Belt Buckles & Pajamas Page 2

  “Actually, I was a little curious about something,” Violet says, leaning close to Andie. She brushes Andie’s hair back over her ears, her hand trailing back to rest under Andie’s chin. I see the goose bumps form on Andie’s arm as she struggles to hold Violet’s gaze.

  “About what?” she asks.

  “How you taste,” Violet answers, lifting Andie’s chin up and planting a kiss on the doctor’s mouth. “Hmmm, sweet. And coffee.” She laughs and sits down again, Andie watches her, trying not to show anything but I see the goose bumps, and I think she is looking a little more nipple-ly than the room temperature calls for. I think I am too, to be truthful.

  “Violet, I appreciate your curiosity, but you cannot just kiss someone without permission. It isn’t right to force yourself on someone else.”

  “Cannot? Like hell, it happens all the time. As for right or wrong, since when did that matter?”

  “I understand that there are people who force themselves on others, and people who do not do what is right, but that doesn’t mean we should be those kind of people. The only way things change, the only way we get better, is to make the proper choices ourselves. To respect other people. To do the right thing.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t like it?” Violet asks in her best Bette Davis rasp.

  “That’s not the point; I’m saying you can’t just do it because you want to!”

  “Hmmph. Doesn’t sound like you’re saying you didn’t like it.”

  Sam laughs. Andie shoots him a glare and he pretends to look out the window. Stuart giggles.

  “So, you think that’s amusing, do you?” she asks, but she smiles as she says it so we can tell she isn’t going to yell. I hate it when they yell. Too many echoes with yells.

  Stuart sits up straight. “It was funny, but scary too.”

  “How was it scary, Stuart?” she asks.

  “Because when you talked to Violet you never answered her question and you spun it around and around just like THEY would.”

  “I’m sorry, Stuart, I never meant to ignore her question. And don’t worry, I am not here to spin things, I am not THEM, I will be honest with all of you. I just want to help us all to get to know more about each other.”

  “I am not a number. I will never be number three seven dash four three three.”

  “Of course you’re not a number, Stuart, you’re a human being, and I know that. I accept you, Stuart.”

  Stuart is trying not to cry. He is clenching his fists and biting his lower lip. He loses the fight rather quickly. I watch as he sobs onto her shoulder, where I want to cry, and again I am jealous. How come they can reach out to her so easily?

  She dries his eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. He tries to blow his nose on her sleeve but she is too quick and pulls it away. She motions for a tissue from Sam and lets him use that instead. No, not quite perfect, I guess. If she were perfect she would have had a handkerchief. Mary Poppins would have had a handkerchief.

  “Now, what’s this about number three seven four three three?” she asks.

  “Dash. It’s number three seven dash four three three. It’s what I will never be. I will kill myself before I am number three seven dash four three three.”

  The room goes quiet. Sam is on the alert, ready to pounce. We hold our breaths as Andie takes this in. I can’t believe he said it. He knows he can’t say it. It’s straight to being on notice, no chance for parole, go directly to jail, do not pass go, no $200, no nothing.

  “Sam,” she says, and I can see the word push through the air it is so thick.

  “Ready, Doctor,” Sam replies, preparing the tranq.

  But then the world changes.

  “Sam, please step outside for a second.”

  And we are breathing again.

  “Excuse me, Doctor? Didn’t you hear?” Sam is as baffled as the rest of us at this unprecedented turn of events.

  “Now.” There is no indecision in Andie’s tone.

  Sam’s face, moments ago alive with the prospect of playing the heavy, falls as suddenly as ours rise. “Yes, Doctor. I’ll be right outside, shout if you need me.”

  “And Sam?”

  “Yes?”

  Andie’s face is stern as she looks at him. “You did NOT hear anything, understand?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Sam replies. He leaves, slamming the door behind him.

  We stare at Andie. This is a thing new to us. We wait to find out if it is salvation or damnation that is visiting our lives on this day.

