Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures (13 page)

“What?”

“Cameras. Not in the bathroom, but all these rooms are, let's not say watched, let's say monitored.”

Winston looks around quickly, realizes that he is seated far from the door, that they are on the third floor, that it is too high to jump out the window, that the architecture has trapped him, and that he is correct. He knew that he was being watched.

“Then I have to be careful,” he says, whispering to Sri, already half-standing to leave.

“Didn't you read the signs in the waiting room? This is a teaching facility, so there're cameras running. But it's not someone ‘watching' you in the sneaky way you feel that someone is watching. It's a routine, normal part of our teaching institution. It's a person, a
real
person. Dr. Miniadis is the supervising physician today, so she can see all the rooms. There's the camera.” Sri points at the one-way mirror that shields the lens. “It's a physical camera, with wires, and it's
really there,
but not the way you think someone is
watching you.
You know what I mean?”

“That's exactly what I feel, that someone is really watching me.”

“Now, to be honest, often Dr. Miniadis doesn't watch.” Sri says this in complete confidence that she never turns away from her headphones and her music, and therefore does not hear him give this explanation.

“Now I'm confused. So then who's watching?”

“Really, no one. She's there in the monitoring room but I'm sure that she's not paying attention. In a true sense, no one sees us. But you asked and so I just want to be honest and let you know that these cameras are running.”

“Wow,” says Winston, reclining slightly and considering this information. He leans forward and whispers, “The poison gives me special power, so that I
know
when I'm being watched, like an extra sense. See, before you said it, I already
knew
that we were being watched. I told you. You heard it. I
already knew.
”

 

Having fled downstairs, Winston sat with his back to the door of his apartment, the tea stain cooling on his leg. The Halloween party that he had not thought of for days now emerged in detailed memory.

The pitcher of blue fluid, maraschino cherries bobbing like eyes. Adrienne a harem girl, Claude the sultan. Three Viking brothers with daggers charged at Winston—he screamed until the rubber swords collapsed instead of impaling him. “Are you happy, Winston?” said the harem girl as she shimmied her
hips. “What is your pleasure?” Tigger called him Winnie, and handed him a drink. He tore a wider mouth-hole in the bedsheet that made him a ghost, and gulped at the air in fear of the pressing, dancing, shouting crush of people. A tiny female jockey on her strong-haunched stallion charged around the living room, yelled “Giddy-up! Giddy-up!” The horse reared in front of Winston, whinnied, shook its head, almost threw off its glasses. “Silver is spooked by ghosts,” the jockey said. Claude toasted Winston, who said that he was not feeling well, that this was too much for him. Claude said, “I am the Sultan, and I command you to party!” and handed him a tumbler of the blue cocktail that was named Red Sky at Night. With his third drink, Winston began a ghost howl. Phantoms pursued him, and he chased them in return. All around him was the murmur of plotted conspiracy and special powers, and Winston told them of his knowledge that people watched him and yet could see right through him, that he could hear their thoughts even when he didn't want to, and that he wished people would stop inserting words into his mind. Laughter confirmed and mocked him. Joan of Arc sympathized, said that she had never realized that being a ghost was so trying, but asked him if he had ever tried to go into battle as a woman pretending to be a man. After Winston fell, the harem girl helped him to his feet, shooed people from the stairs to bring the ghost to his apartment, steadied him until he was in bed. “You
overdid it, little ghost,” said the harem girl. “I know your thoughts,” said Winston. “And you'll drift through my room at night, right? Let me get you some water.” The harem girl sat as he sipped the water, watched him drink it all. Only after swallowing did he realize that it had been unusually blue, just like the Red Sky at Night. Then came the harem girl's dance—perhaps she didn't realize it was his first time. He was unsure if he wanted her to know how glad he was that his first time was with her, or if he wanted to conceal his inexperience.

