Authors: Alex Adams
“Did you hear? Cynthia is dead,” one says when I walk in.
Two weeks ago she was jubilant, and now she’s gone. I barely knew her, and yet it takes everything I have to hold myself in a single column.
That afternoon a man approaches me on the train. The usual crowd has dwindled to just a smattering of backsides in seats, so he stands out like a bloodstain on white pants. He’s burrowed down in his green sweater, fingertips peeking out the ends of the sleeves. He has a lollipop head covered in thick sandy hair that hasn’t seen a barber’s scissors in some time. So slight is he that the messenger bag slung crosswise his body seems to be the only thing holding him down.
“Can I … May I talk to you? It’s polite to ask, so that’s why I’m asking instead of just talking.”
I turn in the seat, look up at him, try not to be annoyed at having my worrying interrupted. He goes on without my consent, which should be my first clue to shut him down, but he’s caught me in an unguarded moment.
“You work at Pope Pharmaceuticals, right? Of course you do. I mean, I know you do. I followed you from there. I didn’t want to pick one of those science people, because they won’t say squat, at least not in terms most people can understand. So I had to pick someone else. Someone not so important who’d talk to me. People in menial jobs like to talk. I’ve seen them on the television. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes. So I picked someone like you.”
I try to ignore the insult, because something about this kid is different. “You’re a journalist?”
His gaze settles on my left ear. Flicks to my right. Down to my hands. To some spot atop my head. “Jesse Clark,
United States Times
. I used to have an Internet blog. Maybe you’ve heard of me.” He waits in an unnatural pause.
I try to shake the surrealism away.
“No, I’ve never heard of it, or you, or the
United States Times
. I’m sorry.”
“It’s new.” The kid is a whole litter of still-blind-puppies full of enthusiasm. “So many people have gone to fight that there aren’t enough qualified journalists and newspaper people left. They want one big newspaper that tells the same news to everyone who’s still here. It’s easier that way, they say. I think it’s a conspiracy and the government wants to control the news. But since they’re paying for my stories, I just got my first apartment all on my own, so the money is nice. I’m learning to cook, too. I made oatmeal this morning, in the microwave. Last night I made an omelet. With those green peppers and bacon. The recipe said ham, but I like bacon better.”
Again he waits as though this is chess and it’s my move.
“I prefer bacon, too.”
He beams, focuses on the armrest. “Can I sit down? I know I should wait until you ask, because that’s the polite thing; but I don’t know how long it’s going to be before you ask, and standing on a train facing in the wrong direction doesn’t make me feel so great.”
Normally I’d ignore him, hope he goes away before he proves to be a problem, but these are not normal times. I wave at the aisle seat and hope he takes that, not the middle.
He chooses wisely. “I don’t want to take the middle one. That would make it look unbalanced. So if you sit there and I sit here, it’s almost symmetrical.” Prim and proper. Hands flat on his chino-clad thighs. Bag across his body. “Thank you. I have to say thank you because that’s polite.”
“You’re welcome.”
“That’s polite, too.” He stares straight ahead. “I want to ask you some questions, if that’s okay. I’m working on a story no one knows about yet. You might think I’m crazy, and it’s okay if you do, because lots of people think I am. Even my best friend Regina thinks I’m crazy, but that’s okay because she’s my friend and she’s kind of weird, anyways. My parents think I’m crazy, too. They don’t say it, but I can see it. My dad’s always getting angry at me because I’m no good at driving or playing football like my brothers, and my mom’s always saying, ‘Don’t say that. He’s a smart boy. He’s just different.’ I love my mom. I love my dad, too, because that’s what you’re supposed to do: love your parents. But I don’t like him all that much. Do you like your parents?”
“They’re good people.”
Jesse nods. “About a month ago I was looking through the newspapers and I noticed something strange. I used to get all the major papers on account of having my blog and wanting to have all the latest news. Checking out the competition, my dad calls it. Only, now I don’t have a blog because no one has the Internet anyway. When the newspapers come I like to cut out the pieces and lie them on the floor in the basement. It’s flat and no one else goes down there much, so I can spread them out and move them around however I want. I like to look for patterns. And in the past month, I’ve been seeing all kinds of patterns in the obituaries. Lots of people are dying who wouldn’t normally be dying, and they’re all dying of the same thing. Only, I don’t think anyone else has noticed or it would be in the newspapers already, right?”
