Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys Read online

  It was a deep, solid sleep, born as much from complete exhaustion as it was from the tranquilizer given to him.

  He did not dream; he would not have remembered even if he had.

  And so passed the only peaceful night Martin Tyler would know in Buzzland.

  2

  He was awakened at eight a.m. when a burly attendant did not so much knock on as pummel his door, shove it open, flip on the too-bright overhead lights, and bellow in a sing-song yet impatient voice, “Time to get up, come on, breakfast in five minutes,” before walking on to repeat the ritual elsewhere.

  Martin swung his feet down onto the floor, and for a moment sat staring at the light-colored tile there. Hadn’t he read something once about how places like this used neutral-to-soothing colors? Nothing that would agitate someone? Bland but not boring. And why was he pissing away brain cells pondering the decorating scheme?

  This floor needs to be stripped and re-waxed, he thought. A good buffing wouldn’t hurt things, either.

  He swallowed, was barely able to work up enough saliva to complete the action, and realized he had a major case of cotton mouth. It also felt like his stomach had imploded—Christ, he was hungry.

  Breakfast in five minutes.

  He stood, pulled in a deep breath, and took exactly three steps toward the door before his right leg buckled and his left decided that looked like the thing to do and joined it, which is why he was sitting on his ass in the middle of the floor when Sing-Song the Impatient came by again.

  “Having a little trouble finding your legs this morning?”

  “No, I found them just fine. It’s getting them to cooperate that seems to be . . .” He couldn’t think of any way to finish that, so didn’t bother trying.

  The attendant—whose name tag identified him as B. WILSON—came into the room and helped Martin to his feet. “Want me to lend you a hand getting to the dining area?”

  “If you don’t mind.” And as the attendant was helping him up, Martin asked, “What’s the ‘B’ stand for?”

  “Bernard. But everybody just calls me Bernie.”

  “But you prefer ‘Bernard’, don’t you?”

  The attendant looked at him. “Actually, yes, I do. How’d you guess?”

  “‘Bernard’ sounds like a good, strong name. ‘Bernie’ sounds like some weasel bookie whose math is always questionable.”

  Bernard laughed. “I like that. If you can make me laugh, then you ain’t as far gone as you think. C’mon, food’s getting cold.”

  Breakfast was scrambled eggs, three links of sausage, toast, orange juice, milk, tea or coffee, and a fruit cup. It was brought in (as were all meals) in plastic-covered hospital serving trays. Clients were allowed to use only plastic utensils (all of which had to be accounted for at meal’s end), coffee and tea were always decaffeinated, you were allowed only three small packets of sugar, and if you were in a mood and didn’t want to eat, you went hungry until the next meal was delivered.

  The main area—which also served as the dining room, break area, television room, group therapy space, and activities room—consisted of two large, long folding tables with a dozen folding chairs, a small sofa and two easy chairs that had seen better days (judging from the amount of duct tape used to repair the various tears and gashes), a color television with an actual honest-to-God channel dial, a VCR that appeared to have fallen from the cargo hold of a plane cruising at twenty thousand feet but somehow still worked, a shelf filled with donated books and videotapes, a coffee table whose surface was hidden beneath piles of magazines (most of them at least six months out of date), and a single wire mesh-covered window that looked out on a parking lot with two Dumpsters squatting at the edge. There was only one door for people to enter and exit by, and that had to be opened electronically from inside the nurses’ station. As for decorations, the walls sported bulletin boards with various outdated announcements tacked to them, posters of the cute-kitty Hang In There! variety, pictures and watercolors drawn by children who’d come to visit parents or relatives, and a large dry-erase board where the daily schedule was written:

  8:00 – 8:30 – Breakfast and Morning Medication

  8:30 – 9:00 – Showers

  9:00 – 10:00 – Individual Sessions

  10:30 – Noon – Group Session #1

  Noon – 1:00 – Lunch and Afternoon Medications

  1:00 – 1:30 – Free Time

  1:30 – 3:00 – Group Session #2

  3:00 – 3:30 – Free Time

  3:30 – 4:30 – Individual Sessions

  4:30 – 5:30 – Dinner and First Evening Medications

  5:30 – 11:00 – Socialization

  11:00 – 11:15 – Wash-Up and Second Evening Medications

  11:15 – Lights Out

  Martin was already worn out from just reading it.

