PEPPER WOKE UP thinking of butts.
And nothing else.
Ladies’ butts.
Skinny butts, big butts, saddlebag butts, flabby and firm butts, the kind that sit so high they seem like part of the woman’s back, the kind that ride low and form a UU just above the thighs like in the old television commercials for Hanes Underalls, butts that wiggle and butts that jiggle, sagging butts and robust butts, butts that hardly make an impression under a pair of jeans; sidewinder butts and trumpet butts—the ones so meaty they actually spread out until they appear to be a woman’s thighs (ass so fat you can see it from the front), butts as knotty as acorns, butts as smooth as a slice of Gouda, butts with pimples and butts with cellulite, the kind that have pockmarks or red splotches, butts with tattoos and butts with bullet scars. Butts you can cup in your warm hands. Butts and butts and butts.
In other words, Pepper woke up horny.
Let’s take a moment to be impressed. Three doses of Haldol and lithium topped off with a Vicodin nightcap and the urge still arose, like a flower growing through concrete. And he sure hadn’t been staring at any butts while in here. He just hadn’t had the itch. All those butts, and more, were stored in Pepper’s memory chip. It was as if his mind had known the surest way to rouse him from the pit of sedation. Asses would work.
Pepper’s mind woke him up. He found himself in his bed yet again. No butts in sight.
Now Pepper, get your big ass out of bed.
Outside his windows Pepper heard the muted rumbles of traffic moving down Union Turnpike. Ambulances whining as they sped toward the hospital. Car horns composing a fugue of frustration. From where the sun sat he guessed it was midday. He’d probably slept through breakfast.
In fact, it was four thirty on Saturday afternoon.
Coffee’s bed sat empty. The sheets tussled but the body gone. The door to the room was open. Pepper walked to the corner where the ceiling panel had fallen down. He stood under it but couldn’t make himself raise his hand and touch. It felt like standing under a cold shower, being right there. Pepper’s big body tensed so hard he shivered. He half-expected someone, something, to come crashing down on him. But that didn’t happen. So finally he backed out of the room, keeping an eye on that ceiling tile until he’d left.
He stepped into the hallway gingerly. Would one of the staff members appear, tackle him, and hold his mouth open? Why hadn’t Miss Chris or Scotch Tape or whoever was on duty done that to him this morning like they did the day before? Maybe they preferred to let a sleeping patient lie.
Northwest 2 was empty. Quiet. Yes, the fluorescent lights in the ceiling made noise, the low drone of an electric insect. But other than that? Not much. Pepper didn’t even hear his own footfall. He had only his Smartwool socks on his feet. He went back for his boots.
He still wore the clothes he’d had on when the cops brought him in. Now the fabric looked a bit ragged, more wrinkled than an old man’s balls.
He reached the nurses’ station and found just one orderly back there, charting.
The orderly looked up from his seat, over the tall shelf of the nurses’ station, and nodded at Pepper. A thick folder of paperwork sat in front of him. The orderly had stopped writing to flex his aching fingers. Like the other staff members, he wore his keys on a short, red plastic cord around his wrist. When the orderly looked up at Pepper again and stretched his aching hand this time, his keys tinkled.
“Last night …” Pepper said, but he couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t want to say it out loud.
The baby-faced orderly kept watching Pepper, but his hand dropped back on the papers and the fingers searched blindly for the pen, working nearly autonomously.
“You need something?” the orderly asked.
How old was this guy? Twenty? And in this place he had almost total authority over Pepper, a forty-two-year-old man.
“Where is everyone?” Pepper asked.
The orderly jerked his head once, behind him, toward Northwest 5, the television lounge.
“It’s visiting hours.”
Finally the kid looked down and found his pen. He snatched it, then looked up and frowned, clearly unhappy to find Pepper still standing there.
Now the orderly leaned over and lifted a clipboard.
“You had your lunchtime meds?” He scanned the list but wasn’t sure of this patient’s name.
Pepper saw an opportunity. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I had those. Definitely.”
“What’s your name again?” the orderly asked, torn between the clipboard and the charting.
“Thanks!” Pepper shouted as he walked to Northwest 5, and the orderly just set the clipboard back down with a shrug. He clicked his pen and returned to work.
Even from halfway down Northwest 5 the lounge looked like it was jumping. Every table was occupied, handfuls of folks were forced to stand. The natural afternoon light flushed against every face. And most of the people in there weren’t even looking up at the television, though the television stayed on.
