16
Troy needed to see a doctor. Ulcers had formed in both sides of his mouth, down between his gums and the insides of his cheeks. He could feel them like little wads of tender cotton embedded in his flesh, little puckers of numbness. Between breakfast and dinner, he alternated. In the morning, he kept the pill tucked down on the left side. For supper, he squirreled it away on the right. On either side, it would burn and dry out his mouth with the bitter bite of the medicine, but he would endure it.
He rarely employed napkins during meals, a bad habit he had formed long ago. They went into his lap to be polite and then went on his plate when he was done. Now he had a different routine. One quick small bite of something, wipe his mouth, spit out the burning blue capsule, take a huge gulp of water, swish it around.
It was a dereliction of duty, he knew. He was the captain of a creaking ship long at sea, and here he was tonguing a loose tooth and refusing to swallow his daily allotment of lime. The scurvy was taking him and he was letting it, even though this placed the others at risk. He knew this and felt bad about it, but he couldn’t will himself to do anything else.
The hard part was not checking to see if anyone was watching while he spit it out. He sat with his back to the wallscreen and went through this process while he imagined eyes in white coveralls drilling through the side of his head.
But he didn’t look. He chewed his food. He remembered to use his napkin occasionally, to wipe with both hands, always with both hands, pinching across his mouth, staying consistent. He smiled at the man across from him and made sure the pill didn’t fall out. The man’s gaze drifted over Troy’s shoulder as he stared at the view.
Troy didn’t turn to look. There was still the same draw, the same compulsion to be as high as possible, to escape the suffocating depths, but he no longer felt any desire to see outside. Something had changed.
He spotted Hal at the next table over—recognized his bald and splotchy scalp. The old man was sitting with his back to Troy. Troy waited to catch his eye, but Hal never turned to look.
He finished his corn and worked on his beets. It had been long enough since spitting out his pill to risk a glance toward the serving line. Tubes spat food; plates rattled on trays; one of the doctors from Victor’s office stood beyond the glass serving line, arms crossed, a wan smile on his face. He was scanning the men in line and looking out over the tables. Why? What was there to keep an eye on? Troy wanted to know. He had dozens of burning questions like this; answers sometimes rose toward the surface, but they skittered away if he trained his thoughts on them.
The beets were awful.
He ate the last of them while the gentleman across the table stood with his tray. It wasn’t long before someone took his place. Troy looked up and down the row of adjoining tables. The vast majority of the workers sat on the
In the past weeks, it seemed patterns were becoming easier to spot, even as other faculties slipped and stumbled. He cut into a rubbery hunk of canned ham, his knife screeching against his plate, and wondered when he’d get some real sleep. He couldn’t ask the doctors for anything to help, couldn’t show them his gums. They might find out he was off his other meds. The insomnia was awful. It was as though his body had grown scared of the dreams that awaited. He might doze off for a minute or two, but deep sleep eluded him. And instead of remembering anything concrete, all he had were these dull aches, these bouts of sadness, the feeling that something was wrong, that he’d known what was going on a week ago, maybe even a month ago, but no further back than that.
He chewed on this thought and his ham both. He caught one of the doctors watching him. Troy looked down the table and saw men shoulder to shoulder on the other side, empty seats lined up across from them. It wasn’t long ago that he wanted to sit and stare, mesmerized by the gray hills. And now he felt sick when he caught even a glimpse; the view brought him close to tears. He eyed the corner of the room where he knew a camera was hidden. Troy had an idea of what they were looking for. They were looking for signs of remembrance.
He stood immediately with his tray, then worried he was being transparent. Obvious. The napkin fell from his lap and landed on the floor, and something skittered away from his foot.
Troy’s heart skipped a beat. He bent and snatched the napkin, hurried down the line, looking for the pill. He bumped into a chair that had been pulled back from the table, felt all eyes on him, the sailors watching their captain dance drunkenly across the deck, losing his mind, teeth falling out and clattering away.
The pill. He found it and scooped it up with his napkin, the tray teetering dangerously in his palm. He stood and composed himself; a trickle of sweat itched his scalp and ran down the back of his neck. It seemed like half the room had stopped eating to watch him. Everyone knew. Knew he was losing his mind.
He turned and walked toward the water fountain. It took an iron force of will to not glance up at the cameras or over at the doctors. He was losing it, he knew. Growing paranoid. Just a little over a month left on this shift. He could do it.
Trying to walk naturally with so many eyes on him was impossible. He rested the edge of his tray on the water fountain, stepped on the lever with his foot, and topped up his glass. This was why he had gotten up: he was thirsty. He felt like announcing the fact out loud. He wasn’t crazy. He was like them. He couldn’t remember anything.
Returning to the tables, Troy squeezed between two other workers and sat down facing the screen. He balled up his napkin, felt the blue kernel hidden within its folds, and tucked it between his thighs. A bite of ham remained. He picked up his fork and jabbed it. He sat there, facing the screen, but he didn’t dare look.
17
The fat raindrops on the canopy outside De’Angelos sounded like rhythmless fingers tapping on a drum. The traffic on L Street hissed through puddles gathering against the curb, and the asphalt that flashed between the cars gleamed shiny and black from the streetlights. Donald shook two pills out of a plastic vial and into his palm. Two years on the meds. Two years completely free of anxiety, gloriously numb.
He glanced at the label and thought of his sister, then popped them in his mouth and swallowed. He was sick of the rain, preferred the quiet cleanliness of the snow. But another winter had been too warm for any chance of that.
Keeping out of the foot traffic flowing through the front doors—umbrellas jostling against umbrellas—he cradled his cell phone against his ear and listened patiently while his wife urged Karma to pee.
“Maybe she doesn’t need to go,” he suggested. He dropped the vial into his coat pocket and cupped his hand over the phone as the lady beside him wrestled with her umbrella, water flicking everywhere.
Helen continued to cajole Karma with a raft of words the poor dog didn’t understand. These were their conversations of late. Nothing real to say, disjointed daily routines, babbling about the trivial amid long silences. “But she hasn’t been since
“She didn’t go somewhere in the house, did she?”
“She’s four years old.”
Donald forgot. Lately, time felt locked in a bubble. He wondered if his medication was causing that or if it was the workload. Whenever anything seemed… off anymore, he always assumed it was the medication. Before, it could have been the vagaries of life; it could have been anything. Somehow, it felt worse to have something concrete and new to pin it on.
On the other end of the line, Helen pleaded with the dog. There was shouting across the street. Donald looked up to see two homeless men yelling at each other in the rain, squabbling over a piece of cardboard or a bag of tin cans or some personal offense from the day before. He watched morosely as more umbrellas were shaken and more fancy dresses flowed into the restaurant. Here was a city charged with governing all the others, and it couldn’t even take care of itself. These things used to worry him more. He patted the capsule in his jacket pocket, a