  Look on the bright side, he thought . . . then couldn’t come up with any way to finish it.

  He was starting in on his second sausage link when one of the nurses—an attractive black woman in her early fifties—walked up to the board, picked up a red marker, and made a large red X through everything between 9:00 and Noon. As she passed by Martin, she stopped for a moment and smiled. “We’ve only got three clients right now, Martin, including yourself, I think, and the doctor here doesn’t like to conduct group meetings if there’s less than four—but don’t worry, we’ll have a fourth soon enough, probably more, and probably in time for the second session; it’s Friday, and we tend to get full-up for the weekend. You came in during one of our rare slow periods.”

  “So I’ve got nothing to do between now and lunch?”

  The nurse shook her head. “I didn’t say that. We’ve got a gymnasium of sorts around the corner and through the only door there It’s mostly just a basketball court, but you can walk around or shoot some hoops if you want—be careful, though: there’s four steps that lead down onto the court once you go through the door, and they take some folks by surprise. Anyway, Dr. Hayes will be in around ten a.m. to talk you through things. In the meantime, my name’s Ethel; if you need anything, just knock on the nurses’ station door, all right?” She pointed to the station, which was actually an oversized glass-walled cubicle separating the main area from the sleeping rooms; you had to walk (squeeze, almost) through a semi-tight hallway to move from the bedroom corridor into the main area, and because the nurses’ station had glass walls on all sides, at no time were you out of anyone’s sight; even the ultra-small smoking room could be watched from there, despite its having a door that closed it off from view of the main area.

  Martin took in all of this with a single, sweeping glance. “Looks like you keep a close eye on everything.”

  “We do,” replied Ethel; it was both an answer and a warning. “Now, you finish your breakfast and I’ll go get your medicine.” On her way out, Ethel stopped long enough to turn on the television: a network morning news show, two oh-so-pretty hosts chatting incessantly about nothing in particular and making it sound like the most profound thing they’d ever discussed.

  Martin was, for the moment, alone in the main area. He chewed his sausage—which was surprisingly flavorful—and wondered where the other clients were. Hadn’t Bernard woken everyone in the same whimsical manner? And why was Ethel—the person he assumed was in charge—unsure of how many clients they had right now? That seemed like the kind of thing they’d keep a close count on. So what was the deal?

  Maybe if he didn’t eat his food too quickly, someone else would show. He suddenly wanted company.

  As if she’d read his mind, Ethel appeared a few moments later with a small paper cup in her hand. “Here you go.” Martin took the cup from her, saw it had five—five?—pills, tossed them all into his mouth, downing them with a deep drink of orange juice.

  “Open your mouth, please,” said Ethel, clicking on a small penlight.

  Martin did; Ethel shone the light into his mouth. “Lift your tongue for me.”

  He complied, Ethel nodded her head,
clicked off the light, and started to walk away. Martin called her name and she turned around.

  “Do you have to go?” he asked. “It’d be nice to . . . have someone to talk to.”

  “Martin, come this time tomorrow, if not sooner, you’re gonna be looking back at this time by yourself as the good old days. Enjoy the quiet while it’s yours to enjoy. If you’re still hungry after you finish, they brought extra trays of food—they always bring extras; have some more if you want. What doesn’t get eaten goes down the disposal.” And with a bright and sincere smile, she went back into the nurses’ station, closed the door, and took her seat at one of the desks; another nurse, this one much younger, with porcelain-doll skin and a head of lustrous red hair, was typing something into her computer while talking to Bernard, who caught sight of Martin through the glass and gave him a quick nod.