Pepper didn’t make it all the way to the lounge. Part of the problem was that he saw Dorry in there, at a table with a slightly tired-looking woman in her forties, and two enthusiastic kids under ten. The kids were in their chairs, on their knees, holding playing cards close to their faces. Dorry, too, though she kept dropping her hand theatrically and one or the other child would shout for Grandma to be careful! The woman in her forties had a hand of cards, too, but hers were facedown on the table. She looked out the window and seemed to wish she was anywhere else.
And Coffee sat at another table with a pudgy man in a tight white button-down shirt and wide tie. His suit jacket hung on the back of his chair. He and Coffee were hunched over documents spread out on the table. Filling the entire table. Reams of data of some kind. And the man in the shirt and tie looked exasperated. He’d take one form and hold it up and read it, then place it facedown on a growing pile. Then lift another, read through, shake his head, and place it facedown with the others. Meanwhile, Coffee merely slid yet another sheet of paper toward the man. Pepper wasn’t sure which of them he should feel sorry for.
There were meetings of various kinds at every table. Some folks had even brought in food. Chinese, or pizza from Sal’s, bottles of soda or juice, chips or cookies. Like they were having picnics on the psychiatric unit.
How could this place be so active, so lively, when last night he saw …?
Pepper chose to focus on one table with three people sitting around it. An older woman, in her fifties, a heavyset man in his thirties, and a teenage girl who looked to be about sixteen. He couldn’t figure out which of them was the patient. Why did that bother him just then? It was like he suddenly wanted to know. Like he should just be able to tell. He assumed it was the guy in his thirties but, if he was being honest, that was only because the man was kind of chunky. He assumed the woman in her fifties was the mother, but mostly because she kept handing out egg rolls and cartons of Chinese noodles to the other two. She pulled a board game from a shopping bag. Pepper realized that these “clues” also proved nothing. Only the teenager seemed the unlikely choice. She wore baby-blue Nikes and a matching light blue knit cap pulled over her head. The cap had two small light blue pom-poms that dangled from the top. Pepper imagined some celebrity, one he couldn’t name, had worn much the same outfit recently. The kid just looked so put together in that high-school high-fashion kind of way, where a fifteen-year-old tries to look like a twenty-year-old and ends up making herself seem like she’s twelve. He wished he could excuse her from this room, so she could just go out and enjoy the prickly fruits of childhood. At least until the next time she and her mother visited the chubby guy.
But this sleuthing didn’t really matter. From his place at the lip of the television lounge, Pepper could be sure of only one thing: No one was there to see him. He pitied himself.
But instead of indulging this emotion too long, Pepper went back to the pay phones. If most of the patients were here in the lounge, then maybe, finally, the pay phones would be free. He could make that call. The person he most hoped would visit didn’t even know where the cops had taken him. Time to call her.
“Mari.”
“Who’s this?”
“You can’t guess?”
“There’s a number but the caller ID just says ‘New York City.’ ”
“It’s your favorite neighbor.”
“Gloria?”
“That’s funny. It’s Pepper.”
She paused.
“Hi, Pepper.”
“You sound as tired as I feel.”
She paused again.
“Were you worried about me?”
“I was worried about what you did to Griff.”
“Is he all right?”
“He’s okay. I guess. I don’t talk to him if I don’t have to, but since the police haven’t come here and arrested me for conspiracy, I figure he’s not dead.”
“You want to know where I am?”
“Why did you have to do that, Pepper?”
“What? You told me he was threatening you, so I figured you wanted some help.”
“I was just talking about it with you, Pepper. You know? I thought you were being my friend. I wasn’t asking you to fix anything.”
“You don’t tell a gentleman about a problem and expect him not to help.”
“So I guess it’s my fault, right? You went to my job.”
“His job.”
“It’s the same place! God! You know how it looks now? Like I hired a man to come to my job and beat up my ex-husband. What does that say about me? I teach seventh-grade Spanish!”
“I went to Van Wyck to tell him to keep his distance. That’s all.”
“I can handle myself! I’ll call the cops if he really tries to hurt me. But that’s my business anyway. I was just talking! But now you make me look like … My students saw you hitting him in the parking lot. How do you think they’re going to look at me at school on Monday?”
