“Stop it, England,” he says. “Dreams are for the weak.”
“Did you plan for your baby?” the Swiss asks. It’s just we two awake, suspended in that slit between darkness and light.
“No. It was a surprise.”
He starts talking then, telling me everything
I have questions, fears. The Swiss fills in the blanks with facts.
“Are you sexually active?”
This is not Dr. Scott. It’s an unfamiliar face atop a white coat, which may or may not mean he’s really a physician. He told me his name when I came in, but my brain slipped a gear and cast it to the sterile, air- conditioned breeze.
“No.”
He doesn’t look like a doctor. There’s a briskness to doctors this man lacks. They’re used to running from one emergency to the next. They slip their feet into comfortable shoes, not robust boots with a firmness to the toes that indicates they’re lined with steel. These boots have not seen the inside of an emergency room. Nor have they seen construction. If I knelt, held my face close to the polished leather, I’d see a distorted version of my face. A fun-house hall of mirrors lives on his boots, reminding me that ever since the mice died last week, Pope Pharmaceuticals feels like a dream version of itself. Things aren’t quite where they’re supposed to be—nothing happens quite as it did, and while the faces are the same, the souls behind them are not. Strangers nod, smile, speak to me like they’ve worked with me for two years.
Even George P. Pope’s face in the lobby is altered.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Although I don’t see how it’s any of your—”
“Any chance you might be pregnant?”
“—business. No.”
He looks like security, although I’ve seen most of the security staff around the building and in the cafeteria, and this guy isn’t one of ours. Pope Pharmaceuticals’ security force comprises men used to walking their beat under a fluorescent sun. This guy has a tan. A real one. Hard edges make up his attitude and his face. He hasn’t been counting the minutes between doughnuts.
He makes notes on a clipboard grasping papers a finger deep. Or maybe he’s checking boxes on a quiz:
“Have you been sick in the last month?”
“No.”
“What about in the last week?”
“I just told you. No.”
“Have you had any sickness today?”
“No.”
“Has anyone in your immediate familial or social circle experienced any illness recently?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t believe me. It’s Etch-A-Sketched all over his face in long doubting lines. At the edge of his jaw a small twitch appears, ticking in time with his clenching and releasing jaw.
“Are you sure?” He’s a robot, unable to think outside the questions on his list or the responses he’s been given to parrot. In that he is exactly like Dr. Scott.
“Positive.”
“Do you know the whereabouts of Jorge Valdez?”
I can feel my eyebrows rise. “He’s not at work?”
“When did you last see him?”
Not yesterday, because that was my day off. Nor the day before, for the same reason. The two days before those were Jorge’s days off. Last I saw of him was the Jesus sticker slapped on his truck’s rear end as he zoomed into the evening haze.
“Friday.”
No
I sit. I wait. If he touches me I will run screaming, because those are not doctor’s hands. A callus forms a thick smooth cap over his right thumb, as if he’s dipped it in yellowing wax and let it spill into the backwards
“You can go,” he says, although there’s a kind of calm craziness behind his eyes that suggests he’d like nothing more than to compel me to yield different answers. He reaches out to me with his left hand. We stare at each other until I break. I know he’s not a doctor. And he knows that I know.
The jar has made me paranoid. I’m seeing monsters where there are only men.
The hand stays steady, but I push off the Naugahyde-covered bed without his help. My feet hit the floor like they’re wearing cement shoes.
Ben is dead. I know this because there are people standing outside my apartment telling me so. They have the quiet disheveled appearance of cops who’ve been on their feet too many hours for too many years. I see them mouth their names, but bees have set up house deep in my ear canals. I can’t think—not with this noise.
“How?”
Their lips move in some undefinable shapes.
“Wait.” I shake my head, bend down, grab my knees. And count to ten. When I straighten, the buzzing has subsided enough for me to hear myself. “How?”
“We’re working on it,” the tall one says.
“Did you know him?” The other one is squat, like someone took the first guy and tamped him with a mallet.
“We were friends.”
Their expressions remain steady. “Anything strange about the man? Anything new?”
“He’s been sick. That’s all.”
“Sick how?” It doesn’t matter which of them speaks, it’s all coming out of the same mouth.
I tell them. They swap knowing looks like they’re passing notes in class.
“Any strange habits?”
“He was a computer geek,” I say. “Pick one.”
“Did he like to eat anything… weird?”
“Like stuff that maybe isn’t food.”
Ben snapping up the escapee shrimp replays in my mind. Maniacal? Maybe. But shrimp was definitely real food.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Like maybe computer parts. Paper. Kitty litter. Weird like that.”
Poker face is my talent show act of choice.
“No.”
We stare at each other for a time. Until they make noises like they’re leaving and I make noises like I’d be fine with that.
