Prelude to a Scream (4 page)

“So she had red hair, huh?”

Stanley abruptly looked up. Had he been maudlin out loud? What had he said? He looked at his glass. Had he blacked out? He looked at the bottle, at her glass. They all had some whiskey in them, though less than before.

More to the point, what had she heard him say?

“Ahm, look,” he began. “If I've been rude…”

“That red hair's a known killer,” she said. She came a little closer. “That's only if you're particular, of course.”

Caged radium.

Had he blacked out and mentioned the red hair?

They would look good with red hair, those green eyes.

They looked damn good with black hair.

He turned away from the green eyes to refill his glass and to cling to it, along with his clichés about barroom conversations.
Pock
… Boring, metronomic, concentric, claustrophobic, taking no chances, revealing little.
Pock pock
… All the same after ten o'clock.
Pock
… Maudlin blurts.
Pock
… Based on country-western songs.
Pock-pock
… Premature ejaculation, that would sting.
Pock
… Nothing so
existential
as trying to impress a woman who doesn't love you anymore…
Pock
… Backfire of all backfires…
Pock-pock
… But its subject unrepressed a strange feeling in Stanley and, he eventually realized, staring at his drink, that this red-haired feeling in his breast, unexpectedly freed by this green-eyed presence, but more likely by the alcohol, although probably by the combination of both, had managed to fill his eyes with moisture.

He curled his lip and breathed heavily. The air around him turned ochre. Let not one tear fall, he thought, not a single one, lest I destroy this bar completely. Everything in it. Between his two hands the drink trembled a little. Through the moisture in his eyes he could see the viral filaments conspicuous to strong alcohol adrift in his whiskey, like malaria in a bloodstream. And somewhere, similarly adrift in his neural sea, a voice, long-unheard, unexpectedly called his name.

He almost answered it aloud. But something arose in him, dignity perhaps, for lack of a better concept, which forced him to say something—anything—else.

“I've always suspected,” he croaked, “that a life lived within an uninterrupted field of television, alcohol, and a dumb job would leave a man right where he started, emotionally speaking.”

“I'd suspect,” she said, “it'd leave him with even less.”

“I'm beginning to believe it.”

The back of her ringed finger almost managed to brush the tear off the cheek below his right eye before he jerked his head back, like a startled horse.

He looked away and wiped his cheek himself.

“I'm drunk,” he said, turning back to her after a moment.

She smiled boozily. “The chemistry is mutual.”

He cleared his throat. “It's like a time machine. You get in with a certain set of problems and it seems like maybe five minutes have passed while the lights on the dashboard go on and off and maybe there's a little vibration in the chassis while you're watching the news. And then something clicks and you open the door and stick out your head to look around and it's a week or three months or a year later. It doesn't seem so long to you, though. But you get out and stretch anyway because if that much time has passed you better get a little exercise.

“The days are longer or shorter than you think they ought to be because the season has changed; all the kids tell you they're seniors in college but look too young to be in high school, which you attended with their parents; the cars have changed subtly, they've gotten smaller and more alike; there are many, many more places where you can't smoke; and the corner grocery doesn't sell anything made with meat anymore either: they've even changed the President.

“But you? You've got the same set of problems you got into the machine with, when those kids maybe weren't even born yet, when the guy those kids elected President was two classes behind you in high school, and you realize that it's true, that television puts you into a dream state very like the real thing with this important difference, that when you're dreaming you're metabolizing, and when you're watching television you're not. In psychic metabolism real-time experiences are broken down into energy-yielding substances for use in vital emotional processes. Other constructs, necessary for mental health, are synthesized by dreaming. Under the influence of sleep and work and play and, uh, sex, psychic metabolism gets to do its beneficial thing. But under the influence of television it doesn't. Under the influence of television your experience just sits there, letting all that fake, pre-masticated pseudo-experience television serves up to you, that nutritionless
pap
,
pile up on top of whatever slender,
bona fide
,
unresolved experiences you might have managed to accrue under your skullcap, right up until the time you picked up the wand.”

“The wand?”

He held thumb above forefinger in front of him and made the clicking motion.

“Zap,” he said softly. “Zap, zap.”

“The remote control,” she concluded.

“The wand of non-awareness,” he confirmed, as if to himself.

She nodded, ever so slightly.

Stanley sighed heavily. “You're up on the latest football scores. You know what they're doing to each other in Rwanda. But you're way, way behind on vital matters of psychic metabolism. And it's so scary or disheartening or whatever that non-emotion is that you close the access port and fire up the television if it was ever fired down and crack the cap on another quart and hope that urban development doesn't deprive you of cheap rent and they don't raise the price on this Irish whiskey because you came down a notch or two for economy's sake already just last year and maybe that rickety little operation you're working for can hold on until the day your social security kicks in, if that new President whatshisname knee-high to the wand of non-awareness doesn't spend it all first, and they don't…”

“Stanley.” She put her hand on his arm.

