Oh, I say, that makes this all lots better. Now everything makes perfect sense.
She just wanted me to know that, tonight, she was to be recalled to the year 2556. This would be the last time we'd ever see each other, and she just wanted me to know that she was grateful.
'I'm profoundly grateful,' she said. 'And I do love you.'
And standing there in the hallway, in the strong light from the sun rising outside the windows, I took a black felt-tipped pen from the chest pocket of her lab coat.
The way she stood with her shadow falling on the wall behind her for the last time, I started to trace her outline.
And Paige Marshall said, 'What's that for?'
It's how art was invented.
And I said, 'Just in case. It's just in case you're not crazy.'
Chapter 46
In most twelve-step recovery programs
, the fourth step makes you write a complete and relentless story of your life as an addict. Every lame, suck-ass moment of your life, you have to get a notebook and write it down. A complete inventory of your crimes. That way it's always in your head. Then you have to fix it all. This goes for alcoholics, drug abusers, and overeaters as well as sex addicts.
This way you can go back and review the worst of your life anytime you want.
Still, those who remember the past aren't necessarily any better off.
My yellow notebook, in here is everything about me, seized with a search warrant. About Paige and Denny and Beth. Nico and Leeza and Tanya. The detectives read through it, sitting across a big wood table from me in a locked soundproof room. One wall is a mirror, for sure with a video camera behind it.
And the detectives ask me, what was I hoping to accomplish by admitting to other peoples crimes?
They ask me, what was I trying to do?
To complete the past, I tell them.
All night, they read my inventory and ask me, what does all this mean?
Nurse Flamingo. Dr. Blaze. 'The Blue Danube Waltz.'
What we say when we can't tell the truth. What anything means anymore, I don't know.
The police detectives ask if I know the whereabouts of a patient named Paige Marshall. She's wanted for questioning about the apparent smothering death of a patient named Ida Mancini. My apparent mother.
Miss Marshall disappeared last night from a locked ward. There's no visible signs of forced escape. No witnesses. Nothing. She's just vanished.
The staff at St. Anthony's were humoring her in the delusion, the police tell me, that she was a real doctor. They let her wear an old lab coat. It made her more cooperative.
The staff say she and I were pretty chummy.
'Not really,' I say. 'I mean, I saw her around, but I didn't really know anything about her.'
The detectives tell me I don't have a lot of friends among the nursing staff.
Вы читаете Удушье (Choke)
