The Devil in Silver

His chance to escape witnessing Dorry’s encore performance had come when one of the nurses entered the television lounge, flicking through the keys on her chain. She found one long four-sided key. As she moved through the lounge, half a dozen other patients appeared behind her, matter pulled in her wake. They followed her, and Heatmiser slid back from his place at the table to join them. The nurse stopped at the glass doorway in the lounge. She slid the key into the door’s bottom lock and called out, “Smoke break!”

Pepper found himself excited by those two words. Even if it was only to stand around on a busted old basketball court. This would be the first fresh air he’d known in almost thirty days. He left Dorry, took his PB&J, and got in line to go out.

The breeze. It touched his neck and made him shiver. He opened his mouth and smacked his lips like a child conditioned to feed at the feel of his mother’s nipple. He inhaled the oxygen and swore it even had a taste. His tongue quivered in the cage of his mouth. He had to clamp his teeth closed to be sure it wouldn’t slip free.

Heatmiser and Pepper and a Puerto Rican kid in his twenties marched outside. (When asked, at his intake meeting four months ago, what he wanted to be called, the Puerto Rican kid told Dr. Anand he wanted everyone to use his “professional name,” Wally Gambino, and Anand only blinked and said, “Wally it is!”)

The nurse didn’t walk outside with the patients. She didn’t have to. At the far end of the court stood that chain-link fence with barbed-wire icing. A less addle-minded person might be able to scale it and use a blanket to cover the razor wire, slip himself over to freedom, but that was sort of the point of New Hyde, no? These folks, by and large, couldn’t even coordinate their outfits. Just about every patient wore a pajama top with jeans on the bottom, or pajama bottoms and a stained blouse on top. Some had showered recently, while others (Heatmiser) hadn’t. Not a jailbreak population.

None of the patients wore coats, it was March but still a little chilly. They were all just so happy to feel the real climate that they didn’t register the cold at all.

New Hyde didn’t supply the smokes. Those were brought by family on visiting days. A (semi)cheap gift, but much appreciated. Once outside, each patient pulled out a loosie and sparked it. All Pepper had was his inedible PB&J. But who cared? He stood outside. He walked the length of the half-court. On one end, that raggedy basketball rim hung at an angle, and at the opposite end stood a tall maple tree. The tree threw shade over half the court. That’s where nearly everyone went. Everyone but Pepper, eyes closed and face up toward the sun, and Loochie, who’d been one of the last ones out. She walked right up to the fence line and picked up a handful of rocks and pebbles. Pepper only opened his eyes when he heard Loochie stop in front of him. He heard this regular breathing and looked down to see her staring up at him, left hand heavy with stones. It was hard, for a moment, not to think of David and Goliath.

She squinted from the sunlight. “I want you to apologize.”

He felt so surprised by what she said that he dropped his damn sandwich on the ground. Both he and Loochie looked at it there. What seemed less edible? The PB&J or the pebbles?

She picked up the sandwich and turned it over and brushed off the small bits of dirt and leaves that had stuck to the bread. Once it was mostly clean she brought it to her lips, gave it a faint kiss then held it over her head, toward the sky.

“Kissed it to God,” she said. “Now you can eat it.”

She handed it back up to Pepper and to Pepper’s surprise he took it.

“Thank you?” he said.

She had on that same blue knit cap. She reached underneath and scratched at her scalp with one finger. The movement was so delicate that the pom-poms didn’t even quiver as she did it.

“How come you’re always wearing that hat?” he asked. He thought he was being playful but Loochie ignored him.

“To my mother,” she said. “I want you to apologize for knocking her down.”

“I didn’t mean to hit her,” Pepper said.

“You know that’s not an apology, right?”

Pepper saw that someday this girl was going to be pretty, but for now she was such a teenage girl. Smallish, but stooped forward to hide her chest, which only made her seem even shorter. Her feet were big and only seemed bigger because of the snug jeans she wore over her thin legs. Her long-sleeved top didn’t quite reach her jeans, so a band of her stomach showed and bulged out slightly, and she tugged at the bottom of her shirt to cover it. But the moment she let go, it slipped up again, showing skin. She yearned to be seen but felt awkward each time it happened.