Night Film: A Novel

by Marisha Pessl

  “Are they pimps, drug addicts, or working in the porn industry?”

  “Oh, no. I mean, I don’t know what they do during the day. They seem nice.”

  “What are their names?”

  She hesitated. “Louisa and Gustav.”

  Those were imaginary roommate names if ever I’d heard any. Living in New York for more than two decades, never had I once come close to meeting anyone with those names.

  I looked at my watch. I was out of time to babysit.

  “I have to leave for a doctor’s appointment,” I said. “So you’ll need to go. But we can talk tomorrow.”

  I collected her plate and coffee mug, Nora watching with wide eyes, and carried them to the kitchen, loading the dishwasher.

  “Thank you for the coffee,” she called out.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  There was a stretch of rather dubious silence.

  I was about to go check on her, but then heard her purse unzipping and zipping. She was packing up her things—thank Christ. But I knew this was buying me only a little time; she’d be back again tomorrow. The girl was like one of those tiny fish that swam relentlessly under a great white shark’s chin for miles. I’d have to phone some old contact, someone in one of the unions or in banking, twist his arm to get her gainfully employed twelve hours a day at some Capital One bank in Jersey City.

  “What’s Shandaken?” she abruptly shouted.

  “What?” I stepped out of the kitchen.

  “You have directions to a place in Shandaken, New York.”

  She was in the foyer, inspecting the folder containing the directions to Briarwood and my emails with the admissions director, which I’d put on the table next to the Whole Foods bag containing Ashley’s coat.

  “You’re getting a tour of the facility?” she asked, glancing up in amazement. “What facility?”

  I snatched the folder from her and, checking my watch—I was supposed to be on the New Jersey Turnpike ten minutes ago—I strode to the closet, grabbing my black jacket, pulling it on.

  “A mental hospital.” I moved back into the hall, switching off the lights.

  “Why do you want a tour of a mental hospital?”

  “Because I might admit myself. We’ll catch up tomorrow.” I grabbed the directions and Nora’s bony arm, escorting her to the front door and giving her a gentle push so she was launched outside, then stepped after her, locking the door.

  “You lied in that email,” she said. “You said your name’s Leon Dean.”

  “A typo.”

  “You’re going there to investigate Ashley.”

  I took off down the hall, Nora hurrying after me. “No.”

  “But you’re taking her coat. I should come.”

  “No.”

  “But I could be your daughter you’re thinking of admitting. I could play, like, a dark and brooding teenager. I’m really good at improv.”

  “I’m going there to get information, not play charades.”

  I stepped outside into the bright morning, holding the door for her—she had a fast, lopsided walk, though I couldn’t tell if it was scoliosis or a result of that leaden bag.

  “This place has the security of the Pentagon,” I said, jogging down the steps. “Over the years I’ve developed a method of interviewing that allows people to trust me. It’s because I work alone. Deep Throat never would have talked to Woodward if he’d been shadowed by a teenage Floridian.”

  “What’s Deep Throat?”

  I stopped dead, staring at her. She was legitimately puzzled.

  I took off again across the street. “You’ve at least seen the movie. All the President’s Men. Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman? You know who they are, don’t you? Or aren’t you aware of any movie stars older than Justin Timberlake?”

  “I know them.”

  “Well, they played Woodward and Bernstein. Legendary journalists who exposed Watergate. They forced a president of the United States to admit wrongdoing and resign. One of the most powerful acts of patriotism by two journalists in the history of this country.”

  “So you’ll be Woodward. And I’ll be Bernstein.”

  “That’s not—okay, yes, they were a team, but they each brought something substantive to the table.”

  “I can bring something to the table.”

  “Like what? Your deep knowledge of Ashley Cordova?”

  She stopped dead. “I’m coming,” she announced behind me. “Or I’ll call the hospital and tell them you’re a fake using a fake name.”

  I stopped in my tracks, turning around to survey her. There it was, that Teflon personality I’d gone mano-a-mano with at the Four Seasons. That was women for you—always morphing. One minute they were helpless, needing shelter and English muffins, the next they were ruthlessly bending you to their will like you were a piece of sheet metal.

