“Here?” I looked around quickly, but Baby Joe went on, “Not here in my room—I mean he’s back here in D.C. They brought him to the ER in West Virginia last night, but I guess he was okay ‘cause they just looked him over and discharged him. He came back with Warnick this morning. Hasel heard them talking, they were supposed to take him to Providence for observation—”
“Providence Hospital?”
He nodded. “To the psychiatric wing.”
“Don’t they have to get the family’s permission before they do that?”
“Hija, Warnick is his family. All the Benandanti—they come first, they take care of their own—”
“But Oliver’s not crazy.”
“Normal people don’t try to cut their dicks off with a Swiss Army knife.”
“Okay, okay.”
He lit a cigarette and smoked pensively for a moment before saying, “You know, that’s what they used to do.”
“Who? The Benandanti?”
“No. Your goddess-worshipers. In Iran or someplace. Turkey, maybe. The priests would go into some kind of ecstatic frenzy and castrate themselves.” He gave a wheezing laugh. “We read about it in Warnick’s class. You can see how church attendance might drop off after a while.”
“But—why would Oliver do that? I mean, how would he even know about it. He hasn’t been to Warnick’s class in two months.”
Baby Joe shrugged. “It’s not like it’s a big secret. It’s history, man, anyone can read about it. Maybe he and Angie, you know—she’s playing Ishtar, he’s gonna be Adonis. Talagang sirang ulo.”
I got to my feet. “I know, I know: crazy fucking bitch.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “God, I just wish I could have a decent meal and a bath and sleep for a week—”
Baby Joe put a hand on my shoulder. “Stay here, Sweeney. Really—you can have the bed, I’ll crash on the floor—”
“Oh, Baby Joe—thanks, really, thanks a lot. But I can’t. I think—I think I better go see Oliver. How far is Providence?”
“Maybe five, ten minutes on the bus.”
“Okay. Do me a favor, then. Will you call Annie and tell her where I am, and find out if she’s heard from Angelica? She’s got to come back, she can’t be out there running around the woods without her clothes—”
Baby Joe grinned. “Nice for the trees, though, huh? Yeah, I’ll call Annie.”
“Thanks.”
He followed me to the door. “You too, you know. You’re a fucking crazy bitch too, but you’re not nuts.”
He drew circles in the air beside his temple, then cocked his finger at me. “Be careful, hija. It’s the 84 bus, stops at North Cap and goes right to Providence. Five minutes.”
He leaned against the door and watched me go. “Tell Oliver I hope he feels better.” With a soft, nervous giggle he turned away.
Oliver’s room was on the second floor of the hospital. Down the hall a woman wailed in an eerie childish voice. A family composed of father, mother, little girl sat in a dreary waiting area, holding magazines in their laps and staring out the window at the parking lot. When I peered through the door of Room 1141 saw Oliver on the bed, reading The Ginger Man, a copy of the Washington Post Book World atop his pillow. There were bars on the window behind him but no shades or blinds, no curtain pulls or chains or cords. On one pale green wall an unadorned wooden cross hung above a wooden chair. Oliver was very pale. His right foot had been bandaged and was propped awkwardly before him on the bed, like a superfluous piece of luggage. The bandage and green hospital robe, coupled with his shaved head and blanched face, made him look like someone terribly, perhaps fatally, ill.
Seeing him like that terrified me—how long had he looked like this, why hadn’t I noticed before?
Because you were too fucked up yourself, I thought. Too fucked up, too selfish, too fucking stupid to stop him!
Anger and self-loathing flooded me. How could I just have let him go like this? The drugs, of course it was the drugs: he’d been eating acid and mescaline and hashish and god knows what else, eating it like candy for months, maybe years. And this is what it came to—
For one awful moment I thought of turning around and leaving, before he could look up to see me. But then I remembered how he had hugged me the night before, holding me so desperately I almost wept to think of it.
Save me, Sweeney. Don’t fear me…
“Oliver.” I forced a smile as I stepped into the room. “What’s shaking?”
He glanced up. When he saw it was me he grinned and tossed his book onto the pillow. “Smelly O’Keefe! What took you so long?”
I plucked at the sleeve of my shirt and made a face. “Stinky Cassidy, more like it. They let you read that stuff in here?”
He pulled me onto the bed next to him. “Ow. Watch the gam.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Looks pretty gross.”
“Septic poisoning. How’d you get up here?”
“Just walked.”
“Did you sign in?”
“Was I supposed to?”
Right on cue a nurse popped his head through the door. “Somebody at the station said you have a visitor? Oh, hi there—did you sign in? No? Well, don’t get up, what’s your name, I’ll do it, I’ve got to give him meds anyway. Right back.”
“That’s Joe,” explained Oliver. “He’s my keeper—”
Before he could finish Joe was back. “All right, six o’clock, time for these.” He handed Oliver a paper cup of water and another little cup containing two tiny red pills. Oliver waved away the water, tapped the pills into his hand, and swallowed them.
“Ugh. How can you do that, I could never do that.” Joe gave me a measured look, checking me out, I guess to determine if I had a hacksaw stuck down my jeans. “More friends,” he said after a moment. “This boy has more friends. Oh, and Oliver, another one of your brothers called, he said he’d try again tonight. Do you want dinner, sweetheart?”
This to me. I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
“All right, then. Visiting hours on this floor are officially over at seven, but I won’t do a bed check till eight.” He grinned, took the little plastic cup from Oliver’s hand, and left.
When he was gone Oliver got up and crossed the room to the door. He moved slowly, like a gunfighter in an old Western, and I tried not to think about what the hospital robe must be hiding. He closed the door and stayed there for a long moment with his back to me. A moment later I heard him gagging.
“Oliver! Are you okay—”
He turned and nodded, eyes watering, and opened his hand. His palm was wet, streaked with crimson; but before I could cry out he shook his head.
“Thorazine.” He automatically reached for a pocket; then remembered he was wearing a hospital robe. He turned to get a tissue from his nightstand. He wiped his hand and went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, then walked over to the chair beneath the little wooden cross. “They gave it to me in the ER last night. I was under restraint so I couldn’t do anything about it. It made me hallucinate; I thought I was totally brain damaged. So now I cough them up.”
He kicked absently at the chair, then turned and crossed to the narrow bed, motioning me to join him. “I guess I could save them for you.”
“No thanks.” I smiled. “First time I’ve ever seen you turn down drugs.”
His pale blue eyes were sharp and guileless as he gazed at me. “I’m not crazy, Sweeney.”