"I'm supposed to take you to group."
Lem led me down to an airy dayroom. People in pajamas sat in slat-backed chairs. Wen was there, wearing a sweater with tiny felt animals sewn on it.
"My name is Wen," he said, "and I'm feeling what I'm feeling today."
I took a seat, looked around at all this pain, puff-eyed, in flame-retardant cotton.
There's an air hockey table in the dayroom, and when I'm not too busy feeling what I'm feeling, I'm taking Lem in three-out-of-fives for the day-old doughnuts Nurse Donald sneaks us from the cafeteria. Cudahy and I used to play on a table just like this one in his father's basement, until the Thornfield boys took a clawhammer to it. The world is full of sore losers. Some go on to win with great bitterness, too. Me, I've just always loved the sound of these babies warming up, all that air hockey air jetting up through holes.
Lem's nom de puck is The Wrist. I'm Rip Van Winkie, maybe on account of the new white shoots in my hair. Today there was a coconut flake on the line, but the game was called due to an unscheduled shame rap. Out came the chairs of sharing. The pajama zombies filed in.
"I'm feeling less than today," Wen said, picked at the fuzzy rhino on his sleeve. "My shame monster has woken from deep slumber."
A hard, thin pain slung through me as he spoke.
"Steve," said Wen. "Are you okay? You're shaking over there."
"I'm fine, Wen," I said.
"We all know what that means," said the woman beside me. Estelle Burke. Scorned ballerina. She tore at her thumb with her teeth.
"It doesn't mean anything," I said. "Do we have to do this now?"
"Wen's shame monster reared up," said Estelle. "You can't just pick and choose when that's going to happen."
"Thank you, Estelle," said Wen.
"Yes, thank you," I said, "for the blowjob Wen is about to receive."
"Whoa!" said Estelle. "I mean, from where?"
She spit some cuticle on my knee.
"It's okay," said Wen.
"Fuck okay," said Estelle. "I'm feeling very flanked."
"I understand the flanked feeling," said Wen. "And I understand Steve's rage. Though I can't condone it."
"I don't feel so good," I said.
"In what sense?" said Wen.
I had a fairly heady answer planned before I pitched off the chair.
"Steve?" said Wen.
"My name's not Steve," I said from the floor.
"What is it then?" said Lem.
"John Q. Fuckeroo."
"Is that Welsh?" said Estelle. "My first husband was Welsh."
"I'm the stewman," I said.
Everyone stared.
Wen walked me back to my door.
"You've got to stop collapsing," he said. "It's impeding your progress."
I found Lem down near the bed sifting through some dust balls.
"What's going on?" I said.
"Nothing," said Lem. "I dropped some Percodan."
"Where'd you get Percodan?"
"Your nurse buddy, Donald. Decent caring Donald."
"I'm going home, Lem," I said. "I'm going home to live or die but I'm going home."
"Probably die," said Lem.
"You're coming with me."
"I can't," said Lem. "I'm a country boy."
"You're a freak, Lem. A botched psychosocial experiment."
"I'm not that bad. I get the jokes on TV."
"We have to stick together now."
"I have to find the percs I dropped."
"You didn't drop them. No one ever drops anything."
"What's these, then?" said Lem.
We popped the pills, broke out some Bavarian creams. We rolled the TV in from the TV lounge.
"I've seen this," I said.
"Don't ruin it," said Lem.
Sandhogs ate their sandwiches and died by the score. The host stood inside the tiled tube, sobbed.
"The men were mealed," he said. "Until a granular quality obtained."
We took a bus down to the city with the motor oil money. We got a good movie on the bus. It was about airplanes falling out of the sky. Airplanes fell, boats sank, what could you do but get nervous? Buses swerved into ditches, mostly, or they tumbled from mountaintops in mountainous countries and only the chickens lived. But the chickens, they'd get buried in an avalanche. The avalanche would kick off a flood. Rivers would swell, whole villages would be wiped out. It was horrible, horrible. These goddamn countries were exporting horror and they had to be stopped. Maybe invaded, even.
I mentioned my concern to Lem.
"You're out of your fucking mind," he said. "It's the PREXIS. It's snacking on your faculty for reason."
"I'm in fine fettle," I said.
But I'd been feeling the shoots and shudders again. The organ-flutter, the vein ache. Lem had his perc stash in his fanny pack. I partook, feared more chicken visions.
We pulled into Port Authority at dusk. The home grime gladdened me. I led Lem through the throng.
"How about a peep show?"
"It's all kiddie stuff now," I said.
"Kiddie porn?"
"Kind of."
I shoved him onto a downtown train.
"Gibbering, jostling humanity," said Lem.
"Sit the fuck down," I said.
A man stood near us gripping the pole. He dropped his pants, groaned down into a squat.
"I have no place to shit tonight," he said. "Can you help me find a place to shit tonight?"
He started to pass a hat around.
"Have you ever really done it?" Lem asked the man.
"Done what?"
"Taken a dump on the train."
"That's disgusting," said the man.
It looked like they were doing some work on my old building. There were ladders outside, high bins full of stones. The neighborhood had been crumbling for some time. Every so often a gargoyle would topple off an edifice, crush a schoolgirl. It was good homegrown horror but people still preferred the imported kind. My old neighbor, an architect, wore a hard hat everywhere outside. He called us all cornice-bait.
Lem and I walked into the lobby and waited for the elevator.
"You're not going to believe this," said Lem, "but I've never been on one of these before."
"An elevator?"
"People fuck in them, right?"
"Constantly."
We got in with an old lady I used to bathe.
"Hilda," I said.
"Hilda's dead," said the woman. "I'm Hilda's mother."
My apartment door had been painted over. Someone was doing slap bass scales inside. I knocked and a woman in platinum-rimmed safety glasses answered the door. She had a jar of ointment with her. The label said Rad Balm. She daubed some of it on her lips.
"What?" she said.
"I live here," I said.
"Are you a time traveler?"
"I don't understand."
"Maybe you used to live here."
"That's very clever," I said. "How'd you get in?"
"Super gave me the key."
The Rad Balm girl disappeared, came back with a cardboard box. There was my Jews of Jazz calendar sticking out, Cudahy's track jacket, some spice vials bound in rubber band.
"Yours?"
"Yes."
"I had no real reason to save it. No law compelled me. And how many months does Benny Goodman get anyway?"
"Somebody gave me that calendar."
"Somebody gave me chlamydia. Stop making excuses. You'll be better off."
"I'd be better off if I hadn't been illegally evicted from my home."
"That I can't help you with. Just the emotional stuff."
"Thanks," I said. "See you around."
"Sure."
"You play beautifully," said Lem.
"It's not me," said the Rad Balm girl. "It's software for the fish."
"Fish?" said Lem.
"That's musician talk."
She shut the door.
We got some hot dogs and papaya juice, sat with the pigeons in a park. The park was mostly concrete. Stone benches, stone fountains, a brick chute for the kids. I threw a piece of wiener to the birds. They didn't mob it the way I'd hoped. A few made some listless pecks. It was a slowdown.