Come Out Tonight (43 page)

Okay, so put Edward on the stand... Give me Somnolux, and...Haha!
 
Give me Somnolux or give me death!
 
No...Seriously.
 
Let them see the transition.
 
How about that?
  
Yeah, sure.
 
Fuckin’ jury, he’d call them.
 
Or get up and fondle the judge’s boobs.
 
Seal my doom.

...And, anyway! How in HELL is he aware of me when I don’t have the foggiest of him?
 
Maybe Henry’s the figment and Edward’s the real one? So who am I in all this?
 
Henry. Sure! Of course! Every memory of Henry.
 
Mark and Lisa locking me in the upstairs closet...Yelling!
  
Mom making chicken soup.
 
Don’t want that stupid knaidle.
 
I want noodles!
 
Dad’s 1988 Chevy... new car smell...ahhhh.
 
BUT NOT A SINGLE MEMORY OF EDWARD except that freaking video.
  
Must be Henry...Must....Ouch.
 
Stuff like that just makes my head hurt.
 
I’m not going there.
 
No, I’m not.
 
Hummmmm Da da doo da.
 
Shut up.
 
I’m not thinking about that.
 

Anyway...doesn’t matter, because Edward’s never gonna see the light of day!

Somehow, though....I...
miss
him.
 
Yeah, did some pretty sick stuff.
 
Hit Sherry in the head, left her to die, destroyed her life...Yeah, but...didn’t mean to kill her!
 
Said that.
 
Edward knows right from wrong!
 
Yes, but.
  
He MURDERED Jessica.
 
No!
 
Didn’t mean that either.
 
Two consenting adults...she liked that sort of stuff...must have been going for the big “O” and it just got out of hand....Yeah, yeah.
 
But he KILLED her.
  
He DID.
 
She’s DEAD.
 
Could
I
have?
 
Wouldn’t...couldn’t... No don’t think about that.
  
Hummmm.
 
Da da doo da.
 
Shut up.
 

Well, Edward killed Diego for sure...But that was self defense!
 
Diego was going for the gun, Edward reached it first.
 
Plus, Diego was a low-life.
 
A violent scum-bag.
 
Probably involved in drugs....So?
 
Hell difference does it make who he was?
  
Kill someone, you’re a murderer.
 
Thou shalt not kill!
 

Haha, if I shot Osama ben Laden, think the world wouldn’t call me a hero?

Oh, Sherry!
 
You bitch!
 
Thought you were so wonderful...the best thing ever to happen to me.
 
Decent...supportive...all this time you were playing me like a....harp? a violin?
 
Whatever.
 
Hate you. Hate you.
 
Glad you got your comeuppance and lost your mind and can’t get out of bed and... Goddamn it, I love you!
 
I’ll never see you again!
 
Sherry Baby!
 

What a shit you are.
 
Truth for truth’s sake, no matter what you have to do to get it.
 
High up in the sky painting pretty pictures about minds and brains and sleep.
 
Mixed states and destabilizing networks and stuff
emerging
from nothing.
 
Bullshit abstractions...don’t mean a goddamned thing!
  
Self’s a story.
 
Well, I got one for you, Sherry, baby!
 
There
is
no self!
 
Not even a story.
 
Not even a sentence! Not even the period at the end of a sentence!
  
Know what we are?
 
We’re pieces of meat emerging out of the MUCK!
 
We’re shit and puke and fucking garbage!
 
That’s what we are!

Head is swimming...got to lie down.
 
In and out of consciousness…. In a delirium.
 
Night’s coming.
 
Night’s here.
  
Feels like parts of me and parts of Edward are mixing and matching, cohering and de-cohering.
  
Feeling disjointed...disassembled, like I’m a colony of one-cell creatures.
 
No longer Henry.
 
I’m a sponge; a coral reef.
 
Many, not one.

Voices.
 
Sherry: there’s no little man in our heads.
 
Sirken: She didn’t love you.
 
You were her guinea pig.
 
Edward, growling: No way am I gonna rot away in your sorry body for life.
 
It’s just not gonna fucking happen...

“What’s the use?” I say out loud and bolt upright.

Moonlight is coursing in through the barred window, throwing stripes across a filthy crust of paint on cinder block.
 
Suddenly I see something beautiful on the ceiling.
 
It’s a drainpipe.
  
Lit up in the moonlight.
 
A drainpipe with lots of room between it and the ceiling to wedge in a rolled up sheet.
 
If only I could get up to it.
 
I get up from the bed and move my lone chair under the pipe.
 
I stand on the chair and stretch my arm up until it’s as high as it can go.
 
The pipe’s still out of reach.
 
So I get down, go back to the cot and drag it as slowly and quietly as I can until it’s directly under the pipe.
 
I pull the sheets off the cot, lift the chair onto the bed, grab the sheet and climb.
 
I stand on top of the chair, which is on top of the cot, and yo! I can reach the pipe.
 
I swing the sheet half a dozen times till it wraps around the pipe and comes down on the other side.
 
I tie it once, as high up as I can, than drape it several times around my neck, knotting it twice.
 
I tug it a couple of times with my hand.
 
It seems to hold.
 
“Goodbye, you jerks,” I say and kick away the chair.

DONNA

I got a hold of the Pollacks the day after cracking the case of Sherry’s assault.
 
