Daphne_A Novel Page 10

  “Hey, come on! Wait a second!”

  A cab pulled up to the light. I hailed it, threw myself in. “The Mission,” I just managed to get out. “18th and Capp.” I tried to tell him to wait for Ollie. But all that came out was a slurred jumble of syllables. The driver must have thought I was drunk and gave me a cautious, aggrieved look in the rearview, worried about me puking on his upholstery. I slumped in my seat, unable to turn to see where Ollie was. The cab pulled away. Only the seat belt kept me from sliding to the floor.

  OLLIE GOT TO THE GROVE fifteen minutes after I did. He must have rung the buzzer twenty times. But I was on the couch, switched off, unable to cross the room to let him in, shivering inside even as I couldn’t on the outside. My phone rang and rang, all the way over in my bag where I’d dropped it by the door. The attacks kept rolling through me. A hard, black cold set in. My thoughts flowed thick and sludgy as tar. When I woke, it was dark. My stomach clawed for food. On hands and knees, I got myself over to my bag. But my phone was dead, and finding my charger, just then, seemed impossible. All I could do was crawl up to the loft, listen to the muted bleat of traffic on Mission, the dull shouts of junkies and working girls. The image of all those little doors . . . It kept shoving me down to the root of my terror. And, still, I couldn’t touch it.

  In the drawer of my bedside table, I kept a bottle of prescription pills. Teshawn might have built up a tolerance, but the stuff fucked me up completely, left me, the next day, woozy and disembodied, caught in the worst jet lag imaginable. The doctors and specialists will tell you they don’t know exactly how the drug muffles the condition, but it was initially developed as a heavy-duty tranquilizer—it muffles everything. One pill and I’d be sunk for the night, so deep, so numb my brain wouldn’t even have a memory of sleep, those hours only a blank, part of my continuous self snipped out, the broken strands forever disconnected.

  I shook out a pill. It was sticky with age and clung to the tip of my finger. I hesitated, then put it on my tongue and, wanting to retch, swallowed hard. It began to blossom in my stomach. My head went grainy. I dropped onto the pillow. Sleep closed in, but another darkness came quicker. Parts of me were already going dim, those parts I forever had to police. I started to drift. The bed slipped from underneath me, and I went up like fog into an already gray sky. Panic still sludged through me. Then it all began to drift away. I fell as I rose, expanded as I dissolved. Guilt and shame and terror receded, dark undertones on a black canvas. I might have felt relief or even, momentarily, free.

  But the drug had taken over. I didn’t feel anything at all.

  I WOKE. The bed was wet. I’d wet the bed.

  Cold and wet, I hobbled down to the toilet. The toilet seat was icy cold. My bowels released. I sat there, staring at the floor.

  I dragged myself and my phone to the couch. I had to email Byron, call in sick. Email in sick. Whatever. Ollie had left voicemails, texts. A dozen, more. I stared at them, all of his worry. I couldn’t. Couldn’t call him, ask for his help. Not in this state.

  Lunch—oatmeal, a few sips of tea—threw it up. Hunched over the toilet, everything came up. Wrapped myself in an old comforter on the couch, the TV just a smear of color and sound. Slept, woke, slept. Rest from the pills, no rest at all.

  Five-thirty the next morning, I came around. Soaked in sweat but half-whole. I showered, thought I might go to work. No. The woman in the mirror, frazzled, cadaverous, shook her head no. Another email: I’d be out for the week. Hauled myself back up to bed. Another pill on the end of my finger, choked it down. Went back down.

  OLLIE CAME TO THE GROVE, rang the buzzer again and again. I couldn’t answer. It was impossible, a delusion that it could’ve worked. A few more weeks, he would’ve known, too. He wasn’t dealing with someone who just had quirks or a weird hangup. Each bad attack had a memory attached, some absurd, some almost funny, some so heavy they crushed me all on their own. I had broken dreams of him, his old radios, tangles of wiring all around him. When I woke, I picked up my phone, opened my contacts. My finger hovered over the little portrait I’d taken of him, red fez lampshade over his eyes, framing his goofy smile . . . No, impossible. I tossed the phone away, rolled onto my back, in case I switched off. But the pills worked. No tears, no regret, no longing. The ghost of his photo hung before me. Then it dissolved.

