Somebody Up There Hates You (10 page)

I nod. Now that's a problem, isn't it? Who would you pray for tonight, for example? The guy who walked out of Bataan umpteen years ago and just tonight his number's up? Or his roommate? The woman in the coma? Or Mrs. Elkins? Sylvie? Me?

She puts a hand flat on my chest. “Now I think of it, you know who I might pray for, if I were so inclined?” she asks.

I look at her. “Who?”

“Sylvia's father, that's who. I have never seen a man in so much pain.”

Sylvie's father. Now that is a surprise. That's someone I never thought worthy of prayer. I shake my head. “Don't waste your time,” I say. “That man's a demon.”

“No. That man's in hell, is all. He's not in charge of the place, he's just been thrown in there. Given no choice and having no options. Think about that. Man's used to taking care of his family, his child. Protecting them, you know? And now . . . Well, now.” She turns away, all brisk and nurselike. “Now, young man, I think you need a clean gown, and I'm not speculating on why, that's for sure. And maybe you'd like some Jell-O. Edward's report says you say you want to eat a little. Red or green?”

11

N
EXT MORNING,
I
'M UP
and showered and dressed and I've had my little breakfast of broth and coffee, nice and early, just like I actually have something to do, a real busy day ahead of me. There's sunshine outside the windows, and I'm feeling decent. I pick up the package that Br'er Bertrand left. The aide that cleaned up my room left it on the night table.

It's a big envelope, the padded kind. Inside, on top, there's a note. It's obvious, right away, that it's from Uncle Phil—the handwriting is all bold and messy, and the paper smells like him, cigarette smoke and beer.
Your Majesty,
it starts.
Sorry I had to abandon you. Had to get out of Dodge, pronto. But sat up all night long, working on these. I'll be back real soon, I promise.
He signed it,
Your loyal lackey, Philip the Fool.
Then there's a PS:
I trust you'll find the secret clues, my lord.

I pull out the sheets of thick paper, each one ragged on top, like they were ripped out of one of those big artist's pads you can buy. They're drawings, charcoal I think at first. But then I realize that they must be pen and ink, the lines are so fine. Black-and-white, no color. The top one is labeled
The Woman in the Coma. October 31.
Funny, his writing here is perfectly neat and square. Like once he goes into artist mode, Phil's a different guy. I'm almost scared to look real close at the picture, so I take a few minutes to spread all of them out on top of my bed. There's five altogether. They've all got labels and dates:
Family Lounge. October 31
.
The Two Old Guys, Room 304. October 31. Sylvia. October 31. Richie's World. October 31.

My heart, for some reason, is up high in my throat, just glancing at the pictures. They're really detailed, so finely drawn that there are, like, hundreds of details in each one. I don't know why drawings should scare me, but they do. It's like, I don't know, like I'll see things I don't want to know. Like, in black-and-white, the reality of this place will be too much. But there they are, on my bed, all in a row, and I think how wussy it would be not to study them, appreciate all Phil's work, anyway. I mean, it's clear the guy's got a gift. And that he worked like hell on these. But they're hard to take, all at once. So I pile them up, in an order that seems to me to be least to most scary, least on top. You know, so I can look at a couple and leave the rest, if I want to.

I lean over
The Woman in a Coma
and try to figure it out. All the angles are weird, like everything in the room radiates out from one central spot. Everything's there: the windows, the door, the ceiling, the walls, the bed table with its suction equipment, all of that. But it's like, all circular. And it's all kind of distorted, like everything is pulling toward you. Everything is sort of being sucked in. Those little border cherubs, they're all stretched out and weird, like gargoyles or something. I keep staring. And then I get it: everything in the picture is from
her
point of view. Like she's the one standing outside the picture, looking in. There's a kind of tingling in my head as I fall into what Phil's done: he's put me in her place.
I'm
the woman in the coma, and this is what I see. It's freaky as all hell, but I can't stop looking. The more I look, the more I notice. There are little faces scattered around the room, tiny, like flies. All the mouths are open, they're chattering at me, but I can't tell what they're saying. After a while, I see what's outside the window. It's the moon, a fat full moon. Inside it, there's a bigger face. And it's grinning, big jack-o'-lantern grin, two pointy teeth on top, one on the bottom. I'm not sure whether it's a happy grin or an evil grin. I stare into the Moon Man's eyes for a minute and I still can't decide. I have to roll back from the bed, I'm so dizzy. If there's a secret clue here, I don't get it.

