yeah. It's fucking with me, it's fucking with us, and we're already sick and tired." He thrusts a thumb toward Dullick, who yawns and stands more horizontal than vertical. "So if you know where this cock-chomper is, you better tell, because we don't need to be fucked with right now, not now, no, not now, with this little game of hide-and-go-seek disturbing our peace."

  "Who are you guys?" Billy asks.

  "Who are you, Mr. Roam-the-halls-in-the-middle-of-the-night?" Os­sap counters.

  "Nobody."

  "Well, same here."

  "So you're not here for anything in particular," Billy asks.

  Ossap looks toward Dullick. "No," he says with a hedge. "Are you?"

  "No."

  "Okay then."

  "Okay."

  "You're just here, right?" Ossap asks.

  "Yeah," Billy answers.

  "That's the same with us," Ossap says.

  "You're not working for anybody?" Billy asks.

  "No. And you?"

  "No."

  Dullick says, "I think I'm goin
g to throw up," and rushes from the room. Ossap walks toward the door, elbows splayed like a flightless bird. Before leaving, he turns around and asks Billy, "So a pride of African elephants on the Serengeti would mean nothing to you."

  Billy, puzzled: "I wouldn't say that."

  "Then what would you say?"

  "I don't know, they'd make a majestic sight?"

  "Wrong," Ossap tells him. "Go fuck yourself."

  It's raining. No wind, no thunder, just rain falling like static. Billy watches the downpour from bed. It must be coming down an inch an hour.

  Any harder and the drops would lose their integrity. It's the kind of rain where, if you're outside for a second, you're instantly drenched. There's no running here. A dash to the car is as good as a swim. In that way, the rain is almost carefree, giddy, like Gene Kelly. Billy wonders if rain was ever so happy before 1952? But with Do missing, and his parents inching closer to their romantically proscribed date, pathetic fallacy is what gets Billy on his feet for a closer, more indulgent view of the summer squall.

  Give rain a bit of thought and you're soused.

  No other weather, not even snow, is as dangerous.

  The middle of the sundial courtyard is flooded, thanks to its slight concave quality, another design flaw. The hand sculpture has been transformed into the centerpiece for a fountain. Water pours from the palm into a shallow pool around its base, the index finger pointing as if daring for lightning. The storm's bruised light does wonders with the bronze. It's like an odd optical harmonic, metal hums the eyes. Billy squints and unblurs the individual drops of rain, his head unconsciously nodding their descent. As he stands there, curious when the torrent will stop, this firework finale of rain, surely unsustainable, he catches a sense of you're not alone on his left. He pivots and sees Do in the thick accordion folds of the curtains. Do stares straight into the fabric. His arms are tight on his sides, his face is blank, his body is naked. The Bible is held tight to his chest, like some flotation device.

  Billy, softly: "Do?"

  Do doesn't move.

  "Do, it's me."

  Do remains committed to his invisibility.

  "I'm not going to tell anyone so you don't have—"

  "Leave," Do mutters.

  "Where are we in Luke?"

  "I'm out of time."

  "Is this where you've been hiding?"

  "Yeah."

  Billy is briefly thrilled, the winner of the find Do contest.

  "Now leave," Do says.

  "You must be exhausted. And hungry. Why don't you lie down for a bit and I'll get you some food and something to drink. I won't tell anybody."

  Do squeezes his eyes like a boy wishing away a bad thing. "Leave," he says.

  "Even if they do find you, they're not going to do anything except maybe kick you out, which is what you want anyway, so put on your clothes and I'll get you a snack. They had Pop-Tarts for breakfast."

  "I'm not an idiot," Do says.

  "I know."

  "Aren't you scared?" Do says.

  "Of what?"

  "Being next to me."

  Billy shakes his head.

  "I'm seeing you dead right now," Do tells him. "Ripped to shreds. I can see your head and it's three feet away from the rest of your body and you're a geyser of blood and it's awful. I can't help it. It's what I see."

  "But I'm here," Billy says. "I'm not ripped to shreds."

  "I don't want to hurt you."

  "I know, I know." Billy tries investing his words with as much truth as he can muster. "And you won't hurt me, I know that too. You won't hurt anybody. I know that about you. I'm smart, remember. Now you can stay here for as long as you want. I'll sneak you food and water and tell you the coast is clear when you need to go to the bathroom. Because I know about hiding. I used to hide all the time when I was a kid. And this is a genius spot, so obvious, so right under their noses. I was pretty good at hiding too. I once told my parents I was going to a friend's house for sleepover but instead I stayed home and hid. I knew every great hiding place in that house." Like the top shelf of the linen closet, the cabinet under the bathroom sink, the corner wedge behind the television set, those spots where Billy would hole up and listen as his parents went about their day without him. He never heard anything but the mundane. "What do you want to do for dinner?" "I don't know." "I love you." "I love you too." "Now dinner?" "I have no idea." "Pasta?" "It's always pasta but pasta is fine." "Pasta then." "I love you." "Me too." Billy would wait for an opening, creep toward the front door, and slam himself home.

  "Would you shut up," Do whisper-shouts.