  THAT SUNDAY I WENT to group. Because I hadn’t left the apartment in a week? Or I wanted easy sympathy? They were the only people I’d let see me like this? I don’t know. I got into a black car in front of the Grove, I got out in front of the church. The pills took me. Autopilot. The AA guys were out front. The action figure held the door for me. “Right on time,” he greeted me, “right on time.” I couldn’t even mumble thanks.

  The reek of cleaning vinegar down the dim corridor, Sherman’s smile as I came in, brighter than it’d been in weeks. “Great to see you back, Daphne!” There was general chatter, everyone talking about their weeks—dropped plates, embarrassing stumbles—until Sherman started up on the Stanford study again. He had a fading yellow bruise on his temple he kept reaching up to touch. Corner of the kitchen table? Counter? My mind dully marched through possibilities. It had hurt. I saw that it had hurt. But . . . floor? Doorknob? Doorframe?

  Sherman wanted to know: Anyone participated in clinical trials before? Sparse murmurs of assent around the room. “Yeah, yeah,” I heard myself murmur. Anyone like to share their experience? I stared at the ceiling, counted holes in the acoustic tile.

  “Daphne, want to tell us about yours?” He gave me such a hopeful look. “The studies aren’t so bad, right?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Go ahead, Daphne. Stay open here.”

  Oh, God, that. If only he hadn’t said that.

  “Try it,” I heard myself say, the words on autopilot, too. “Be my guest.” Now I was staring at Sherman’s bruise. “If you really need the cash, knock yourself out.”

  “The money seems fair,” Miranda said. “And, in the end, it’s helping all of us.”

  “Don’t expect miracles,” I said. “Miracles are not coming anywhere near us.”

  “Okay, then,” she went on, “since we’re listening to an expert opinion here.”

  “Are we talking about curing cancer? Heart disease? Baldness, for Christ’s sake? Why would they bother? Why work on some freak thing hardly anyone knows about? Nothing in it for them. Money? Fame? Recognition? Nope.”

  “But Dr. Francis,” Sherman said, “he studied with your Dr. Bell.”

  And if only he hadn’t mentioned Dr. Bell, who put me through so many tests and overnights when none of them added up to a damn thing. “These guys are scientists, not healers,” I said. “They’d cut open our skulls and start poking around if they could. You ever try to sleep with thirty electrodes taped to your head? Try that and tell me it’s worth seventy-five bucks a night.”

  “It’s one-twenty now,” Sherman mumbled.

  “Okay, great, one-twenty. Worth it”—I turned my dead gaze to Miranda—“if you’re about to get canned.”

  People fidgeted in their desks. They glanced back and forth between Sherman and me. Didn’t matter. Truth was better than empty promises and cheer. “I’m just trying to save you the trip down to Palo Alto. Might as well spend the time on the couch where it’s safer.” I shrugged. “Sorry, I’m just staying open here.”

  Sherman rushed through the rest of the meeting. I could’ve stayed afterward, explained myself, told him what had happened, told him it was the pills talking, only the pills. But I didn’t. I slipped out as soon as we finished.

  At home, I stood staring into the mirror. I thought of the singer, practicing all his looks. I grimaced. I smiled. Maybe I could catch a glimmer, an echo of each feeling. Frowned, startled, pouted, jeered at myself. No, there was nothing. Not even an echo.

  FIFTEEN

  AT WORK EVERYONE WAS CIRCUMSPECT. I’D COME back after an unexplained week away looking like an invalid: puffy, slack, bloodshot eyes. Had Byron told them?
He probably had his suspicions about why I’d been out. His squint was even more knowing. On Tuesday a memo came across my desk: He’d written up Hidalgo, a dress code violation, Hidalgo’s Giants cap of all things. It’d gone up the ladder, come back down with a query from the bosses. I shredded it. Just then Byron passed by in a three-piece suit and a garish paisley tie, like the model employee. With the muffling of the pills, my response to him was bland, impersonal, and I saw him more clearly: a man so afraid of being ignored or passed over that he’d turned himself into the group’s villain just to get some, any, kind of recognition. Still, my tolerance for the drug must have been building—I could’ve grabbed him by that tie, fed it into the shredder.

