The Inner Circle (42 page)

Clenching my jaw, I give the door a slight push, and the whiff of rosewater perfume takes me back a dozen years. It’s the same smell as Clementine’s old house. As I lean forward, the nylon on my winter coat rubs the door like sandpaper. I crane my neck just enough to see—

“
What the hell you doing?
” an angry voice snaps behind me.

I spin around to find a tall brown-haired man—nurse… another nurse—standing there wearing plastic gloves and carrying a stack of Dixie cups in a long plastic sheath.

“
You got no business being back here!
” the nurse scolds, plenty pissed.

“The other nurse… the guy up front… in the white,” I stutter, pointing back the way I came. “He said Nico had visitor privileges.”

“
Christopher?
Christopher ain’t no nurse! He runs the juice cart! And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing…”

“
Doing?
I-I’m not doing anything.”

“You say that. But then every year or so, we still get one of you showing up, hoping to get an autograph or grab some personal item—last year, some guy put a Bible that he said belonged to Nico up on eBay. I know you think it’s cool, but you’ve got no idea how hard Nico’s working. It’s not easy for him, okay? Let the man live his damn life.”

“I am. I want to. I’m… I’m just trying to get my notebook,” I tell him.

“The what?”

“My notebook. I was visiting with him earlier. Doing research. I think I left my notebook.”

The nurse cocks his head, studying me for a full two seconds. He believes me. Pointing me back to the swinging doors of the day room, he explains, “Nico’s doing his janitor work in the RMB Building. You wanna ask him something, go find him there. You’re not going in his room without his okay. Now you know where RMB is?”

“The redbrick building, right?” I say, rushing for the door, remembering where Nico feeds the cats. “I know exactly where it is.”

86

Nippy out today, huh?” a young guard with a big gold class ring asks as I shove my way out of the wind and into the toasty lobby of the redbrick RMB Building.

“I’m from Wisconsin. This is summer for us,” I say, working extra hard to keep it light as I approach the desk and yet again scribble my name in a sign-in book. “So who’d you play for?” I add, motioning to the gold football that’s engraved into his ring.

“Floyd County High School. Out in Virginia,” he says. “It’s class A, not AAA, but still… state champs.”

“State champs,” I say with a nod, well aware that there’s only one thing I really care about from high school.

“So you’re the Nico guy?” the guard asks.

“Pardon?”

“They called me from the other side—said you’d be coming. You’re the one looking for Nico, right?” Before I can answer, a lanky black woman with bright red statement glasses shoves open the locked metal door that leads to the rest of the building. After finding me outside Nico’s room, they’re not letting me get in this building unattended.

“Vivian can take you back,” the guard says, motioning me through what looks like a brand-new metal detector. But as the red-glasses nurse swipes her ID against a snazzy new scanner to open the metal door, I’m all too aware that this building has a far more high-tech security system than the ancient giant key ring that the nurses rely on in the other one.

“So you a reporter?” Red Glasses asks as she tugs the door open and invites me inside.

“No… no… just… I’m doing some research,” I say, following behind her.

“Like I said—a reporter,” she teases as I notice a sign on the wall that says:

Gero-Psych Unit

In the hallway, there’s an empty gurney, an empty wheelchair and a state-of-the-art rolling cart. Everything’s scrubbed neat as can be. Outrageously neat. Even without the industrial hand sanitizer dispensers along the walls, I know a hospital when I see one.

“I didn’t realize you had a full medical unit back here,” I say as we pass an open room and I spot an elderly man in a hospital bed, hooked to various monitors and staring blankly at a TV.

“Our population’s aging. We need someplace to take care of them. You should put that in one of your articles, rather than all the usual stuff you write about us.” She’s about to say something else, but as we reach our destination—the nurses’ desk that sits like an island at the center of the long suite—she stops and arches an eyebrow, looking confused.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I just… Nico was just mopping back here.”

I follow her gaze down to the floor. Sure enough, the tiles are still shiny and wet.

“Gimme half a sec,” the nurse says, picking up the desk phone and quickly dialing a number. As she waits for it to ring, I trace the wet streaks on the floor to…

There.

Just a few feet ahead, along the tile, there’re two parallel streaks—from the wheels of a mop bucket rolling along the wet floor—that run like train tracks, then make a sharp right into one of the patient rooms.

“Pam, you see Nico up there?” the nurse says into the phone.

As she waits for an answer, I follow the streaks a few steps toward the open room. Inside, the lights are off, but there’s sunlight coming in from the window. Stretching my neck, I peek around the corner, into the room, and…

Nothing. No mop bucket… no Nico… nothing but another patient hooked up to another set of machines.

“Great—he’s up there?” the nurse says behind me, still talking on the phone. “Perfect. Great. Sure, please send him down.”

As she hangs up the phone, I take one last glance at the patient in the bed. He’s maybe sixty or so, and propped on his side, facing me. It’s not by his choice. There are pillows stuffed behind his back. His body’s frozen, and his hands rest like a corpse’s at the center of his chest. They did the same thing when my mom had her heart surgery: turning him to prevent bedsores.

The oddest part are the man’s eyes, which are small and red like a bat’s. As I step in the room, he’s staring right at me. I raise my hand to apologize for interrupting, but I quickly realize… he’s barely blinking.

I tighten my own gaze. There’s nothing behind his eyes. He’s not seeing anything at all. He just lies there, his whole body as stiff as his arms on his—

Wait.

His arm. There’s something on his arm.

My face goes hot, flushing with blood. Every bone in my body feels paper-thin and brittle, like a fishbone that’s easily snapped.