Yet now, the details of the harem girl's dance were blurred. Winston achingly, importantly, wanted to remember the texture of skin, the scent of neck, the drift of veil, but all this was fuzzy. What clearly remained was that Adrienne had ignored the aftermath of seduction in the banality of innocent tea preparation, that she had poisoned him to do this, and that the poison had made him forget but now he remembered. What else would the poison do? The mind's implosion? Explosion? Possibly, this was not true love. He had to get help, to find the antidote.

 

Sri says, “You said that Claude and Adrienne have been your friends for a long time.”

“Best friends,” says Winston.

“You wouldn't hurt your best friends, then.”

He looks away from the camera, at Sri. “Adrienne wants to be with me. That would make her happy,
though I suspect it would upset Claude. Yet, I'm wary of a woman who poisons me to sleep with me.”

“What will you do?”

“I must wait, and listen.” He stares straight into the shielded camera lens.

“And?”

“And be vigilant.”

Sri decides that there will be no spoken clue that will allow him to confine Winston against his will. He turns to his backup plan and says, “Also, you need to take pills that I will prescribe. One a day. And come back in three days.”

Winston says, “This is the antidote.”

“It may help you.”

“And the tests?”

“Takes a while for the results. We need to make a deal. If you start to think about hurting anyone, or hurting yourself, you call us first. Can you commit to that?”

“And you'll help me?”

“Yes, and you must come back in three days.”

“Three days, the magic triad.”

“To see how the pills are working,” says Sri. “Before you do anything that might…hurt anyone, you have to commit that you will call us and we will help you. Have we got a deal?”

Winston nods slowly.

Sri gives Winston the prescription.

Winston sits cross-legged at the kitchen table, facing the door of his apartment, next to which stands a narrow green bookcase with a stencilled frieze of red flowers. He watches the bookcase, has already smoked half of the pack of cigarettes that he bought. The butts hiss briefly as he pushes them into the moist soil of the potted gardenia on the windowsill. In the backyard, no red car. On the third shelf of the bookcase is an orange glass dish whose surface is bubbles of thin cold membrane—
molten sand cooled,
he thinks. In this dish are Winston's keys, and his wallet, and a small, secretive paper bag that would be too slim to hold even a thin sandwich. Inside the paper bag, whose folded mouth the girl at the pharmacy had stapled carefully as she smiled at him (too prolonged a smile, he immediately realized), there is a yellow plastic canister. He saw her put it in, this canister with its push-down-turn-counter-clockwise-childproof top and the printed label fixed to its side, brimming with green and white capsules. Green and white capsules, the kind with the little ridge through the middle that are slippery once in your mouth—easy to swallow. Now, Winston tries to remember:
Did Dr. Sri say it was a cure? Or an antidote? And how long have I known Dr. Sri? But he would have prescribed the right thing, because I told him about the poison. Unless he's a poisoner himself.

The red car.

The red car is in the backyard.
Parked sloppy.
The gate ajar.
Why parked so sloppy? In a rush? Is Claude in
a rush because he has discovered about us?
The methodical bump, bump, bump of feet climbing upstairs. Every poison has a remedy—that much is common knowledge.

“Hi, honey,” Adrienne's voice leaks down the stairs and through Winston's door.

So the thing is: eating the green capsules? Green and white bullets that must be a cure, or antidote. Cure or antidote? What's the difference? Will either really do? Why would a woman who loves me poison me? From her own fear, perhaps, but wouldn't she know that this could sabotage everything between us? Unless she doesn't really care, is using me.
Winston tilts the cigarette into the planter, exhales.
Are the capsules part of the deal? The doctor made me make a deal, something about three days, about doing something or other, calling before doing something else. Before doing some particular thing, I am to call someone, and take something.
He wants to remember the harem girl's dance, that part so horribly, tragically fuzzy.