  I KEPT TO MY OFFICE, caught up on email. My mother tried to chat me a couple of times, but I was telegraphic in my replies, and she either took the hint or got busy with her own work. On Friday I called Staci into my office. She perched on the edge of her chair, alert, penitent. I’d put off this conversation too long. “Reviews aren’t till the end of the year,” I began monotonically. “But we should talk now about your position and whether—”

  She broke into her old pitch, how she’d always wanted to be a vet but her parents never had the money for school, and when she saw this job, she knew it was perfect for her. And she wanted to help our dogs. They did such important work. They helped us so much, they needed someone to help them, too. As she went on, it started raining heavily. I listened to it pattering the skylight, thought about how rain was good for the Central Valley farmers, wondered what I had coming in my produce box that week. “I can toughen up,” Staci was saying, “and I just want you to know how grateful I am. This opportunity means so, so much to me.” I told myself, She can either do the job or she can’t. And I’d all but promised Hidalgo the overtime. But if I did fire her now, I’d have to feel something later. Resentment, guilt. Christ, just send her packing, be done with it.

  “Reliability,” I said, “that’s what this lab needs. More importantly”—she wasn’t the only one who could play on feelings—“that’s what the dogs need. Someone who steps up every day. Ask yourself if that’s you. If it isn’t, maybe it’s time to start—”

  A muffled clang sounded from somewhere in the building. The slightest tingle in my skull—I dropped my pen. Otherwise, it was so aberrant, I wasn’t sure what I’d heard. “Hold on,” I said, got up, and poked my head into the main room. Pin had her earbuds in.

  “What was that?” I asked Byron.

  He let out an annoyed grunt. “Some fresh disaster, I’m sure.”

  Then all of the dogs started howling at once. There was another loud clang and several muted shouts. I went to the glass and looked for Hidalgo. He was pressed against the far wall. I rapped on the glass and caught his eye. He pointed to the door to the outside play area, then ducked out of sight. The door hung crookedly from its frame, its top hinge popped loose. Then I saw, moving between the pens, three figures, two in black hoodies, one in a dark green raincoat. “Pin, Byron,” I said. “Get security here, now.”

  I ran to the air shower, yanked it open, hit the button. The vents kicked on. Without a Tyvek suit on, they stung. But I didn’t think of that, or how much I hated that cramped, chill space. The inner door released. I shoved out into the din of howling dogs. “Security will be here in one minute,” I heard myself say in a hard, clipped voice. “You’ve got exactly one minute to get out of my lab.”

  The two hoodies squatted at the end of the third row of pens. They both had fence cutters and were snipping at one of the cages, which was already half-open. Raincoat stood a few steps back, a huge bolt cutter dangling from his right hand. The other two had ski masks on. Raincoat only had a camouflage bandana over his mouth and chin. In his eyes, there was a disbelieving, terrified shine.

  “You’ve got forty seconds.” I’d gone so still, so dead, I was almost outside myself. “Thirty-five.” It wasn’t the pills—they’d burned off with the jolt of seeing the intruders—but something deeper, the fight reflex kicking on, closing down anger, fear, everything. Or maybe it was all of my practice, my constant tamping down. Either way, there was only one second, the next, the next. “Thirty.” One of the hoodies looked up, glared at me, grabbed a handcart, and threw it over. Part of their strategy was to wreck as much property as possible, but he wanted to rattle me as well. “Good, very good,” I said. “Already going to jail, might as well up the charges.”

  “You defend the corporation’s filthy profits?”

  “Even if you get one of those dogs out, how far you think you’re going to get? They’re all chipped,” I lied. “We’ll find them, and you, in twenty minutes.”

  Raincoat started delivering a nervous speech—“You don’t have to be the oppressor!” he bawled at me—but the barking threw him off. His jeans were soaked and muddy, sweat stood out on his forehead. Any moment he might break and run, or start swinging those bolt cutters.

  I narrowed my thoughts, no time for the willows, the river. The barking was catastrophic. Staci had come in behind me. “Get out!” she screamed. “Just get the hell out!” I advanced, my gaze locked on Raincoat. He was eighteen, nineteen, way too young. The hoodies were bending back the wire of the cage, about to pull out the dog. “Please, lady,” Raincoat said, “stay back, okay?”

  “Don’t go any further with this,” I said. “You’re about to mess up big-time.”