  “So it’s blackmail.”

  She nodded, her stare fierce.

  I walked the remaining yards to my car, a dented silver 1992 BMW parked along the curb.

  “Fine,” I muttered over my shoulder. “But you’re staying in the car.”

  Nora, squeaking with excitement, hurried around to the passenger side.

  “You’ll do everything I say at all times.” I unlocked the trunk, shoved the Whole Foods bag inside. “You’ll be a silent operative with no personality. You’ll simply process and execute my orders like a machine.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  I climbed in, yanking on my seatbelt and starting the car.

  “I don’t want feedback. Or yammering. I don’t chit, and I sure as hell don’t chat.”

  “Okay, but we can’t leave yet.” She leaned forward, turning on the radio.

  “Why not?”

  “Hopper’s coming.”

  “No. He’s not. This isn’t a fucking fourth-grade class trip.”

  “But he wanted to meet up with us. You really hate people, huh?”

  I ignored that comment, inching out onto Perry, though a taxi barreling down the street behind me laid on the horn. I slammed on the brakes and was forced to retreat meekly back to the curb as a motorcade of cars passed, piling up at the light, trapping us in the space.

  “You remind me of this man back at Terra Hermosa.”

  “What the hell’s Terra Hermosa?”

  “A retirement community. His name was Hank Weed. At mealtimes he’d always take the good table by the window and put his walker against the empty seat so no one else could sit down and see the view. He died like that.”

  I didn’t answer, silenced by the sudden realization that I had absolutely no idea if any of what came out of this girl’s mouth was true. Maybe she was really good at improv. I couldn’t be certain she was nineteen or that her name really was Nora Halliday. Maybe she was like one of those sweaters with an innocent little thread hanging off of it: One pull, the whole thing unraveled.

  “Do you drive?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Give me your license.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to make sure there’s not an Amber Alert out for you. Or that you weren’t profiled on Dateline as some kind of tween criminal.”

  Smirking, she leaned forward, dug around in that hulking bag, removing a green nylon LeSportsac wallet, so stained and filthy it looked like it’d floated for a couple of years down the Nile. She flipped through a few snapshots encased in plastic—deliberately turning the wallet away so I couldn’t view them—and slipped out the license, handing it to me.

  In the picture she looked about fourteen.

  Nora Edge Halliday. 4406 Brave Lane. Saint Cloud, FL. Eyes: blue. Hair: blond. Born June 28, 1992.

  She was nineteen.

  I handed it back, saying nothing. Both Edge as a middle name and Brave Lane—not to mention the year of her birth, which was pretty much yesterday—were enough to render me mute.

  The light turned green. I put the car in drive, easing out.

  “If you want to wait for Hopper, be
my guest. I have work to do.”

  “But he’s here,” she yelped excitedly.

  Sure enough, Hopper was shuffling down the sidewalk in his gray coat. Before I could stop her, Nora reached over and repeatedly honked the horn. Seconds later, in a blast of cold air, cigarette smoke, and booze, Hopper collapsed in the backseat.

  “What’s up, cholos?”

  The kid was bombed again.

  I accelerated through the yellow light, speeding across Seventh Avenue. Hopper muttered something incomprehensible. A half-hour later he asked me to pull over on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike and got sick.

  It didn’t look like he’d been home all night; he was still wearing the white GIFFORD’S FAMOUS ICE CREAM T-shirt from yesterday. TRY OUR 13 HONEY-PIE FLAVORS! it whispered in faded letters. When he finished, he seemed to want to sit down on the guardrail and watch the traffic blasting inches from my car like cannonballs, so Nora climbed out to help him, guiding him back to the car. She did this with remarkable tenderness and care. I couldn’t help but sense she’d done such a thing many times before. For whom? The dead mother? The convict father possibly awaiting Old Sparky? Grandmother Eel Eye?

