Crack-Up (13 page)

“So do you know who I am?” she said, tight-jawed, insulting, the way she spoke to her staff when they'd fucked up.

“Yes, yes, the old Argus is back now.
 
I think.”

Keisha wore a black pant suit with a gold vest, which matched her purse.
 
I wore blue hospital pajamas and white paper slippers.
 
I felt ridiculous.

She hugged me, briefly, stiffly, her braided locks cutting the air with jasmine.
 
Standing so close together seemed to melt her a little.
 
She gave my face a slow inspection.
 
She has a tender side, but it’s not part of her own self-identity.

“Sorry about the jammies,” I said.
 
“They smell a little rank this late in the afternoon, don’t they?”

“Is it true?” she said.
 
“You’re a paranoid schizophrenic?”

“Yes, it’s true.”
 
With a gallant sweep of my hand, I invited her to join me at a little orange plastic table, a circular table surrounded by many others just like it in what was currently a crowded visitors room.
 
But Keisha didn't budge.

“How long have you known, Argus?
 
How long?”

“Not too long.
 
Roughly a quarter century.”

She shook her head.
 
“You self-centered ass.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.
 
“I can see you’re hurt.
 
I should’ve shared that with you.”

“You should’ve shared that with your clients, don’t you think?
 
Or how about back in the day with President Cooper?”

I sighed.
 
“They would’ve canned me from the Service.”

“So?” she said doing that vertebrae-defying, Black female thing with her neck, which always makes me want to pop mine.

“Don’t you think I thought long and hard about that?
 
It wasn’t an easy decision.”

“They had a right to know.”

“And I had a right to privacy, I felt.”

“But this disease—”

“I had it under control.”

“Look around, Argus.
 
Tell me what you have under control.”

I heard my name spoken nearby, and I searched for the source, wincing from stab-like neck pain as I did so, the result of a minor injury—one of many—I’d sustained while being taken into custody.
 
I found four people seated at the table to my immediate left—three visitors, one inmate—all darting their eyes away from my direction.

“Apparently, I’ve made the headlines.”
 
I turned back to Keisha, wincing again.

“You’re hurt,” she said.
 
“You okay?”

“Yeah.
 
Except for my neck.
 
And my back.
 
And my right quadriceps, and my left ankle.
 
And both groin muscles.”

“Both groin muscles?”

“If you ever go berserk, Keisha, remember to stretch first.”

“I’ll make a note.
 
Why don’t we sit down.”

We sat, me lowering myself gingerly.
 
Two men in sharp business suits could be seen standing in the hallway, outside the entrance to the visitor’s room.

Are they watching me
? I wondered.
 
Then I told myself to forget about the pair.
 
It was probably nothing, just a little residual paranoia on my part.

“So how are we handling this?” I said to Keisha.

“Handling what?”

“This!
 
The . . . incident.”

“What can we do, Argus?
 
Our clients are outraged.
 
We’ve lost a quarter—maybe a third of them—already, with the rest threatening to leave.”

“That . . . can’t be.”
 
I’d worked ten years to build that firm.
 
Now it was suddenly on the verge of collapse.

She topped my hand with her own.
 
“I didn’t come here as your employee, Argus.
 
I came here as your friend.”

I stared down at her slender, dark hand, into the cheap twinkle of her gaudy rings.
 
She was a sharp lady, and always honest with me, yet I refused to believe her news about my firm.
 
I’m hearing what a paranoid hears
, I thought,
I’m not well yet, best to ignore, best to ignore
.
 
I changed the subject.
 
“I don’t remember doing it.”

“Killing him, you mean?”
 
I gave her a nod.
 
My eyes were tearing suddenly.
 
Keisha began to pat my hand.
 
“What exactly
do
you remember, Argus?”

“Seeing John Helms dead.
 
On the floor of his office.
 
His face—”
 
I shook my head from revulsion.
 
“Just a bloody pulp.”

“What else do you remember?”

“A good deal,” I said.
 
“Though that’s not as helpful as it sounds, Keisha.
 
It’s hard for me to distinguish between what really happened that day and my own, twisted interpretation of events.
 
But either way—in fact or fantasy—I don’t remember killing him.”

She sighed.
 