  He gripped his bolt cutter tighter. I could picture him bringing it down on my skull. But if I could get him to run, the others might follow. “Shut up!” Raincoat said, straining against his uncertainty. “This place is Auschwitz!”

  “You think we do this because we like torturing dogs?”

  “I don’t care why you think you’re doing it.”

  Lord knows I fantasized enough about setting all our dogs free. And not doing anything here wouldn’t have cost me my job. Our security team would catch hell, but I wasn’t required to face these people down. It wasn’t a question of protecting company property either, though I winced when one of the hoodies grabbed a device interface—six grand worth of electronics—and slammed it against the wall. The dog they were going for cowered in the back of its cage, yelping so loud it wrenched my guts.

  “Run out that door right now, you might get off light, a slap on the wrist.” Jesus, where the hell was security? “Run up into the hills, you might just get away.”

  “You motherfuckers! Get out!” Staci’s fury was towering, but I didn’t want to push Raincoat over the edge. I motioned for her to calm down. Mercifully, she did.

  “You’re upsetting the animals,” I told him. “That’s all you’re doing right now. Listen, I get it.” I gestured at the cages. He couldn’t help following. He seemed almost transfixed. “This sucks. It sucks that we have to do this. But there’s a reason.”

  “Don’t listen to her!” Hoodie One turned over a bin of dry food, scattering pellets everywhere. “She’s a fucking corporate tool!” Hoodie Two was half inside the cage, reaching for the dog.

  My eyelids fluttered, my own trance fading. With a brutal effort, I shoved everything down. “Get out of here right now, you might not wind up in jail tonight. You could still disappear. But in ten seconds, my security people get here.” I kept my eyes fixed on Raincoat. “Look at that dog, he’s so frightened he can barely move. Come on!” I shouted, struggling to hold it all down. “Get out now, wake up in your own beds tomorrow. You’ll still feel like you did something.”

  Raincoat’s face crumbled. “Guys, come on.”

  “I’ve been to jail before!” Hoodie One shouted. “Who gives a shit?”

  “Guys, I can’t. I can’t.” A tremor got into Raincoat’s voice. “My scholarship. If I get in trouble again, they’ll take away my scholarship.”

  “Chris, just shut up and start cutting.”

  Raincoat looked close to tears. “Dave, you can’t get another charge. They’ll give you, Jesus, I can’t remember what they’ll give you. Just come on, this is crazy.” He was ba
cking away. “Guys, please,” he said, “let’s go already.”

  Hoodie Two suddenly backed out of the cage and hurled his fence cutters at the wall. His right cheek was covered in blood. He’d cut himself on the wire. Nothing like a tiny injury to make you truly dumb with rage.

  “Go!” Staci shouted. “Get out!”

  “Just get out.” I heard my voice go weary. “Just leave.”

  They could do no more now than wreak a little extra havoc. They tried to tip over a shelving unit, but it was bolted to the wall. As they went out, both hoodies gave me the finger. Then they were gone. I heard the rattle of them going through the hole they’d cut in the fence, then it was just rain spattering on the concrete outside and the thrum of the overhead fluorescents. I closed my eyes, put out a hand to steady myself. Someone touched my shoulder.

  “Jesus,” Staci said. “I can’t believe you did that. I—”

  “Check on the dogs. Check and see they’re okay.”

  “Putas,” Hidalgo muttered, reappearing. “Hijos de puta.” He paced back and forth, worked up, or maybe embarrassed that, in the moment, he hadn’t done anything. Or, no, he hadn’t been scared, just calculating. He didn’t get paid to put himself in harm’s way, not on his benefits plan.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Just start picking up. Back to work.” I grabbed a bag of treats and went down the aisles, dodging pieces of shattered glass and plastic. The dogs’ tails were stiff and upright, batting noisily against their pens. I came to Biscuit’s pen. He was curled in the far corner, trembling. I opened the pen, reached in, then refrained from petting him. I took out his bowl, dropped in a fistful of treats.

  SECURITY ONLY CAUGHT ONE of the activists—Raincoat. I didn’t want to know anything more about it, didn’t want to see the kid or hear his story. The Animal Liberation people always shook us up, but this . . . I told Staci to take the afternoon off; I didn’t need her crying in the bathroom. But she insisted on staying to help clean up. I started an inventory of what had been broken, kept my head down. The trembling started to creep in. Head down, head down.