Transorbital Read online

  We clinked glasses.

  “Here’s to ya,” I said.

  “Gaumarjos.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So vot you vant, yeah?”

  “Well, well,” I said. “Right to the business, eh? OK then. Well, like I said, I want you for the whole night, first of all. I’m good for it.”

  “OK. But dyehff’rent fun ees dyehff’rent price.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Ees good to haff system in zis line.”

  “Hey, doll, don’t I know it.”

  “You vant just fuck? OK. Normal price. But to come in my hair? Vill cost. To come on my face? Vill cost. To come on my toes? Vill cost. To come—…vell, you get idea.”

  “More mess more money. Square deal.”

  “Yoll vant have my ass? Vill cost MYUCH extra…” Realizing she might be queering the deal with her ‘all-business’ tone, she suddenly became affectedly flirty again. Nice technique. “But for you ees discount…for cyuteniss.”

  “Well that’s good-a-ya. But here’s the thing, honey-kitten. The bottom line. I need you to stay awake. All night. And just watch me.”

  “Vatch you?”

  “You got it. Just watch me.”

  “Zot’s eet?”

  “Not too kinky for ya, is it?” I asked. She shrugged. “I don’t sleep well, you understand? I spent three of my best years, since I’m fourteen and a half, surrounded…all day every day…by screaming, clawing, jabbering, pants-shitting fruit loops. They threw shit at me, they put voodoo spells on me, they tried to eat my ribcage. It kinda got to me, you know?” I tapped my forehead. “So now, I don’t sleep right. And when I do finally drift off, sometimes I stop breathing. For no reason.”

  I grabbed the bottle from the bedside table, poured myself a shot and guzzled it. She tried to copy me with what was left in her tumbler and choked again on the alcohol.

  “Careful now,” I said.

  “I’m fine, sank you.”

  “It’s…it’s like my brain is trying to kill me,” I continued. “You know? I’m gonna die in my sleep before I turn twenty-one, and that’s no joke. So I can’t sleep alone. Least not all the time. And at least not in DC.”

  “Vy is DC?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s worse in DC for some reason. But listen, if I stop breathing, or I look distressed in anyway, you gotta wake me up. You get me? Am I coming through clear? You show me I can trust you, and maybe we can work out something long-term. Least when I’m in town.”

  “I can’t do every night! I haff other cyustomers.”

  “Hey, I hear you. I couldn’t afford every night anyhow. Most nights I sleep alone in the Lobotomobile.”

  “Lobotomobile?”

  “That’s what Doc Freeman calls the van. Ain’t much, but it’s home, you know. I take my chances.”

  She kissed me softly—not a hooker kiss, but a real one.

  “You haff sleep now. Vill take care of you. Haff sveet dreams.”

  “Ain’t gonna happen, but thanks all the same, doll.”

  Chapter 3

  Pushing the lunch cart at Riverside one fateful day, I heard the voice of Dr. James Watts echo down the corridor.

  “You can’t do that, Walter!” he said, and I saw him storm out into the hall. He came marching right past me muttering, “Can’t take this anymore!”

  Just then, Doc Freeman stuck his head out from around a corner.

  “You there, lad,” he said to me, “can you work a camera?”

  How hard can it be? I thought, and headed on down to this cramped little operating room. There he’s got a woman, an older dame, unconscious and laid out on her back…with a rubber-handled metal spike jutting straight up out of her right eye socket.

  Freeman handed me the camera, watching me to see if I recoil. I don’t. I didn’t know if he was impressed or disappointed that I didn’t faint away on sight.

  “Get a shot of these angles,” he said.

  So he knocked the spike back and forth a few times, I clicked off a couple of shots, then he pulled out the rod, sopped up a bit of blood off her face, and woke the dame up. And whatever was ailing her, she’s cured…I guess.

  And just like that, I was old Doc’s right-hand man.

