In the morning, Billy opens the curtains and stares down the inside seam to where Do stands, unmoved since yesterday. Billy pretends to admire the sun on the courtyard. "It's going to be a beautiful day," he tells Lannigan, hoping he might convey a sense of warmth and understanding, an ally-ally-in-come-free sentiment.
"I'm sick of this place," Lannigan says from bed.
"Well, we only have two more nights."
Lannigan scratches new-growth hair, particularly itchy around the groin. "I hope Do's all right," he says.
"I'm sure he'll be fine."
"I was just kidding around. Nobody should ever take me seriously." Lannigan's fingernails kick up a fury of sheets. "Typical the worst side effect I suffer from is my own stupid fault."
In the bleed room, Joy puts in a fresh cannula for the last few draws. "Still no sign of your roommate?" she asks Billy.
"No," he says.
"Are you all right?"
"Yeah."
"You're so quiet."
"How's Rufus?"
"He's fine."
"Good."
Joy tapes down the cannula, then draws a test tube of blood.
"I'll miss this," Billy says.
"You might be the only person who's ever said that to me."
"I will though," Billy says. "I'll miss this whole place. I wish they could extend the study, just keep it going, you know, or allow me to matriculate into the next phase. Sign me up forever. Let me be the first-in-man man. I'd do it for room and board, that's all. They could do anything to me, use my body for some scientific good. Crunch me, you know, like numbers. Break me down into base data."
Joy crooks her head as if peeking around Billy's words, to the source of the blather. "Are you going home to your parents after this?" she asks.
"Probably, unless something comes up."
"Like what?"
Gretchen, he thinks, a new life with Gretchen once the first kiss has been gained. Run away with her in the style of his parents, abandon family ties for the sake of love. Or there's Honeysack, Honeysack and his test, Billy strapped down and killed and possibly brought back, the first successful bypass of certain death, like da Gama going around the Cape of Good Hope, Billy living on as tricky currents navigated. Or dying in those waters. Yes, dying. The first death, the building block, the old college try. But first casualties are often remembered, even if in footnotes, William A. Schine a notation in the History of Great Endeavor, a trail for scholars with nothing better to do. No matter, this is more appealing than a Ragnar dispatch. Gretchen, Honeysack. "I don't know," he says to Joy. "Something."
Joy stares at Billy longer than his eyes can accept. She says, "I feel for you, I do. But your parents need you even if you don't need them and trust me, not going, not doing anything, will leave you worse off. So suck it up and go. You don't have to help them with their"—her forehead buckles into a staff of sad music without notes—"chore, but be there even if being there is selfish, so you can say to yourself 'at least I was there.' Iknow it's hard. But trust me, the other way will be harder."
Billy is briefly thrown by the sentiment, but he recovers and tells her, "I didn't realize I was on a couch," hoping he might defuse her sympathy with sarcasm.
"Fine, make fun of me," she says.
"I'm not making fun of you."
"Yes, you are."
"Am I really?" Billy asks, honestly unsure.
"It doesn't matter. Just go home, to your parents."
After breakfast, a new group of normals arrives, replacing the reds discharged earlier that week, a giddy mess. "They're coming, they'recoming," Lannigan cheers from the window, seeing Corker lead a vanload of recruits through the courtyard. Billy hopes Do is hiding well in the curtains, but to Lannigan the curtains are a mere paranthetical to the action before him. "Finally," he says. He rushes over to his bed, to his duffel bag stashed beneath, and pulls out a squeeze bottle of ketchup smuggled from the cafeteria.
"You in?" he asks Billy.
"In what?"
"Our madhouse scene." Lannigan heaps his left palm with ketchup. "I'll be the victim, you'll be the perp. You can batter me into a delicious pulp."
"I don't think so."
"Come on, I need somebody."
"Let's not," Billy says, thinking of Do.
"No, let's."
"Why freak them out?"