Why should I have to eat pills? Why not an injection, a surgical procedure? This is a perfect way to make me take something, to make it look like I wanted to take it. Is that the deal?
The capsules are in the childproof yellow canister with the white lid stapled into the brown paper bag on the orange glass dish upon the green bookshelf next to the door right where they should be.
One a night, the doctor said.
From where he sits, Winston can see the edge of the bag.

The sound of an explosion, of a grenade launcher, of a malicious rocket; the door being knocked.

“Winston?” says Claude.

The roar of a building collapsing, of a crumbling rock face, of an iceberg splitting; the door being knocked.

“Winston?” says Claude. “Are you home?”

“Oh. Hi, Claude.”

“Hey buddy. Adrienne said you came by yesterday, that you aren't feeling well. You okay?”

“Never better, Claude. Million bucks.”

“Adrienne's making her chow mein. You're welcome to come up. She's making too much, as always.”

The throbbing of an April river, of fingers in the cold, of stop-and-go traffic; his heart. He says, “Sure. Sure. Maybe later, for sure.”

Then the whispering. He dares not move.
I should take the antidote now.
They will know if he has taken it, because they hear him walk across the room just as he hears them back and forth in their kitchen. Winston follows their footsteps from fridge to counter, counter to table, table to stove.
Strange. So much movement for chow mein? Why the laugh?
It is about him, her giggling. Such a cruel woman: to poison, then love, then laugh. Claude laughs too. Perhaps Adrienne has let him in on it. All a big joke.
I'm a big joke. They may kill me tonight. Why don't they let me sleep? Die painlessly?

Fifteen minutes later, a machine gun, a tooth whacked out; the door being knocked.

“Dinner's on, Winston. I put snow peas in it,” says Adrienne.

She does love me.

“Are you okay in there?”

“Fine.”

“You didn't seem well yesterday.”

“Just fine.”

“If you're not feeling well, you should see a doctor.”

“I saw a doctor.”
Why did you say that?

Claude's voice now: “You're okay, then? They didn't slice you open? Good for you. Noodles are hot, buddy. Come on out.”
He said
buddy
in a homicidal voice. Slice me open. Why would I be sliced open?

Adrienne's voice: “Ignore Claude. He's being stupid. Did you get some pills or something?”

“Yes.”
That was a mistake, dummy.

“What kind of pills are they?”

“What pills?”

“The pills you got from the doctor.”

“No, there's no pills.”
That's better.

“If you got some medicines, you should take them, Winston,” says Adrienne.
The witch who loves me casts spells through the door.

“I said yes but I meant no, because I don't need pills. The doctor said I don't need anything.”

“You want some noodles?” she asks.

“I ate.”

“He ate,” Claude says to Adrienne. “Let's go.”

“I ate!”

“Gotcha, buddy,” says Claude through the door.

As they go up the stairs, Claude whispers to Adrienne.

The reply comes in her higher-pitched hiss: “Be nice, Claude.” Their door shuts with the clang of a manhole cover.

Winston watches television, allows the sitcoms, infomercials, and reality TV to speak their special messages to him. Three hours later, he writes.

 

November 7, 1 a.m.

Was about to take pills. Now see, just in time. So clever—green & white & poison. Pharmacy girl smiling, just smiling away.

Obvious.

Adrienne said about doctor. Wanted me to go to the doctor, she knew, knew the doctor. Part of it.

 

It is dark. Winston debates whether to make a run for it. But where to? And Claude has a car. He could steal the car, but it is booby-trapped, wired with explosives. He should call his mother, but the phone is tapped. Winston pulls out the gardenia, holds the stalk and lifts out the pot-shaped mould of dirt, empties half the pills into the flowerpot, leaves the yellow plastic canister open on the table—casual, no, he moves it three centimetres to the right where it appears even more casual. He slides it a centimetre to the left.
What time of night is it? Are we headed away from light, or
toward it? But maybe if I don't take the pills they will kill me anyway. They will know that I know too much.
Winston picks up the telephone and dials the emergency number that Dr. Sri gave him.