  Andie gets up and paces the room, walking back and forth across the twelve foot by twelve foot square. Her footsteps are barely audible as they fall on the beige carpet. We remain sitting, alternately staring at her and at Stuart. Stuart is trembling, just now realizing the enormity of what is occurring. At the words he had let slip out.

  Glen saves Stuart – saves us all, really. Andie is turning from her to and fro, about to return on the fro, when he hits the floor and performs his Guardian salute in as smooth a rocket blasting motion as I have ever seen from him. “My lady Andie, we salute you.” She stops in her tracks, about to reply, when he stands up, arm crossed over the solar system on his t-shirt.

  “We salute the courageous stand against injustice you have taken on this momentous day,” he continues. “We salute the solidarity you have shown. We salute the understanding, the compassion, the PROTECTION, you have bequeathed upon this sorry group.” Glen stands still, arm brandished over solar system, awaiting acceptance.

  Andie smiles, and we know it will be okay. Glen sits down. Andie comes over and leans over Stuart, who is still trembling. “It’s okay, I know you’re scared, but I promise – I swear – you will never be a number to me. Not three seven dash four three three, not forty-seven, not sixty-two million, not any number. You will always be a person.”

  She takes his head in her hands, and stares him straight in the eyes. Her face goes from mother to supreme monarch in a split second. “But you must NEVER EVER say you will kill yourself again, understand? Not in jest, not in anger, not to make a point – NEVER. If you ever do it again, I will not be able to stop them.”

  Stuart doesn’t hold back the tears, but it’s okay: they are tears of happiness, not fear or sorrow. “I won’t, I swear I won’t.”

  Five: Theodore And Daphne Share A Dream

  There are bright lights all around. I can’t tell where they are coming from – it is like the floor and the walls and the ceiling are all made of light. Theodore and I are lying on a flat table. There are several – well, not people, creatures? – around us, but I can’t really see them. It is too bright, and my head feels funny.

  “They’re from outer space, you know,” Theodore tells me, except I don’t hear him with my ears – he is inside my head. It’s like he knows what I am thinking. That scares me more than the creatures.

  “They hooked our brains together,” he tells me, again inside my head and not through my ears. He pushes a picture at me, an image coming to my mind unbidden, of us lying on the tables with wires going from his cut open scalp to a machine and more wires going to my own exposed brain.

  “Get out of my head,” I tell him, but it is no use, there is no off switch.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, trying not to think at me, but he does and it hurts. It hurts to see inside someone else and know what they think of you and know that they know what you think of them. To be naked and exposed. I want to sleep; I want it not to be my fault. I want to be alone inside but not outside my mind.

  I try not to think of Theodore, I try not to hear his thoughts of me. To know he wants me. To think maybe I want him. That he knows what I am thinking.

  “What do they want?” I ask. Not that I care, but it is something else to talk – to think – about.

  He knows as soon as I ask that that is not what I am asking. But he answers anyway.

  “They are coming. They are coming through me, the beacon, the source, the guide. They will infest the host organism and the virus will
be cast out upon the masses and we will all die. They will absorb all that we are and we will be no more. They are different, so different from us, and we will never adjust to their ways. Their society. Their mores.”

  His mind throws at me more than just his diatribe, more than just images of this alien infestation overrunning our world. It is an onslaught of unnaturalness, of vivid scenes in more than three dimensions, and my head nearly explodes before saving darkness overtakes it.

  “Were you there?” Theodore asks me at breakfast. “Do you remember?”

  I stare at him with hatred until Glen tells him to leave me alone.

  Six: The Cemetery Revisited

  After breakfast they insist on dragging me out to the cemetery again. Stuart wants to show the headstones to everyone else.

  “Now what do you say?” he says, triumphantly showing off the site. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Theodore pores over each of the gravestones. “You’re right, all numbers and dates, no names. Most disturbing.” He looks at me and I turn away.

  “I need everyone to promise something.”