  I don’t mind living on the road. I’ve always been pretty much a transient. Working floors from coast to coast, collecting keys along the way. It’s like, every head case I ever encountered, every looney and screwball, infected me with a little piece of his poison. Generous, no? So I kept the keys. I collected them. I kept the keys to the asylums, so I could keep all the crazy hanging right here on my belt loop. And not so much in my head.

  Doc and I, we’re evangelists, all right. Like the old-time medicine carts…but for real. No horse feathers. No snake oil. And through sheer force of will, Doc Freeman made outpatient prefrontal lobotomy the vanguard of psychiatric medicine. After all, the medical community, they’re just like everybody else. They wanna be hip. They wanna be with it. They wanna catch the A-train too, don’t you know. And who wants to be that one square cat trying to dim a shining star?

  Chapter 4

  Every so often in life you discover something new about yourself. Its significance might not be readily obvious at the time. But you can bet the house on black that it will inform every choice you make from then on. As is often the case with these sorts of revelatory moments in life, it was a day like another other the day I first encountered chlorpromazine hydrochloride…

  “Good morning, lad.”

  “Morning, Doctor Freeman.”

  “I trust you slept well.”

  “Well enough,” I replied, though it wasn’t true.

  “My apologies,” he said, patting his chest in mea culpa, “I meant to tell you before, but we’re just doing consultations today. You’ll not be needed.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Very well then.”

  I went to make my exit, but noticed a crack in the old Doc’s otherwise cool, aristocratic demeanor.

  “Everything OK, Walter?” I asked.

  “Fine and dandy I don’t mind to say,” he said.

  I nodded, gave a small good-bye salute, and headed for the office door again.

  “See ya in the funny pages.”

  “Say lad,” he shouted quickly after me, “have you heard the latest?”

  I stopped short.

  “Ummm…Not likely, Doc.”

  “Well…sad news,” he said, “seems an associate of mine, Dr. Charlie Stewart…do you remember him?”

  “I don’t. Sorry.”

  “Seems Dr. Stewart has just this morning been found dead in his home. Homicide they say…at the hands of a former patient.”

  “Well damn. Don’t that just curdle your morning milk. I’m sorry to hear this.”

  “Shot in the spine, don’t you know.”

  “Huh. Déjà vu, yeah? Just like…when was that you were telling me…’39? Your mentor. Whatsisname…Dr. Moniz.”

  “Yes,” Doc said, clearly surprised that I remembered. “But Egas survived. And recovered. Mostly. No such luck for Dr. Stewart.”

  “It’s a dangerous world, Doc.”

  “Indeed. And a sick one, to be sure.”

  “That ain’t really what’s the matter, though, is it Walter?”

  “Well,” he snapped, “it has certainly cast a shadow over the day, I’ll tell you that.” He caught himself, and softened a bit. “The service is this weekend. Somewhere in Maryland. I’m still awaiting details. I don’t expect you to attend if you don’t wish to.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “I’ve got plans to ball it up a bit this weekend.”

  “More of that jazz, eh?” he replied with a sharp snicker. “I would think you’d want to save yourself a bit for New York next week.”

  “I’ll be ready for the Big Apple, Walter, don’t you worry about that.”

  “Well, it’s no matter.”

  H
e fidgeted in an uncharacteristically awkward way with various bric-a-brac scattered about his desk.

  “Come on, Doc. Spit it out. What’s eatin’ ya?”

  “Oh, it’s not much of anything really,” he said, waving it off. It was not a convincing performance.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve heard of this new silliness,” he said, forcing a chuckle. “Thorazine is the brand name.”

  “What-azine?”

  “Precisely. Precisely. The ‘chemical lobotomy,’ they’re calling it,” he chuckled further, and even less convincingly. “Balderdash.”

  “You don’t say? Chemical lobotomy, huh. You suppose…we’re outta business?”

  “Certainly not. Ha! The very idea…”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Utterly,” he said. “Nothing but a gauze bandage on a compound fracture if you ask me. If it even works at all. The transorbital lobotomy has no equal.”

  “Of course.”

  “1949 is our year, lad. This is the year that it all comes together.”

  “It’s 1950, Doc.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s 1950.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. 1950.”