I roll back up and pull out the old guys one. It's sort of happy: there are two guys sitting up in bed, watching the TV on the wall. Each guy's got a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I look again. These guys are young; their faces are, anyway. They've got hair and scruffy whiskers and no wrinkles. One's wearing a Yankees cap, and the other one some kind of beat-up fishing hat, full of tied flies. The one in the cap is pointing at the TV with his smoke, laughing. I follow the line of his pointing hand and I can see what's on: there are guys in white shorts and guys in black shorts, all watching as a soccer ball goes into the net. When I look back at the old guys, I see what I missed the first time: they're not in beds; they're in recliner chairs. Scattered around the chairs are copies of
Playboy
and
Sports Illustrated.
And the walls, they're not hospital walls, either. There's wallpaper and framed pictures on the walls and bookshelves full of sports trophies and school pictures of kids and all of that. I shake my head and smile. Those guys are home, in a family rec room or something. Just regular guys, watching TV and hanging out.

This isn't so bad. I'm pulling out the family lounge one when Sylvie's voice fills the room. “Hey. Good morning, Rich-Man,” she says.

I turn around and wave her in from the doorway. She looks tired, but she's still walking on her own. She's wearing a short plaid skirt over black leggings, with a white blouse and little flat black shoes. Total prep-school girl. “Hey. You look like you're off to school.”

She runs a hand down the skirt. “Yep. Any day now.” She comes in.“What are those?”

I'm kind of proud of the pictures, because they show that someone in my family has some sort of talent. “Drawings my uncle Phil did. They're pretty amazing. I only showed him around once, and he, like, got it. Come look.”

She comes and stands next to me, leaning over the back of my chair. She stares down at the picture of the guys in 304. “Wow,” she says. “Very cool.” All of a sudden she points to a framed picture on the wall of the room the two guys are sitting in. “Look what this says.”

I put my face almost right on the paper, but I can't read the tiny words she's pointing at. I mean, I can see that maybe there are words there, but it's like some half-invisible ink or something, blurry.

She gets impatient. “Come on, Richard, are you blind? Look, it's like some little embroidered motto thing.” She taps her finger on the paper. “Look. It says
Forever Young
in script. And there's a flower border around it.”

I sit up and shrug. “If you say so.” It bothers me a little, that Sylvie's eyes are still okay. That she's that much stronger than me. I mean, I know that she still texts her friends all the time. Won't let them come visit, but texts giggly, happy little messages to all of them. It is, actually, a pretty cool way of lying. What they can't see can't hurt them, right? Little screens are all they see. And whatever she wants them to know.

“It's right there,” she says. “And it's sort of sweet, don't you think?”

“Yeah,” I say. But, really, I don't know about that. The only way to stay forever young, if you think about it, is to die before you get old, right? But I don't say that. Instead, I ask her to look at the woman in the coma one. Maybe she'll find the clue there, too.

It doesn't take her a second. “Whoa,” she says. “That's, like, psychedelic, man.” She points at the smiling man in the moon. “There's one word on each of his teeth, see? Tiny little capital letters: LONG TIME GONE.” She shakes her head. “Ain't that the truth. That woman is
so
not here. Long time gone is right. Let's see another one.”

We both stare into the family lounge. It's just like it is in real life, dusty flowers and all. But there's a middle-aged couple sitting on the couch, staring at the TV screen. She's all prissy-dressed in a flowered blouse and plain skirt, feet crossed at the ankles; he's in a suit and tie, shiny black dress shoes on his feet. The only thing that's weird that I can see is that there's a little bunch of cherub angel things—you know, fat babies with white feathery wings—hovering over their shoulders. And in the corner, the harpy, bent over her harp, strumming her heart out. And she's got white feathery wings, too. It seems sort of sweet to me.

But Sylvie is holding her sides, laughing. She points at the TV. I can't see what she's laughing at until she says, “Look what they're watching. Porn!”

I still can't see it—it's just a bunch of tiny lines all sort of twisted together—but I laugh anyway. “No kidding!”

She points to a VCR tape holder on the floor at the couple's feet. Even she has to put her nose on the paper to read the letters on it. “And look at the name of the tape:
The Screw-Yourself-to-a-Cure Hospital Handbook.
And look . . .” Her finger touches the man's suit-pants. “He's got a hard-on—see it? It's clear as day under his pants, a real boner. And her hand here is, like, creeping under her skirt. She's touching herself!” She shakes her head. “Your uncle is a riot.”