  We look at Stuart, not thrilled at the idea of another promise you won’t turn the lights off with your left hand because that’s the direction of the gravitational flow of the government’s neuromancer tracking force. Or swear to never start a sentence with the word ostrich because it resonates the hidden tuning forks and they can hear everything you say then. “Please,” he says, “please promise.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “When they get me – when they bury me out here – give me my name back. Find a chisel, a hammer, scratch it out with a rusty nail, anyway you can, please give me my name back. Don’t let them make me a number.”

  Glen steps up to the plate. “The Guardian so promises.”

  Violet licks her lips. “Okay, baby, but you’ll owe me something sweet later on.”

  “They won’t get you, Stuart,” Theodore says. “The alien host will have absorbed you and all you are far before that will happen.”

  “Theodore,” Glen says with his humor him or else, guardianship wonderful self.

  “Fine, I promise.”

  I hug Stuart. “She promised you would always be someone, Stuart. Andie promised.”

  He looks at me. “I know, but I need to know it from you, too, Daphne. I need to know I’ll always be a name to you. I need that from you most of all.”

  I cry. He is so special. “Always, Stuart.”

  Seven: In Which The Bad Doctor Joins The Good Doctor

  We walk into our group session in the afternoon and everything sucks again. I should have known that it was a trap, that Andie wasn’t for real, that nothing was changed and it would always, always, always suck.

  “Gerard will be joining us today,” Andie announces, as if we hadn’t seen the evil emperor sitting there beside her. Gee, no kidding, that dark cloud of doom didn’t give it away at all. Or the walls crushing in at one hundred miles per hour, encapsulating us once again in a friggin’ prison. Just when the butterflies started to emerge out of the cocoons. Glen was even trusting her – he gave her the salute, inducted her into his little Guardianship club!

  Doctor Martin – I guess his first name is Gerard, he never told us that – dismisses the introduction with a wave of his sweaty hand. “We’ve met, Doctor MacPherson.” He turns to her, his expression as bothered while looking at her as it is when giving us the once over. “And please, it’s Doctor Martin when we’re with the patients.” I couldn’t see calling him Gerard anyway; Andie is okay, she’s a first name person, but Doctor Martin will always be his title, not a real name, not a human being.

  “Well it’s still Andie, Doctor Martin.” She turned her nose up on him! I’ve never seen anyone actually do that. Hmmph. Maybe she isn’t in this by choice. He is the evil emperor, after all.

  “I prefer to maintain an appropriate, professional distance – however, unless it interferes with patient care, you may have it as you wish. Let’s get started, shall we?”

  “Fine. Okay, so, who wants to start us off?”

  Like that is going to work with Doctor Martin there. Stuart, despite himself, giggles.

  “Do you find that amusing?” Doctor Martin asks.

  “I’m not talking to you,” Stuart replies. “You’re with THEM. You probably assign the numbers, don’t you?” He stands up, working up to a good old-fashioned Stuart tirade. “You probably chisel the numbers in with your fingers, don’t you?” he shouts in the doctor’s face. Sam pulls him back down to his chair. Sam is always a lot closer to us when Doctor Martin is here. I think Sam knows it is mostly the doctor’s fault, because he only pulls Stuart back, he doesn’t shove him down like usual.

  “Still paranoid about them, are we Stuart?” Doctor Martin asks. He didn’t even blink when Stuart got in his face, he just calmly took off his spectacles – other people have glasses, I think he has spectacles, kind of Ben Franklin like – and wiped them on his handkerchief. I guess I was wrong; Andie wouldn’t have been perfect with a handkerchief, not if he uses one. She’s better than I thought. She even knows what not to have.

  “We’re working on that,” Andie interjects. “He knows that there are people who aren’t after him; that’s the first step.”

  “Oh, are there?” Doctor Martin asks. “Do you agree, Stuart? Is everybody out to get you or not?”

  Stuart looks at Andie. She smiles, her warmth eclipsing the iceberg jutting from Doctor Martin’s false concern.

  “Oh, I see, can we be any more obvious? Doctor MacPherson, patient attachment is NOT a cure.”

