When She Was Bad

2

Irene Cogan opened her eyes to steely daylight. Across the room, dirty dishes were piled high on a room- service cart; there was an empty bottle of Jim Beam on the dresser. She groaned and sat up, pressing her palms tightly against the sides of her throbbing head as if she’d just glued the pieces of her skull back together and was waiting for the Elmer’s to dry.

Looking down, she realized she had fallen asleep in her sweatshirt and sweatpants, but didn’t remember changing into them. From the adjoining room came a bubbling snort. Irene turned stiffly, rotating her torso along with her head so the pain wouldn’t flare up, and discovered that the connecting door was wide open. Ohmigod! she thought, What happened last night? Then she saw the clock on the bedside table-8:15 A.M. Another heartfelt ohmigod! — she was supposed to be at the TV studio at 9:00.

On the toilet, in the shower, brushing her teeth, changing into the russet jacket and skirt outfit she’d worn Monday, making up her face, the question continued to bounce around in her head: What happened last night? Pender was no help-he was still sound asleep when Irene closed and locked the door between their rooms. And though she tried to pay attention to the cab driver as he explained why he was taking this bridge and not that bridge or some other bridge-apparently bridges were very important in Portland-the half of her brain that wasn’t writing mind-screenplays about the upcoming interview was desperately trying to recall what had happened after that second glass of Jim Beam.

TPP Productions was housed in a converted warehouse close to the river. A production assistant met her at the reception desk and hustled her back to makeup, where a gum-chewing, big-haired cosmetician in her twenties admired her fair complexion, then all but obliterated it under pancake so she wouldn’t fade into Casper the Friendly Ghost under the TV lights.

From makeup, Irene was led to a soundstage in the corner of the hangar-like building. The set was bare- bones: a lone wooden stool, a black curtain hanging in folds to provide a textured backdrop. Technicians crowded around, fussily posing and re-posing her, turning the chair a few degrees to one side, then the other, holding light meters to her face, clipping a tiny lapel mike to her jacket and cautioning her not to touch it, darting forward to mop the sweat already beading up on her forehead-and cutting through the chaos, the voice of a pimply young man with a headset and clipboard ordering her to just relax and be herself.

Easy for you to say, thought Irene.

3

It’s hard to imagine two personalities less alike than the pair who shared Ulysses Maxwell’s mind. Where Lyssy was sunny and outgoing, as friendly and disingenuous as a puppy dog, Max was brooding and saturnine, with a sardonic wit and the compassion of a starving alley cat-if they hadn’t occupied the same body, he’d have strangled the cheerful little bastard years ago.

In the good old days, in fact, Lyssy was only permitted consciousness when great pain or long periods of boredom had to be endured. The rest of the time the original personality was confined to the dark place, while in the external world his alter identities, under Max’s direction, functioned together as a sort of strawberry blond processing plant. At one end was the charming Christopher, whose job it was to seduce them; waiting at the other end was Kinch the Knife.

But the other alters were gone now. Some had faded from existence while the body lay bleeding out on the floor of the barn at Scorned Ridge after being shot by Pender, while others had failed to return from their ECT sessions. Of that once-feared gang, only Max and Lyssy remained. In a way, thought Max, it was a lot like the end of the Arthurian legend, when the king and his page were all that were left of the mighty Round Table.

Only in his case, the king wasn’t going to die-not if he was successfully able to masquerade as the page. And thus far Max had made it through his first meal in two and half years-his first crap in two and a half years, for that matter-without any of the staff noticing anything amiss. The cockteaser of a nurse Lyssy had dubbed Miss Stockings, the huge, dumb-as-a-sack-of-onions psych tech named Wally, even the sharp-eyed Patty Benoit-like most people, they saw whom they expected to see.

Not Max, though. The instant he and the girl in the dining hall had locked eyes that morning, he’d realized that she had to have undergone an alter switch since Lyssy had shown her around the arboretum Monday-otherwise there’d have been at least a glimmer of recognition on her part. And if it hadn’t been for a challenging look in this new alter’s eyes, something steely and questing and determined behind her momentary confusion, he’d have busted her on it then and there, maybe picked up some brownie points with the staff.

Instead, he’d bailed her out by prompting her with his name. And in just a few minutes, he told himself as the two of them set off down the sun-dappled path between the pines, followed at a respectable distance by their escorts, he’d find out whether fate had brought him a potential ally, or merely a momentary distraction.

Until they achieved a little more separation from the trailing psych techs, though, Max confined himself to vintage Lyssy-babble. “It’s pretty here in the morning, hunh? Everything’s so fresh and new. Of course, it’s always pretty, even when it’s raining. That’s the neat thing about the arboretum, how it’s different at different times of the day. My favorite is around sunset, when the sky and everything lights up like the pictures in this Maxfield Parrish book my art therapy tutor gave me. The violet hour, she called it. Only it’s not always easy getting an escort that time of day, so…. “

They reached a point where the gravel path, bordered on the right by a seven-foot hedge, looped tightly around on itself like a paper clip. Max glanced over his shoulder-the escorts had dropped back out of sight. “Wanna play a trick on them?”

“Sure, I guess.”

He took the girl’s hand-how warm and alive it felt, like a small soft animal-and ducked lopsidedly through a gap in the hedge, good leg first, bad leg dragging. They rejoined the path on the other side. Still clutching one of her hands in one of his, Max held the forefinger of his free hand to his lips as the psych techs strolled by on the other side of the hedge, uniforms flashing white through the dark green leaves, then tugged the girl back through the hedge as the psych techs disappeared around a sharp bend.

“They think they’re behind us, but now we’re behind them,” he whispered, his glance sliding downward to the swell of her breasts under a brown T-shirt the same color as her hair.

“Hey! Anybody ever tell you it was rude to stare?”

“I wasn’t…I mean, I didn’t mean to…“stammered Max, as Lyssy; if he could have forced a blush, he would have.

“Just messing with you,” said the girl. “You like?”

“What’s…what’s not to like?”

“You want?” Taking his hand in both of hers, she pressed his scarred palm between her breasts, against her heart, which was thumping a mile a minute. Gone was the little girl whisper; the alter’s true voice was low-pitched, with a husky, thrilling catch in it.

Staring directly into her eyes now, he cupped his palm under her right breast, stroked the stiffening nipple with his thumb. “I wouldn’t throw you out of bed for eating potato chips,” he whispered, using his own voice, the one that sounded like acid eating through glass, for the first time that day.

“Okay then,” she said. “But there’s something you have to do for me first.” Her breath was moist and sweet, her eyes so dark there was no border between pupil and iris.

“What’s that?”

“Get me out of this fucking loony bin.”