The Devil in Silver

On the screen, the same anchor, as well maintained as a pre-owned luxury car, scrabbled through a handful of papers on his desk and looked up at the camera as the show returned from a commercial break.

“Welcome back to News Roll, I’m your host Steve Sands. As you know, we focus on the big news, national and international, but we’re even more committed to covering the big news that’s local. That’s right. Casting an eye on the stories that matter most to New Yorkers like you and me.”

Pepper chose a table that looked out on the decrepit basketball court. In a couple hours, about noon, the staff would open the door here for a smoker’s break. Would they let him go out there? Pepper wondered how many of the patients still had their staff schwag. At least he’d distributed free cigarettes to the masses! That’s the best thing he could say about the incident: He’d helped a bunch of people flirt with cancer.

He took an empty table, his back to the rest of the lounge, and looked out on the court. He ignored Steve Sands. Halfway through the meal, he actually felt the sunlight on his face. Despite the meds, he sensed the warmth. Such a small thing, but so pleasant. He ate his toast quietly in his chair. He tasted the sweetness of the butter and almost laughed.

“You eating that?”

He knew the voice even before he saw the hand reach over his shoulder and take his apple.

Loochie.

“I am eating that,” he said, and swiped at the fruit with his left hand.

Or, he meant to swipe at that fruit. By the time the signal left his brain, hacked through the underbrush of antipsychotics, and actually raised his hand, that girl had already taken it.

His reaction time still needed work.

She took the seat directly across from him. She wore the blue knit cap again, but the pom-poms were missing. Two sad blue strings lay limp. Pepper wondered if she’d even plucked the pom-poms off while suffering some involuntary spasm in the middle of the night.

Loochie finished the apple, down to the core. She wiped her fingers on her polo shirt. Loochie said, “Share your cereal with me?”

Pepper set the Frosted Flakes down and opened the back of the box. While he opened the plastic and poured the milk, Loochie went to the nurses’ station and demanded a plastic spoon. When she returned, Pepper pushed the box toward her, it sat halfway between them. They took turns dipping their spoons in. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Loochie finished her last spoonful and said, “Thanks.”

Pepper touched the plastic spoon to his forehead in a salute.

“So, we going to kill that old bitch or what?” Loochie asked.

Pepper actually ate one more spoonful of cereal. It wasn’t until he’d finished chewing that he understood what Loochie had said.

“You with me?” she asked, smiling like she’d just asked him to go hang out at the mall.

No.

That was his answer. The only answer. Loochie looked at him, confused. “Pepper?”

On the television, Steve Sands looked into the camera and seemed to speak directly to Pepper. “My friends, the world gets more frightening every day. The news I report to you stays with me when I go home to my wife and children every night. As our politicians fail us, and our once-mighty institutions suffer from rigor mortis, it’s become clear that we’re kind of on our own out here. Am I right? That’s just how it seems to me. It may sound harsh, but the new American reality is this: every man for himself. Make sure your butt is covered.”

Mr. Mack actually applauded from his chair. “That man is speaking the truth right there! You can’t save nobody but yourself.”

At the same table Frank Waverly picked at his scrambled eggs. When Mr. Mack slapped his friend’s shoulder, looking for a little corroboration, Frank Waverly leaned away from the touch.

Pepper returned to his room and read. At lunch, he came out to the nurses’ station, took his pills, then ate. Though they were making sure he took his pills, his body was starting to react with slightly less tilt. The body adapts. At eleven p.m. he found himself awake instead of zonked into a narco-coma. His body had adapted in another way, too. Weeks spent walking the ward from eight in the evening to four a.m. meant that his clock had readjusted. He came to life during the haunted hours.

Pepper still hadn’t been given a new roommate, though the staff had at least cleared Coffee’s bedsheets. The only thing they’d left behind was his blue binder. It had been on the windowsill, and when one of the nurses went to grab it, Pepper said it was his. They’d cleaned out the bottom drawer full of pills without comment. Scotch Tape even moved Coffee’s dresser away from the wall and swept up all the rat droppings. The room had been cleaned, cleared, but that didn’t make it feel empty.

Eleven thirty, and Pepper put down Van Gogh’s letters and left his room.