“…blow the whole goddamn place to kingdom-come unless of course it's the day before you're in a bus on the way to the discount liquor store and you see
her
, walking through the crowd on the sidewalk in Chinatown, a full red head taller than everybody around her, just before the bus roars into the Stockton Tunnel—.”

“Stanley,” she said again. “You mentioned sex.”

“Too soon would be right on ti— I did?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I—. No, I didn't. You did.”

“No, no. It was you. You mentioned it.”

“No, it can't be. I can't bear to think about it. You, it was you. You mentioned sex.”

“You mentioned it first.”

“No, it was you who brought it up.
Then
I mentioned it. I would never—.”

“Okay,” she said, “I mentioned it first. Then you mentioned it.”

“Don't you want another lil—?”

“Mention it again.”

“What? Me? Oh, I couldn't. Please excuse…”

When she smiled now she had four lips. Four beautiful, beautiful lips. “How'd you get so funny?” she said.

“Me?” he said. “You should see you.”

Her laughter sounded like windchimes on nocturnal Kauai.

“There hasn't been a man to make me laugh in…” She looked puzzled, then sad.

“No wait,” Stanley said. “Don't go there, I just came from there.” He wagged a forefinger between their faces. “It's a nasty, sad, godforsaken, flickering place illuminated by nothing but televisions.”

Vivienne, herself, seemed to be blinking back an untoward memory.

“Like my apartment,” Stanley nodded, “if you could call it anything so domestic. Its walls reek of despair—a squalid place suffused by dark-ness and mildew, lit only by that noisy little window onto a thousand fake worlds—.”

A tear rolled over her cheek, and headed for the corner of her mouth. But the smile, there swelling involuntarily, threw it off to the side, whence it fell onto her…Stanley tried to catch it, failed, his hand brushed her breast.…

“Is that cashmere?” he stammered.

Her beautiful mouth quivered between laughter and despair.

“Oh no, oh no,” Stanley said. “Please…”

“I-I can't…,” she sniffled. “You won't…”

“No, please,” begged Stanley, “don't cry. You're too beautiful to cry. Wait, here, I've got a handkerchief.”

A large flowered bandana bloomed out of his hip pocket into his hand and he gestured ineffectually with it. Another tear rolled over the same cheek, and followed the path of its brother. Sister? Stanley adroitly dabbed beneath her eye with a corner of the kerchief.

They were very close now, head to head, and she said, almost inaudibly, “What's a girl…?”

“Don't cry,” Stanley whispered.

“Say it,” she whispered back. Her eyes were not eighteen inches from his.

“S-s…” Stanley began.

The eyes were big and filled with tears. “Say it,” she repeated softly. “Please say it.”

Stanley allowed a sibilant to escape his teeth.

“I can't hear you,” her lips said, inaudibly.

Stanley managed to whisper it, just below the threshold of audibility.

“What?” she breathed.

Stanley pulled her gently to him. She did not resist, and rested her head on his shoulder. The smell of her suffused his senses, and with it he swept a handful of her hair to his face. She was warm. She smelled good. He could feel her breathing.

“Sex,” he said softly, directly into her ear. It was the first time he'd ever used that word as a verb in the imperative
¹
, in the transitive
²
, and as an affirmative
³
, too.

1
. imperative: 3. [Grammar.] Of, relating to, or constituting the mood that expresses a command or request.

2
. transitive, 1. [Grammar.] Expressing an action that is carried from the subject to the object; requiring a direct object to complete meaning.

3
. affirmative 1. Asserting that something is true or correct, as with the answer “yes”…

Chapter Three

T
HERE WERE SHOES.
W
HITE SHOES WITH RUSTY DOTS ON THEM.
But the light was all wrong, as if a scarf were over the eyes. A drip. A drip into a metal pan…

“He's coming out of it.”
A high voice, strident.

“Take him back.”
A deep voice, with a strange accent.

“No way.”

“He'll start screaming. Can't have him screaming. Take him back down, please.”

“I can't yet.”

“Do as I say.”

“Look, Manny, I've got to stabilize him first. This guy's drunker than the usual customer. It's not easy, stabilizing a guy when he's tanked on booze and chloral hydrate. It's been four hours since he's had a drink. His sugar's kicking him awake, right through the sufenta. His sugar wants a drink.”

This high voice sounds as if helium, or the toe of a boot, has been applied to the larynx.

