The Madman - Страница 39

"Yes. A pair of innocents. But if I show you these…"

"You will anger Mister Evans. Tough."

Again, Lucy paused, before replying, this time with a hesitancy born of curiosity in her voice. "Peter," she said slowly, "do you care so little about who it is that you piss off? Especially someone whose opinion as to your current mental state could be so critical for your own future…"

Peter seemed about to laugh out loud, and ran a hand through his hair, shrugging and then shaking his head with the same off-balance smile. "The short answer to your questions is Yes. I care very little who I piss off. Evans hates me. And whatever I do or say, he's still going to hate me, and it is not because of who I am as much as because of what I did. So I don't really hold out any hope for him to change. Probably not fair for me to ask him to change, either. And, he's probably not alone in the We Hate Peter Club around here, he's just the most obvious, and, I might add, the most obnoxious. Nothing I do is ever going to change that. So, why should I concern myself with him?"

Lucy, too, smiled slightly. It made the scar on her face curve, and Francis thought suddenly that the most curious thing about a blemish as profound as hers was that it made the rest of her beauty all that more substantial.

"I protest too much?" Peter asked, still grinning.

"What is it they say about the Irish?"

"They say a lot. But mainly that we like to hear ourselves speak. This is the most dramatically trite cliche. But, alas, one based on centuries of truth."

"All right," Lucy said. "Francis, why don't you go and see Miss Cleo, while Peter accompanies me to my little office."

Francis hesitated, and Lucy asked again, "If that's all right with you?"

He bent his head in agreement. It was a strange sensation, he thought. He indeed wanted to help her, because every time he looked at her, he thought she was more beautiful than before. But he was a little jealous of Peter getting to accompany her, while he had to launch himself after Cleo. His voices, still muted, rumbled within him. But he ignored the noise and after a momentary hesitation, hurried down the corridor toward the dayroom, where he suspected Cleo would be behind the Ping-Pong table, in her customary spot, trying to enlist victims in a game.

Francis was correct. Cleo was roosted in the back of the dayroom, by the Ping-Pong table. She had arranged three other patients on the side opposite her, equipping each with a paddle, and showing them a designated area, where they were to respond if her shot landed there. She also demonstrated to each patient how they should crouch down, and grip the paddle, and shift their weight to the balls of their feet in anticipation of action. It was, Francis saw, a mini clinic in how to play the game. And, he guessed, destined for failure. They were all older men, with stringy gray hair and flaccid skin marked by brown age spots. He could see each of them unhappily trying to focus on what they were being told, and struggling with their responsibilities. These simple tasks were magnified in the moment before the game was to begin, and he could also see that the more urgent the need to reply to Cleo's opening Ping-Pong salvo was, the less capable they were of meeting it, no matter how well she had instructed them.

Cleo said "Ready?" three times, looking each in the eyes, as she prepared to serve the ball.

Each of the opponents reluctantly nodded.

With a flick of the wrist, Cleo launched the ball vertically. Then her paddle came forward with snakelike speed, and knocked it across the table, where it landed once on her side of the table, clicking loudly, then jumping the net, striking the other side, spinning and passing directly between two of the opponents, neither of whom budged in the slightest.

Francis thought Cleo would explode. She reddened, and her upper lip seemed to curl back in anger. But then, just as swiftly the whirlwind of fury dissipated. One of the opponents retrieved the little white ball and tossed it across the table to her. She set it down on the green surface, beneath her own paddle.

"Thanks for the game." She sighed, replacing all the anger on her face with resignation. "We'll work on our footwork a little more later."

The three opponents all looked significantly relieved, and wandered off to distant corners of the room.

The dayroom was crowded as usual, with a bizarre mixture of activities. It was an open, well-lit room, with a bank of steel barred windows on one wall that let in the sunshine, and an occasional mild breeze. The glistening white painted walls seemed to reflect the light and energy in the space. Patients in various forms of dress, ranging from the ubiquitous loose-fitting robes and slippers to jeans and overcoats, milled about the room. There were cheap red and green leather couches and well-worn armchairs spread about the space, and these were occupied by men or women who sat quietly reading, despite the hum of noise that filled the room. At least, they appeared to be reading, but pages turned only infrequently. There were out-of-date magazines and tattered paperback novels on sturdy wooden coffee tables. In two of the corners there were television sets, which each had a passel of regulars gathered around, absorbing the soap operas. The pair of television sets were in dialogue conflict, tuned to different stations, as if the characters on each show were squaring off against the other network. This was a concession to the near daily fights that had sprung up between devotees of one show, versus those favoring a competing show.

Francis continued to look around and saw there were some patients playing board games, like Monopoly or Risk, a couple of chess and checkers games and some patients that played cards. Hearts was the dayroom favorite. Poker had been banned by Gulp-a-pill when cigarettes were used as chips a little too often, and some patients began hoarding them. These were the less crazy ones, or, Francis thought, the people who hadn't checked all connections to the outside world at the door, when they were shipped off to the hospital. He would have put himself in the same category, a distinction all the voices he heard within him agreed with. And then, of course, there were the Catos, just wandering about the space, speaking to no one and everyone, all at once. Some danced. Some shuffled. Some walked briskly back and forth. But all had their own pace, driven by visions so distant that Francis could only guess what they contained. They made him sad, and they frightened him a little, because he feared becoming like them. Sometimes, he thought, on the balance beam of his own life he was closer to them than he was to normal. He considered them doomed.

A thin haze of blue cigarette smoke hovered over everyone. Francis hated the room, and tried as much as possible to avoid it.

It was a place where everyone's out of control thoughts had free rein.

Cleo, of course, ruled the Ping-Pong table and its immediate surroundings.

Her blustery manner and fearsome appearance cowed most of the other patients, including, to some degree, Francis. But, at the same time, he believed she had a liveliness that most of the others lacked, which he enjoyed, and he knew she could be funny, and frequently managed to make others laugh, a valuable and rare quality in the hospital. She spotted him hovering on the edge of the area, and grinned wildly.

"C-Bird! Come to give me some competition?" she asked.

"Only if forced," Francis said.

"Then I insist. Forcing you. Please…"

He walked over and picked up a paddle. "I need to speak with you about what you saw the other night."

"The night of the murder? Did the woman prosecutor send you to ask me?"

He nodded.

"It has something to do with the traitor she is searching for?"

"Correct."

Cleo seemed to think for a moment, then she held up the small white Ping-Pong ball, eyeing it closely. "Tell you what," she said. "You can ask your questions while we play. As long as you keep returning the ball, I'll keep answering your questions. We'll make it into a game within a game."

"I don't know…" Francis started, but Cleo dismissed his protest with a nonchalant wave.

"It will be a challenge," she said.

With that, she flipped the ball into the air and served it toward him. Francis reached across the green table, and punched the ball back. Cleo returned it to him easily, and suddenly a rhythmic clicking filled the space, as the ball went back and forth.

"Have you thought about what you saw that night?" Francis asked, as he stretched forward for his shot.