I don’t tell him that I’ve noticed, too, or that I don’t know whether to feel relieved or terrified that someone has made the connection.
“So I said to myself, ‘Jesse, this could be the story that makes you someone.’ My dad will be pleased that I’m someone important and maybe people won’t think I’m so stupid. What I did next was talk to some families of the people who died. Mostly they said things like ‘Go away, mind your own business, we’re trying to grieve here,’ but some of them used ugly words, too. Like
f-u-c-k
.” He glances around, his face pinched. “I hope nobody heard.”
“I don’t think they did.”
“But you know what? Some of those people talked to me. And they all told me the same stories and described the same symptoms, so I said to myself,
That’s weird, because how do all these people in different cities and states have the same thing?
”
My heart plays skipping stones in my chest before stopping for several beats.
“How do you know?”
“I told you, I saw the patterns in the paper. Then I got on a bus—lots of buses—and visited a whole bunch of people. My dad said I was crazy and that I should get a job at McDonald’s or someplace, but the grease smells funny, so I got on the bus instead. I talked to this real nice lady in Little Rock and she said both her cat and her husband died and he wanted the cat buried with him but the funeral home wouldn’t do it.
Dead is dead, so I think they should have done it, because that’s what he wanted. This lady, she told me that first her husband got real sick and vomited blood all the time. She apologized, because we were in her kitchen eating red velvet cake and she was worried I had a weak stomach. Then she said her husband got all these weird pains in random places in his body, like he was getting jabbed like a voodoo doll. After a couple of weeks he died. She said after the funeral the mortician came over to her and asked if he’d always had a tail. She said yes because she didn’t know what else to say, but then she told me he never had that tail before and they’d been married forty years. Isn’t that strange? You know what else is strange? I saw a whole lot of stones in Little Rock but I couldn’t tell which one was meant to be the little rock.”
“Why aren’t you in the war?”
“Special dispensation on account of my condition. Do you know what that means?”
“I’ve heard it before.”
He nods, keeps his gaze fixed on the seat ahead. “Asperger’s is what the doctors say I’ve got. It doesn’t mean anything other than I’m different.
Different
can mean good or it can mean bad, depending on who’s doing the talking.”
His fingers start to tap. At first I think piano, but the longer I watch, I see number patterns.
“After I went to Little Rock I went to some other places and then I went home. They’ve got a big library there at the college. Before, I would have just gone to Google but I had to do it the old way, which was a lot of hard work after riding all those buses. I couldn’t use the Internet, but they still have an internal system where you can search for books and journals. You know what? There’s no disease like that. Nothing that makes you sick and then grow a tail. Some of the other dead people grew other weird stuff, too. One kid had two hearts when they cut him open; only, one was growing up in his throat and choked him to death. Some of them just died after all the vomiting, but some grew stuff people shouldn’t have. So I talked to my mom and she said maybe I’d discovered something new, something no one ever heard of, and maybe if I figured out what that was, they’d name it after me. If there’s anybody left to care.” His shoulders slump. The number patterns slow.
The inside of my head is a radio station turned to static. I believe what he’s saying: the pieces are all there.
“Why me?”
“A new disease has to come from somewhere. Have you seen
Resident Evil
? There was an accident in a laboratory and everyone turned to zombies. I figured maybe this was like that.”
“That was just a movie.”
“Nuh-uh. It happens. There are lots of online forums that talk about how it could happen for real. I went to a lot of labs and companies that make medicine and no one would talk to me. They just smiled and gave me pamphlets to read or threatened to throw me out. One guy threatened to have me locked up in an institution. All I wanted was to ask some questions. I think they wouldn’t talk to me because they think I’m different-bad.”
I shake my head. “They won’t talk to you because what if you’re right?”