“So give him a drink.…”

“Right. Since he's flying first class we gently wake him, and ask if he'd prefer the Bordeaux or the Chardonnay. Then we can take him back down with Mezcal and curare.
Doctor.”

“This is insubordinate.”

“Go eat the worm.”

“Swine.”

“Tourist.”

First class? He'd never flown first class in his life. They say the seats are wider. They say the wine is free. Red, please, and keep it coming. He's never even met anyone who has flown first class. They say the first-class passengers are smarter than the ones in coach. And, please excuse him, but, while he's flying first class…

Where is he going?

“He's trying to say something.”

That was a woman's voice.

“Take him back down!”

“I've got to stabilize him first…”

“Stabilize him?”
Hysteria.

“Stabilize him?”
Mockery.

“You mock me. ME…”

“Don't antagonize him,”
said the woman.
“He locks up when he's antagonized.”

“Oh. Brilliant's not enough. He's got to be sensitive, too.”

“What the devil's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Except that most brilliant people aren't sensitive at all. Whereas yourself…You're very sensitive.
Doctor.”

Jesus. The sound made by pinching the mouth of a balloon so the escaping gas makes a squeal.

“It's just that operating makes him…”

“It isn't operating that makes him…It's operating out of a textbook that
makes him
…And that isn't the only thing that
makes him…
Getting up in the morning
makes him.…”

“You're spitting on the fascia.”

A whispered groan.

“You see? He's coming out of it. That moan… that's… that's a prelude. A prelude to a scream!”

“Hey.
Prelude to a Scream,
that's a good one. Good name for a band. Better than
Tenesmus.”

“No, no,”
came a chorus of voices. “Stomach Punk
is better…”

“Wielding the guitar and playing air scalpel, instead of the other way around. We're definitely in the wrong racket,”
said the high voice.
“But we knew that. Didn't we?
Doctor?”

“I've seen this before. He's going to be screaming at any moment! I tell you, he'll bring the whole neighborhood down on us.”

“Doctor, not to be so dramatic. Permit me to give him a local.”

“A local?”

“Sure. Lidocaine the T-6.”

A chuckle.

“That stuff's expensive.”

“So? Let him scream, then.”

Silence. The whisper of cutlery. A moan.

“Well?”

“He… He's almost up, isn't he?”

“You're the goddamn anesthesiologist. Is he almost up or is he not almost up?”

“No. I mean…not quite. He's…he's hovering just below consciousness. Like a hawk on the morning air. If he doesn't catch a thermal, he'll be okay.”

“A thermal?”
the woman asked breathlessly.

“Something emotional, some jet out of his subconscious, a nightmare, a memory. Some buried anguish, an inner heat can lift him right up…”

The woman laughed.
“Just don't mention red hair.…”

A louder moan. The room had a strange resonance to it… the acoustic reflection of hard, parallel surfaces…?

“Hey, he heard you. What's that about?”

“Man, that really works…”

“Whoa, sweetie. Hold on… A little less of sufenta, a taste of curare. Okay… He's stabilized. Okay… I can hold him…”

Blackness. That is to say, an absence of vision as received through the organs of sight. A dream of cute little rockets, playing tag with one another through thickets of stars…

“Who…,”
said the accent.
“Who'd come around this place at night anyway? Who's to hear? I mean, what's more disconcerting: knowing what goes on in here or not knowing what goes on in here—?”

“I'm glad you asked that question. If knowledge is a tiny subset of the unknown, one would have a hard time containing one's curiosity. But if the unknown is the greater part of consciousness, why tamper with the status quo, otherwise known as God's plan?”

“Put a cork in it, Jaime.”

Hard to put a name to this accent. A non-native speaker of English making radio theater, maybe… Coming on like the BBC… Authoritative, informed… The only voice available to missionaries in the jungle at the time of the uprisings… Hidden in the root cellar… Crushing the headphones to the ears so as not to let a phoneme escape, betray the tunnel to the rebels… Password
Crepuscular Bollard…
Where did that come from…?

Another moan.

“That was appropriate. He groans every time you make a decision.”

“It's getting softer, though,”
said the woman hopefully.
“Isn't it?”

Now the playful rockets come in loud and low. Too loud. Too low. Businesslike. Run for cover.…

“Hold him…!”

The bluish stars against blackness became rusty splotches against whiteness, interlaced by textured contrails and metal-rimmed eyelets. Fly buzz. Motor on a V-2 rocket… It's when it cuts off that you've got something to worry — There! It cut off—!

“You going to wait until this guy can read the number on my license plate already? Gas the bastard!”

“You telling me my job, Doctor?”

“You're working for me, aren't you?”

