A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (48 page)

It dawns on me that I
’
m talking to a patient.

“
Well, can you take a message?
”

Long pause.
“
I
’
m not sure if I
’
m allowed to. Wait.
”

The phone is dropped loudly; I can hear it swinging from its cord. After a full minute or so, he picks it up, breathing heavily.

“
Okay, I think I can risk it.
”

I ask him to tell John I called.

“
Okay, John called.
”

“
No,
Vm
calling
John.
”

“
Oh. Oh.
”
He is fretting.
“
You
’
re calling John. Does he know you? Are you a relative?
”

“
No.
”

“
Are you his father?
”

“
No.
”

“
Well you can
’
t call if—
“

“
Okay, I
’
m his dad.
”

“
No you
’
re not. You just said—
“

“
Listen. I
’
ll call back. Don
’
t worry about it.
”

“
Oh, thank you!
”

I come by later in the afternoon.

I am led to the door, and sign the registry. Down the hall is a common room, with blue carpet, a few couches, and a butcher-block table. It looks a little like a seventh-grade classroom. John is through the first door on the left, lying on his side, hands between his legs, on a bed in a dark room. A blanket covers his feet.

I sit on the bed opposite.

“
So?
”

“
Do you smell it?
”
he asks.

“
Smell what?
”

“
Can
’
t you smell it?
”

“
No. What is it?
”

“
The other guy couldn
’
t find the toilet last night.
”

“
What other guy?
”

“
My roommate, the old black guy out there.
”

“
Oh.
”

“
All last night, on and on. He was moaning, tapping on the window, crying. He was saying,
‘
I
’
m dying, somebody please help me, I
’
m dying.
’
It was unbelievable.
”

“
Was he dying?
”

“
No, he wasn
’
t
dying.
He was taking a dump!
”

“
I thought you said he was by the window.
”

“
He was. He couldn
’
t find the bathroom, so he let
‘
er go out right there, standing by the window.
”

“
Oh.
”

“
Then he got all quiet, and in the morning, there was shit everywhere. It had gone down his leg, and onto his shoe, and during the night he had walked around—
“

“
Okay, fine.
”

“
There were shit footprints in the room, in the hallway.
”

“
Okay. So...
”

“
They moved me to another room for a while. Then they cleaned the floor and moved me back.
”

“
I can
’
t smell anything.
”

“
Yeah, they sprayed or something.
”

“
It actually smells nice.
”

“
They tied me to the bed.
”

“
When?
”

“
For most of the next day, after I came in.
”

“
Huh.
”
He wants me to be outraged, or impressed. I am not sure which.
“
Is that standard?
”

“
It drove me fucking
crazy.
Look at my arms.
”

He shows me his wrists, rubbed raw, bluish.

“
And look.
”

He shows me his ankles, red and splotchy.

“
I mean, have you ever been tied up?
”

“
Let me think.
”
I think of a few trenchant things I could say.
“
No, I
’
ve never been tied up.
”
Then:

“
But I
’
ve also never pretended to commit suicide.
”

“
What did you say?
”

“
Nothing.
”

“
Fuck you.
”

“
No, fuck you.
”

“
You think that was an act? You and that fucking nurse. She was such a fucking bitch. She called me
‘
Martin Sheen.
’”

“
You don
’
t look like Martin Sheen.
”

“
She meant it like acting. Like I was acting.
Apocalypse Now.
”

“
Oh. I
’
ve never seen that.
”

“
You haven
’
t?
”

“
Not all the way through. Not the part she
’
s talking about.
”

I look at him for a second.

“
You look more like Emilio.
”

He gets up on his elbows to look at me.

“
This isn
’
t funny.
”

“
I know.
”

“
They tied me up because they thought I might do it again.
”

“
Why would they think that?
”

“
Because I said I would.
”

“
But you won
’
t.
”

“
Why not?
”

The feces man walks in. His skin is purple and gray. He waves. He sits for a minute on his bed, smoothing the sheet with his palm. Then he gets up and shuffles out.

