“Rights, huh,” Rainey said. “I got the right to some peace and fucking quiet. So sit down, and shut the fuck up.”
I screamed something. I’m not sure what it was-something with lots of four-letter words in it.
I managed to stop screaming just long enough to hear someone whispering.
Out there-out where Rainey was.
He’d ducked away to the left of the grill-I could hear a conversation going on. I couldn’t make out the words.
“Hey! Hey! Who’s that? Who you talking to, Rainey? Hey!”
More footsteps. The sound of cart wheels rolling on tile.
The doorknob jiggled, turned.
I instinctively backed away, edged closer to the wall.
Rainey and two orderlies in blue scrubs. They’d obviously been picked for their size and not their bedside manners. One of them had a syringe in his left hand.
“What’s that?” I said.
“What’s it look like?” Rainey said.
“I’m not taking a shot.”
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
“You’re committing a crime, don’t you get it? You’re going to jail.”
“Nah, I’m going home. After we put you to bed.”
“I’m not taking a shot.”
“You’re agitated, dude. Agitated people make me agitated.”
The orderly with the syringe in his hand looked Samoan, like one of those NFL fullbacks with a last name you can’t pronounce. He smiled and said, “Come here.”
“No thanks. I’m fine right here. Thanks anyway.”
“Look, man,” he said with weary exasperation. “We can do it hard or easy.”
“Okay-easy. Let me out of here, and I’ll go easy on you. Promise. On all of you. I understand. You’re taking orders. I get it. You’re orderlies; orderlies take orders. I’m not a patient. I’m a reporter. I’m doing a story.”
“Better spell my name right, bro,” the Samoan said. “It’s got eleven letters.”
“Name? Hey, I won’t mention your name. Just let me walk out of here and it’s all copacetic. It’s all cool.”
“You really want this?” Rainey said. “You want to be hog-tied, straitjacketed, fucked up? You want the whole shit storm?”
“Okay, fine, you win,” I said.
There was a slight space between the Samoan and the door, a crack of daylight a good running back might blow through like a category 4 hurricane.
“Can I roll up my own sleeve?” I said.
I hadn’t played football since childhood-three-on-three street ball where you had to keep one eye open for darting cars. I’d been considered shifty back then, a good thing on 167th Street even if it was a not-so-good thing later on in the newsroom.
I tried to look relaxed, resigned to my fate.
It’s hard to do with every muscle in your body quivering in alarm.
Agitated people made them agitated. Relaxed people made them relaxed. See. Rainey was already leaning back against the wall. The other orderly was leaving, no longer needed-gone. The Samoan folded his arms, like a patient husband waiting for his wife to vacate the dressing room so he can go home and watch the game.
“Which arm you guys want?” I asked.
“Your choice, bro,” the Samoan said.
“I’ll go left,” I said, “since I’m a righty,” starting to methodically roll up my sleeve.
One, two, three.
One, two, three.
Get off my old man’s apple tree…
Straight from 167th Street, Queens.
I ran to daylight.
Surprising them just enough to slip past the Samoan’s attempt at an arm tackle.
Fast enough to burst through the open door and into the hallway.
Cool enough to blow past a doctor/orderly/patient without stopping to register which.
Run, Forrest, run…
I might’ve made it. Really.
All the way to the elevator and down to the ground floor where I could’ve made a scene, could’ve said can you believe what these guys are trying to do to me, can you, where Major DeCola would’ve sent them scurrying back up the psych ward.
I might’ve, but I ran into a brick wall.
It was human.
THE SAMOAN MUST’VE GIVEN ME THE SHOT AFTER ALL.
When I woke, coughed, sputtered, opened my eyes, and looked, I was staring into a mirror. A funhouse mirror, where your reflection blurs like a rained-on watercolor, distorted enough to make you feel uncomfortably queasy.
My reflection was smiling at me, even though I was pretty certain I wasn’t smiling back.
That made me even queasier.
“Hello,” I said, my voice sounding as if it were coming through a bad cell phone connection. “Hello. Who are you?”
“You asked me that already,” the reflection said. “I’m a plumber, remember? I’m doing routine maintenance.” The same whistling falsetto I’d heard in my basement that day. Like a girl, Sam said.
He was still smiling at me.
You can’t touch me, that smile said. Can’t… can’t… can’t…
I couldn’t touch him.
I was lying down. My legs and arms were strapped tight.
“You followed us to that gas station,” I said, still in that strange, faraway voice. “You tracked my credit card receipts and you followed us.”
He laughed. “Credit card?” He shook his head. “Now that wouldn’t have been very efficient,” he said.
“You knew where we were? How?”
“You’re an investigative reporter. Figure it out.”
Like a dream.
“Why am I tied down?” I said.
“Oh, that,” he said. “You were resisting treatment.”
A birth defect, I thought, looking at his face. I’d imagined it was an accident-a horrible smashup where they couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It wasn’t. He had no scars. It was a malfunction in the manufacturing process. He’d come out this way.
“You were there at the gas station. I can’t figure it out,” I said.
“No?”
He put his hand by his ear and pantomimed something. We were playing charades.
Okay. Of course.
“My cell,” I said. “You used my cell phone.”
“I can’t comment. I mean, is this off the record? I wouldn’t want to be quoted or anything.”
“You triangulated my signal.”
They could do that now-satellites able to pinpoint your location to within six inches. You don’t have to be using your phone, either-it just has to be on. That’s how he was able to be right there. To follow us on the highway, then creep up to the gas station where we’d fallen asleep.
“You killed the clerk,” I said. “You cut out Dennis’s tongue.”
“Wow. When you put it like that, it sounds kind of mean.”
“Why? I was asleep. Why didn’t you just kill me?”
He giggled, said nothing.
“What do you want? What are you going to do with me?”
“I’m a plumber. Not a psych.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Of course not.”
“I know about Kara Bolka. I know about the 499th medical battalion. I know what happened to Littleton Flats.”
“Hell of a story, ain’t it?”
“If I know, if I figured it out, someone else will. Don’t you people get that? It won’t be just me. You can’t put the water back in the bottle. It’s spilled. It’s all over the fucking floor.”
“That’s what plumbers do. We fix leaks.”
“I’m the leak,” I said. Needles and pins. There were needles and pins in my legs. “You’re fixing me.”