And I told him about Clinic. People love to hear that shit, why you work there, what it’s really like. So you tell them, you give them some kicks. Cheap thrills for them, easy points for you. But with Little I somehow got it wrong. With Little I got it wrong right from the start.
“I don’t want you to go crazy, Ruby,” he said. “I love you too much.” He was looking down at me, into my eyes. He was obstructing my view of the ceiling.
“What are you talking about, me going crazy?”
“All you people go crazy. I never met anyone before works River Street. I never thought I wanted to, heard you were all crazy. But you’re not crazy at all, and now, I don’t want you to be. You’re different. You’re not like I expected.”
“Listen,” I say, propping myself up on an elbow, “crazy is part of the job. Psychosis in a controlled environment. So it doesn’t happen out on the street. But you got to go with them, to where they go. And keep one foot on the beach, so’s you can lead them back out. Only sometimes you don’t come back. Sometimes they pull you in and drown you. I’ve felt it happening. Benji got me out one time, cut me loose. Some of them you got to let go. We’re still human, we government workers. It’s hard sometimes, to remember there’s that one or two a year, you got to cut them loose. It becomes a point of pride, fixing people. But it’s better to lose them than yourself as well. They put those ones on drugs, keep them locked up like they used to. There’s not many anymore. Not nearly as many as there used to be. Because of us.”
“But they don’t pay you enough, Ruby. Even this,” he says, stroking my arm, leaving blue trails there, “this is lovely, but it isn’t enough.”
“I love you too, baby.”
And after that he just tried to make me laugh.
And he did. He made me laugh for weeks, while we stayed high. I didn’t go in to work, except to pick up my ration of Blues. Because I’m good, Frankie put up with it. And because Benji told him I was in love. And every day Little made me feel younger.
I felt young again, and I felt evil. I kept turning my back on it, thought it was residue from my last jalloo I couldn’t shake off. But it wouldn’t rub off, wouldn’t come off, no matter how much Blue I scrubbed at it with, how much Love. No matter how much of Little I used. But it was mine. It was my very own monster.
I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know it when we didn’t have enough anymore to keep the two of us going and Little came home one day, telling me he’d filled out an application for a job at the Clinic. I didn’t even suspect when I heard myself tell him how good he’d be. It’s a No Experience Preferred type of gig. They train you; it’s based on a personality profile they get from a bunch of tests they run on you. But I didn’t need to see the test results. I knew they’d accept him. He’d be better than me, better than Benji even. He had the dotted line around him, could merge, join others; see with them.
The night before he was to start training we thought we’d celebrate, do up what we had left in one big bang. And when the sky outside turned the same colour with morning, Little told me he loved me again.
“I love you too, baby. I love you because you’re so beautiful…”
Only this time, Little told me no.
“No,” he said. “You don’t love me. That’s just The Blues talking, and now you’ve made me hear them too. They’ve fucked me up, and I’m hard to fuck. I got too much polish, most things just slide right off. But The Blues has stuck, has made me need what I thought was just a good time. Not like you. You I loved from the start, although you never would believe me. You tried to buy me, Ruby. Didn’t think you were worth shit, didn’t think I could love you for yourself.”
I went to the bathroom and locked the door, looked at myself in the mirror. Listened to his footsteps follow me, stop outside. Listened how his voice had gone quiet. Scary quiet. Saying: “You don’t love me. You think I’m just some dream The Blues dreamed up. You don’t even know what love is.”
I looked at myself in the mirror. Opened my mouth. Heard: “You never could handle your drugs. You’re just a kid. Go to bed, get some sleep. We can talk about it in the morning, if you still want. If you remember.” Then I turned the shower on, loud, so I wouldn’t hear what else he might have to say. So he wouldn’t hear me crying.
He forgave me. To prove it he even moved his stuff into my place. He didn’t have much. Some clothes. A photograph album of some family. I threw that out, jealous. The only pictures I still had of family were scratched onto my brain, no matter how hard I tried to get rid of them. But Little forgave me.
It was hard, always being forgiven. Before, he’d always made me laugh, but now he had me taking showers all the time. I was never cleaner.
He finished training, started his first case. Frankie started him on an easy one: a teenage girl who’d had her heart broke. But Little was good, too good; he didn’t just heal her, he left her singing. And maybe that is what healing is, after all.
But it wasn’t just the first one; it was all his jalloos that followed. They all came away clean as spoons. Little spent himself for all of them like he was a stock market crash about to happen. When it came to throwing pearls before swine, he was the prince. And I thought it was just he was new to The Blues.
He said it was the money he liked. He did, too; money he had for the first time. He bought presents for his friends, vintage silk kimonos he had sent from Japan. For Benji, a turquoise one, with dragons embroidered in silver and gold.
For her to dance in. Little loved to watch Benji dance.
“When you dance,” he told her, “I don’t need much more in the world.” And she danced more often, because of it.
Sometimes he gave money to strangers in the street. “I like to make people feel better,” he’d say. It wasn’t only the money. Little loved his work; he thought it mattered.
Living The Blues with you. We’d come off case and go dancing in the clubs that line the river: The Ocean, 1001 Knights, Kenya. Little knew all the doors and bartenders from his days as a performance artist. We never paid covers, and our first rounds always came on the house. They welcomed him home, his people. With me it was different. Little introduced me as his best friend, as the love of his life, but they turned away, mouths sharpening at the corners. I was the magician, the one who’d disappeared him, brought him back transformed: a therapist at River Street. The job attracts rumour-mongering faster than illicit sex. I played mysterious woman for them. I know all the lines; for some jalloos, it’s the only game in town, at least at the beginning.
When the clubs emptied at four there’d be parties, speakeasies, restaurants. And then we’d go home. Every morning between jobs we’d see the sun come up from my big factory windows. We’d see the sky change colour, shift from black to violet to blue. Blue. Washes of Blue. Awash in Blue.
“It’s good,” he said. “You’re very good.”
“This is all I’ve ever wanted.” And it was.
But the morning came that Little disappeared, lost me in the crowd of night faces, slipped away on the dance floor at Kenya.
I looked everywhere. I spent fortunes on a half-awake cabdriver, asking him to wait outside. He waited, and I always came out alone. He grumbled at me in his rear-view mirror, telling me I’d never learn. Finally he drove me home.
No Little there to kiss me to sleep, just a hollow in my gut where he’d been. The bed was big and grubby; the morning light too critical for the dust we were always too happy to clean. I got dressed again and walked over to the Fifth Street Deli, and on my way there clouds came, and it started to rain. With the rain, even the pigeons took cover.