  "Yeah, sorry," Billy says, heading back toward bed. "I won't tell a soul."

  During dinner Do remains the topic of conversation. Billy practically bursts with his secret, though now he has drifted into the realm of accomplice. He sits with Gretchen and Stan Shackler, mystery Ph.D. candidate, and Stan has changed the subject away from Do and toward something more to his liking: his reinterpretation of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence. "But my spin on it," he says, primarily to Gretchen, "is the idea of the eternal rerun. See, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence posited that we are destined to live our lives over and over again the same exact way every time, that this life is the first run so we better be bold and make good strong choices because those choices will stay with us forever, that the true liber-man would rejoice in this fact."

  "And what's your eternal rerun theory?" Billy asks.

  Stan Shackler raises his hands as if what he really wants to do is direct. "That with the onslaught of recording devices and reproduction equipment, with photography and video, the digital revolution, with all this entertainment around us, TV, movies, music, we as a race are no longer original. We've lost the first-run quality of our lives. Instead, we're living in the eternal rerun, the cliche, the hackneyed. At least Nietzsche thought this life was the first life. But I don't think that's the case anymore, not in this day and age, when we sit back and consume our life. The only way we can stomach this fact is by being superior to the material."

  "What does this have to do with Do?" Billy asks.

  "He's playing the escapee, the guy who snaps. Do's big bold choice is something we've seen a thousand times before. Because there are no more original gestures left except maybe blowing up the world. If originality is our god, then god is dead. Rugged individualism, that's long gone. All that we have left that is uniquely our own is DNA, hence the recent obsession with the human genome. It's the last gasp of the original, a little mark here instead of there and eureka, this is I. But I would argue that the death of originality is a comforting thought because when we are presented with true originality, with true genius, which still exists in the corners, we shrivel up inside and die. We can love it, we can pursue it, that rare great contemporary work of genius, but its presence is debilitating. Old master painters, they're fine because they have the added element of time, they're already in syndication, but new masters, they're devastating. Current greatness makes us feel unspeakably small. On the other hand, the cheesy, the predictable, the bad TV show, the bad book, the bad movie, they're uplifting for we know we are better than that. Originality is what crushes the soul, not its opposite."

  "Do you take this philosophy to heart or is it just something you flog?" asks Billy.

  "Definitely take it to heart."

  "So you surround yourself with mediocrity?"

  "Hard not to in this society."

  "You avoid the latest greatest movie?"

  "No, I don't avoid it. I go. But while watching it I'm hoping the film stumbles, just a little bit, and if the film doesn't stumble, if it is truly great, or at least to my thinking great, I leave the theater feeling lesser because I'm nothing in comparison to the fiction on that screen, whereas a sitcom can fill me with metaphysical joy. Same with a great book, a great piece of music. Give me pulp and pop."

  Billy notices Gretchen's body language leaning in the direction of this Ph.D. "Is this what your dissertation is about?
" Billy asks.

  "I refuse to discuss it."

  "How far along are you?"

  "No comment."

  "But you're almost done?"

  Stan Shackler flinches. "Please."

  "Well, how many pages have you written?"

  Stan Shackler gets up from the table.

  Gretchen smiles.

  "At least tell us how many words," Billy calls out.

  The long day of Do nearly done, Lannigan says from bed, "He might be gone, but his smell lingers on."

  Billy looks toward the curtains for a flutter of discontent.

  "Where do you think he is?" Lannigan asks.

  "I have no idea."

  "Do you think he's gone totally nuts?"

  Billy keeps his eyes on the curtains. "No."

  "How can you say no. You saw him, the guy was losing it."

  "It's the drug."

  "Yeah, maybe," he says. "If I'd known he was so on edge I wouldn't have been so over the top." Rue suits Lannigan poorly, like a pair of tight loafers his mother insisted he wear. "I was just fooling around. I should never have offered to suck his cock for fifteen dollars."

  "You did what?"

  "I'm not even gay. I thought it was a joke. I was just expressing my inner swishiness. I've always had a gay sensibility and I'm fine with it. I just don't dig the whole penis-in-asshole part. I thought Do would've known I was joking. I was being locker-room queer, you know, like I'll suck your cock if you want for fifteen dollars. I thought the word cock was universally recognized as a joke. But maybe he didn't get it. Do is kind of an idiot. Sweet, but dense. A big old loser. If I said to you, I want to suck your cock, you'd know I was joking. I just think that Do is—"

  "Lannigan?" Billy says.

  "Yeah."

  "Shut up."

  "What?"

  "Just shut up."

  "What did I do?"

  "Do me a favor and don't say another word."

  "Fine."

  33

  ALL NIGHT long Billy is focused on the thick curtains and the small sways of fabric, Do as intermittent breeze. He could be a child's monster haunting the room's crannies. Every second implies Boo! But Do stays on the lam, no doubt starving and bladderful and scared. Billy is tempted to join him and turn this into a game of sardines. Lannigan would be next, then Gretchen, all the way down the hall until the curtain is bowed with bodies giggling at the approach of the last remaining player.