  “Honest mistake.”

  “We are blazing new trails here, lad. And nothing will stand in our way. Nothing.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “It would…be good to test it out on a guinea pig, though,” he said. “Don’t you think? Just to see. Perhaps when we return from the symposium at Columbia, yes?”

  “Sure, Doc. Best to dot every i and cross every t, that’s what I say.”

  “Agreed.”

  More awkward silence, but he seemed relieved to have talked it out, if briefly. I had assumed, given how eager he was to teach others his revolutionary methods and all, that he felt no threat from competition. But then I realized, of course, that the transorbital was his baby. He owned it. It was irrevocably tied to him. And this Thorazine was an alien presence. It needed to be studied. And either conquered, or killed.

  “Well…” I said finally. “I suppose I’ll be moving along then. Let you get to your consultations. Give my best to Marjorie and the kids, and you have a good trip now. My sympathies to whomever and all.”

  “I will do that,” he said, “and I will pass that along.”

  Walking out the door, I stopped short one last time.

  “Say Doc, shot in the dark here, but I thought I might like to borrow a book from you if you don’t mind.”

  “Certainly. Any time. My shelves are yours.”

  “Thanks a million.”

  “Something in particular you’re looking for?”

  “Maybe something on the Eastern Bloc if possible. I don’t know. I’m just interested in the region all of the sudden. Maybe a Georgian phrasebook?”

  Doc Freeman raised a curious eyebrow.

  “Georgian phrasebook?”

  “I mean, you know, if you’ve got one of course.”

  “I certainly do. But whatever for?”

  “For nothing,” I said, my face getting hot. “Never mind. I’ll see you first thing Monday morning. Take care of yourself, Doc.”

  “And you as well. Mind yourself, lad. Keep your powder dry and your nose clean. Don’t get stuck in a fix.”

  Chapter 5

  “KI! OH! OH KI!” she squealed. “Menda! Me menda!”

  And so there we were, a spirited, twisted mess of limbs and tangled bed sheets. If she was faking it, it was a superb performance. Had me convinced.

  Afterward we lay still, panting and sweating, staring up at the cracked ceiling. We could hear the sounds of like activity emanating through the tissue-thin walls. It was just that kind of a joint.

  “Yes,” I said, catching my breath, “that’ll do. That’ll do nicely.”

  She giggled and clung tightly to me, panting hard.

  “Zis job…ees…not so all ze time bad.”

  “Thanks doll. Right back atcha.”

  “Vas nice…Vas…werry nice.”

  We lay in silence for a moment as a couple from across the hall yelled about money.

  “So,” she continued finally, “not zot eet matters, but my name ees Irina.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Uh huh. Irina. Like my muzzah. And hers.”

  “All right then.”

  “But you can call me Doll. I like eet.”

  “Irina. Irina the Satin Doll.”

  “Es werry nice.”

  “Got a little ring-a-ding to it.”

  We were silent again for a moment, then she said,

  “You don’t haff to tell yoll name if yoll not wanting to.”

  “Maybe someday, doll,” I said, stroking her damp, chestnut hair. “My name isn’t really so important.”

  “So…” she said, sitting up, and then, oddly, covering her naked breasts with the bed sheet, “same routine zen? I vatch you tonight so yoll not dying in yoll sleep?”

  “I’d sure appreciate it.”

  “OK. Can I maybe, come morning time, stay in room longer? So I can haff sleep when yoll leaving?”

  “You bet. I can get the room ‘til later in the day.”

  She settled comfortably back into the bed with a dreamy sigh.

  “Didi madloba.”

  “You’re welcome very much.”

  She gave me a wry, surprised look.

  “No to ze brain cutting zis veekend?” she asked as I got up to pour a couple of drinks.

  “We’re heading out to New York next week,” I said. “Big University. Big symposium. Surgeons, head shrinkers, the whole lot of ‘em. I don’t really care about any of that shit, though. I just like the town. You ever been? It’s not far. Less than five hours by Lobotomobile.”