  “It’s not –”

  “Oh please, spare me. If you cannot admit that, then I think we are done here.”

  “Okay, so what? It is still a beginning. It’s still Stuart opening up, trusting someone.”

  Violet leans over and grabs Doctor Martin’s crotch. “Hey Doc, you don’t have a problem with a little intimate therapy, do you?” Trust Violet to act up when the attention isn’t focused on her.

  “Violet! Stop that!” Andie says. Sam tries to pull Violet back, but she holds firmly onto Doctor Martin’s privates.

  “Ow!” he shouts. “Let go, let go!” I’m not sure if he is talking to Sam or Violet, because it looks like there is a little action going on down there. Or rather response to Violet’s action, as her mouth is now pressed against the front of his pants and her hands hold tight on either side of his fly. Doctor Martin tries to get away, and the chair flies out from under him. Violet lands on top of him, head still buried in his crotch, but her grip is broken by the fall and Sam succeeds in pulling her off of the doctor.

  Doctor Martin gets up, and it is pretty apparent that at least the little doctor wasn’t against some intimate therapy. He picks up his clipboard, holding it in front of him, his face turning beet red. “That’s it! No more of this coddling best friend bullshit – I am administering the treatment this afternoon. Sam, keep her in isolation until then.”

  He storms out. Violet tries to turn and kiss Sam, but he holds her tight. Andie sighs.

  “But Andie, darling –,” Violet tries to wheedle her way out of the situation, but Andie cuts her off.

  “Sorry, he’s head of staff, and that was – well, it was too much, Violet. I can’t stop it. Maybe, maybe it will help.” She turns away.

  “It’s okay, Violet, I will do it for you,” Glen offers. “I can handle it.”

  Sam smirks. “Sure you can. It’ll be real fun, when the first jolt hits you.”

  Eight: Bolts Of Lightning

  It must be a dream because Glen is flying. Really up in the air, no strings attached, cape flapping behind him flying. And his t-shirt has somehow become this really geeky comic book superhero costume. I can still tell it’s him because he isn’t wearing a mask.

  Anyway, there he is. Flying. He smiles at me, waves, and flies down to land next to me. “I am glad you called me, Daphne.”

  “I called you?”

  “Well of course. Thi
s is a job for The Guardian, after all.”

  I am so confused. I hate it when I don’t know what is going on in my dream. Wait a minute. I guess it is worse when I do know what is going on. Because it is always what it shouldn’t be. What isn’t right. Glen is waiting for me to speak. I just look at him, not knowing what to say.

  He clears his throat. Oh, I get it. “Yes, of course, Guardian. Do your job. Save us all.”

  “Thank you my lady. I vow to stop this tempest that has beset us, to root out the source of the maelstrom that threatens our very existence, to quell the –”

  “Glen. Guardian. Just do it, please?” I ask, not able to absorb anymore of his analogies or metaphors or whatever the hell he is spouting at me.

  He salutes me, and flies up into what I now see as a very unhappy sky. Funny how that can just suddenly change like that, how it can turn from blue sky with puffy clouds to dark grey thunderheads in an instant. Surely I should have noticed all those bolts of lightning and huge hailstones and funnel shaped clouds of eerie green before this. But I think he was in a blue sky when he flew down to me, I am almost sure the sky had been blue.

  So off he goes and stuff is hitting him and he fights against the swirling winds. There are lots of flashes of lightning and then I realize what is happening. He is losing. Glen is losing. The Guardian is losing. My protector is losing. He gets hit by a huge lightning strike and starts falling, his silly cape wrapping around him like a shroud, his limbs flapping aimlessly as he plummets to his death.

  He strikes the ground and the sound is louder than all the thunder of the storm raging around us. “No!” I scream, running to where he lays prone on the ground. I kneel by him, head on my lap, urging him back, pleading for him not to leave me.

  I look up as the lightning strikes nearby, I smell the ozone, I feel the static charge. The next bolt is for me, I know it is. “Glen, help me!” I scream at him, shaking him.