They agreed to come out East to tie up the loose ends, as well as to visit their daughter.
  
One week later, here they are, sitting in my office at the precinct, dressed in their usual California best: Phillip in his jaunty blue blazer and grey slacks and Rhonda in cream-colored pants, an expensive-looking silk top and an intimidating amount of gold. Rhonda takes out a tissue from a small package in her Prada bag and cleans the seat before she sits back down.
 
Their expensive duds seem to make the door that won’t shut, the fake wood and the dirty metal chairs all the more tawdry.

I’ve dragged in a second chair, jammed it up against the other and pushed the desk back so they can have an extra inch or two of legroom.
 
I’ve had two grande cups of Starbucks cappuccino brought up especially for them; it seemed a nice touch.
 
Still, the Pollacks look out of place and ill at ease.
 
I resolve to make this session as quick as possible.

“So the boyfriend did it after all,” Phillip says.

Well, yes, though with one caveat,” I reply.
 
What can I say here? That Henry is as much a victim as the felon?
 
That the Somnolux, the very drug their daughter had helped to develop, made him do it?
 
I’m sure the irony wouldn’t be lost on them, but I don’t want to rub it in.
 
Out loud I say, “The courts will have to rule on that one.”

“Still, someone has to pay for what was done to our daughter,” Phillip says.

I have the feeling that, just as there is more than one person responsible for their daughter’s misfortune, more than one person will be called upon to pay for it, but that isn’t what I called them in to ask.
 
It may not matter in the scheme of things, but I want them to fill me in on all that they’ve been keeping from me.
 

“Dr. Pollack,” I say, “I’d like to revisit why you were so intent on staying out of the limelight.
 
Why did you allow me to believe that you weren’t there the night of Sherry’s attack?
 
And why did you run away from the media at the Parkhill Nursing Home?”

If possible, Rhonda looks more incensed than her husband.
 
“How many times do I have to tell you, Detective?
 
My husband is a very private man.
 
You can’t possibly realize how adversely this sort of thing would affect his clientele.”

Phillip puts a hand on his wife’s arm.
 
“The police have to know the whole truth, Rhonda. Besides, they know all about Vandenberg anyway.”
 
He sets his paper cup down on the desk in front of him.
 
“I guess you know that Vandenberg, and Sherry in particular, was experimenting on people.”

I nod.

“This is very hard for me to say, Detective, but my daughter was one of the bad guys,” he says, his eyes clouded with pain.
 
“I never suspected it until we saw her that night for her birthday dinner.
 
Yes, I’d always had my qualms about Vandenberg – that’s why I was so against Sherry going there - but never in my wildest dreams would I have dreamed that they would recruit unsuspecting patients to test their drugs.
 

“That night, though, Sherry told us everything.
 
I think at last she was feeling guilty.
 
Her wild ambition, her
hubri
s had led her to this point of no return, and Sherry needed someone to talk to.
 
She couldn’t tell that ridiculous boyfriend of hers, since he was her prime guinea pig.
 
So, she told us.”

“And you were not kind,” Rhonda remarks, her face buried in her cup.

“No,” her husband says, chastened for once.
 
“I was furious.
 
And conflicted.
 
I desperately wished she’d never gotten mixed up in this whole thing, but she had. My first reaction was that she should tell the public, just as she had concluded herself.
 
But my second was that the moment this got out, she would be blacklisted, humiliated.
 
And so would we.
 
My practice would disintegrate.”

“Your patients love you,” Rhonda insists.

He waves her comment away.
 
“I’m not proud of what I felt,” he says, addressing himself to me.
 
“First and foremost, I wanted to protect my family. And myself, above all.
 
I can’t delude myself about that.
 
But I couldn’t go as far as lying.
 
I knew if confronted by the media, I would have to tell the truth.
 
I’d have to tell them what my daughter did.
 
And then we’d both be ruined.”

“So you fled in a panic,” I say.

“Yes.
 
Several times.
 
I ran away not only from the media but from my daughter as well.”
 
He covers his face with his hands and sits there head bowed and silent for a few moments.

“Dr. Pollack,” I say after he raises his head.
 
“Did you catch up with Sherry that night in the dark?”

Rhonda looks meaningfully at her husband.
 
“Yes,” Phillip admits.
 
“Yes, I did.
 
I caught up to her a few blocks away and made her stop and listen.
 
But nothing really was accomplished. All we did was quarrel some more.
 
She wanted to tell the world. She wanted to be cleansed of the whole thing.
 
I told her life didn’t work that way.
 
That she’d be vilified. That the Pollack name would be tied to infamy….And then, only then, did she waver.
  
She wasn’t convinced, she said, but she understood, and if I’d only forgive her, she might be able to live with herself.”

He pauses to pull a handkerchief out of his blazer pocket and blow his nose. “It was a gambit I did not take.
 
Talk about hubris – I told her I would
never
be able to forgive her.
 
What she had done this time was just too much to condone. That she should go back and ask her boyfriend for forgiveness, not me.”
 
He pauses, remembering.
 
“And she did.”
 

We sit there for a minute or two in respectful silence, whether it’s for Sherry or the absurdity of life, it doesn’t matter.
 
We all need to get some closure on all this.

“So,” I begin after the silence has gone on long enough.
 
“Will you be going home soon?”

“Yes,” Phillip says.
 
“Later today.
 
After we visit Sherry, of course.”