  Martin looked down at the food remaining on his tray and wondered how many trays like this the hospital kitchen had to wash every day, and just as quickly remembered all the times he’d watched his mother standing at the sink washing dishes, her and Dad having never been able to afford a dishwasher, and as he stared at this remembered image of her arthritic hands slipping dirty dishes into hot soapy water (while she hummed Charley Pride’s “Kiss An Angel Good Morning,” her favorite song), he wondered how many hours of her life she’d spent like that, alone in the kitchen, after the meals, standing at the sink washing dishes; had she ever gotten tired of it? Did she wish she’d been able to afford a dishwasher so she didn’t have to spend so much time on this chore that no one else really noticed or thought about unless it wasn’t done? Did she ever want someone else in the kitchen with her, someone to talk to while she performed this thankless task in a day filled with thankless tasks? How much of her life had she spent washing . . . ?

  Martin set down his plastic fork and knife, lowered his head, and wept into his hands. He could try thinking about Dad but odds were he’d just come up with some equally happy image alive with equally cheerful thoughts. Christ! Why was it that the bad memories were always broadcast in high-definition crystal clarity, while the good ones could only be found using an old set of rabbit-ears that obscured them in static and snow?

  I’ll do the dishes, Martin, don’t you worry about me . . .

  She’d said the same thing to him the last time he’d had dinner with her, the night before she had the massive coronary from which she never awakened. Nine months since Dad had died, nine months with no one else but her son to cook nice meals for, and he couldn’t be there every night, and when he did, by-God she did the dishes . . .

  . . . you gotta stop this right now, Martin told himself; but, still, the tears kept coming.

  And his food was getting cold.

  “Oh, this is fuckin’ great!”

  Martin pulled his hands away from his face, then wiped his eyes to see a young woman of perhaps twenty-three standing there glowering at him.

  “It ain’t bad enough that I wind up in fuckin’ Buzzland,” she snarled. “No, I gotta have breakfast with some cry-baby, over-the-hill loser . . . well, fuck that!” She stormed over to the trays and grabbed one, piling on the milk and orange juice containers before heading back toward her room.

  “Where you going, Wendy?” said Bernard, stepping into her path.

  “I’m gonna eat in my fuckin’ room, all right? I don’t wanna be around no cry-baby.”

  Bernard shook his head. “You know the rules, Wendy; you eat out here with the other clients, or you don’t eat.”

  “But I’m fuckin’ hungry!”

  Martin wondered if there was some rule requiring her to say either “fuck” or “fuckin’” in every sentence; would she perhaps be heavily fined otherwise? The thought should have made him smile, but he was still stuck back in his mother’s kitchen, watching as she reached for yet another dirty dish, and so looked down at his food so he could cry without drawing too much attention to himself. Besides, he still had another sausage link and a fruit cup to finish.

  “I ain’t eating in here, Bernie. Not with that guy! No fuckin’ way!”

  “Then you’re not eating, period.”

  “To hell with you and your lousy goddamn food, then!” screamed Wendy—

  —Martin thought: don’t you mean to say, Fuck you and your lousy fuckin’ food?—

  —then Wendy spun around and hurled her tray, drinks, and utensils into the wall over Martin’s head. The tray hit with a loud bang!, its lid popping loose and splattering food all over the wall, the floor, and the back of Martin’s shirt.

  Bernard grabbed Wendy from behind, throwing both his massive arms across her chest and pinning her arms, then lifted her off the floor, her legs kicking, her head thrashing side to side, a stream of curses and profanities spewing from her mouth that would have made a trucker blush, and before Bernard had even turned fully around, Ethel and the other nurse were there, the redhead pulling out and holding steady one of Wendy’s arms while Ethel stuck a needle in and sank the plunger; Wendy was unconscious before Ethel pulled out the needle. Bernard and Ethel took Wendy to her room. The redhead turned around to make sure Martin was all right, saw that he was crying, and said, “This doesn’t happen all that often.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said.

  “No one has to, where Wendy is concerned,” replied the redhead, then set about cleaning up the tray and food. Martin was confused about what the nurse had said; he hadn’t been talking about Wendy at all.

  He finished his breakfast in silence, stopping only once more, halfway through the fruit cup, when a particularly hard burst of tears got the better of him. Finally he was done with the food (and out of his mother’s kitchen), showing the redhead his plastic utensils before tossing them in the trash, then being given a towel and a bar of soap for his shower.

