“You remember Roxanne? The motorcycle mechanic in Dime Box?”
“Horst’s leather-tit girl with the laugh?”
“She’s managing the P.I.P. home in Texas. Nine acres outside of Old Dime Box. It’s only been open to guests for three months but it’s already getting popular.”
Doc P. and Chick were on their way over so I went into the security room. I arranged myself on the stool and tried breathing through my mouth to dilute the medicinal smell.
Doc P. was sitting so straight that her plump white spine never touched the back of the dark padded visitor’s chair. Chick was lolling on the carpet with one shoe untied and both socks crumpled down. A small pencil stood on its pointed tip on his bent knee. The pencil rocked steadily like a metronome, broke rhythm for a tiny jig, and then lapsed into a four-four waltz in the space of a thumbnail on his denim-covered knee.
Arty leaned forward against his desk and examined Chick thoughtfully. Arty in his grey vest, Arty in his white collared shirt and black silk tie. Arty with his slim fin bones touching the gleaming wood of the desk. Arty with his pure round skull clearly visible beneath the skin and a blue vein ticking above his ear. He spoke tenderly to Chick.
“Dr. Phyllis tells me that you aren’t happy about my plan for the twins.”
Chick’s eyes flicked briefly away from the dancing pencil to Arty’s face, then back to the pencil. Arty lowered his own eyes.
“Tell me about it, Chick.”
Doc P., with her white-gloved hands asleep in her big lap, blinked calmly at the wall behind Arty and sat very straight in her chair. The pencil fell off Chick’s knee to the carpet. Chick sat up and hugged his knees.
“Not good. Not good, Arty. You know.”
Arty’s face was hot and still with knowing.
“If you do that,” Chick stared, amazed, as though he had just discovered a wonder, “I’m not even going to like you, Arty!”
What amazed Chick was no surprise to Arty. Not being liked was familiar ground and all his usual contrivances went into gear. His face slid smoothly into a cartoon of sympathy.
“Why, Chicken Licken, my boy, that’s O.K. That’s quite all right. Of course your little sensitivities are offended. You can’t help being a norm, and I sympathize. But it doesn’t matter at all. No, it doesn’t matter whether you like me or not, my Chick. Because I like YOU!”
After Chick and Doc P. left I asked Arty what the hell he was letting Doc P. do to the twins anyway. He answered in an offhand, easy way that she was just going to “get rid of the parasite.” I assumed he meant an abortion and that it was killing the baby that bothered Chick.
I told him about Chick feeling the baby reach out. Arty leaned back in his chair and gave me a dose of silence. When I remember it now I think he was laughing inside as he watched me argue in a half-assed and maybe halfhearted way on the wrong track entirely.
“Go away, Oly,” he said. He turned to the pile of papers on his desk with an exhausted look designed to put me lower than slug slime. It made me mad.
“Are you swallowing your own line of shit, Arty Binewski? Aren’t you forgetting that you’re just a two-bit freak with a gimmick?”
“Get out,” he ripped back at me.
I went.
Chick explained sadly that he could not talk to me about the plan for the twins. Could not and would not. “You can make me cry,” he said, “but you can’t make me talk about that.” Ashamed, I left him alone.
Arty wouldn’t let me in for a solid week. Miz Z. or one of her apprentices would come to the door and tell me, “Arturo does not wish to see you.”
The guards wouldn’t let me see the twins during that time. When I brought their meals, Ike or Mike, or whoever was perched in front of the twins’ door, would take the tray from me and give me the dirty tray from the last meal. The notes that I slipped under the plates, and once actually into a turkey sandwich, were methodically searched for and found before my eyes — handed back to me without a word. One of the Arturan ladies was inside with the twins. The guard would knock and the ghostie would open the door and trade trays.
Finally I wrote “Uncle” on a piece of paper and gave it to the novice who answered Arty’s door. She came back and told me to go in and make sure the twins were eating and not flushing their food.
Arty let me do chores again. He didn’t talk to me, though. He was completely taken up with his ass-sucking followers. I didn’t try to push him. It had struck me hard that he didn’t need me, that he could shut me out permanently and completely and never miss me. He had all those others dancing for him. For me there was only Arty.
He didn’t need us.
I watched that message sink deeper and deeper into the twins. Elly had always known it but it was news to Iphy. Not that they talked to me. They didn’t.
I tried to warn them at first. “Listen,” I begged, “he’s planning an abortion.”
They looked at me. Elly barked. A harsh mock of a laugh. “Fat chance,” she said. That was the last she spoke to me.
I was the enemy, or as close to the enemy as they were able to get for the time. They were silent when I was there. Elly never spoke. Iphy said “please” and “thank you” when I brought food and did the cleaning for them. They never ate in front of me. They were getting very thin. Their eyes had a bludgeoned depth, burrowing into purple caverns in their faces. They didn’t dress. They wouldn’t bathe. I didn’t tell Arty. I didn’t want to bring more trouble on them. As far as I could tell, all they did was sit up against the pillows in their big bed all day. They didn’t read or practice or study. But I saw knowledge grow in Iphy’s face and harden in Elly’s. They knew more than I did.
I never thought about how wide the twins would be, lying side by side. A regular stretcher would leave their heads and shoulders dangling off the sides. Doc P. sent four novices to take a rear door off a van.
We were strapping them onto the door when Elly opened her eyes and looked at me. A fearful question pushed her dark eyebrows high. Her pupil contracted in the purple iris but her lids were heavy and sank, pulling her grooved forehead smooth as they closed. Doc P. bent over to touch Elly’s throat with a gloved hand.
“I wonder,” I piped nervously, “if this is the same door you did that horse on.”
Doc P.’s white-wrapped head swiveled toward me like a turret gun.
“You remember that horse with the rotten feet?”
She nodded at the novices. With one white-robed man at each corner of the door, they moved forward. They had to tip the door onto its side to get it out through the door. The twins hung slack, hair trailing, as they left the van.
Arty was outside, waiting in his chair with a guard beside him in the dark.
“Wait. Put the light on them.”
A flashlight clicked a cool white cone into the blackness. Arty leaned forward to look at the sleeping twins.
“What’s wrong?” His voice was harsh. “They look terrible! They’re sick!”
“What did you expect?” snapped Doc P. “They’ve been locked inside for months!”
“But their hair. They could bathe.” He sounded shrill and fragile. The novices looked at him anxiously.
“Arty.” I touched his shoulder and his face turned away from the sprawled sleepers. The light went out and then reappeared further on. Doc P. led the jostling novices down the ramp. Arty’s chair followed them and I went along.
We waited outside while they tipped the twins again to slide them through the surgery door. Doc P. stepped down for a last word.