“No.”
“He doesn’t really talk. I don’t know how much they can do for him.”
The guy looks up at the ceiling fan above the dining room, shudders, and forks food into his mouth.
“Then there’s Jimmy. Jimmy’s been here a lot. I’ve been here twenty-four days, and I’ve seen him come and go twice. You seem to like him.”
“We came in together.”
“He’s a cool guy. And he has good teeth.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.”
“Pearly whites. Not a lot of people in here have that. I myself wonder what happened to Ebony’s teeth.”
“What’s wrong with them?” I turn.
“Don’t look. She has none, you didn’t notice? She’s on a liquid diet. Just gums. I wonder if she sold ‘em, tooth by tooth. . . .”
I bite my tongue. I can’t help it. I shouldn’t be laughing at any of these people, and neither should Humble, but maybe it’s okay, somewhere, somehow, because we’re enjoying life? I’m not sure. Jimmy, two tables away, notices my stifled laughter, smiles at me, and laughs himself.
“I toldja: it come to ya!”
“There we go. What is going on in his mind?” Humble asks.
I can’t help it. It’s too much. I crack up. Juice and chicken tender bits spray my plate.
“Oh, I got you now,” Humble continues. “And here comes the guest of honor: Solomon.”
The Hasidic Jewish guy comes in holding up his pants. He still has food in his beard. He grabs his tray and opens a microwaved packet of spaghetti and starts shoveling it into his mouth, making slurping, gulping groans.
“This guy eats once a day but it’s like his last day on earth,” Humble says. “I think he’s the most far gone of everybody. He’s got like a direct audience with God.”
Solomon looks up, twists his head from side to side, and resumes eating.
Humble drops to a true whisper. “He did a few hundred tabs of acid and blew his pupils out. His eyeballs are permanently dilated.”
“No way.”
“Absolutely. It’s a certain cult of the Hasidics: the Jewish Acid-Heads. There’s like a part of their holy writings that tells them it’s the way to talk to God. But he took it too far.”
Solomon gets up, leaves his tray disgustedly at the table, and moves out of the room with alarming speed.
“He’s like the Mole Man, back to his hole,” Humble says. “The real Mole People are the anorexics; you don’t even see them.”
“How many people are in here?” I ask.
“They say twenty-five,” Humble says. “But that’s not counting the stowaways.”
I look around. Charles/Jennifer isn’t in the room.
“Did the, uh, you know, Charles? Did he leave?”
“Yeah, the tranny’s gone. Left this afternoon. Tranny hit on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Smitty lets him do that. Gets a kick out of it.”
“I can’t believe he’s just gone. They don’t, like, throw a party for you when you leave?”
“No way. People here don’t want to get out. Getting out means going back to the streets or to jail or to try and fish their things out of an impounded car, like me. Your kind of situation, with the parents and a house: that’s rare. And also, with so many people coming and going, we’d be nuts to try and have a party every time. We’d end up like Fiend One and Fiend Two.”
My tray is a mess from the food spraying out. “You crack me up, Humble,” I tell him.
“I know. I’m a great time for everybody. Too bad I’m in here instead of onstage getting paid for it.”
“Why don’t you try going onstage?”
“I’m old.”
“I have to get some napkins.” I rise and go out to Smitty, who hands me a stack. I return, wipe off my tray, and start in on the pear.
“You have a secret admirer,” Humble says. “I should’ve guessed. I know how you operate.”
“What?”
“She was just here. Look at your chair.”
I get up and check it. There’s a piece of paper lying there, face down. I flip it around, and it says HOPE YOU’RE HAVING A GOOD TIME. VISITING HOURS ARE TOMORROW FROM 7:00-7:05 P.M. I DON’T SMOKE.
“See? Your little girl with the cut-up face just left it.” Humble gets up. “I had a feeling. Now you’re starting to look like a rival male. I might have to keep my eye on you.”
He deposits his tray and gets in line for his meds. I fold the paper up and put it in the pocket where my phone used to be.
twenty-eight
“Craig! Hey buddy! Phone!”
I’m sitting with Humble outside the smoking lounge for the 10 P.M. cigarette break, thinking about where I was at the last 10 P.M.: just getting into Mom’s bed. Humble doesn’t smoke, says it’s disgusting, but everyone else in here does, practically, including the black guy who’s afraid of gravity; and the big girl, Becca, both of whom I thought were underage. Armelio, Ebony, Bobby, Johnny, Jimmy . . . no matter how nuts they all seem, they have no problem migrating to the upper left of the H and sitting down on the couches quietly to wait for their particular brand of cigarettes, which I learn the hospital does not, in fact, provide for them—they come in with the packs themselves and the nurses keep them in a special tray. Once they pull a cigarette out of their respective packs, they walk single file through a red door, passing Nurse Monica, whose job is to light everybody up. When the door closes, the smell drifts out from under it and you hear talking—everybody talking all at once, as if they saved their words for a time when there was smoke to send them through.
“How’re you doing for your first day, Craig?” Nurse Monica asked me five minutes ago, as she closed the door. “You don’t smoke, I see.”
“No.”
“That’s good. Terrible habit. And it happens so much to people your age.”
“A lot of my friends smoke. I just, you know . . . never liked it.”
“I see you are adjusting quite well to the floor.”
“Yeah.”
“Good, good, that is so important. Tomorrow we’re going to talk more about your adjustment and your situation and how you’re feeling.”
“Okay.”
“You gotta watch out for this one,” Humble said. “He’s crafty.”
“Oh yeah?” Monica asked.
I was looking for the blond girl, Noelle—I had to remember to meet her—but she wasn’t around. Neither was Solomon. Next to Humble was the woman he identified as the Professor, watching us with her bugged-out eyes. Unprompted, Humble started talking with me and Monica about this old girlfriend of his, who had, in his words, “pig-tail nipples, like curly fries, I kid you not.” Monica laughed and laughed. The Professor said Humble was disgusting. Monica said it was okay to laugh once in a while, and did she have a story to share?
“Yeah, we all know you had some indiscretions in your youth, Professor,” Humble prodded.
The Professor got a dreamy look in her eyes. I almost thought she was going to have a seizure. And she said, in a light little voice, with a nasal twinge: “I had a lot of guys, but I only had one man.”
I was wondering where I’d heard that before, when Armelio interrupted.
“C’mon buddy! Phone is for you!”
“Right.” I get up.
“You’re lucky, buddy. It’s after ten. They usually shut the phone off at ten.”
Shut the phone off. I picture a big lever in my mind, a man heaving it down.