John leans toward me, whispers.

“
See how he walks? They all do that. The Thorazine shuffle.
”

“
Yeah.
”

“
You know I
’
m locked in.
”

“
I figured.
”

“
As in, I can
’
t leave, even if I want to.
”

“
Yeah, well...
”

“
I mean, that
’
s weird, right, that these people, who I don
’
t even know, can prevent me from leaving? It
’
s weird, just on a philosophical level, right?
”

I agree that it is weird.

“
I
’
m so tired,
”
he says.

“
Me too,
”
I say, perhaps too quickly.
“
We
’
re all tired.
”

He brings his knees to his chest.

“
No, I
’
m really tired,
”
he says.

He rolls onto his side, his back to me.

He wants to be encouraged.

I put my hand on his shoulder. I can
’
t believe he
’
s going to
make me give him the speech. I am livid that he
’
s going to make me give him the speech. I do it, piecing it together from times I
’
ve seen it done on TV and in movies. I tell him that there are many people who love him and would be crushed if he were to kill himself, while wondering, distantly, if that is the truth. I tell him that he has so much potential, that he has so many things to do, while most of me believes that he will never put his body and brain to much use at all. I tell him that we all have dark periods, while becoming ever more angry at him, the theatrics, the self-pity, all this, when he has everything. He has a complete sort of freedom, with no parents and no dependents, with money and no immediate threats of pain or calamity. He is the 99.9
^th
percentile, as I am. He has no real obligations, can go anywhere at any moment, sleep anywhere, move at will, and still he is wasting everyone
’
s time with this. But I hold that back—I will save that for later—and instead say nothing but the most rapturous and positive things. And though I do not believe much of it, he does. I make myself sick saying it all, everything so obvious, the reasons to live not at all explainable in a few minutes on the edge of a psychiatric ward bed, but still he is roused, making me wonder even more about him, why a fudge-laden pep talk can convince him to live, why he insists on bringing us both down here, to this pedestrian level, how he cannot see how silly we both look, and when, exactly, it was that his head got so soft, when I lost track of him, how it is that I know and care about such a soft and pliant person, where was it again that I parked my car.

VIII.

We can
’
t do anything about the excrement on the floor. At the
Might
office, we are having a problem with the excrement on the floor. The fecal matter has been coming over the toilet
’
s porcelain lip and onto the tile, then under the door, and there is now a peninsula of brownish sewage in our main work area, which we would complain about, and have something done about, if we were still paying rent. But we can
’
t call anyone to fix anything because the landlord condemned the building four months ago, when it was deemed needy of seismic retrofitting, and no one, especially him or her, knows we
’
re still here. All the other tenants have moved out, but because no one ever formally
told us
the plan, or issued any sort of
official letter,
and because Randy Stickrod is out of town—we have not seen Randy Stickrod for a while—we are squatting.

We
’
re still not paying contributors, or part-time staffers, much less ourselves. And even though we are able to use the magazine as a vehicle to answer some long-held questions—
Can you drink your own urine? Which butterflies can be safely eaten?
—the perks are
not
justifying the work, and it
’
s all kind of depressing. We are beat.

We are weak. Marny
’
s nose has been running for two years now. Moodie, who seems to have a perpetual case of mono, keeps a disconcertingly large jug of vitamin C on his desk. We are kept alive only by a constant influx of volunteers and interns, a half dozen at a time. We meet and recruit someone named Lance Crapo (long
a),
apparently an heir to one of the biggest potato-farming families in Idaho. Because he tucks in his shirts and is willing to handle the magazine
’
s business aspects, from advertising to the ever-wondered-about business plan, within a month he
’
s our vice president and acting publisher. And soon we
get
something named Zev Borow, just out of Syracuse University, who has moved from New York to San Francisco to work, for free, for us.