"Freak them out? It's all in fun." Lannigan spurts a half-dollar-sized dollop on the bald bony knob of his forehead. He opens wide and loads his mouth with what seems to Billy a disturbing amount of condiment, then he primes the plastic bottle and slips it under his right armpit. Ready, Lannigan approaches the window. After a moment of actorly calm, he begins pounding the glass with tomato streaks of gore. This is followed up with a knocking of the forehead against glass, self-mutilation painted in broad B-movie strokes. The ketchup bottle under his right armpit splutters like a bagpipe player with a severed aortic artery. Just when Lannigan is ready for the piece de resistance—the exploding mouth trick—he notices Do, his gobbed-up mouth mumbling, "Oh!" a second before Do springs forward and grabs Lannigan by both hands.
Ketchup falls to the ground.
Lannigan's eyes bulge as if a glassblower bugles the optic nerve.
Billy steps forward but still keeps a distance. "Okay, Do, settle down."
Do is unmoved. He squeezes Lannigan's hands into a tight bundle of fingers.
Lannigan yells, "You're hurting me," spitting phantom wounds on Do and himself.
"Do, stop," Billy ridiculously commands, like Do is his monster.
Lannigan begins kicking, but Do's shins are harder than toes.
"Enough," Billy says.
Lannigan begins screaming, "I found Do! I found Do! He's in here!"
Do bends down until his eyes are level with Lannigan's bunched-up fingers.
"He's in here!"
Billy wonders if the people in the courtyard think this is part of the show.
"Quick, hurry! I found him!"
Do moves closer, as if prepared to be blessed by Lannigan, pulling those clenched fingers toward his eyes, wide open, like black targets, the pupils never flinching from the approaching fingertips, while Lannigan squirms like a child refusing a parental hug, Do's eyes an inch away, now closer, Billy shocked by what he's seeing, but frozen, as if shock insists on fulfillment as fingertips enter eyes, forks for the eggs, the tips going in deeper and Lannigan crying, "Please stop," his hands transformed into hilts for jabbing swords, Do down on his knees, a disturbing liquid, like viscid tears, on his cheek, Lannigan retching, overpowered, his fingertips wiping clean the windows of the soul, "Stop him," he screams, then he goes limp, Do clutching his hands in place, the two of them dancers dancing Greek myth, a blinding pas de deux, Billy thinks, the thought striking him as absurd and releasing him from shock, Billy rushing over, a hand on Do, a hand on Lannigan, an incompetent referee until security storms in.
They must see the ketchup everywhere, all over Lannigan and Do, on the floor and window, and think a blade has been used on Lannigan, his head sliced open, his mouth looking like the tongue's been bitten clean through. They skid to a stop as if coming to an edge of a cliff. They take in Do, naked and imposing; they take in Lannigan weak and screaming. They rush Do.
"It's not what you think," Billy shouts.
Security tackles Do, flinging him, punching him, headlocking him, riot police on a bull.
Lannigan melts into a corner. He holds his hands like they've been dipped in acid.
Billy, the bystander, shouts, "Don't hurt him."
Security beats Do until blood and ketchup mix.
Lannigan wipes his fingers on his pants and then vomits.
Nurse Clifford/George runs in and plunges a hypodermic into Do's arm.
"He's already unconscious," Billy shouts at her.
But the nurse, adrenaline exhausted, backs into a bed and leans there, the aftermath too queasy for words. Security steps away from Do. Their arms are still ready for a lurc
h, like Do could be a madman in a movie and a final jolt is coming, time slowly giving way to the fluid on their hands and the fears of some kind of contamination, their heaving chests slumping into the fatigue of their own thoughts. Lannigan goes weeping into the bathroom, shuts the door, the nurse and security surprised by his spryness, considering his obvious wounds. Billy looks down at Do, poor Do a mantra in his head. His nose bleeds, his upper lip swells. His eyes are thankfully closed. Down lower, his penis rests against a mound of pubic hair like a gift from a forlorn lover. Poor Do. Billy goes to his bed, rips away the top sheet. Do covered seems to break the room's hush.
"What happened?" Nurse Clifford/George asks, shaken.
Security huddles amongst themselves, motherfuck blooming from the middle.
"What happened?" Nurse Clifford/George asks again.