“Sure is,” I say. I wish I could see it, but, what the hell, hearing Sylvie talk dirty is almost better. “You want to see the next one?” I forget what that one is and pull it out.

Sylvie gets real quiet when she sees it's her:
Sylvia, October 31.

I get to see most of it before she picks it up and holds it against her chest. It's all of those pictures of Sylvia as a baby and as a girl and as an athlete and award-winner and all of that, made into a frame around a bed. The girl in the bed is asleep, curled up on her side, naked. She's gorgeous: long curly black hair, full breasts, sweet round ass. I look again: I think I see a baby held against one breast. But then Sylvie's got the picture completely hidden. I look at her face and there are tears running down her cheeks. “Hey,” I say. I touch her shoulder. “Does it have a clue?”

She looks at me like I'm the dumbest person she's ever met. “It
is
the clue, Richard, the whole thing.” She holds it out again for a minute. “Don't you see? It's me, grown up. With a baby. It's, like, my future. See, Richard? I grow up. I make it.” She points to the bottom of the paper. “It says
Pretty Woman
.”

She holds the picture against her as she walks out of the room. She's keeping it cradled up against her chest, like that picture is the baby she's going to have someday.

I have a few minutes of being mad at Uncle Phil. I mean, what right does the guy have to imagine her naked? Or, even worse, to give her false hope? I mean, I hate that, I really do. Sure, I spout the magic-science-geek-miracle-cure crap when I have to—but I don't
believe
it. And I don't want to hope, either. I mean, I want to know. I want to know and face it and deal with it. Okay?

So why is my heart pounding when I pull out the last picture,
Richie's World
? I mean, what do I expect? A crystal ball? A glimpse of my future? Shit, I know Phil. He's no soothsayer, believe me. If he were, he wouldn't mess up his own life right and left, right? I mean, he'd see all those disasters coming and he'd duck. That's what I think. But what I feel? I don't know, that's different. I bend over the picture and see that it's much simpler than the rest. It's me, in my wheelchair, from the back. I'm big, in the center of the page. Everything else around me is tiny, like I'm high above it. But it's still easy to see the hallway and the rooms and the nurses' station and all. It's this place, but it's way below. And beyond that, even, is what looks like a map: the Hudson River curving away, going far off into the distance that I can't really see. I look at me again: I'm wearing my Halloween getup, the crown on my head and the blanket-cape around my shoulders. But the cape is much longer, all sort of flowing out behind me, the stars on the fabric kind of melting into the stars that are scattered all over the page. I've got both my arms out straight in front of me like Superman used to in all those TV shows. The letters on my cape are big enough even for me to read:
Richard Casey: The Incredible Flying Boy.

I look at it for a long time. It's funny, the longer I look, the more I feel like I actually am flying, like I'm lifting off. It's sort of fun and big-time scary, that feeling. Sort of comforting and totally terrifying, watching everything here get smaller and smaller and smaller. Houston, we have liftoff. Over and out.

When I'm so dizzy I have to look away, I spend some time just staring out the window into the bright blue sky. Shit, I think, holy shit. I pick up
Richie's World
and put it back into the envelope. I find a pen and write on the front:
For Sisco (aka Richie's mom), with love from her brother, Phil
. Then I roll to the little closet by the door and I stash the envelope under my gym bag and the other stuff I brought with me. Mom will find it, I figure, later. Maybe she'll hate it—but maybe not.

The other pictures, the dirty ones and the funny ones? Those I hang on my bulletin board for everyone to see. Then I roll to Sylvie's room and look in. She's sitting on the edge of her bed, still dressed for school. Only now she's added a hat, a black beret tilted on her head, and a black jacket. No one's with her; her mother and bros must be taking another day off. She looks like she's waiting for something, or someone, to pick her up and take her on a date, take her somewhere, anyway. I just can't stand it if she keeps on sitting there, all dressed up with nowhere to go. That's just not right. So I roll into the room and say, “Hey, Pretty Woman. Want to blow this joint?”

And before you can say “Jack Robinson,” she's on her feet and pushing my chair toward the lobby and the elevator. I try to help her by pushing the wheels myself, but she slaps my hands away. I know that Edward sees us; he's right there at the nurses' station, writing in the charts, and we're sort of hard to miss. But he doesn't make eye contact and he doesn't say a thing.