  Why the hell did she care about Ashley Cordova—about any of this? And Hopper—was a stuffed monkey anonymously mailed to him really why he chose to be with me on a Wednesday morning, not in bed with Chloe or Reinking or some other downtown girl reeking of cigarettes and indie bands?

  These two kids clearly knew a hell of a lot more than they let on. But if they were hiding something, I’d learn what it was soon enough. Secrets—even in hardened criminals, they were just air pockets lodged under debris at the bottom of an ocean. It might take an earthquake, or you scuba diving down there, sifting through the sludge, but their natural proclivity was always to head straight to the surface—to get out.

  Nora loaded Hopper into the back. He mumbled something as she removed his sunglasses, and then, stretching out across the seat with a boozy sigh, he slung his arm behind his head and conked out. Nora resumed scanning the radio. She stopped on a folk song—“False Knight on the Road,” read the display—and sat back, staring out the window at the ragged fields.

  The morning seemed to tiredly sponge off the sky, washing the road signs and windshields in dull, bathwater light as the rhythm of the highway thumped under the tires.

  I didn’t feel like talking, either. I was too surprised at where I found myself: with two total strangers, an assortment of stories behind us and who the hell knew what in front of us, but for the time being, our lives three frail lines running side by side.

  We made our way toward Briarwood.

  15

  “We don’t think of our guests as patients,” Elizabeth Poole told me as we strolled down the sidewalk. “They’re part of the Briarwood family for life. Now, tell me more about your daughter, Lisa.” She glanced back at Nora—known for the time being as Lisa—who’d fallen twenty paces behind us. “What year is she?”

  “She was a college freshman,” I said. “But she dropped out.”

  She waited for me to elaborate, but I only smiled and tried to look uncomfortable, which was easy.

  Elizabeth Poole was a short, plump woman in her fifties with such a sour expression I initially assumed she was sucking on some type of hard candy, only to realize as the minutes ticked by that expression showed no sign of subsiding. She wore high-waisted mom jeans, her thin brown hair slicked into a ponytail.

  Nora and I had left Hopper passed out in my backseat and found Poole’s office on the ground floor of Dycon, a redbrick building that housed Briarwood’s administration, which didn’t so much sit on the pristine hill as nail it down with long boxy annexes and gray tendrils of sidewalks. I’d taken just one look at Poole—then, as it jingled out from behind her desk, her snow-white, pink-barretted Maltese, Sweetie, who glided around her office like a tiny Thanksgiving Day parade float—and immediately wanted to call off our ruse.

  Making matters considerably worse was Nora’s acting ability—or alarming lack thereof.

  As we’d sat down, I’d explained that my daughter, Lisa, had disciplinary issues. Nora had grimaced and stared at the floor. I was sure the many hard, knowing looks Poole shot me were not compassionate but coolly accusatory, as if she knew my daughter was a sham. Just when I was certain she was going to order us off the premises, however, Poole—and panting, tingling Sweetie—had kick-started the tour, leading us out of Dycon and across Briarwood’s sprawling grounds.

  “What sort of security do you have in place?” I asked her now.

  Poole slowed to consider Nora again, who was glowering at the sidewalk (a look Sue Ellen gave Miss Ellie throughout season twelve of Dallas).

  “I’ll go over the specifics with you in private,” Poole said. “But in a nutshell, every patient is assigned a level of surveillance, which ranges from general observation, when the patient is checked by staff every thirty minutes throughout the day and night, to constant observation, when the patient must remain within arm’s length of a trained technician at all times and may use only a spoon at mealtimes. When she arrives, Lisa will be evaluated and assigned the appropriate level.”

  “Have there been any recent incidents of escape?” I asked.

  The question caught her by surprise. “Escape?”

  “Sorry. Don’t mean to make it sound like Alcatraz. It’s just, if Lisa sees an opportunity, she’ll make a run for it.”

  Poole nodded. If she was reminded of Ashley Cordova’s breakout, she gave no indication.