It’s crazy. It should be crazy. But just because something is crazy doesn’t mean it isn’t true. All those dead mice. Jorge. The bones crammed inside the jar. It’s making me want to ask questions. Maybe my paranoia
isn’t
.
Ben’s dead. James. Raoul. Two receptionists now. The woman from the bathroom. And the man in Arkansas with the tail—oh God.
Jesse’s fingers pick up pace, then slow again. His head turns and I think he’s going to look at me, but he stares at my mouth instead. “Will you answer my questions?”
I want to. But I can’t. I explain about the contract I signed, the confidentiality agreement, so maybe he’ll understand how the business world works when there’s a whole lot of green and reputations at stake. I think it’s going to sink in when he goes back to staring at the chair.
“You’re scared. I’m scared, too. My mom says it’s okay to be scared because that’s just our brain’s way of telling us to be careful.”
On the other side of the window, the scenery changes. Two minutes until my stop.
“I wish I could,” I tell Jesse. He seems like a good kid. I like him. I’d love to help.
“Please.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want either of us to get hurt.” Or worse.
“But my dad will be proud of me if they name the disease after me. I’ll be different-good.”
The train slows. I tug my bag over one shoulder, hold the strap in place with my opposite hand, shielding myself from his questions. “I’m sorry.”
The last I see of him is his face pressed against the window as I glance back over my shoulder. He’s looking straight into my guarded soul.
I go about my business
. I clean, talk to the mice, monitor them for signs of imminent death. I do not name them, although the little guy at the end with the bent whiskers is begging for an identity that doesn’t include numbers.
I watch the mice and wonder if the experiment is larger than this bank of cages.
My paranoia has its own mind.
You know you want to
, Nick says in my head.
“Not now.”
He falls silent. Please don’t let today be the day I see him on the list.
I pull on slippers with my jeans, throw on a coat. Still, I shiver when the chill slams my body. The two quarters are cold lead weights in my palm. It stings to hold them. They clank into the newspaper dispenser and I use the edge of my sleeve to tug it open.
The city newspaper is gone; in its place is the
United States Times
. Jesse flashes into my mind, that kid who just wants to be different-good.
The stairs fly by two at a time. My apartment door crashes behind me. I grab more quarters and I’m gone again.
Two by two, I shove them into the other dispensers, the ones that should be holding newspapers from all over the country. I have to see, I have to know if there’s other news out there. But they’re all filled with one publication now: the
United States Times
. That journalism has been distilled to this dangerous point catapults me into action. I’m doing nothing when I should be doing something.
Back in my hidey-hole, I dissect the paper. I pick through the pages as a soothsayer might a tangle of entrails, trying to divine a course of action. It’s just a paper. It’s like all the others with its bold title announcing its presence. Nothing about it screams,
I killed the competition. I took away your choices overnight
. The cover is more of what we’ve been seeing: battles won. Men cheering. Leaders happy with the troops’ success. There are twelve more obituaries than in yesterday’s paper.
The hall closet looms, its clean white paint darkening as I assign it characteristics it can’t possibly possess: dark, foreboding, dangerous.
When the phone rings, I leap.
“We’re showing an alarm at your residence. Do you need assistance?”
I forgot the alarm. Damn. “No, no, I’m fine. I was carrying … groceries.”
“Code, please.”
I give them the code, and the secondary code, and my mother’s maiden name. When they’re satisfied I’m not a doppelgänger, they reset the system and I lock myself in.
I stand in front of the closet, hands poised on the handles.
“I’m ready,” I tell Nick-in-my-head.
It’s still in there, that carton I stashed, wrapped in its packing-tape straitjacket. Between the fake Christmas tree I keep because I hate hauling a fresh one up the stairs, and building rules state they’re not allowed to ride the elevator anyway, and the box of Bibles I’ve collected over the years from people who thought my soul needed saving. Too superstitious to throw them away, I keep them here to ward away people who’d give me another. The flaw in my plan was James. Last Christmas he gave me a children’s Bible painted with toothy cartoon characters.