I could now see a tall figure standing at the head of a row of shelves filled with drugs of every description. A bluish flame glowed. By its light, he was reading something that hung from the shelf-a clipboard. Papers shuffled. He sighed.
He moved quickly then, down the row of shelving into even deeper darkness. I waited a beat, then scuttled forward to the head of the row of shelves.
The light flared again. He was kneeling at the far end of the row, exploring something on the back wall. The blue flicker revealed a cross-hatch pattern. Metal clattered on metal. He was trying to break into the lockup where I suspected they kept the really potent stuff.
I glanced around, looking for some source of real light. On the counter next to the deceased cash register was an oil lamp. I scurried, stretched and fetched, then fumbled the lighter out of my pocket.
The rattling was fainter and more purposeful suddenly. Whoever this was, he seemed to know how to handle locks. I moved with all speed back to the shelves.
He’d doused the light, but even in the dark I could tell the thief was making progress. The rattling stopped and the door of the cage creaked open.
I crept up the aisle, holding the lantern and lighter at the ready. Inside the lockup, he was fumbling in the drawers.
36 / Marc Scott Zicree amp; Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” The voice was a croak.
I lit the lantern and thrust it through the door of the lockup. “Hey!” I said. (Original, huh?)
He froze, hands full of bottles and packets, something like pain in his dark eyes.
“Goldman? What the hell are you doing?”
THREE
GOLDIE
There are some moments in life you can only survive. Moments in which you find yourself desperate for oblivion, or a mantra-anything that will just get you through it.
I remember one night, coming up out of the subway tunnels near Central Park, running into a pack of young punks out hunting “moles,” which, since I had a subterranean address at the time, included me. My life narrowed to a circle of dark figures with gleaming eyes, the ominous creak of leather, lips forming crude and entirely rhetorical questions, biting cold.
It was the last week of November, and Manhattan was lit up for the holidays-Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa- take your pick. When the punks instructed me to take off my clothes, I suspected I’d get my fifteen minutes of fame by being the poor, naked, homeless schmuck found frozen to death on the first day of the holiday season. I’d make the headline news, and probably a handful of Sunday sermons as well.
I couldn’t run; I couldn’t fight; there was nothing I could do with the moment but just get through it. So, I thought of the Chrysler Building pointing up through the snow; a million frozen falling stars drifting down to blanket Fifth Avenue and catch in the bare branches of its hundreds of trees-and I spontaneously broke into “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”
The punks found a naked mole-guy singing holiday jingles amusing, which derailed some of their misdirected spite and got me through the moment until some friends from the underground came to bail me out.
My failed attempt on the pharmacy’s goodies leads to one of these moments. There is no threat of physical violence here in Dr. Darryl Nelson’s cozy first-floor office, but there is a circle of eyes-anguished, disappointed, disapproving. And there are questions, none of them rhetorical.
I discover again (as if I could have forgotten) that an enemy’s hatred is less painful than a friend’s disappointment. There is no mantra for this occasion; there is more at stake here than my dignity.
Cal’s lips have stopped moving and though I haven’t really heard him, I know the nature of the question. Doc, perched on the corner of a large antique desk, looks pensive. He is as reluctant to pass judgment as Colleen is to withhold it. I barely graze her face. It would be hard to read even if I cared to try. Where she sits, behind Doc in the window casement, she is half in shadow. Her condemnation, I can feel.
I pan back to Cal, whose eyes beg me to come up with a reasonable explanation for what I was doing in the pharmacy tonight. Moment of truth. Question is, what variety of truth? Half-truth? The whole truth and nothing but? Are they ready for that? Am I?
I open my mouth and a half-truth slips out. “I couldn’t sleep.”
I wait for somebody to feed me a straight line: So, you were just looking for something to help you sleep?
No one feeds me anything. I wonder if Cal the Earnest knows how hard it is to lie to him, or even withhold from him. I start again, flashing for just an instant on the cold sweat I woke up in about an hour ago. “I was having a hell of a time sleeping. I don’t know, um, maybe all the-the stuff that happened today just, um …” That isn’t it. Not really. I scratch my head. Time for a haircut. “I thought maybe some sleeping pills…”
Doc stirs. “You could have come to me, Goldie. I would have gotten you something, gladly. So would Dr. Nelson, I imagine.”
No accusation. He exposes me with simple compassion. “C’mon, Goldman,” says Colleen. “You were after something a lot more potent than sleeping pills.”
Cal raises a hand and she subsides, looking mutinous. He says, “If there’s a problem, Goldie, let us help you.”
He makes it so easy. Flashback to my parent’s living room and three different pairs of eyes. If someone-any-one-had uttered those words back then… But they didn’t, and the rest, as they say, is history.
You’re just like Grampa Ziolinsky, Dad said. An impossible drama queen.
I take a deep breath. Focus. “Tegretol,” I say, “I wanted Tegretol.”
Cal’s face is a total blank, then he glances at Doc, as if for a translation. In the miserable silence, I can hear flames fluttering in their lanterns. Doc raises himself slowly from the desk.
Cal shoots him a sideways look. “What’s Tegretol?”
“A trade name for carbamazepine, a drug most often used to medicate epilepsy.” Doc doesn’t take his eyes from my face. “But this is not epilepsy, is it, Goldie?”
“No.”
Now he nods, comprehension and understanding flickering in his eyes. “You are certain of the diagnosis?”
“I diagnosed myself when I was seventeen, but no one at home was buying. They went into denial and I went into college. I had to flunk out and hit the streets before a friend got someone in social services to listen to me.”
You don’t need medication, Dad said, you need self-discipline.
“How long?”
“I’ve been on carbamazepine for about eight years-on and off.”
“Your last dose?”
“Months ago. I thought maybe the Change might… oh, I dunno… change that, too, but…” I shrug.
Cal says, “What is it? What’s wrong with him?”
Perverse as it sounds, the metallic note of anxiety in his voice is music to my ears, because I hear neither anger nor judgment in it.
Doc turns his sad, gray gaze on my friend. “Goldie is bipolar, yes?” He glances back to me for confirmation. “Manic-depressive. This is a disease most commonly treated with lithium, but carbamazepine is sometimes prescribed for a particular type of manic depression-rapid-cycling bipolar affective disorder is the clinical name. It can be kindled- triggered-by physiological or psychological trauma.”
As always, the clinical terms, so cool and tidy, give me a chill. Even the warm, Slavic lilt of Doc’s voice can’t lend them heat. I realize I am shaking from stem to stern. Cal moves a few steps closer to me, entering my space, supporting me with his eyes, then with a hand on my shoulder.
Ah, a friend from the underground coming to bail me out.
I take a deep breath. This is okay. I’m just not used to sharing this crap with anyone. In my underground days, only Professor John had known something was seriously loose in Goldman’s attic, and his only response had been to get me to the Roosevelt when I melted down.