The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  Dorry turned her back to them. She walked toward the fence. Her flesh quavered with each step. Her skin sagged. The backs of her knees, her calves, were mottled blue.

  Dorry reached the chain-link fence. She tossed her nightdress over the top so it covered the barbed wire. The white nightdress rested on the top like snow covering a hedge.

  Pepper watched her, like all the others, absolutely smacked.

  He’d been so surprised by her actions that he left Dorry’s envelope behind when he walked up to the windows with everyone else. It lay curled into a tube on the tabletop.

  She’s making a jailbreak, Pepper thought. Then he felt slightly angry. She stole my fucking idea!

  Clio finally noticed the atmosphere in the lounge. She turned away from the intractable Mr. Mack, the impassive Frank Waverly, and saw all the patients gathered at the windows. When she joined them, she saw Dorry climbing the chain-link fence.

  Actually, Dorry was already at the top.

  A rush and a push and she’d be on the other side.

  “Oh, my good Jesus,” Clio muttered.

  “Code two! Northwest Five!” Rudy shouted seeing Dorry. Loud enough that Dr. Anand almost heard him, and Dr. Anand was four miles away, at home. “Code two! Northwest Five!”

  The rest of the night staff, an orderly and another nurse, scrambled from the station. Clio pushed her way through the crowd of patients, trying to reach the door that would get her outside. But the patients? They didn’t part for her. Their loyalties were split. They’d been trained, and medicated, for maximum docility, but despite all this, they remained willful human beings. If Dorry wanted out and had the fire to make the climb, then let her go.

  But when Dorry reached the top of the fence, she didn’t hop over. Instead, she perched herself up there, in a crouch, like a gargoyle at the top of a building. Despite the nightdress the barbed wire was digging into her soles, but her face showed no pain. No exhaustion. No worry. Dorry had balanced herself in that crouched position and then, even more remarkable, she stood.

  Because it was night, the dull silver fence was practically invisible, so the old woman seemed to be floating eight feet above the concrete court.

  Dorry levitated.

  More than a few of the witnesses would remember the moment that way.

  The other staff members reached the lounge. They pulled patients aside. Rudy fussed with his keys, trying to find the right one for the door. But he had fallen into a panic, and his fingers wouldn’t work. Even when he found the right key, it didn’t help. Each time Rudy tried to slide the key in the lock, he lost his aim. He was just stabbing at it, grunting with frustration. Clio, try as she might, couldn’t get Rudy to step aside and let her open it.

  Dorry scanned the lounge until she found Pepper’s flabbergasted face. She smiled, as tenderly as when she’d given him the tour of New Hyde.

  Dorry mouthed one word to him.

  Rest.

  She took a step forward, as if she was just walking down the sidewalk. One foot out and she plunged. It wasn’t that far to fall. About eight feet.

  Dorry landed on the side of her head. Her neck bent so hard, so fast, that for a moment her ear touched her elbow.

  Then her body smacked flat on the concrete. She shivered once.

  Rudy finally got the door open.

  Three staff members ran out to Dorry’s body while Clio stayed in the lounge and used her cell phone to call the trauma unit.

  The patients could not be ushered back to their rooms, no matter what the staff threatened. They wouldn’t stop staring at the old woman’s body. Her head had come to rest in a cluster of old stubbed cigarettes.

  Before the crash cart arrived, Doris Walczak bled to death.

  34

  “WHAT THE FUCK is wrong with you people?”

  Pepper and Loochie sat quietly. They didn’t give an answer. And with good reason. This wasn’t meant as a question.

  “You look like the rest of us, you were born just like the rest of us, but spend a few hours around you and it becomes obvious. You are not like the rest of us.”

  Still, Pepper and Loochie stayed silent.

  “I’m not even going to play games anymore. Pretend you’re just ‘different.’ We’re all special and wonderful in our special wonderful goddamn way. It’s a different ability not a disability. You don’t suffer from an illness, just an otherness. I mean, what does that even mean?! Well, forget it. I’m just going to say this because I need to say this. Out loud. To your faces. There is something wrong with you. You people are fucking crazy.”

