"Just Mongo will be fine."
He pointed to the fifty-dollar bill resting between us on the marble tabletop. "That's an awful lot of money. You're a friend of Theo's, and you're buying me lunch, so you don't have to pay to talk to me."
"It's all right, Michael. It's worth it to me. I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Sure. But I don't see how anything I have to say could be worth fifty dollars. I know money doesn't grow on trees."
"Theo tells me you only picked up on chess a couple of weeks ago. Is that true?"
"Well, I only began to understand the game a couple of weeks ago, and I'm learning more every day-even playing here, where the people who pay to play aren't that strong. But I learned the moves of the pieces as a child."
"Can you tell me how this sudden understanding of the game came about?"
He gave it a lot of thought while he sipped at his soda. He ate some of the ice cream left at the bottom, then looked up at me with his wide, innocence-filled blue eyes and shook his head. "No, I don't think I can.
"Give it a try, Michael. For instance, on the day when you first met Theo, Buster Brown, and the others, had you come down here to the park to play chess?"
"No. I was doing what I did every day, just wandering around."
"And then you saw Theo and the others playing, and you were interested. So you stopped and watched."
"Yes. I remembered how I liked to play as a kid. I watched people playing for a while, and-this is what I don't know how to explain-I just suddenly understood all sorts of things about the game that I'd never been taught. You hear people talking about how good players can think nine or ten moves ahead, but it wasn't like that at all. I could look at a position and know what was a good move and what was a bad move, and why. If one player made a bad move, then I could see what moves the other player could make in order to win. Suddenly I just understood certain principles of the game, and the right moves flowed from these principles. Sometimes I could see the right moves all the way to the end of a game. I don't want you to think I'm bragging, Mongo, but beating Theo and the other people who play here regularly isn't hard; beating the people who want to bet with me on a game is usually even easier. Actually, getting used to playing with a clock, and remembering to hit it after I'd made a move, was a lot harder in the beginning than actually playing."
"How do you come to be in New York, Michael? How long have you been here?"
Michael Stout was guileless, his emotions transparent, and now it was as if a curtain had dropped down somewhere behind his expressive blue eyes. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, he quickly averted his gaze. "I, uh, just kind of ended up here."
"Where did you come from?"
"Well. . uh. . that's kind of hard to say. Look, maybe I should-"
"Were you in a mental hospital, Michael?"
His eyes darted back to my face. The curtain behind them had abruptly been raised, and onstage, front and center, were alarm and anxiety. "Why do you ask that?"
"You told Theo, Buster Brown, and the others that you'd been 'out of it' for a long time. I thought you might have been in a mental hospital."
He pushed the remains of his ice cream soda, and the fifty-dollar bill, away from him in a slow, deliberate motion. "I don't mean to be rude, but I don't want to talk anymore. I think I'd better be getting back to the tables. Theo will be wondering where I am."
I took a second black-and-yellow capsule I had brought with me out of my shirt pocket and set it down in the center of the table where the fifty-dollar bill had been. Michael Stout was halfway out of his chair, but when he saw the capsule he let out an audible gasp and collapsed back into the chair as if his legs had been cut out from under him. The expression on his face was not only one of shock but something very close to terror.
"What's the matter, Michael?" I asked quickly. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"But you have one of the pills! You're not one of us!"
"One of whom, Michael? One of what?"
His gaze left the capsule, came back to my face. He stared at me for a few moments, mouth slightly open and eyes still filled with fear, then slowly shook his head. "I can't tell you, Mongo. I'm not supposed to say anything to anybody."
"Michael, I know you're in trouble. You're in danger. I think there are people stalking you who want to kill you, and it has something to do with these pills. I want to help you. I got this one from somebody-"
"Who?!" he interrupted, his eyes growing even wider. "Which one?"
"You don't know her; she's not one of you either. They were given to her by a man I'm sure knew he was about to be killed, and he gave his bag of capsules to the first person he came across who he thought could be helped by them. Right after he gave them to my friend, he was shot on the street. My friend suffers from severe psychosis-she's schizophrenic. Is that what you are, Michael-a schizophrenic who's able to function normally on this particular medication?"
He stared at me, clearly frightened, for what seemed a long time, then slowly, reluctantly, nodded his head.
"Do you know that if you stop taking this medication, even if you skip just one dose, you'll lapse back into madness, and maybe die?"
"Mongo, I can't talk about it!"
"You can talk about it to me. I want to help you-you, and my friend, and however many more there are of you in the city. But I can't do that unless you tell me everything. Now, do you know what will happen to you if you stop taking the capsules?"
I wasn't sure he was going to answer me, but after another long pause he finally nodded his head again. Now he had the startled expression of a deer caught in headlights. "I just know I have to take one every day or I'll end up nutty again."
"What are you supposed to do when you run out of the supply of capsules you have now? I don't know how many you have, but my friend only has enough to last her another couple of weeks or so. How can she get more?"
Michael Stout swallowed hard, said quietly, "Dr. Sharon is trying to get us more. We're supposed to meet her on Christmas Eve at the big Christmas tree by the skating rink uptown."
"You mean Rockefeller Center?"
"Yes, I think that's the name of it. Besides the Christmas tree, there's a big statue there."
"Who's this Dr. Sharon?"
"Sharon Stephens. She's a psychiatrist. She was the only nice one there."
"Where, Michael? A mental hospital? Is that where you came from?"
He nodded in a timid, birdlike fashion.
"What's the name of it?"
"Rivercliff. It's about a four-hour drive from here, north up the Thruway."
"How did you get to New York City?"
"Dr. Sharon brought us, in a bus that belonged to the hospital. She helped us get away. Raymond was running around with a surgical saw and scalpel killing everybody. She took as many of us with her as she could, and she brought us here. There were twelve of us on the bus, besides Dr. Sharon."
I suddenly realized I was breathing rapidly and shallowly, and my stomach muscles had knotted. I took a deep breath, slowly let it out, then leaned back in my chair and tried to relax. "All right, Michael," I said in what I hoped was a soothing, reassuring tone, "let's slow down and back up. You trust me, right? You believe I want to help you:
"Yes, I do," the boyish-faced man said quietly. There were still shadows of anxiety moving in his eyes, but he was starting to look a bit more at ease. "But Theo's going to be mad at me if I don't get back soon and start playing. He'll say I'm mooching off him and costing him money. Without Theo, I don't have a place to stay, or any way to support myself."
"You let me worry about Theo. Like I said, in order to help you and my friend, I need to know everything so that I can begin to understand what's going on. I think it may be easier if I just ask questions and you answer them-but if you think of anything to add to an answer, don't hesitate to do so. Don't worry yourself about Theo, or playing chess, or anything else except the conversation that's taking place right now. Okay?"