“Yeah, but at this moment my higher allegiance is to the patient, who needs me more than you need—”

“Jeeze,”
said the woman's voice,
“he's strong—.”

“Get the duct tape.”

“Gas him I tell you!”

The helium voice:
“Vital signs not yet stabilized. Can't do… substantial risk. Who knows what that cocktail is doing to him? Alcohol, chloral hydrate, sufenta—I don't know if he's on Mars or the subway. Do you,
Doctor?”

A tearing sound. Somebody's wrapping a package. That lousy job in the shipping department, summer of '67, everybody else following the song to San Francisco.…”

“We can't have him all the way up! Don't you realize the risk?”

“The risk is to us, he sees.”

“Yes, to us.”

“That's right. Us. Fuck the patient.”

“Critical. Okay. He's quieting down, now. Yes. Look. Nobody's going to hear him scream, for chrissakes. Besides, he doesn't have the strength.”

“My Christ when God was handing out brains this entire outfit stood on line with a communal thimble! I'm not talking about screaming. Let him scream. It's his seeing that I'm worried about.”

“Practically the old Random Walk, this guy's metabolism…”

Silence.

“There's always the eye bank,”
the radio voice mused.

“Eye bank,”
said the second voice.
“Eye bank? There's no going back, once that's started. Besides, who knows from eyes?”

“Can of worms, it's a fact.”

“Precisely! A can of worms. The can is the unknown, see, and the worms are the known…”

“Aw, can it, Jaime.”

Silence. Rather, a roar that equates to silence, like looking into the mouth of a blast furnace. Then a single, deafening drip.

“He's hysterical, look at him. The guy takes me seriously.”

“You shouldn't antagonize him.”

“Antagonize him? Me? I'm just passing the time, waiting to see if my patient is going to die or not. Antagonize him? He might as well be passing a kidney stone.”

“That's it. Maybe the guy's got a kidney stone. Is that possible? Maybe that's what woke him up.”

“Doctor, darling, get a grip. What woke him up is ten thumbs retracting his colon.”

“You know, you're in this a little too deeply to be talking like that. Deprecating my skills. Why when I was your age…”

“When you were my age, you and your fellow students were jerking off to
Elective Affinities…”

The woman stifled a laugh, then tried to sound serious.
“You shouldn't antago—”

“A good anesthesiologist knows how to keep a patient down, and not let a simple thing like pain and chemical confusion get in his way. And as for Goethe,”
the second voice said,
“YOU LEAVE GOETHE OUT OF THIS!”

A moan, no longer a whisper.

Silence.

“It's us who'll hear the screams,”
said the radio voice morosely, a mere disconcerted shadow of its formerly shouting self.

“Take it easy,”
said the high voice soothingly
.
“We haven't lost one yet. Right?”

Silence.

“Right?”

“A can of worms. One day we'll open one up and it'll be exactly that.”

“Gross,”
said the woman.
“Is that possible? Is he serious?”

“Like he said. It's like a corpse completely covered with flies. From a distance it looks like a mildewed velvet suit. Fuzzy. But close up: everything is moving.”

“Oh my God…”

“…just perceptibly moving…”

“He's got something there, you know. I remember a guy we took out of the Mission, last year—”

“How many times do I have to tell you about smoking around this oxygen?”

“Aw go bottle Mezcal with your worms. You see that little tube there? That's where the oxygen is. It's in that little tube, and that cylinder, and underneath the mask. Watch. See?”

“Stop waving that lighter around!”

“Okay, okay. Don't make a federal case out of it.”

“It's against the law to smoke in the workplace.”

“You begin to piss me off.…”

“You're completely loco.”

“Loco?”
A chuckle.
“Loco.…”

“Next thing you'll be flicking ashes into the retroperitoneal.”

“If ashes in the retroperitoneal killed surgery patients, no patient would get out of surgery alive.”

“This isn't a hospital,”
the woman reminded him.

“This guy shouldn't have come up like this.”

“The man shouldn't have come up like this, he says. You couldn't gas a cat.”

“No telling about guys like this. You can gas them and gas them and nothing happens, they're just barely under. Then—”

“Then?”
It was the woman, the woman's voice. He found himself waiting to hear it. What was it about that voice?

Oh…

Oh, yeah.

That voice has green eyes…

We're still together.

Green eyes like the lights on the out-of-control panel for some fabulous vehicle designed to surf gravity. Some sleek little rocket chasing another sadder little rocket through thickets of stars and a rattle of glassware, in and out of the twinkling Olympia waterfall that sounds like perpetually pouring whiskey, into a wisteria-wreathed sylvan tunnel that turns head-on into the roaring BART train, headed the other way and it's not stopping here…