And if he managed to gargle something that bore a passing resemblance to thank you, she would look around at whoever happened to be near, smiling proudly. Look! My pet monkey can talk!
He could talk (more and better than they knew), and he could shamble ten yards up the Torture Highway. On his best days he could eat custard without spilling too much down his front. But he couldn’t dress himself, couldn’t tie his shoes, couldn’t wipe himself after taking a shit, couldn’t even use the remote control (so reminiscent of Thing One and Thing Two back in the good old days) to watch television. He could grasp it, but his motor control wasn’t even close to good enough for him to manipulate the small buttons. If he did manage to hit the power button, he usually ended up staring at nothing but a blank screen and the SEARCHING FOR SIGNAL message. This infuriated him—in the early days of 2012, everything infuriated him—but he was careful not to show it. Angry people were angry for a reason, and gorks weren’t supposed to have reasons for anything.
Sometimes lawyers from the District Attorney’s office dropped by. Babineau protested these visits, telling the lawyers they were setting him back and therefore working against their own long-term interests, but it did no good.
Sometimes cops came with the lawyers from the DA’s office, and once a cop came on his own. He was a fat cocksucker with a crewcut and a cheerful demeanor. Brady was in his chair, so the fat cocksucker sat on Brady’s bed. The fat cocksucker told Brady that his niece had been at the ’Round Here concert. “Just thirteen years old and crazy about that band,” he said, chuckling. Still chuckling, he leaned forward over his big stomach and punched Brady in the balls.
“A little something from my niece,” the fat cocksucker said. “Did you feel it? Man, I hope so.”
Brady did feel it, but not as much as the fat cocksucker probably hoped, because everything had gone kind of vague between his waist and knees. Some circuit in his brain that was supposed to be controlling that area had burned out, he supposed. That would ordinarily be bad news, but it was good news when you had to cope with a right hook to the family jewels. He sat there, his face blank. A little drool on his chin. But he filed away the fat cocksucker’s name. Moretti. It went on his list.
Brady had a long list.
? ? ?
He retained a thin hold over Sadie MacDonald by virtue of that first, wholly accidental safari into her brain. (He retained an even greater hold over the idiot orderly’s brain, but visiting there was like taking a vacation in Lowtown.) On several occasions Brady was able to nudge her toward the window, the site of her first seizure. Usually she only glanced out and then went about her work, which was frustrating, but one day in June of 2012, she had another of those mini-seizures. Brady found himself looking out through her eyes once more, but this time he was not content to stay on the passenger side, just watching the scenery. This time he wanted to drive.
Sadie reached up and caressed her breasts. Squeezed them. Brady felt a low tingle begin between Sadie’s legs. He was getting her a little hot. Interesting, but hardly useful.
He thought of turning her around and walking her out of the room. Going down the corridor. Getting a drink of water from the fountain. His very own organic wheelchair. Only what if someone talked to him? What would he say? Or what if Sadie took over again once she was away from the sunflashes, and started screaming that Hartsfield was inside of her? They’d think she was crazy. They might put her on leave. If they did that, Brady would lose his access to her.
He burrowed deeper into her mind instead, watching the thoughtfish go flashing back and forth. They were clearer now, but mostly uninteresting.
One, though . . . the red one . . .
It came into view as soon as he thought about it, because he was making her think of it.
Big red fish.
A fatherfish.
Brady snatched at it and caught it. It was easy. His body was next to useless, but inside Sadie’s mind he was as agile as a ballet dancer. The fatherfish had molested her regularly between the ages of six and eleven. Finally he had gone all the way and fucked her. Sadie told a teacher at school, and her father was arrested. He had killed himself while out on bail.
Mostly to amuse himself, Brady began to release his own fish into the aquarium of Sadie MacDonald’s mind: tiny poisonous blowfish that were little more than exaggerations of thoughts she herself harbored in the twilight area that exists between the conscious mind and the subconscious.
That she had led him on.
That she had actually enjoyed his attentions.
That she was responsible for his death.
That when you looked at it that way, it hadn’t been suicide at all. When you looked at it that way, she had murdered him.