The Devil in Silver

He looked at Loochie, who wore a bright red scarf tied around her head. He hated to admit it, but he felt relieved by this. The site of her patchy scalp had been depressing. He knew it was selfish, but he was happy she’d covered it. Then her right hand floated up and two fingers slipped under the red scarf. Loochie hardly seemed aware of the action. Then, as if waking up from a bad dream, her eyes shifted and she caught herself and pulled her hand back down to her side again.

“Once we take care of the staff,” Coffee began, “each of us has a choice to make. I’m using the staff phone to make my call. After that, I’ll support whatever the group wants to do.”

Dorry said, “Why don’t we try working together on this. First, Coffee gets his phone call. Then, I have a talk with the man behind the silver door. Then, Loochie gets to … What do you want to do, Loochie?”

Loochie’s eyes had trailed off to the lounge’s windows.

“Loochie?” Dorry asked again. “What do you want to do?”

“I just want to be a girl,” she said quietly.

Pepper almost laughed. “You are one!” he said.

Her eyes drooped. She looked soul-tired for a moment. “I haven’t been a girl since I was thirteen. I’m just a diagnosis.”

Dorry raised one hand for peace. “Loochie, I’m sorry, but that’s probably not something we can fix tonight.”

Coffee sensed that they might be about to spin off into some grand philosophical conversation that would derail any concrete action. And he was ready to act. “It’s time,” he reminded them. “We’re ready enough.”

He moved. Loochie got in step beside him. Dorry came around the table and pinched Pepper out of a moment’s paralysis. They hadn’t asked him what he wanted to do. Maybe they didn’t really want to know. Find my file. Find my way out. That’s what he would’ve said.

Josephine sat at the nurses’ station. With paper and pen she filled out a complaint against Miss Chris. She wasn’t even looking up as Dorry, Loochie, Coffee, and Pepper entered the oval room. Scotch Tape was in Northwest 1, pushing the meal rack, and all those empty dinner trays, into the conference room that had long ago been repurposed as the storage room.

Coffee knocked on the nurses’ station desktop and said, “I need to use the phone.”

Josephine didn’t even look up. She was in the middle of writing the word negligence and had lost herself in the pleasure of using it to describe Miss Chris.

While they waited on Josephine to look up, Pepper said, “Hey, Coffee. How did you get the social secretary’s private number? You never said. I’m sure the White House switchboard didn’t just give it out.”

In the storage room, Scotch Tape slid the meal rack to its usual place near the back of the room. If he didn’t keep it far from the hallway door, the rats (he believed it was actually only one enormous, graying rat; he’d seen it so often he felt familiar with it), the rat might be tempted to slip into the hall and then it would be sprinting down Northwest 1 openly, causing panic among patients. And who would be sent to try to kill it again? Him. Clarence Green. (He didn’t refer to himself as Scotch Tape, obviously.) He’d been sent on that mission before, dropping poison pellets all over the abandoned second floor, and learned his lesson. That rat had the run of this building, more than any other living thing. (But what about the freak on Northwest 4? What about the …? Shut up with that, Clarence. Shut up with that, right now.) Scotch Tape got the rack to the back of the storage room and switched off the light and pulled the door closed. He locked it and returned to the nurses’ station.

Where he heard Coffee’s answer to Pepper’s question.

Coffee said, “I went online. That’s how I got the social secretary’s number.”

Josephine looked up from her complaint form.

“Coffee, you know patients make all calls on the pay phones.”

Coffee pouted. “But I don’t have enough coins for a long-distance call, and Pepper’s card is maxed out. I don’t think he had very good credit.”

Pepper said, “Hey!”

Scotch Tape entered the oval room, saw four patients crowding around the station and said, “What’s going on over here?”

Dorry ignored the question, imploring Josephine. “It’ll only take a minute, sweetheart.”

But by this time of night, Josephine couldn’t muster any more goodwill. “Pay phone, Dorry,” she growled. “Pay phone.”

Scotch Tape came around the station so he could see the group’s faces and they could see his. “I asked you all a question.”

Loochie brushed him away with one hand. “Go mind your own business.”

Scotch Tape roared with laughter. “My business is you. Now you can make it pleasant business … or unpleasant business.”

Pepper touched Coffee’s shoulder. “Wait. How did you go online?”