Читать книгу The Blind - A.F. Brady - Страница 28

It’s snowing outside. I’m up on the corner of my desk, staring out the window. The guys on the scaffold are still working, despite the change in weather. It’s been brutally cold, but for some reason, when the snow starts, it feels warmer. Like the snow is creating a blanket that covers the world and keeps it safe. The flakes are fat and wet and sticking to the cars parked on the street below. In the city, the snow only stays beautiful for a couple of hours. Once the plows come through, the perfect white shroud becomes a thick, gray sludge, sometimes piled to waist height. The only thing I miss about my house growing up is the way the snow stayed untouched.

My door is slightly ajar, and I hear the chatter of patients in the hallway. My office is across from the computer room, a popular spot for patients to try to break into porn sites or gather to chat with each other. There are two dilapidated couches and someone is always asleep in there.

I hear an unfamiliar voice outside my door, probably someone leaning against the wall outside the computer room. It’s a man’s voice, Brooklyn accent, and the hiss of missing teeth. His voice is loud and abrasive, but he hushes it down to a whisper scream to add a conspiratorial air to his story. I move to the crack in the door and listen to him without showing myself.

“It’s women—women get you into these places, man. No matter what you do, you can’t please ’em.”

“A woman got you in this place?” Another male voice I can’t quite recognize.

“Yeah, she did. My ex.”

“What did she do?” Whoever is telling this story is certainly commanding the attention of his listener.

“Well, she broke up with me, first of all. Then she went and started fuckin’ my best friend. Mmm-hmm. And you know that ain’t right. So, I had no choice; I had to get her back. Ain’t nobody gonna disrespect me like that.”

“How’d you do it? How’d you get her back?”

He hushes his voice back down to the whisper scream: “I killed the bitch.”

“You killed her?” The listener gasps.

“Man, shhhhhh! Shut the fuck up, yo. I ain’t gonna tell you nothing you keep hollerin’ like that.”

“How’d you do it?” the listener whispers back. I’m still eavesdropping from my office. I’m not concerned yet—these kinds of grandiose stories are not uncommon here. Some patients treat the unit as if it were prison, and the scarier they make themselves appear, the safer they feel, so bullshit stories about murders are rampant.

“Ha. I’ll tell you how I did it. She had a house in the Bronx, right? And she would let her dog out the back to run around and piss and whatever. So one night, I went to her house, and I waited for her to let that dog out. Once I seen the dog, I jumped the fence and I grabbed him.”

I hear chairs from the computer room scooting across the floor, followed by a few short footsteps. The story is getting more listeners.

“He was some old shaggy piece of shit dog. I had a can of lighter fluid with me, and I dumped it all over that dog. He was so stupid, he started to lick it off. He liked it, too. Just kept lickin’ at that lighter fluid. But he stopped when I lit him up.”

“No shit? You lit the fuckin’ dog on fire?”

“Damn right, I did! And he starts barkin’ and yellin’ and shit, so I pick him up, and I throw his ass through the back window of the bitch’s house. It smashes the window, and the curtains got lit up, too. I could hear the dog, and it was screamin’ and then I heard Alisha, and she start screamin’, too. And she trying to put the dog out, and he dyin’ and the fire just getting bigger and bigger.” His voice is getting loud now, and I can feel my fists clenching.

“So, she says ‘fuck the dog, I gotta get out,’ and she runs out the back door, and where am I? Right there waitin’ for her. And it’s dark out, and she don’t even see me, so she runs right into me. I grab her and turn her around so she has to watch the house burn. I put my hand over her mouth so she can’t scream. You see that?” I can almost hear the craning necks looking to see what the storyteller is showing them. “Bitch started biting my hand. But she stopped biting when I popped her in the mouth.

“The house was going up fast, I mean fast, and it started to get hot and the smoke made it hard to see, so I pulled her back into the alleyway behind the house. She was kickin’ and pullin’ and she knew she couldn’t save nothin’, and so she stopped strugglin’ and just watched it burn. The fire was mad loud, and then when the trucks came, you couldn’t hear nothin’, not even screamin’. So I took my hand off her mouth, and I told her: this is what she gets for fuckin’ with me.”

“And no one saw you? You didn’t get caught?”

