The period necessary to obtain a cure varied with the number of intakes from the outside. The more people sent in from the courts, the more people became sane. Dr. Ghope and his colleagues did not want crowded wards, which meant trouble, budget problems, and more work. The only restriction on this system was the notoriety of the patient. They knew better than to let an infamous ax murderer out on the street while the memory of the crime was still fresh. They did this as infrequently as they could, but after all, they were only human. In short, the hospital was part of the criminal justice system.
Dr. Ghope consulted Louis’s case file. He read what Dr. Werner had written. It was always a pleasure to read Dr. Werner’s notes. Such a learned man! And his referrals seemed never to give much trouble. He, Ghope, had cured so many of them. Dr. Ghope looked across his desk at the thin, yellowish-skinned man slumped in the plastic chair. He certainly didn’t look violent now. Perhaps he would be an easy cure.
“How are you feeling?” he asked again.
Louis raised his eyes. “Feel fine. Sleepy.”
“Excellent! Well, let us see. Mandeville, your name is? What an unusual name! Yes, indeed. Well, Mandeville, have you experienced any delusions this week? Have you acted out?”
“Wha’?”
“Excellent. First-rate! Any problems with your medication?”
“Medi’shum.”
“Oh, very good. Very good, indeed. Well, Mandeville, you seem to be progressing splendidly. Steady progress is our rule here, as you shall find.” Dr. Ghope made some notes with his fountain pen, capped the pen, replaced it in the breast pocket of his white lab coat and closed the folder. “I will see you next Thursday. Until then, please do continue your excellent progress,” he said, and rang the buzzer for the nurse to come and lead Louis away.
Louis was in the Arts and Crafts room, coiling a clay candy dish, trying to remember what he had to do that was important. His dosage had been reduced over the last few months, but he still felt like there was a concrete block tied to his higher mental functions. Louis was extremely sensitive to drugs, which was why he had never used any himself on the outside; and of course nobody paid enough attention to him on the inside to find this out. Had he not met Fallon he might have continued inexorably declining into carrothood, and so truly have reached that state-for which the hospital had been designed-of not being a danger to himself or others. He stopped coiling the clay and glanced idly around the big, light-filled room. Most of the inmates were busy with clay or rubber band and wooden toy boats. In the corner, by the window, one man was painting at a large easel. Louis wandered over to see what he was doing.
“Holy shit!” said Louis, when he saw the painting.
“Ah, a connoisseur,” said the man, with a friendly smile. He was a big, soft, moon-faced man, pasty of complexion, with a hooked nose, thick moist lips, longish, thinning black hair and a fringe of dark beard, like Henry VIII.
He held out a large, long-fingered hand, blackened with paint. “Robert Fallon,” he said. Louis shook the hand and said his name. He could not take his eyes off the painting. Its subject was a scene of sadistic pornography brilliantly executed, explicit, and suggestive at the same time. It was as full a realization of the lower reaches of the human spirit as Rembrandt or Monet were of the higher.
Louis watched Fallon paint for a while. Fallon didn’t mind. He enjoyed adulation. At one time Fallon was considered one of the most promising artists of his generation. Were it not for his unfortunate desire to rape, murder, and mutilate little girls-a desire to which he had given full vent some six years before in the art colony of Millbrook, New York-he might have continued as an ornament of the Manhattan salons forever. He had got himself put into Matteawan, after being arrested, by his version of the same scam Louis had used. He had just gone semi-catatonic and refused to admit that he remembered anything at all about the four little girls, the sink in the basement, the plastic bags, and the box of blood-clotted industrial razor blades.
The hospital was really his only choice, since he understood that his life span-had he been sent to Attica-would have been no more than a few weeks. Thugs have their standards, too. He was happy in the hospital, although, as the Millbrook Ripper, Fallon was on Dr. Ghope’s list of unreleasable inmates. He painted, he sold his paintings at premium prices to a small group of wealthy admirers, and saved his money in a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. One day he planned to escape and live out his days in a less effete country, perhaps in South America, where they still appreciated extraordinary men, and where little girls could be purchased like bananas.
The light began to fade and Fallon got ready to put away his work. As he cleaned his brushes he fixed his companion with his huge and shining blue eyes, and said, “You’re the shotgun artist, right?”
“What’re you talking about, shotgun artist?” said Louis coldly.
Fallon chuckled. “Hey, it’s OK. I know everything that goes on here. No, really, just making conversation-why should I care if you slaughter a hundred shopkeepers? Let me just finish up here and we’ll go into the lounge and have a nice chat.”
Louis let himself be towed by the big man into the day room. He had little enough will in any case, and the painter seemed to be the only inmate he had met so far who was not a zombie. He thought maybe Fallon would be able to help him remember what he had to do.
“Friend,” said Fallon, “the first thing is, we’ve got to get you off the dope. You see, decadent societies always try to clip the wings of their superior men. Three centuries ago it was the stake and torture. Now it’s tranquilizers. You understand what I’m saying? The sheep can’t handle wolves like us and they haven’t got the balls to kill us any more. So they send us to so-called hospitals to ‘cure’ us. And what’s the cure? Slow poison. Hey, you can barely understand what I’m saying, you’re so doped up. Listen, next time that asshole with meds comes by, do what I do. Give him a dumb smile, take the drink, hold it in your mouth, and then spit it out into some toilet paper. Here, take some of mine.”
Louis did as he was told. By that evening, his head was clearer. The feeling of being wrapped in a warm blanket was fading. The next day he spat out all three doses. The day after that, he remembered what he was supposed to do.
Elvis almost fell out of bed when he heard the voice on the phone. What made it especially unnerving was that the bed he was in belonged to the voice on the phone, as did, in a manner of speaking, the woman who shared it with him.
“Elvis, my man! How you doin’, bro? You comfortable an’ all?”
“Man? Hey, that really you, huh? Where you at, Man?”
“Where I at? Where the fuck you think I at, asshole? I’m in the goddam nuthouse, where I got to be to keep from goin’ to the slams for about a thousand years, cause goddam Snowball Walker snitched on my ass, instead of bein’ dead in his grave, where you was supposed to put him. Now what the fuck happened?”
Elvis explained about leaving the package in Room 10.
“You left the shit! Goddam, Pres! If I wanted to leave the fuckin’ package I coulda hired a goddam white man from the Railway Express Company to leave the package. You suppose to watch the mutha-fucka take the stuff. An’ since Snowball wasn’t there you didn’t get the damn paper with my phone number on it, did you? No, you sure as shit didn’t.