  “We have forty-six acres,” she said. “The perimeter is fenced in and secured with video surveillance. A twenty-four-hour detail at the gatehouse entrance monitors every vehicle entering or exiting.” She smiled thinly. “Patient safety is our biggest priority.”

  So that was the official statement on Ashley’s escape: It never happened.

  “The funny thing is,” she continued, “once people settle in it’s harder to get them to leave than stay. Briarwood is a sanctuary. It’s the real world that’s brutal.”

  “I can see that. This is a beautiful place.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  I smiled in agreement. As beautiful as an injection of morphine.

  A vast, immaculate lawn spanned out on either side of us, smooth, flat, and ruthlessly green. Far off to our right stood a massive oak tree, an empty black bench beneath it. It looked like the front of a condolence card. The grounds were eerily deserted, except for an occasional smiling nurse striding past us in purple pants with a matching festively patterned shirt—to distract you, no doubt, as she fed you your meds. Farther off, a bald man hurried purposefully between brick buildings.

  Though Poole had explained that at this hour everyone in the clinic—clinic seemed to be code for psych ward—was in a behavior therapy session, the place had a creepy, muzzled feel. Any second now, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a man’s gut-wrenching scream pierce the chirping birds and the breeze. Or to see one of those doors fly open—a door to one of the buildings Poole had expressly skipped on our tour; “Just another dormitory,” she’d said when I’d inquired what it was—and some patient in white pajamas come out, trying to make a run for it before he was tackled by a male nurse and hauled off to his electroconvulsive therapy session, leaving the landscape stiffly serene.

  “How many patients do you have?” I asked, glancing back at Nora.

  She was lagging even farther behind.

  “One hundred and nineteen adults between our mental health and substance abuse programs. That doesn’t include outpatients.”

  “And psychologists work closely with each person?”

  “Oh, yes.” She stopped walking to bend down and brush off a brown leaf that was stuck in Sweetie’s fur. “Upon admission, each resident is assigned a personal health-care team. That includes a physician, a pharmacologist, and a psychologist.”

  “And how often do they meet?”

  “It depends. Often daily. Sometimes twice daily.”<
br />
  “Where?”

  “In Straffen.” She pointed to our left at a redbrick building half concealed by pine trees. “We’ll head over there in a minute. First, we’ll take a look at Buford.”

  We veered off the path, heading toward a gray stone building, Sweetie trotting along right by my feet.

  “This is where residents dine and meet for extracurricular activities.” Poole moved up the steps, opening the wooden door ahead of me. “Three times a week we have professors from SUNY Purchase give talks in the auditorium on everything from global warming to endangered species to World War One. Part of our philosophy for healing is giving our patients a global perspective and a sense of history.”

  I nodded and smiled, looking over my shoulder to see where the hell Nora was. She’d stopped following us, standing back at the center of the lawn. She was shading her eyes, surveying something behind her.

  “I can see your trouble with her,” Poole said, following my gaze. “Girls can have a tough time at her age. Where’s Mrs. Dean in all of this, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “She’s out of the picture.”

  Poole nodded. Nora looked like she was debating making a run for it. But then she shuffled toward us with slumpy posture, stopping to give Poole a Dr. Evil look before skipping up the steps. Poole led us through the foyer, which smelled strongly of disinfectant, and into the dining hall. It was a large, sunlit room with round wooden tables, arched windows. A handful of female staff were busy arranging place settings.

  “This is where residents take all meals,” said Poole. “Obviously we promote physical health as well as mental, so the menu has a low-fat option, also vegetarian, vegan, and kosher. Our head chef used to work at a Michelin-star restaurant in Sacramento.”

  “When do I get to meet the people who live here so I know they’re not all psychotic?” asked Nora.

  Poole blinked in shock, glanced at me—I stared back sheepishly—and then, recovering, she smiled.

  “You won’t be meeting anyone today,” she said diplomatically, holding out an arm to usher us down the hall, as Sweetie floated along beside her, nails clacking on the floor. “But if you come, you’ll find the people here are as diverse as the people anywhere.”