  “You doing all right?” asked the redhead, whose name tag identified her as Amber Fox; Martin wondered how much teasing she got about her last name, being as pretty as she was.

  “I don’t mean to sound rude or anything,” he said, “but if I was doing all right, why would I be here?”

  Amber nodded. “Good point.”

  “Will Wendy be okay?”

  “That’s sweet of you to ask. She’ll be okay. We can’t promise anything more than ‘okay’, but we can promise that.”

  Martin started toward the bathroom when something occurred to him: “Amber?”

  She stopped, the nurses’ station door halfway closed. “Yes?”

  “What happened to my grocery bag?”

  “You’re not getting any of that stuff back, Martin, so don’t bother asking again.”

  Being scolded by a girl maybe half his age; was his life working out, or what? “I wasn’t asking about the drugs. There was a watercolor painting in the bag, and I don’t remember—”

  “Oh, that,” said Amber. “I wondered where that came from. It’s in here, safe and sound. Would you like me to take it to your room?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He took his shower—feeling as if he hadn’t bathed in a month—then cleaned off his shirt, dressed, towel-dried his hair, went back into the main area, plopped down in one of the surprisingly comfortable easy chairs, flipped around the channels until he saw what looked like a movie, and sat back to watch, fighting the effects of the medication every step of the way. Man did this stuff kick your ass in a hurry.

  This scene in the movie took place in a dim, shabby room. An actor who looked familiar was lying in a bed. Next to the bed, a large black man, balding, sporting a goatee, sat in a chair with an oversized, dusty, leather-covered book on his lap, its pages opened to reveal—as the camera cut to a close-up—an illustration of a creature that might have been the twin of the camera-thing Martin had seen on the roof of the building last night.

  Now it had his full attention.

  Next to the illustration, encased in a delicately etched square of trellised lilacs, was a large dark A scripted in the most eloquent calligraphy Martin ha
d ever seen.

  It was, he realized, an ancient book.

  The camera cut to a medium shot of the room, showing the bed and the man sitting next to it; the large black man cleared his throat, smiled, took a drink from a silver chalice, and began reading from the ancient book:

  “‘An old magic man wakes one morning to find that the magic in his mind has grown so heavy that his head sinks down into his shoulders from the weight of it all. Since only his forehead and eyes are now visible, he knows it’s time to store some of his magic elsewhere, until such time as he needs it, or else he’s going to attract some very odd stares when he goes out.

  “‘An old magic man rummages through his kitchen drawers until he finds the steel mallet he uses to soften up the tough but inexpensive meat he buys from the butcher. “Just a little hole,” he says to himself. “Only big enough to drain off the excess magic.”

  “‘But an old magic man’s judgment isn’t what it used to be—he hits himself far too hard, and the hole he punches into his head is much larger than he intended; magic pours from his skull like a waterfall. “Well, shit-fire and save the matches!” he says, watching as his magic assumes various forms: an aviatrix with three rabbits’ heads; oversized clown puppets with severe curvature of the spine; gargoyles in expensive three-piece pin-striped suits; a large wooden mask with onyx-dark eyes that looks like the head of a soldier wearing a crown . . . all of these forms and more ooze from an old magic man’s skull as he searches frantically for something with which he can stuff up the hole.

  “‘Never being one who thinks clearly when in the grip of panic, an old magic man grabs the first thing he sees that looks like it might do the trick—the drain plug from his sink. It does very nicely, but now his room is overflowing with bits and pieces of his magic; bobbing in the air as it eats his cookies, scurrying on multiple legs as it looks through the books on his shelves, unfurling massive rainbow wings as it smokes his cigarettes, dropping ashes onto the sofa. He asks it to stop behaving so inconsiderately, but it ignores him and eats all his groceries and makes rude noises and in general makes the morning quite unpleasant. An old magic man screams and shouts at the magic to sit down and for goodness’ sake behave itself. It doesn’t listen to him; it’s been cooped up in his head for so long that all this extra room is just too tempting to resist.