  Pepper and Loochie shifted in their chairs, not sure if they were supposed to laugh.

  “I know that seems like a joke, since we’re here in a mental hospital. But it’s not a joke. You are terrible people. And honestly. Truly. Sometimes I want to kill you.”

  Now everyone in the room, three bodies sat quietly. The last sentence filled the space like poison gas.

  “Yes. Good. Fine. I said it. There are times when I go to bed and pray, please, God, just let me wake up to find out that every mental patient in the world has died. And I don’t even believe in God! Every day I look at your fat, ugly faces and I wish I could slap each one of you. I know it’s supposed to be the medication that makes you obese or slow or dazed or incoherent, but I don’t blame the medication. Look what it has to work with! Brains so warped, so poorly wired, that nothing will ever fix you.”

  Pepper and Loochie were wondering when this would end. How long were they expected to just sit here and listen.

  “People who have never been around you can talk and talk. I can’t think how many times I’ve been at a dinner with my wife and someone will start telling me about the evils of the mental-health profession. And when they’re done lecturing me, I ask them what the hell they know about it, and they tell me they read some damn book! Or they listened to a story on goddamn NPR! Well fuck them and fuck you!”

  And with that, Dr. Anand ran out of breath.

  He sat behind his desk, in his office, heaving. His brown face had gone red. (Which made it look sort of chestnut, really.) He’d risen from his chair as he ranted. Now he plopped back down and the cushion of his chair let out a sigh, as if even the furniture was fed up.

  It was late morning, April 16. Dorry had killed herself the night before.

  Dr. Anand’s “office” was another repurposed room on Northwest 1. The trio sat there, listening to the clock on the wall. The second hand clucked as it spun, and now it was the loudest thing in the room.

  Doris Walczak’s body had finally been wheeled out of Northwest only hours ago. Off to the Rose Cottage. Dr. Anand had been called after she was pronounced dead. He’d come to the unit at four a.m. He’d been in this office for the last seven hours, interviewing patients.

  The man wore a different pair of glasses than usual. These frames were metal and old and lopsided. The rubber guards on the ends of both arms (called temple tips) were worn down. Dr. Anand had a habit of using the ends to dig into his ears when they itched. Over the years they’d gone white-ish. These were not Dr. Anand’s professional pair, but he’d been so tired when he was called that he put on the wrong ones. It was as if he’d forgotten to put on his professional face. So he’d shown up as Samuel Anand, husband and father, who owned a two-family house in Rego Park. That’s the man who sat down with Pepper and Loochie in his office. And because he was tired he’d said way too much.

  Dr. Anand leaned forward in his knockoff Aeron office chair, until his head touched the desktop. It looked like the man had fallen asleep. Pepper and Loochie looked at each other. Loochie still wore that damn towel on her head, which had been the last straw for Dr. Anand when he saw them walk in.

  Pepper raised one hand to jostle the doctor, but then Dr. Anand’s shoulders trembled. They watched him a moment longer and that’s when they realized the man was crying.

  Weeping.

  Well, now what?

  Pepper brought his raised hand back down to hi
s lap and looked behind him at the room door, wishing some other staff member—a trained therapist perhaps—would come in here and take over. But that didn’t happen.

  So Loochie reached across the desk. She patted the top of the man’s bushy head.

  “Don’t cry, Dr. Sam.”

  Pepper was surprised to hear Loochie’s charitable tone. But Loochie’s touch, Loochie’s tenor, only wrecked the man even more.

  “Don’t cry, Dr. Sam.”

  This time, Loochie mushed the doctor’s scalp. And her voice lost some of its kindness. The first time, it was like Loochie wanted to make him feel a little better but by the second, it was like she couldn’t believe that he, of all people in this building, was the one most in need of support. Dorry and Coffee (and Sam) were dead. Glenn’s larynx had been crushed. Loochie’s hair had been torn out. Pepper had spent weeks in manacles, with Dr. Anand’s tacit approval. So who ought to be in tears right then? Dr. Sam? Really?