“Nah, man. Nobody even knew we was there. And she starts beggin’ and sobbin’ and slobberin’ all over, and that’s when I finished it. I just put my hand around her neck, and I squeezed. Didn’t even take that long.”

I feel my face contort into an angry grimace as I hear this macho bullshit. I find myself overwhelmed with disappointment at the pathetically appreciative response from the listeners. This sociopathic story, this admiration from peers—I’ll never understand this shit. The more I keep hearing it over the years, the more I feel like it’s seeping into me, disturbing my sanity. I keep listening and I hear some of the guys relaying bits of the story to latecomers. I even hear what sound like high fives. And then I hear raspy, almost panicked breaths. I hear a familiar voice now, shaking, furious. Tyler.

“You set a woman’s dog on fire? You threw her dog into her house and her house caught fire?” Tyler has obviously been listening, and he is appalled.

“Yeah, bro, and what?”

“And what? You murdered her? For cheating on you?” His voice is getting higher.

“You got problems, bro?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got fuckin’ problems.”

“Hi, guys!” I shout as I open my door and pretend I haven’t been listening. “What’s happening? How’s everyone?” It’s clear there’s tension in the hallway, and various patients have fled to the safety of the couches in the computer room. Everyone’s eyes are glued to Tyler and the storyteller.

“Hi, I’m Dr. James. I don’t think we’ve met.” I extend my hand to the storyteller, who has his eyes trained on Tyler. He ignores me. “What’s your name?”

“Floyd.” He still won’t take his eyes off Tyler. Floyd is about a foot shorter than Tyler is, but has probably sixty pounds on him. Tyler is vibrating with anger.

“Miss Sam, I don’t think you should be here right now.”

“Really, Tyler?” Chipper, unaware. “How come?”

“This man got no respect for women.” Tyler is shifting his weight from one foot to the other, clenching and unclenching his fists. Floyd doesn’t move. He stares, unblinking, at Tyler, waiting for him to act.

“Pitchers and catchers report in a couple months, you know.” Talking Yankee baseball with Tyler is my ace in the hole to defuse this without security or backup. “Floyd, are you a baseball fan?” I ask as I move to the space between them, and the air is thick with perspiration and rage. “Tyler and I are huge Yankee fans.” I’m a little taller than Floyd, so when I’m up close to his face, he has to shift his gaze to make eye contact with me. I’m obscuring his view of Tyler, so he’s forced to address me.

“Yeah. I could watch some baseball, miss.”

“America’s pastime. It’s a beautiful thing. Now—” I clap my hands together “—where are you gentlemen supposed to be? I’m sure there’s something productive we could all be doing instead of loitering here in the hallway, huh?”

No one responds to me, but several patients observing from the computer room peel themselves off the couches and move on. Tyler is backing up slightly, but I can still feel his breath at the back of my neck.

“No? Okay. But I’ve got things to do. Tyler? Want to walk me to my next group?” I know Tyler is a gentleman and he wouldn’t let a lady walk by herself if she asked for an escort.

“Alright, Miss Sam.” I hear his teeth grind as he steps in front of me and starts slowly moving down the hallway. I pull my glasses down my nose and glower at Floyd.

Tyler and I walk down the hall, and I again ask him about baseball. Completely distracted, trying to shake the story from a moment ago, he falters and mumbles. When we reach an empty group room, I step inside and ask him to follow me.

“Tyler, when you hear something like that and you react, it just feeds the beast. He was telling that story to get a reaction out of people. Let’s not give him the satisfaction, okay? When you’re disturbed by somebody, you walk away. You don’t engage. Come find me or another staff member if you feel you’re not able to take it, okay?”

“He killed that dog. I just got so mad when he said he killed that innocent dog and that innocent lady.”

“Yeah, me too, Tyler. Me too. But we can’t let it get to us, okay? We have to rise above it.”

“You think it’s bullshit? He’s making it up to scare the other patients?”

“Maybe. Maybe he’s making it up. But even if he didn’t kill an innocent dog or an innocent lady, you and I both know that there are innocent ladies and dogs getting killed every day. But we can’t go to pieces and get in fights because of it. You’re here to take care of you, not to worry about anybody else. Right?”

“Yeah. I know you’re right, Miss Sam. I’m here to worry about me. And the Yankees, because, last season, our pitching wasn’t looking so good.”

“You’re damn right about that.”