“Why would they know it has anything to do with you?”
“Teenagers know. I’m telling you. I’m trying to act like a grown-up and you make me look like a fool. How am I supposed to teach them how to act if I can’t keep my own life in order? This is my job, Pepper. It’s like you’re trying to get me fired.”
“I meant to do something good. For you.”
“Look, Pepper. I don’t know how else to say this. I’m sorry to say this. But it’s not going to happen like that. Between you and me. I’m not trying to be mean, but you have to hear me.”
“Do you know where I am now? Your ex-husband … who the hell is named Griff anyway? Your ex-husband was the one who tried to get tough with me when I asked him nicely to stop threatening the mother of his child! He threatened to sue me. For menacing. Is that a crime? Okay, I admit, I lost my temper at that point. I smacked him one. So then we both got into it. Then three guys drive up in a Dodge Charger and I’m supposed to know they’re cops? In a Dodge Charger? I assumed they were meatheads. But they were fucking cops. Patrolling a school zone. Now I’m in a hospital behind this shit. And last night I was attacked! I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, so I’m sorry but I called thinking that if anyone might give me a little understanding it would be the woman I was trying to look out for!”
“I’m sorry about all that, Pepper. I really am. But I don’t know what you want me to do. You wanted to help me, but you never asked me what kind of help I needed. All I wanted was to talk about it. It was nice to do that with you down in the laundry room all those times. You were already helping. I don’t think that mess with Griff was about me at all. It was about you.”
“Marisol.”
“You have a brother, right? Your family is who you should be calling if you’re in a hospital.”
“You mean Ralph? I haven’t spoken to him in six years. Maybe more.”
“But he’s your brother.”
“It’s not going to happen, Mari. I’m not calling him. And he’d probably hang up as soon as he heard it was me.”
Mari sighed into the phone. Pepper was going to make even coming to his aid into a hassle. She said, “Hold on and I’ll find a pen.…”
Well that was depressing.
But also just confusing. How could she and Pepper see the same actions so differently? It made him wonder if the cops, or that dick-head Griff, had spoken to Mari and explained the fight in a way that made him seem as terrible as possible. Speaking to her about it forced him to see the same afternoon from a new angle. A big guy stomps into a parking lot and beats up a teacher. Then he beats up three cops. Good God. He’d begun seeing this version of himself—a thug, a marauder, a monster—when Mari mentioned calling his brother, when she asked him to hold on while she found a pen.
He had no choice. He told her Ralph’s name. And that he lived in Maryland now. But when she asked him for the actual number, he couldn’t give it to her. His cell phone knew the digits, not him. She said she’d go online and find Ralph’s number and give him this one and explain as much as she could. She wished him sincere good luck.
Pepper left the phone alcove, despondent. In part because he knew, even if Mari actually did track down his brother, Ralph wouldn’t call. He probably wouldn’t even tell their mother Pepper was in the hospital. Pepper had entered the alcove thinking he had at least one ally. He left knowing he had none.
He left the alcove and looked toward Northwest 2 and the room waiting there. Another day and a half. How many more chances would that give last night’s visitor to drop in?
He looked to his right and saw that unclassifiable trio—woman in her fifties, man in his thirties, teenage girl—walking from the television lounge and down Northwest 5. He watched as they entered the room at the hub of Northwest and circled around the nurses’ station. They barely spoke to one another but didn’t look angry, really. Maybe just a little worn out. The time spent getting ready for the visit, traveling to the hospital, sitting around with your loved one inside a sealed (if sunny) room. That’s going to get you tired. Now they spoke to one of the staff. A nurse led the family to Northwest 1, toward the secure ward door. She moved ahead of the family, already picking through her ring of keys for the right one. The one that would let them leave. Pepper watched all this carefully.
He felt so low just then, at a complete loss. Dogged out. Abandoned. Without the willpower to be prudent, to check himself. A feeling known, generally, as fuck it.
Pepper trailed behind the family who trailed the nurse. No alarms went off as Pepper moved closer. No one even noticed him.
The nurse had her back to the hallway and the proper key in hand. She pulled it forward, moving it toward the lock, and the red plastic cord squeaked faintly with the stretch.
It was then that Pepper realized he was really going to try to escape. He worried about the dude in his thirties, but not that much. The guy was doughy, not very tall; the kind of man who made a living but rarely worked. And, for all Pepper knew, heavily medicated. Pepper could get past him. His slow walk turned into a trot.
