I also worked with a kid who had shot three people at his high school and a serial rapist (they always seem to have prostitutes for mothers) and a Taiwanese pedophile named Vic Wang, and since I was more sympathetic to their situations, understood personally their stunted development, disgraceful upbringing, festering minds, was not afraid of them, and refused to use words that contained the root psyche, I think I was more effective in many cases than the shrinks or the techs themselves.
After I’d taken the harassment class and passed the exam, Dr. Jangler took me for a long drive. He was strangely quiet. It was a Friday. He went to the river just past downtown Napa and parked along the wall. We got out. He stared at the river. “Got some bad news and some good news,” he said.
I nodded.
“Bad news is I can’t get you out.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve built up too much rancor. You’ve got this ticky-tack rap sheet a mile long. Most of them up there would just as soon see you rot at Napa State.”
“What’s the good news?”
“Good news is you don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m busting you out.”
“How?”
“I’ll just tell them you bolted and jumped into the river. I followed but lost you. It’s stated explicitly in your record that you don’t know how to swim. In my opinion you drowned. Frankly, I think that will come as welcome news. I’m driving back to San Diego tonight. You can ride with me while they drag the marsh. You’ve got people there, yes?”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been back, but a few, yeah, and my father.”
“Don’t look so flabbergasted, Eddie.”
“But how can you do this?”
“How can I not do this. You’ve spent more than a third of your life in a mental hospital because you stole some suits?”
“Aren’t you going to get into trouble?”
“Patients escape all the time. Anyway, I’m not sticking around much longer myself.”
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t know yet. Who knows? This place is a discredit to the human race. I’ve never seen such deplorable treatment of patients. I had no idea what I was getting into when I accepted this position.” He drew a package of cigs from his smock pocket, shook out and lit one. “Besides, I’m not really a psychiatrist.”
“What?”
“I was a theater major at San Diego State.”
“How did you . . .”
“I’m an actor, and a pretty fair one at that, but it’s hard to get steady work. So I create my own roles. In the last decade I’ve been a trial lawyer, the mayor of Reno, and the captain of an oil tanker. Before that I was a literature professor at Tulane. Certain jobs are all about presentation. I’m thinking about becoming a cosmologist next, all you have to say is ‘quantum vacuum field’ and the audience is yours. Anyway, if you’re up for it I’ve brought you a change of clothes and a little disguise.” He opened his trunk. “Get into all this after I’ve gone. I’ll pick you up in front of that Italian restaurant around six, how does that sound?”
“What about my medications?”
“I can write you all the scrips you like, but my suspicion is that you don’t need them.”
“But you’re not a psychiatrist.”
“We’ll iron out the fine points later. Right now I need to get back and report you missing. So plunge down the bank and dash along the river there, if you don’t mind. I’ll shout at you a few times from the window, and then I’ll see you in about three hours. You remember where the Italian restaurant is?”
5.Chivalrous Deceptions
I SLEPT MOST OF THE LONG DRIVE SOUTH. THE WARM, GLOWING green chamber of Jangler’s BMW was like a return to the womb. Freedom was out there in the night with the city lights like unfriendly faces. I recalled the prostitute at the Mustang Ranch outside of Reno who had explained to me with a sneer just before I fell apart how I was one of the favored millions who lived on the degradation of the rest. My dreams were vivid and bizarre. In one I was going to bet a horse I felt good about. A tiny Chinese man had his twisted head sticking out of a wall, behind which I found a basement room, inside of which was a very cool couple in their fifties, a man with white hair pulled back into a ponytail and his attractive and buxom black wife. The room was furnished in an early capital-punishment theme and filled with endearing frippery such as whirling monkeys on bronze seats, an empty radioactive canister, some sharpened battle axes, and a television that was covered until a second glance revealed it was not covered. I had had many psychic episodes and prophetic dreams, and they had all spelled disaster, yet hope remained that this was my future, that the ethereal man in the dream was me.
The rising sun was lighting the ocean when Jangler took the Via De La Valle exit off of Interstate 5, turned down the ramp and pulled into the Denny’s parking lot just around the corner from the Del Mar Racetrack. It is cool here every morning, the tentacle shrouds and mists crawling in off the sea. Denny’s had always been a joke, with papery, undercooked hash browns, greasy, slippery eggs, and overcooked spaghetti, but this morning it felt like a godsend. We took a booth by a window.
The waitress appeared, her nametag read: SHEILA.
“Coffee?” I asked.
Sheila was confused. “Yes,” she said. “We . . . have coffee.”
“I haven’t had a cup in years. Coffee is black market where I come from.”
Now Sheila looked worried.
Jangler laughed. “He’s been in a quantum vacuum field.”
“Oh,” she said.
I stared at the menu. My hands were shaking (the tremor is still with me). Jangler