  While Loochie might’ve had a reason for her righteous indignation, Pepper’s perspective differed. He was forty-two to Loochie’s nineteen. At nineteen, the world seems so simple. This is because nineteen-year-olds have it almost completely wrong. Pepper knew differently. Who had a right to a few tears just then? How about every single one of them? Dr. Sam, too.

  Dr. Anand pulled his head up. His eyes were wide and wild.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t believe I just said all that.”

  Dr. Anand took off his glasses, almost slipped one temple tip into his itchy ear. But he stopped and laughed at himself when he realized which glasses he’d worn to work. He spoke to Pepper and Loochie more evenly now.

  “You know how many of us started out together at New Hyde?” he asked. “I’m a forensic psychiatrist. There were three of us when I first arrived. I’m the only one left. I had friends who worked in other departments, not just the psychiatric unit, and do you know where ninety-five percent of them are now? They’re in private practice, or they work for a private hospital, or they went into research. They’re almost all gone, and I stayed. I don’t want to be applauded for that, but I don’t want to be punished, either.”

  Pepper cleared his throat. “We’re not …”

  Dr. Anand had regained his professional authority. He raised his hand to quiet Pepper.

  “I’ve spent years lobbying my superiors for more funds. More staff. Better oversight. I’ve spoken with politicians. I’ve tried the press. I’ve gone to the community-board meetings. No one could ever tell me why the funding never materialized. I mean never. Do you know what Govenor Pataki did to our services when he was governor? The man butchered us.”

  Dr. Anand sat back in his chair. He looked at the ceiling.

  “One day the truth came to me. A wise man once said that every system is designed to give you the results you actually get. If you understand that, you’ll see that this system is working.”

  “For some people,” Pepper said.

  Dr. Anand shook his head emphatically. “No. Wrong. The system is working exactly right for those it was intended for. That’s why it hasn’t been fixed. Because it isn’t broken!

  “Can you imagine anything more terrible? Doesn’t it hurt? I love being an American and I know it hurts me. I mean, New Hyde’s board knows we’ve got trouble with patients in Northwest. People hurting themselves, even dying. And what’s their solution? Equator Zero! Do you know what that program actually does?!”

  Dr. Anand clapped his hands and glared at them, but they didn’t have any idea what Equator Zero was. Dr. Anand said, “The system is working and it hates us.” He shook his head and looked at his empty, open hands. “Sometimes I can see why people believe in the Devil.”

  Dr. Anand’s cheeks drooped, his mustache sagged.

  “But it can’t just be terrible and that’s that,” Pepper said. “Even on a sinking ship people still want to try to get out, to survive.”

  “And you’ll be the one to save them, is that right?” Dr. Anand asked sarcastically. “You want to know your diagnosis? I finally figured it out.”

  “I don’t want to hear that.”

  Dr. Anand jabbed his finger in the air after each word. “Narcissistic. Personality. Disorder.”

  He grinned at Pepper, but it wasn’t pleasant. “You’re going to get a lot of people hurt with your delusions of grandeur, Pepper.” He dropped his hand onto the table. “Maybe you already have.”

  Behind them, the office door opened. Scotch Tape peeked in. “Dr. Anand?”

  “What is it, Clarence?”

  Scotch Tape jerked his head backward. “Cops is here.”

  Dr. Anand pushed his glasses up with the knuckle of his pointer finger. “Okay,” he said. “Tell them to give me two minutes. I’m not done here.”

  Behind Scotch Tape, the squawk of a police radio made everyone in the room jump. Scotch Tape’s head pulled back and the door opened wider. A cop stood there now, bulky and short. If he’d been out of uniform, you might’ve taken him for a funny guy; he had the build of a neighborhood comedian. The kind who taunts people and causes fights. In uniform, the same dimensions made the man seem petty and easily offended.

  “Why don’t you talk to me right now?” the cop said. He had his hand on his police radio as if that were the handle of his gun.

  Dr. Anand stood right up. Much to the surprise of Loochie and Pepper.

  Dr. Anand walked over to the officer, and the officer said, “We can talk in the hall. I don’t care.”