The nurse slipped the key into the secure ward door and this is the moment when she got a bit lazy. She should have looked over her shoulder to be sure there were no other patients crowding close. In fact, the orderly should actually have accompanied her and the family to the door. All this was basic training. But there was only the one young orderly on shift, and he’d gone to the television lounge to let people know visiting hours were about over.
The nurse stood at the door alone. She’d offered to go open the door for this family just to avoid the damn charting for a few minutes. The most pleasant part of her job for the next few hours would be these moments when she got to usher visitors out. She took some pride in smiling at them as they left, like a good hostess. She was new, on the job for only two months. She unlocked the secure ward door and pulled it open.
A moment later Pepper rear-ended her.
The big man was fast when he had the proper motivation. Like getting out of the nut hut. Like stepping outside and breathing fresh air.
Pepper moved toward the door. He reached that family and mushed them out of the way. First the man: it was like brushing past a sack of dirty laundry, that’s how soft the man’s body felt. The guy slipped and went down. Then Pepper made his harshest decision. He chose to vault over the woman in her fifties. He thought this was better than barreling through her. But the man was no kind of athlete. Pepper had no ups. If he went three inches off the ground it would be an all-time best. He bum-rushed that poor woman and she went stumbling forward, plowing into the nurse’s back. The two smashed into the wall just to their left.
No time for apologies. The door was completely open. Look at that lavender wall paint in the hallway right outside! Pepper could’ve maneuvered a Zamboni machine through the doorway. He was free. He was free. Even if it was the worst idea he’d had, in a week of lousy ideas, the man could still escape. He made it past everyone.
Except the teenage girl.
She didn’t have Pepper’s size or weight, obviously, but what she did have in her favor was rage. She had the Crazy Strength. (Retarded folks are rumored to have powerful—nearly mythic—strength but don’t shortchange the mentally ill. In the proper state they can bring the ruckus.)
This teenage girl was the patient. The woman in her fifties, the mother. The soft-bodied man in his thirties, her brother. Pepper had guessed wrong, and he would pay for it.
The kid mounted him from behind. She grabbed his shirt right by the waist and planted her feet on the backs of his shins. Even though she didn’t weigh that much, Pepper couldn’t stay upright with that pressure on his calves. With that surprisingly simple move she toppled the big man.
As he fell, time slowed, giving Pepper a moment to once again take in the painted trees in the framed pictures on one wall. The images seemed to move away from him now. Before his face hit the floor, he had one clear thought.
I’m a fucking idiot.
When Pepper’s face connected with the linoleum tiles, his mouth opened and his front teeth connected with them and he heard one of his teeth crack, and small bits of enamel skitter through the doorway, to the other side.
The young woman ran up his back, clawing forward, until she grabbed the back of his head and pulled at his hair. Brown strands in her hands. And this whole time those two blue pom-poms on the top of her blue knit cap were bouncing and bobbing playfully.
“Put your hands on my mother again!” the teenager howled. “Put your hands on my fucking mother!”
The girl brought her right elbow down on the back of Pepper’s neck; her elbow stabbing right into the ball at the top of his spine. Pepper couldn’t even yell, he coughed violently and foamy spit covered his lip and chin. He dropped the side of his face against the floor and he huffed and heaved and snorted.
The woman in her fifties had found her footing by now. She grabbed her daughter and pulled her away. “That’s enough, Loochie! Come on now! Get off him! Loochie!”
The nurse and the girl’s brother got up, too. The orderly on duty and two other nurses stampeded down the hall and surrounded Pepper’s prone body.
“He hit my mother!” the girl shouted. “It’s not my fault!”
The orderly grabbed Pepper’s shins. Pepper kicked but there wasn’t much power in him. The orderly then dragged Pepper backward, away from the open door and farther into the unit, like a roped steer. It took a great strain to move Pepper’s body just three feet. Then the nurse who’d opened the door shut it again. She locked it.
Pepper looked up at the wild child, to see her staring down at him, one arm hooked around her mother’s shoulder protectively. The girl’s brother shivered as he leaned against a wall.
A nurse arrived with Pepper’s punishment. When a patient fucked up this fully he wasn’t just given another pill. This time they brought the high-dose solution. It came in liquid form, inside of a needle.