Billy crouches down near Do. Touch his head, Billy thinks, comfort him, he thinks, stop thinking, he thinks, now kneeling, now thinking about acts of sweetness and how they might be portrayed, a hand caressing hair, a whisper of you'll be all right, a pillow crafted from lap. Poor Do.
In the bathroom a shower hisses.
Two orderlies arrive, a gurney on the way. There's no need to force Billy aside; he backs away accordingly. And soon, Dr. Honeysack is on the scene, "Jesus Christ," on his lips.
On the radiator by the window the Bible rests.
10:16 A.M. "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me," the time in Luke, no help, Billy thinks, closing the book and watching Do being lifted onto a gurney.
34
DO GONE, Lannigan leaves soon after. "I thought this would be a casual two-week gig," he tells Billy as he packs up. "Get out of the city during the height of the summer and do my thing and get paid decently. I didn't sign up for blinding." Lannigan shudders, balls his hands into blunted fists. No more Voltimand, now he's Lady Macbeth with eyes red-rimmed. "Shaving my entire body was my own stupid idea, but poking a guy's eyes out, that I never intended. What was he thinking?" Billy shrugs no idea. "I mean that must've killed. I could feel his eyeballs kind of roll against my—fucking awful. And my goddamn fingernails. Why was I growing them long?" Lannigan zips up his bag like quick stitching on a scar. "I don't need this in my life right now, the sight of that, that memory, that sensation. He must've been nuts. Did you see him when he was laid out on the ground?" Billy nods. "He almost looked content. I never thought my body would become an instrument for something like that. I can still feel it on my fingers, you know. Christ, he was strong. I couldn't pull away. I tried." Lannigan's bag thuds from bed to floor. "I'm gone." He gives Billy a wave instead of a handshake. His face seems shuttered and newly mournful, as if the marquee of Brad Lannigan, the show, is no longer running, Billy's, "So long," one more spray of graffiti on the stage door. "I hope he's all right," Lannigan says before leaving. "I mean I hope he can still see. Do you think so? I'm doubting it after what I, yeah, awful. Not my fault. Drug must've been doing something crazy in his head. I just hope he's all right. I wonder where they've put him."
This is the question Billy poses to Dr. Honeysack after Honeysack calls him into his office for a little talk.
"Who?" asks Honeysack, frazzled.
"John Rami."
"Oh, him. Terrible what happened. Certainly unexpected. We sent him to the hospital and they're keeping him under observation. The eye is a fairly resilient organ. He'll probably recover his sight, or some of it, at least. But we paid him in full and we'll pick up his hospital bill and maybe cover any other counseling that might be required. But whatever happened to him happened on his own accord, that psychotic break or whatever, that was his own thing. Now on to—"
"How can you say that?" Billy interrupts. "Of course your drug was responsible. In fact, I thought you guys would've called off the whole study after an incident like that."
"Not my drug, not my study. I want to be clear about that."
"But your company's."
Dr. Honeysack levels his eyes on the real world lingering just to the right of Billy's shoulder. "He was on placebo, okay. Once a volunteer washes, we access their file and check their dose just in case, so we can anticipate other possible reactions within the test group. John Rami was on placebo. He was taking sugar pills."
"Placebo?"
"So we're in the clear," Honeysack says.
"You know what 'placebo' means in Latin?"
"No. And I don't care."
" 'I shall please,'" Billy says. "It's vespers for the dead."
"Oh," Honeysack says without interest.
"Why the fuck would you people use that word for a sugar pill?"
"Don't be mad at me. You think I came up with the word?"
"Placebo isn't nothing," Billy says.
"Hey, but suggestion can only go so far," Honeysack claims. "Our hands are clean in this matter, legally. John Rami had a preexisting condition, a mental crack that after nineteen years finally broke. Maybe we were a catalyst, but you can't prosecute a catalyst."
"Yes you can," Billy tells him. "A shove is a catalyst."
"The behavior was his own."