  The doctor looked back at Pepper and Loochie, narrowing his eyes. He tried to guess which would result in greater humiliation: ushering Pepper and Loochie out of the room, perhaps having to fuss with them about it (in front of this bossy cop), or just stepping into the hall as if following a command, here on his own unit. Which promised to wound his pride more? Dr. Anand stepped out into the hall and pulled the door three-quarters closed behind him, but held on to the doorknob. The doctor and cop had their conversation out there. Pepper heard their voices but couldn’t make out their words.

  He looked at Loochie.

  “Narcissist,” she teased.

  He looked away from her. Could already imagine the time (how much time?) on the unit and all the days and weeks and years (decades?) when she’d whisper that word to him and it would be part of their secret language, a joke between lifers, and he despaired.

  He scanned Dr. Anand’s desk. He heard the officer raise his voice, shouting to another cop there in the hall. Dr. Anand had been speaking with patients for hours, saving Pepper and Loochie for last. Was he trying to get the others to pin the blame for Dorry on them? On him? (Narcissist.) Pepper might’ve continued thinking this way if his eye hadn’t spied one particular device there on Dr. Anand’s desk.

  Dr. Anand’s office phone.

  They’d removed the device from the nurses’ station because patients regularly gathered there. But who would’ve thought to do the same in here, the doctor’s inner sanctum? Pepper didn’t hesitate.

  “Loochie,” he said. “Will you do me a favor?”

  She turned in her chair. “Why should I do anything for you?”

  “It’ll piss off Dr. Anand.”

  A grin tugged at Loochie’s lips, there under her towel. “Tell me.” She listened.

  Pepper whispered, “Will you shut the door and keep them out?”

  “That’s going to get us in some shit,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  Loochie grabbed the towel and pulled it tight around her scalp, tying it up as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. It was a surprise for Pepper to see her face again, unobstructed. To be reminded that he had just talked a child into committing another infraction.

  Loochie stood up and jiggled her head from side to side. Limbering up. Then she picked up her chair with one easy motion and walked right up to the three-quarters closed office door. She kicked that bad boy closed.

  Dr. Anand still had his hand on the knob, so when it slammed, he yelped
with surprise. The cop next to him watched this in dumb paralysis. The door shut and they heard something jostling on the other side.

  “They’re locking you out?” the cop chided.

  Dr. Anand reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out his set of keys. “The door only locks with one of these.”

  But Loochie hadn’t tried to lock it. She’d wedged her chair under the handle and braced her shoulder against the door. A makeshift barricade.

  Pepper didn’t waste the opportunity. He jumped from a seated position and onto Dr. Anand’s desk. It didn’t even seem like he rose to his feet. One moment he sat and the next he flew. Landing on top of Dr. Anand’s paperwork with his big boots.

  “That was pretty good,” Loochie said, admiringly.

  “Lucretia!” Dr. Anand shouted from the other side. “Open this door!”

  The cop’s police radio frazzled and bleeped. The cop said, “This is a violation, miss. Miss, you can’t do this.”

  “A violation of what law?” Loochie said through the door. “You name the law I’m breaking.”

  The cop said, “Unlawful trespass.”

  “Dr. Sam invited me into his office!”

  The cop was quiet a moment. “Just open the goddamn door, miss.”

  One of them rattled the doorknob. Not with any force. Just testing. Loochie had her right shoulder against the door. She grabbed the knob with her left and held it tight.

  Pepper picked up the phone. He held the receiver to his ear.

  Loochie said, “You have to dial pound-nine-three first.”

  Pepper was surprised that Loochie remembered what Dorry told Coffee on that Saturday night, but, of course, she’d been there, too.

  Pepper dialed the code first and then the ten-digit number Coffee had written on the last page of his binder. By now Pepper had memorized it.

  Someone in the hall heaved against the door. The sound was loud enough, the force heavy enough, that it had to be the cop or maybe Scotch Tape. Loochie didn’t believe Dr. Anand had that much gunpowder in his shell.

  No more begging. It was time for battering.

  But Loochie held steady.