The Devil in Silver

Pepper, Dorry, Loochie, and Coffee returned to the nurses’ station. They were much quieter than the patients in the lounge, whose voices played louder than the television. It seemed like a party was being thrown. There was an undertone of forced cheer, though. As if those patients were working hard to celebrate. Hoping to drown out the sounds of whatever was coming next.

Coffee walked into the nurses’ station and touched the beige plastic phone. He seemed to forget the others. He whispered the phone number to himself now, ten digits: “5102821833. 5102821833. 5102821833.”

Dorry and Pepper watched Coffee with concern. Even Dorry couldn’t ignore what Coffee had said about accessing the Internet with his mind. Let him dial the number, if that made him feel better. The rest of them would do the real work.

“What now?” Dorry asked Pepper. “You want me to unlock the front door for you?”

Pepper took a step inside the nurses’ station, too. There were so many files, multiple stacks. Was his there? He grabbed a handful of folders and looked at the names written on the tabs.

“I could make it,” Pepper said as he scanned for his name. Those files were for one patient: Samantha Forrester. Was that Sam?

Dorry hesitated a moment, she hadn’t expected him to leave. Finally she said, “Where would you go?”

“I’ve got an apartment. Rent’s paid automatically.”

Dorry looked bereft. She put her hand against the nurses’ station desktop for balance. Coffee was clearly cuckoo. In a moment Pepper would walk away. Not much of a team.

Coffee mashed at the phone with an open palm. “It won’t let me make the call.”

Coffee tried again while Dorry and Pepper watched.

Dorry sighed. “You have to press the pound sign, then nine, then three. Then you can make an outside call.”

Coffee did as she said. He looked up from the keypad. “It’s ringing!”

Dorry looked at Pepper, who’d taken up another handful of files, hunting for his. She leaned her elbows on the desktop.

“As soon as the police brought you in, I knew why you’d ended up here.”

Pepper set down the next handful of files and lifted another.

“I’m not talking about your crime,” Dorry continued. “I’m talking about something bigger than that.”

“Destiny?”

He didn’t even look up. Destiny. Fate. Solace for losers. And a defense for the ones who’d hoarded success. By almost anyone’s math, he hadn’t made too much of his life. Not as much as he would’ve imagined by forty-two. Not referring to money here, or some kind of fame, but worth. He’d wanted—let’s say, expected—to be valuable by this age. Somehow. But so far he’d done little worth treasuring. So if that was his fate, then fuck fate.

He dropped the folders to the floor. The papers scattered at his feet.

“I’m talking about a calling,” Dorry said. “When they brought you in here, I saw you and knew you were here to meet your purpose.”

That got Pepper’s attention. Dorry looked into his face, and while it’s true that her sweater was inside out and her hair maybe didn’t look quite as well kept as it had been two days before, but her halfblind eyes didn’t look wild just then. If the time off the meds had been just a little too long for Coffee, maybe Dorry had been off them just long enough to say something absolutely right. Maybe she could see something in him that even he couldn’t right now. She believed in him. Who doesn’t hope for something like that, at least once?

But before Pepper could ask what purpose Dorry saw for him, Coffee yelled into the phone. “Hello? Yes! Who am I speaking to?”

Coffee stood straighter, erect with pride.

“It’s good to speak with you Ms. Hong. I am called Kofi Acholi, and I wish to speak with your superior. What? Yes, that’s Kofi, K-O-F-I.”

Dorry slapped the top of the nurses’ station. “Your name is Kofi? Do you know we’ve been calling you Coffee all this time?”

Coffee covered the receiver with one hand. “I am aware,” he said.

Then Pepper finally asked the question that should’ve come up minutes ago. “Where’s Loochie?”

Coffee returned to the phone. “You do know who I mean, Ms. Hong. Of course you do. Our President. The Big Boss. I don’t need to say any more. Now, let him know I am calling about conditions in New Hyde.”

Dorry and Pepper were less concerned about the phone call that wasn’t apparently magically connecting to the fucking President’s social secretary, and instead they moved around the nurses’ station to seek out their fourth member.

“Maybe she went to smoke?” Dorry asked.

Pepper said, “No.”

Dorry turned and saw Loochie walking calmly as you please. She was three-quarters of the way down Northwest 4.

“What are you doing?” Dorry shouted. “We haven’t even figured out what we should say to him yet!”

Loochie looked over her shoulder. “You all were stalling! You weren’t going to ever open this fucking door!”

Coffee’s voice rose. He was screeching. “Washington, D.C.! The nation’s capital. No, that’s not where I am. That’s where you are! What do you mean ‘Oakland’? The President doesn’t live in Oakland!”