  “Not yet, but someday I hope yes.”

  “Great music. Great vibes. Can’t wait. Bird’s playing.”

  “I sink you said he vas in asylum?”

  “Not anymore…but he prolly should be.”

  “Ven I vas leetle gyul, ve live een Moscow foll leetle vhile. Viss my fazzah. My fazzah play jazz music on phonograph record. Before he die.”

  “You don’t say. What was it, do you remember?”

  “I sink…Jelly Roll somezing?”

  “Jelly Roll Morton.”

  “Zot’s eet! Doctor Jazz Stomp and Big Foot Ham!”

  “Yeah, Jelly Roll was great, rest his soul. I was too young to see him, but his records knock me right out. He used to play around here, in DC, not far from where we are right now. ‘Til somebody stabbed him.”

  “Ees dangerous vorld.”

  “I’ll say. So what’d your old man die from?”

  “Bullets.”

  “Yeah, there’s a case of that going around.”

  I handed her a drink. She sipped it lightly.

  “I think I need a new home base,” I said. “DC is cramping my style.”

  “Vhere you vant to go?”

  “Somewhere exotic. Like…Des Moines, Iowa.”

  “Ts’avedit!”

  “You’re ready to go now, huh? You coming with me?”

  “I’m game foll anyzing, kid.”

  “Good to know. Good to know.”

  I wondered how she came about ending up in the good old US of A. What did she do to get here? And why? But then I figured it was probably best that I didn’t know. Nothing wrong with a little mystery, after all.

  “Say, doll,” I said, “you know why they called him ‘Jelly Roll?’ Jelly Roll Morton?”

  “Ratom?”

  “Eh?”

  “Vy?”

  “‘Cause legend has it,” I said, with a dirty grin inching across my mug, “he was packing a big, thick jelly roll in his trousers.”

  “Mmmmmm, yum yum,” she cooed, licking her lips.

  We laughed like hell and she kissed me, cuddling close against me.

  It must hav
e dawned on both of us at the same time that this was not typical whore & john behavior, and we stopped short. I sat up, wishing the room had a window so I’d have somewhere to look.

  “Can I ask vierd question?” she said.

  “OK, shoot.”

  “If somebody hurt you in bad vay, and you sink you could get avay viss eet, do you sink you could kill zot person maybe? Would you haff it in you?”

  “Hmmm…Wow. Huh. What a question. I dunno. Could you?”

  “Don’t know,” she said. “Not sure. Perhaps yes. Zis ees just vot I am sinking about sometimes in my head. I haff too much time in my own head. I vish I could not all ze time sink so much.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean, doll,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

  And then it hit me like a slap to the kisser.

  “Say! That reminds me!” I said.

  In a flash I hopped up and headed across the room to my little leather kit bag.

  “Vot is?”

  “Almost forgot,” I said. “I’ve got myself some homework.”

  She sat up in bed to watch as I took out a dropper, a syringe, and a thin, solid rubber tube. I tried to handle the goods in a professional, matter-of-fact sort of way…but, sad little secret, I was less than a pro with the needle at that time. I’d been lucky on the job to that point, that when emergency sedatives were needed I was always the brace man, not the jabber. Still, if the need arose, I could load a shot.

  “Vot is?” she asked again.

  “Not sure, really,” I said. “It’s called Thorazine. Brand new. Not even on the market yet. Whatever it is, it’s got ol’ Doc’s shorts in a bit of a twist. Said he wanted to try it out on a guinea pig. Well, I’m a go-fer, which is kind of a similar animal.”

  “How you get if ees not awailable?”

  “Facility’s got samples on site. I just forged Doc’s name on a request form. Ain’t the first time.”

  I loaded the works, and tied off the rubber cord on my left arm. A juicy blue vein popped up ready and willing right away.

  “Vot does zis do?”

  “I dunno. That’s what I gotta find out.” I jabbed it straight in on a quick breath. It stung more than it should have. I saw the glass chamber fill with a cloud of my blood, and I pushed the plunger down.