He was transferred from the hospital to a private psychiatric center, bills sent to his mother. The days were long and dull. He could barely sleep, and so the nights were even longer and duller. He was denied access to a tablet; his doctor felt that web addiction was one of his sources of depression, a trigger for his obsessive thoughts. Andy stared at a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle—“Thatch-Roof Cottage in Winter,” read the box—and resolved, whenever he got out of here, that he’d ride a bus down to the Bottoms, buy a gun, and take a more decisive way out. No more of this namby-pamby, cry-for-help stuff.
Cheered by this promise to himself, he settled into life at the clinic. He knew from past experience how to play it. Couldn’t be too chipper, too eager. Dr. Benik would see right through him. He started coming to Morning Group. Didn’t speak, didn’t respond to the therapist’s questions about his goals for the day, but he listened to the others, even nodded a few times. A week in, he mentioned to his counselor that he thought the new dosage might be helping. He finished the thatch-roof cottage in winter—well, not quite, eight of the pieces were missing, but the box was empty, and he let one of the staff members, Hakim, see him surveying his work with a little smile on his face before he began to take the puzzle apart for the next user.
“You won’t be letting people see your masterpiece?” Hakim asked. He had materialized to Andy’s left.
“Nah,” Andy said. “It was a bust. Pieces missing. I’m going to ask my mother to send me a new puzzle. Or maybe some art paper and oil pastels. I used to like working with those. You know the kind I’m talking about?”
“Indeed I do,” said Hakim. “In fact, I think I could scrounge up something tonight, if you’re not too particular about the quality.”
“I’m wearing pajamas at four o’clock. I’m not too particular about anything.” Andy smiled as he said this.
“Let me see what I can do,” Hakim said.
The challenge of pretending to get better really was making Andy feel a bit better.
Hakim, it turned out, was as good as his word. He got Andy the promised oil pastels, some decent-weight drawing paper, a sketch pad, some charcoals. Andy set to his first drawing with something a bit like real enthusiasm. In the days that followed, Hakim came around, watched him, asked questions, seemed genuinely interested—not just fake, patronizing-interested—in what Andy was doing.
“Those mountains,” Hakim said, motioning to the page. Andy had decimated what was left of the Prussian blue to shadow the hills in the foreground, and now he was adding a layer of dark green, smudging together the colors with his forefinger as he went. “You’ve been there?”
Andy shook his head. “Just seen pictures. Why?”
“Oh, only curious about why you’re drawing them.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Andy said. He didn’t elaborate. He was disappointed that Hakim was going to psychoanalyze him or whatever. He’d given him more credit than that.
“I only ask,” Hakim said, “because I have. Been there. You capture them well.”
Andy stopped and gave Hakim his full attention. “Really? You have?”
“I have,” said Hakim.
“What for?”
“I worked at the infirmary for V&M Logging for six years.”
“No shit.”
“No shit.”
Andy set his crayon back to paper and bore down. “Guess you were glad to get this gig and get out of there, huh.”
“It wasn’t such a bad gig,” said Hakim. The word “gig” sounded funny in his mouth, like something new he was trying. “The money was good. The food was excellent. Pretty scenery, lots of quiet. I read many books. If I’d had a companion, I could have stayed there indefinitely. There aren’t many women in a logging camp, though.”
Andy huffed. “That’s a recommendation, far as I’m concerned.”
Hakim smiled big, revealing very straight, square teeth. “I suppose it can be. Though you miss them. Women. Not even just for the—well, you know.”
Andy was charmed by Hakim’s delicacy. He laughed. “The fucking? You can say it to me, Hakim. I’m not that fragile.”
“I don’t think you’re fragile,” Hakim said.
“You’re the only one.”
Hakim shrugged. “May I be honest? What you say is unimaginative. Egotistical. As if we’re all in agreement about Andy. The world had reached a verdict on Andy.” He mimed striking a gavel. “Fragile. Send in the next case.”
“That’s all well and good,” Andy said. “I like what you’re doing. It’s very tough-love of you. But the world—enough of it—decided I needed to be here. Whether I want to be or not.” He tossed the dark green roughly back into its plastic tray and pawed around for a lighter hue.
Hakim, who was sitting across the commons-room table from Andy, leaned back in his chair and rested his crossed hands on the tabletop. “Fair enough.”
“Being in here makes you egotistical,” Andy said. “It makes you feel like everyone’s watching and judging you. Because they are. You are. You’re like the rest of them. Don’t get me wrong. I like you. In the real world, I’d go have a beer with you. In here, though . . .” He trailed off.
“You wouldn’t have a beer with me,” Hakim said.
Andy laughed again. “Well, I will if you’re offering.”
Hakim smiled his brilliant smile again. “I can offer you soda pop.”
“Soda pop! Hot damn. I’ll pass, H.”
He leaned forward, smile tightening. “I can offer you a purpose, Sonofascist90823.”
What Andy would remember most clearly about this moment, later, was how Hakim pronounced his screenname: So-No Fascist. He’d been embarrassed, for them both, at the butchering of his cleverness.
He stopped the movement of his crayon. Tried to steady his breathing.
“My intent isn’t to alarm you,” Hakim said.
“Who said I was alarmed?” He carved at a smudged line with his thumbnail. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
At the edge of his vision, Hakim’s hands shifted position—left on top of right, ring finger winking gold. He had huge hands, pale fingernails that had been smoothly and evenly clipped. A snail of scar tissue slivered across a knuckle.
“Ah,” Hakim said. “I know how this dance goes. How about this? I talk, and you indulge me for a moment. Then I’ll walk away and leave you alone. Sound OK?”
Andy kept coloring.
“Yes. OK. First of all, what I’m saying here? All of the risk is mine. None of it is yours. And the risk for me is significant.” He tapped the gold band with his thick forefinger. “You could ruin me. I am about to give you the ammunition to ruin me, if that’s what you want.”
Andy chanced a quick glance at Hakim’s face. It was a handsome face of indeterminate age. He could be thirty or fifty, though something in the eyes seemed to place him on the older end of that spectrum.
“No one in this hospital knows about So-No Fascist. No one here wants to know. And if they did know, they would only be required to report you to the authorities if they thought you planned to cause harm to another person. So-No Fascist has never talked of harming people.”
Well, that wasn’t precisely true. There had been talk, in one forum, about—hypothetically, that was all, as a kind of intellectual exercise—the possible rewards of assassinating the president.
“Your mother,” Hakim said. “She—”
“Wears combat boots? I’ve heard that one before.” Jesus, Hakim really was a cliché if he thought getting Andy to talk about his mother was going to crack him.