I didn’t see it when I first walked in—I was too busy looking at his empty eyes—but there it is, faded and withered on the lower part of his forearm:

A tattoo.

A sagging, faded black tattoo.

Of an eight-ball.

87

Twenty-six years ago

Journey, Ohio

That’ll be seventeen dollars and fifty-four—”

“No… hold on… I got coupons,” the heavy customer with the thick neck interrupted, fishing out wads of crumpled coupons and handing them to the supermarket cashier.

The cashier shook her head. “Son, you should’ve—” But as the cashier finally looked up and made eye contact, she realized the customer with the ripped black concert tee and the matching punk black Converse wasn’t a
he
. It was a
she
. “I… hurrr… lemme just… ring these up,” the cashier stuttered, quickly looking away.

By now, after sixteen years of living with Turner syndrome, Minnie Wallace knew how people saw her. She was used to awkward stares. Just like she was used to the fact that as she stepped past the cashier and into the bagging area, every single bagboy in the store had somehow subtly made his way to one of the other cashier lanes.

No way around it—people always disappoint
, Minnie thought as she sorted cans of cheap tuna fish away from the cheap generic aspirin, and bagged the rest of her groceries herself.

“New grand total… fifteen dollars and four cents,” the cashier announced, stealing another quick glance at Minnie’s broad chest and low, mannish hairline. Minnie caught that too, even as she brushed her black bowl-cut hair down against her forehead in the hopes of covering her face.

With a final hug around the two brown bags of groceries, Minnie gripped them tightly to her chest, added a sharp lift, and headed for the automatic doors.

Outside, the drab Ohio sky was still laced with a few slivers of pink as the sun gave way to dark.

“Y’need some help?” a voice called out.

“Huh?” Minnie asked, turning off balance and nearly dropping both bags.

“Here, lemme…
Here
,” a boy with far too much gel in his spiky brown hair said, taking control of both bags before they tumbled.

“Man, these
are
heavy,” he teased with a warm smile as he walked next to her. “You’re strong.”

Minnie stared, finally getting her first good look at his face. She knew him from school. He was a few years older from being left back. Twelfth grade. His name was Griffin.

“Whattya want?” she asked, already suspicious.

“Nothing. I was—You just looked like you needed—”

“If you want my brother to buy you beer, go ask him yourself,” she said, knowing full well what Orson had been doing since he’d been back on spring break.

“No… that’s not—Can you just listen?” he pleaded, readjusting the bags and revealing the tattoo on his forearm. A black eight-ball. “I just was hoping—I don’t know… maybe…” Griffin stopped at the corner, working hard on the words. “Maybe we could… maybe go out sometime?”

“You’re serious?”

“Sure… yeah. It’s just… I’ve seen you around school—always wearing that concert shirt—the Smiths,” he said as Minnie’s big cheeks burned red. “The Smiths are cool.”

“Yeah, they’re… they’re kinda cool,” she replied, unable to do anything but look straight down, study her black Converse, and try extra hard to slide open her leather jacket so he could see her current English Beat concert tee, which was stretched tight by her round belly.

“Yeah, English Beat’s cool too,” Griffin added, nodding his approval as he readjusted the brown paper bags and stole another glance at her.

As they crossed the street, Griffin pointed to a parked black Dodge Aspen that had been repainted with a cheap paint job. “If you want, I can drive you home,” he offered.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know,” he said, again peering over at her, this time for longer. “I’d like to. I’d really like to.”

It wasn’t the offer that caught Minnie off guard. Or even his smile. It was the way he looked at her. Right at her. For sixteen years, unless someone was staring, no one looked at her.

But Griffin did. He looked. And smiled.

He was still smiling, even as Minnie shyly looked away.

Feeling like a cork about to leave a bottle, Minnie couldn’t look away for long. Standing up straight—completely unafraid—she looked back at him. “Okay,” she said, standing by the passenger side of the car and waiting for him to open the door.

Still holding both bags, he leaned in and reached past her, his forearm about to brush against her own. He was so close, she could smell the Wonder Bread in the grocery bag—and the black cherry soda on his breath.

She looked right at him, waiting for him to say something.

The only sound was a muffled
rat-a-tat-tat
…

… of laughter.

It was coming from her left. She followed the sound over her shoulder, just around the corner, where two guys—one black with a high-top fade, one white wearing an Oakland Raiders jersey—were snickering to themselves.

“No, ya Guido—the deal was you gotta do the kiss!” the white one shouted.

“You lose, brother! Game over!” the black one added.

“That’s not what we said!” Griffin laughed back.

Minnie stood there, still struggling to process.

“C’mon, you should be thanking me,” Griffin said, turning back to Minnie. “I gave you a full two minutes of what it’s like to be normal.”

Minnie wanted to scream. She wanted to hit him. But her body locked up and her legs began to tremble. Still, there was no way she’d cry for him. No way. She tried steeling herself, but all she saw was how hard all three of them were laughing. From her nose, twin waterfalls of snot slowly ran down.

“Bye, freak,” Griffin said, dropping both bags of groceries. The eggs shattered in one bag. From the other, a single can of tuna fish cartwheeled down the sidewalk.

“You even realize how much you look like a boy? Whatchu got down there, boy parts or girl parts?” Griffin asked, flicking his fingers against her crotch. The trembling in her legs only got worse. “It’s boy parts, innit?”

Minnie shook her head, fighting the tears. “I’m a girl,” she whispered.

“And you’re telling me all those girl parts work? No chance,” Griffin challenged, getting right in her face. “No chance those parts work.”

Minnie watched the can of tuna fish roll into the street and tip on its side, making a small repeating circle like a spun nickel approaching its stop.