The way it can happen to the new girl at school, to be appropriated by the popular kids claiming her as one of their own, Josh and Andrea steer Bunny to their table. Although she has yet to figure out if this is something to worry about or not, it’s clear that Bunny is in with the in-crowd. With the authority of a queen bee Andrea introduces her to Evan and Jeanette. Evan is a sweet, tubby guy with thinning red hair and the red-rimmed eyes of someone with bad allergies on a day when the pollen count is through the roof. Also, people who cry a lot have the same kind of red-rimmed eyes. To sit at the cool kids table is something of a step up for Evan, even if it’s the cool table in the loony bin. In real life, Evan is a junior high school math teacher, and who wouldn’t go crazy with that job? The fact that Evan is a teacher sticks with Bunny in a way that his name does not. Teacher, she remembers. Jeanette is the same Jeanette with the fucked-up face. The man with a two-day stubble and sculpted biceps is Chaz. Chaz is a member of the New York City Police Department; he’s a beat cop in Inwood. “They’re all ECT-ites,” Andrea says.
It would seem that here in the psycho ward, ECT is like a fraternity. Epsilon, Something or Other, Tau. And, in direct opposition to sanity, it has much to do with what distinguishes the cool kids from the not-cool kids. Never mind that they are as batty as an old attic, their dining room table the equivalent of the high school cafeteria table commandeered by the football team and the mean girls. Andrea is not on the ECT list, but she watches over Josh, protecting him as if he were a kitten, although even without that bond, Andrea would’ve had a seat at the ECT table because Andrea has had a seat at every cool kids’ table since kindergarten.
Bunny’s roommate Mrs. Cortez is also on the ECT list, but Mrs. Cortez isn’t popular for obvious reasons.
This morning, Chaz and Jeanette underwent a round of ECT, which they refer to as “treatment.” Although the ECT-ites identify as such, they don’t speak about treatment in specifics, as if what goes on there needs to be kept under wraps. It could be it’s too horrible to recount, or perhaps like the secret rituals of the Freemasons or Scroll and Key, it is knowledge you’re forbidden to share with the uninitiated.
For lunch, the choices are chicken potpie or macaroni and cheese, the kind that comes in a box with a packet of orange cheese-flavored flakes, which stimulates Bunny’s appetite no more than would a bowl of lint. Bunny is spreading the always-on-offer single-serving-size cup of peanut butter onto a slice of white bread when a man wearing a bright white golf shirt with the collar flipped up and red pull-up pants, a white stripe running along the outer side of each leg, sets his tray down on their table. Because there are no available chairs, he takes one from another table and wedges it in between Teacher’s chair and Jeanette’s.
Josh digs his spoon into his potpie and hits ice.
Once seated, the golf-shirt guy rubs his hands together as if to herald a fine feast. Something has to be very wrong with this man. He exudes pep.
“No one invited you to sit here,” Andrea says, and he laughs—laughs—as if she were teasing him. “Good one,” he says.
“No,” Andrea says. “Not a good one. Really, we don’t want you here.”
He laughs again, although this time there is an edge of nervousness to it, more armor than mirth. “You won’t say that when you see what I’ve got for later. Pam brought me two boxes of Whitman’s samplers, a Pepperidge Farm assortment, nacho chips. Other stuff, too.”
It’s not an introduction, exactly, but Andrea tells Bunny, “That’s Howie. He’s a hemorrhoid.”
Josh is picking around the chunk of peas and carrots frozen in the center of his potpie, and Howie, leaning in to confide in her, says to Bunny, “I was going to kill myself. Pam, my girlfriend, saved my life.”
“Oh, no.” Teacher says. “Not this again.”
“If it wasn’t for Pam,” Howie blinks, like he’s trying to hold back tears, “I’d be dead.”
“That’s nice,” Bunny says.