All of this—this grand design, this palace—was run by a man they called only Dr. V, as if his last name were so hideous or so forbidden that even saying “Dr. V” aloud might lead to some arcane punishment. I had the impression that the man’s name was very long. All I know is, I never saw him, not once, during my stay in those glorious apartments, those rooms fit for a king, or at least a rat king.
But as bad as the facilities might have been, I found my fellow inmates more disturbing. My new best friends were, predictably, all depressed, suicidal people. If you want to make a suicidal person even more depressed, keep them cooped up with several other suicidal people, that’s what I always say.
My friends included Martha of the Order of Eating Disorders, who looked like a couple of wet matchsticks sewn together with skin; a writer who would not give his name and thought he had created all of us; Sandra, who suffered through experimental treatments, involving street lamps and an engine from a motored vehicle, that could have cooked a couple of hundred dinners; Daniel, who had reason to be devoid of hope—his deformity had fused his two legs into one stump that fed into his head, which had stuck to his shoulder in an unattractive way—and, of course, Edward.
Edward was different from the rest, and he stayed away from us. I would see him in the mornings, hunched in a corner. Short, dressed all in gray, with a large felt hat. Bright, dark eyes that peered from a pale, slack face. His hands had long dirty nails that looked as if they might snap off at the slightest suggestion of a breeze. A stale, dull, rotting smell came from his general direction, which I later discovered was due to the mushrooms he kept about his person. Sometimes, he made little chirping sounds, kin to the cricket that sang to me from outside my cell when the moon was full.
Edward, according to the experts, thought he was a gray cap. His misfortunes included losing his job as a bookbinder for Frankwrithe & Lewden; falling in love with a woman who could not love him back; the recent death of his grandfather, his only living relative; and not being taken seriously. {This last the fate of many of us.} He’d swallowed whole handfuls of poisonous mushrooms. The landlady had found him in time, but only because she stopped by to inquire about the lateness of the rent. He should have been grateful, but he was not.
In Edward, I seemed to have found someone who was distant cousins with Duncan. {I’d have been much like Edward if I’d let my obsession eat me. But I didn’t want to be a gray cap, Janice—I wanted to learn about them.} I told Edward—with dull sunlight seeping through the dusty fungal filigree of the dull windows, in that dull common room with dull faded carpets and dull faded paint covered with lichen, while we and the other dull inmates sat in our stupid dull deck chairs—pulled off a Southern Isles vacation ship? or a Moth River ferry?—waiting to start another dull hopeless session of rehabilitation with a woman so cheerless and uninteresting that I cannot even conjure up a shadow of her name—I told him about the singing of the blood, the murmuring of the bone, and he agreed it sounded like a much superior method for a suicide attempt. The mushrooms he had taken had just made his body fall asleep. A knife wound, on the other hand, spoke to you in a myriad of voices. It told you how you really felt. He nodded like he understood. I nodded back as if I knew what I was talking about.
Edward only spoke to me using his chirps and whistles, and the occasional drawing. He always drew tunnels—crisscrossing tunnels, honeycombing tunnels, tunnels without end. He used black chalk or charcoal on butcher’s paper. That was all we had in there to chart our creativity.
“I know,” I told him. “I know. You want to go underground. Like my brother. My brother’s been underground. Trust me. You don’t want to go there.”
Chirp, chirp, whistle. Huge eyes glistening from beneath his hat and his cowl.
“No, no—trust me, Edward. The world above ground holds more than enough for you, if you give it a chance,” I replied, even though I didn’t believe a word of it.
Some days I made fun of Edward. Some days I thought he was more in love with the whole idea of the gray caps than my brother. Some days I thought he was my brother. {I was never crazy, just committed.}
One day, on an impulse, I silenced his chirping with a hug. I held him tight, and I could feel his body shudder, relax, and melt into that embrace. I heard him whisper a word or two. I could not understand the words, but they were human. He did not want to let go. Something inside of him didn’t believe in his own insanity. And suddenly, I found myself holding him tighter, and crying, and not believing in my insanity, either.
Soon enough, though, the guards pulled us apart, and we each returned to our separate madness.
Over time, the days took on a sameness in that place. A crushing gray sameness. The only relief came in the form of Sybel, who visited two or three times. He let me know how my reputation fared in the outside world—not well—and brought with him “sympathy” cards from Sirin, Lake, and several others. Sirin had written his using letters cut from the wings of dead butterflies, while Lake had scrawled a sketch and an indecipherable message that appeared to be an attempt at a pun that had gone horribly wrong.
Startling proof of my former life running a gallery for unstable artist types, and yet that whole life seemed unreal, as if I had never lived it. I felt as if I were receiving messages from foreign lunatics.
“When are you coming back?” Sybel asked as he held my hand. I could see real sympathy in his eyes, not just pity.
I shrugged. “It depends.”
“On what?” he asked.
“On when Duncan’s money runs out. Where is Duncan anyway?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s gone underground.”
The truth was, Duncan never visited me. I never asked him why. I didn’t want to know. {I was too angry at you. And I had pressing matters to attend to underground.}
“How’s the gallery?” I asked Sybel.
“As well as can be expected with Lake gone and you…recovering.”
“Recovering. A nice word for it.”
“What word would you like me to use?” Sybel asked. A glint of anger showed in his expression. It was the only time I angered him, or the only time I saw his anger.
“Any other word, Sybel,” I said. “Any word that conveys just how f**ked up I am.”
Sybel laughed. “Just look at your sympathy cards. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”
I stayed in that place for five months, until it became clear that I needed additional help, the kind that could not be provided at the hospital. At least they realized I would not try again. That madness was over with, although I had nightmares: Their hunger was savage. They ate like wild animals, ate mushrooms and worse, drank and drank, fornicated in front of me, all against the backdrop of a city mad with fire.