Tech #2:
Just enough, no more. They’re not kept in the dark, exactly, but in a kind of twilight sleep, essentially the same as for a colonoscopy, or when they operate to remove certain growths — not quite awake, but still believing they are here — in a place, wherever that is — in their minds that has not gone away.
Tech #1:
And do you ever weep for them?
Tech #2:
Are you kidding? Would you weep for a small bird caught in a storm?
Tech #1:
And are there a lot of them out there?
Tech #2:
A whole lot, and not just the ones that you and I are in charge of, but all the rest being taken care of by other staff like us.
Tech #1:
Oh. So what’s it like outside right now — can you tell?
Tech #2:
It’s getting dark. Not dark yet, but heading there.
Has Viktor ever attempted to act like something other than a pig? Well, of course he has — who wouldn’t? It’s not as if he hasn’t tried other animal behavior— something more expansive — a horse’s, for example, or a lemur’s, smaller but cute.
To illustrate just one occasion: Once in the seventh grade, he offered his lunch to a girl who’d left hers at home and so she arrived at school with nothing to eat. She was a pretty girl with long blond hair, so it’s true that there may have been self-gratifying motives at work in Viktor’s mind, but then, after she accepted his offer, she just got up from where she was sitting, the place where Viktor had sat down next to her, and walked to a spot two tables away and unpacked Viktor’s lunch, enjoying one after another of his favorite foods, including a fudge brownie, an item his mother never ever put in his lunch before and, had he known it would be there, he most certainly would never have shared. Viktor just went hungry.
And there were other times also, in high school and after, but in the end Viktor has settled on this piece of homemade wisdom: If you can’t love the one you ought to be, love the one you are. Which is, he knows, a pathetic kind of wisdom, but, hey, it’s all he has. So Viktor tells himself, Pigs are pigs, at least. And pigs tend to get very, very rich.
Suppose he just moved into Louis’s room without asking? Nobody would stop him. Louis isn’t coming back. He’s sure of that.
Still, the Captain has one more card to play — his hole card, no pun intended. If his career as a public speaker ever ends due to scandal or general lack of interest, he can always write a book and get rich. He vaguely remembers that one of the vessels he commanded (and there were a lot of them) had a cat as a mascot, until one day the Captain found it sleeping in a drawer in his cabin, getting its hair all over his neatly rolled socks, and so he took it straight out to the deck and tossed it overboard.
I could write a story about a ship’s cat, he thinks, something warmhearted and aimed at children. Plus, there are advantages to writing a children’s book. First, anyone can write one; second, there are hardly any words, hence fewer chances of making a mistake; third, kids’ books are naturals for sequels; and fourth — and best of all — such books tend to be overpriced. In addition, very few of them hold up under spilled sugary drinks and sticky fingers, so they have to be rebought every time another generation comes around.
That’s settled then. He’s decided the cat should be orange and white, and have a ribbon around its neck. Also there can be battles with rats aboard the ship, but what will he call the cat in his book? Thor? Brutus? Spike? Nope. The actual cat he remembers tossing overboard must have had a name, but he never knew it. So for his book, how about something nonthreatening, a name children can instantly identify with? For example, a simple, harmless name — like Junior.
You keep going forward, girl. Be Positive. These are some of the signs Heather has put up to cover practically every square inch of her room, so, literally, there’s nowhere she can look and not see them helping her. These are the messages that the Good Heather has left behind to aid the Not-Good-Enough Heather when that second one forgets, or gets discouraged, or even wants to sometimes. . well. . to make everything go away once and for all.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life, she read somewhere. Now it’s pasted to her coffee table, and it is true; that’s what tomorrow is, she thinks, but if that’s true, what does that make today? But then, even without her trying, she can hear coming though the mostly instrumental music of the Easy Listening station she keeps on 24/7 another, harsher voice that says: “Heather, you’ve been saying that stupid line about tomorrow for a long, long time, and what has it ever done for you?”
Nonetheless, the Good Heather keeps patiently putting out these notes for the Not-Good-Enough Heather to read, hoping she’ll learn from them, taping them onto the walls, pinning them to the cushions of the furniture, basically covering every flat surface, including the floor of the bathroom so the Not-Good-Enough Heather has something to read and inspire her while she is doing her business, but still, the Not-Good-Enough Heather doesn’t appear to be getting the message. That Not-Good-Enough Heather, well, she’s persistent. No can do is that Heather’s mantra. Does Not-Good-Enough Heather even know the word mantra? And it’s not as if that Heather-In-Between is getting any help from anyone else. Like once, when the Good Heather stuck a sign to the refrigerator in the kitchen of the Burrow — though of course she didn’t tell anyone that she put it there — two days later somebody had changed You can do it to You can’t do it, writing in the apostrophe and the t in purple Magic Marker. Then, after looking at it for a few days, waiting for someone to change it back or say “I’m sorry,” Heather-In-Between just took it down. But it was scary, as if some unseen hand knew better than she did what she’d suspected all along.
Still, writing these notes, even if they are just to herself, feels good, like progress is being made. After all, it’s not impossible that one day the Not-Good-Enough Heather will read one, and suddenly a light will come on. “Oh,” the Not-Good-Enough Heather will say, “I get it,” and then she’ll just disappear forever. Poof. Which is the reason that even while Heather is on the phone with some sex client — practically always, by the way — she wears her headset so she can have a hand free to write yet more notes: That which doesn’t kill me, “Ooh, you know what I would like right now,” makes me, “it’s your big hard,” stronger, “dick, and I’m not wearing any” Slow and steady, “underwear,” wins the day, “so you can,” No, “give it” pain “to me,” without, “fast,” gain. “Oh my God, that was so wonderful.”
When was the last time she was really happy? It scares Heather how long ago it was. Maybe that time in high school, at the end of the Drama Club’s production of Oklahoma!, in which she sang “I’m just a girl who can’t say no,” and everyone told her she had a big career ahead of her, and for about a half second, she thought she had. So from there to here, to this dark room full of scraps of paper—You deserve the best—how did that happen?