Monday is the last dose day for Allevatrox; from here on in, all they do is bleed and give evidence of the drug scattering from their system. By Friday, they should be clean enough for discharge. The green normals swallow the after-dinner pills with celebration even though they still drool and twitch. The end is near. Money will follow. The nurse with the penlight and the tongue depressor checks Billy's mouth for the last time, and as a flirtation, Billy hides the pills in the back corner of his cheek. She spots them like cavities. "Cute," she says. "Now swallow." In the bleed room, Joy is gone. Ron, her replacement, tells Billy it's her day off. Ron has rough hands, as if blood is pulled from the ground. Billy begrudges him his sample.
That night, Billy watches the moths thwump the window like drops of light-hungry rain. He can see Do in the reflection. His hands are tucked in the Bible and his lips move silently through the minutes of Luke. A few moths take on a head of steam and slam the glass while others flutter and search for a way inside, going up and down, resting, and starting again. But Billy is more interested in Do. Earlier, he had thrown up. After dinner he had slipped into the bathroom, and the sound through the closed door was unmistakable: the ratchet of finger on epiglottis, the first few false gags, then the splashdown of fried chicken, peas, mashed potatoes, and butterscotch pudding for dessert. Billy and Lannigan exchanged looks. Lannigan seemed pleased, as if overhearing gossip; his hand covered his mouth with what-do-we-have-here. Billy moved toward the bathroom door, quietly because Lannigan had a point. Vomiting is a private affair. Billy overheard mumbling, almost a chanting in tongues made even more Gregorian by the acoustics of the toilet bowl. It was a relief when another stomach-emptying aria interrupted the recitative.
Lannigan hopped out of bed and went to his section of the bureau where his toiletries (a city compared to the towns of Billy and Do) stood. He grabbed the Right Guard skyscraper, shook the can until primed, and paraded toward Do's side of the room. He began crop-dusting the sheets, holding his nose the whole time.
"What're you doing?" Billy whispered.
"Taking advantage of the situation," Lannigan said.
"Don't be a jerk." Billy knocked on the door. "Do, you all right in there?"
More mumbling, this time sounding like a didgeridoo.
"Should I get a nurse?"
Do shouted back, "No! No-no-no-no."
Lannigan stopped with his aerosol assault. "What we really need is an exorcist," he said. "This is beyond BO. This is closer to demonic possession. This stink stars Linda Blair." He returned to his skyline and picked up a phallic-shaped bottle of cologne. "Holy water," he said, "by Calvin Klein."
"Come on, Lannigan, enough."
"I agree. I have had enough."
Billy opened the bathroom door, pulling and peeking inside, a sort of neighborly yoo-hoo. Do was on his knees, leaning over the toilet and force-feeding his hand down his throat. Most of what could come up had already come up. Only spit remained. The bowl was a mess of what was once considered food but now resembled subhuman slop. Smelling like internal mildew, mustiness made chunky, it instantly reminded Billy of the fine line between puke and digestion. Do kept pushing his fingers deeper, reaching as far as yesterday's lunch. "Okay," Billy said. "I think you're done." But Do was undeterred. He tortured up empty gags, which he treated with contempt, as if somewhere the Gestapo were screaming Speak! Billy reached down and thought about patting his shoulder or gently rubbing his head, but those moves seemed too intimate, too paternal, so he flushed the toilet and told Do, "Let's take a break for a second."
Do's ID dangled in the bowl. This ten-day-old Do circled the drain and smiled for the camera, while the Do above him, incalculably older, took in the small drama of his official likeness spinning faster in the whirl, nearing that black hole and its end pirouette. But the chain held. The ID floated back to the surface. "There's more in me," Do said. "I know it. I can feel it. I didn't get it all. Not everything. There's more."
"You got most of it," Billy promised.
"Not nearly."
Billy handed him a wad of toilet paper. "Just do me a favor and sit back."
"I can still feel it in my gut." Do pinched his belly.
"Feel what?"
"They're slipping something extra in my food. I've seen them do it. They're preparing me. Getting me ready. You'll see. Soon enough everybody will see and they'll take me away forever. I need to get this out"—he began treating his belly button like pull tab—"because otherwise they'll be able to track me wherever I go."
Billy sat down on the bathroom floor, hoping he might impersonate comfort with proximity. "Do, it's the drug. You're having a bad reaction, that's all."
"It's not the drug. It's me."
"I think I should get a nurse," Billy said.
Do grabbed his arm. "Don't you dare."
"But this is getting serious."
Do glared, his heavy brow like knuckles on a ledge. "If you tell anyone, I'll never forgive you. That might not seem like much coming from slime like me, but know for the rest of your life there's somebody in the world who will never forgive you."
"Okay, okay."
Lannigan's voice, desperate for attention, broke through the bathroom, Lannigan standing over Do's bed, sprinkling the sheets with drops of cologne, chanting, "The power of Christ compels you" over and over again like a priest battling low-thread-count cotton.
"Lannigan, shut up," Billy shouted.
"The power of Christ compels you!"
"Shut the fuck up, I'm serious." Billy tried screwing his face so he might communicate the gravity of the situation, the absolute bad idea of the joke, but the high priest only continued.
"Don't listen to him," Billy told Do. "He's an idiot."
But Do was newly calm. The liquid tremble had washed away. What was left behind was colder and far more troubling, a certain smooth resignation, Billy thought, implacable, like a stone no longer submerged in a river but holding all the years of wear. Even Lannigan must have been struck because he stopped his little homage and tilted his head like he could hear what dogs hear. A slight tectonic shift. A high-frequency yell. Do said nothing. He just wiped his chin, got up from the floor, walked past Lannigan and crawled into his newly perfumed bed.
The cologne odor still lingers, bonded unpleasantly with funk. Billy watches Do's reflection in the window, wondering if Do is watching him, if their eyes are meeting or if Do is focused on the moths and the black beyond. Billy goes over and closes the thick curtains, explaining, "Bedtime," so Do might not suspect his dead harvest moon face is the culprit.
"You feeling all right?" Billy asks.
Without moving, Do gives the impression of nodding.