" 'Placere,' to please. He was under the influence of—"
"Nothing," Honeysack says. "He was under the influence of influence. I also accessed your file so I could sleuth your status, and you're on placebo as well." Billy is disappointed but not surprised; all of his side effects seem so trivial, like an overactive imagination. "Brad Lannigan," Honeysack continues. "Also on placebo. Never would you find three roommates on placebo. It simply wouldn't happen. So I'll tell you what I think, and I'll tell you because I want you to trust me. What's going on here is something called a calibration study. A calbrat. Roughly every five years we have one and they help determine the effect of environment on the normal population. It's like weighing the container before putting in the contents. Calbrats give us a sense of the adverse effects of just living here for a few weeks. We get a baseline of stress and its manifestations, usually constipation, lethargy, coldlike symptoms, sore throat, sniffles, the stuff that always shows up regardless of the drug. But sometimes in these calbrats we study suggestion. Personally, I'm not a fan, not a fan of any kind of calbrats. They're a waste of time and resources. At the end of the day a regular study can divine real side effects from imagined side effects by simply crunching the placebos. Anyway, nevertheless, Hargrove Anderson takes great pride in their calbrats. It's a marketing gimmick. They load maybe ten, fifteen percent of the study group with actors and these actors perform the expected adverse events to gauge the effect of proximity on placebo. Quantifiable, I'm not sure. Sexy promotional tool, perhaps. But they claim to get a reliable percentage of unreliability in an average study, placebo or nonplacebo."
"Actors?" Billy says.
"Not always the greatest actors either. I've witnessed some horrible side effects."
"Was Lannigan one of these actors?"
"I have no idea. For the sake of double-blindness, I'm out of the loop. I should say, this is just a guess, but it's an educated guess."
"So nobody's on anything?" Billy asks.
"In my opinion."
"So whatever we've been feeling these two weeks has been phony."
"Not phony," Honeysack says. "Just free-floating."
Billy shakes his head, half-pleased, half-depressed. "So we're the assholes who get high on oregano, drunk on grape juice. We can't even suffer legitimately."
"But the conclusions are as important as any real study. Or at least some people think so." Honeysack leans forward, as if the air is clearer below this innocuous conversational smoke. "But that's not why I want to talk to you. I want to talk about something else."
"What's that?"
"We have a window."
"A window?"
"A window of opportunity. A very small window but a window nonetheless."
"What kind of window?"
"For us to do something."
"Us?"
&n
bsp; "If you're game."
"Is this for your deep-freeze study thing?"
Honeysack frowns. "That's not what we're calling it."
"Do you have a name yet?"
"Not yet. But we have an opening—"
"A window."
"—to test our work."
"To preemptively kill someone before they die."
"In a matter of speaking."
"Manner," Billy says.
"Manner?"
"Yeah. In a manner of speaking, as a matter of fact."
Honeysack grimaces.
"So what are you proposing?" Billy asks.
"What an idiot, of course manner"
"Do you want me to get into a bad car accident or something?"
"The trauma itself isn't necessary."
"Oh."
"We'd like to prove our thesis before they drop our research and take the write-off. 'It's a good idea impossible to execute' is what they've told us. Trauma care will always insist on the best possible treatments before our experimental procedure can be attempted, and as a matter of last resort, our work will fail more often than not. It needs to get in early and take hold in order to slip the patient into this hypothermic chrysalis."
"To buy some time."
"Exactly, then the ER can determine with a bit more leisure the best course of action. Problem is, we've come up with a breakthrough that can't be tested properly. We can't use it because we need the proof and we can't get the proof because we can't use it. The danger in field-testing this thing without informed consent is that if it doesn't work, then hospitals will get sued. We can show eighty percent success in animal studies but animals don't have lawyers. But we have a window," Honeysack tells Billy again. "And we have discretionary R&D money left over, and we have access to the proper equipment, and we have a moment where nobody's looking, and hopefully, we have you."
Billy smiles. "So you want to use me."
Honeysack glances down like his lap is vibrating. "Yeah."
A skid of unease in his stomach, thoughts locking up on slippery desire, if all this talk should be acted upon for what? the dubious hope of self-transubstantiation, his own flesh becoming his own flesh? or if he should turn away and apologize to Honeysack for words once again said without meaning, Billy, unsure, asks, "What would you do to me?"
The Normals Page 29