“I don’t know if I should be telling you this—”

“Tell me.
 
Everything you know.
 
Please.”

Keisha mulled over my request before saying, “There were two eyewitness.
 
To the assault, I mean.
 
Two of our own bodyguards.”

I was flabbergasted.
 
“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!
 
Last time I checked, we both trusted our own peeps!”

I stared into the palms of my hands.
 
They seemed alien to me somehow, the flesh too lively and too red.
 
“I couldn’t have!
 
I just couldn’t have!”

My alien hands clenched my face in a death grip.
 
My shoulders quaked.
 
Keisha was patting me again, this time my head.
 
Slow moans soon turned to short, jabbing sobs.
 
I rocked in place.
 
I cried out.

“Easy, Argus, easy.”
 
Two orderlies approached our table, but Keisha waved them off.

“I never really believed,” I said.
 
“Until now.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I sprang from the table and paced, paced up and down between two rows of orange tables, the muscles in my body taut, burning, frenetic.
 
Meanwhile, Keisha stood, waiting close by our table, clutching her purse, watching me.
 
I went to her.

“Am I hearing you right, Keisha?
 
Or is it just another paranoid fantasy of mine?
 
Are you really suggesting to me that I killed John Helms?
 
Beyond doubt?
 
No doubt whatsoever?
 
Because there’s a pair of eyewitnesses?
 
Two reliable—”

“Yes,” she said, firmly.

I paced some more.
 
I paced, I paced, I paced.
 
I didn’t know what to think, what to believe . . .
 
And then, suddenly, it came to me.
 
Oh, yes.
 
Oh, yes.

I walked back to Keisha, still standing by our table.
 
“Do me a favor, Keisha.
 
Unbutton your vest.”

“Pardon?”

“Take off your vest, and then unbutton your blouse.”

“Why?”

“Just humor me, okay.”

“I don’t think so.”

I lunged at her and, in two quick motions, tore open her gold vest and then her white blouse.
 
Buttons ricocheted madly off the tile floor.
 
Keisha screamed.
 
She fought me.
 
I seized the straps of her flimsy black bra and yanked down hard.

Her vest, her blouse, her bra—it all fell waist-high, pinning her thin arms tightly against her sides.
 
Her big bronze tits popped free.

“Where is it?” I said, now patting down her waistline.

“Where is what!” she cried.

“You know.
 
The hidden microphone.
 
C’mon, where is it?”

“Hidden microphone?
 
Oh my God . . .”

The orderlies had me suddenly, and they were carting me off.
 
People cheered, sick people, I thought.

Keisha cupped her breasts and cried.
 
But she had it coming, I told myself.
 
The bitch had it coming.

“There is no eyewitness!” I shouted.
 
“Because I wasn’t the one who killed John Helms!
 
You know that!
 
But you want to trap me into a confession, don’t you, Keisha!
 
You’re working for the cops, you traitor!
 
Oh, yes!
 
That’s right!
 
I know!
 
Ha-ha!
 
I know!
 
You’re a traitor!
 
And I’ll get you, Keisha!
 
You hear me?
 
You conniving bitch!
 
I’ll get you for this!”

Chapter 13

My keepers isolated me again while my sanity solidified, for lack of a better term, while the gargoyles of my mind returned to their perches and stiffened back into stone.
 
Meanwhile, that false feeling I’d had that my old life hadn’t left me vanished.

The psychic birth of my new life proceeded, wracking and writhing me, mind and body, blurring my vision with tears, burning my tonsils with screams.
 
For in this new life, I’d killed a man.
 
An innocent man.
 
A man I’d been charged to protect.
 
I lost all interest in living.

But I won’t say more about that.
 
The rest stays between myself and God.
 
My story picks up again at the point where I decided I had to go on living, at least until I’d determined which would be better for my daughter, Ellie, and my unborn child: a father imprisoned for murder, or a father who’d taken his own life as a penance for murder.

“It’s a court-ordered psychiatric assessment,” Doctor Woods said to me one day as we sat on opposite sides of the metal desk in her office.
 
“It's to help the judge classify you as competent or incompetent to stand trial.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I’ll be asking you a series of questions.
 
Please answer thoughtfully and truthfully.”