Paris flicked her cigarette; it exploded on the concrete, sparking. “Afraid of the voices?”
I nodded. Then I shook my head. “Just one voice.”
“Same thing. Anyway, I stopped it. You can too. ’Course, the docs go ape if they find out. But the docs think drugs are the answer to everything.”
“You … heard voices too?”
She made an equivocal motion of her head. “Kind of. Visual phenomena. Apparitions. Which would sometimes speak as well.”
“Like ghosts?”
“Like ghosts.”
“And you still see them?”
“There’s a woman standing behind you right now. Half her face is missing.”
I whipped around, heart jumping.
“Kidding,” she said. She gave a wicked smile. “But yeah, I still see shit.”
“I don’t want to hear my voice. It … It wasn’t nice.”
She waved a hand, dismissing this. “You have to learn to deal with it, is all,” she said. “Dr. Lewis can help with that.” Then she leaned closer. Suddenly she was conspiratorial, serious. “Here,” she said. She handed me a card. On it was printed:
NEW JERSEY VOICE SUPPORT GROUP
Under it was a number and an e-mail address.
“Thursdays, at the bowling alley on Elm,” she said. “There’s a room at the back. If I’m not there, tell them Paris sent you.”
I looked at the card. “Is it … safe?”
She laughed. “It’s not a cult. It’s run by a super-respected guy. Dr. Lewis. It’s just … they’re psychologists, mostly. The docs aren’t on the same page as them. Though there are a couple who are coming over to the light.” She paused. “Who are you seeing? Rezwari? Yeah, she’s not one of them.”
“And the people in this group … don’t believe in drugs?”
“They begin with the principle that the voices are real, and are created by trauma, and must be accommodated, not silenced.” It sounded like she was reciting something.
“My voice scares me,” I said. Admitting this out loud seemed major.
Paris glossed over it though. She waved a hand. “Thursdays, seven p.m. You don’t have to go. But give it a chance. Those drugs they’re giving you are just putting a lid on things. They’re not turning the heat down on the range.”
I glanced at the paper bag she was holding, which obviously contained prescription drugs.
“These are antidepressants,” she said. “Different ball game. Without these, my life isn’t worth living, seriously. I’m not, like, antipsychiatry. Just the way they deal with people like you.”
“Which is?”
“Tell you you’re schizophrenic, or whatever. They did that, right?”
I nodded. It was one of my three possible diagnoses.
“Fill you with drugs. Treat the symptom, not the problem. Most people who hear voices, they’re not mentally ill. They’ve just suffered something. Lived through something really bad. And it manifests itself as a voice that seems to come from outside.”
My legs suddenly shook. There was an image in my head: blood pooling around a head, small white tiles. A baseball bat.
I put out a hand and grabbed her wrist.
“You okay?”
I gasped. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
She looked at me, and her eyes were lit with intelligence. “I would hazard a guess”—she talked like that sometimes—“that something bad may have happened to you when you were younger. Am I wrong?”
“No. I mean, yes, you’re wrong.”
My veins and arteries were alive, thin snakes writhing within me. I was so freaked out I didn’t even think to ask the obvious question.
Can you see what the obvious question would have been?
Take a moment.
Yes.
The obvious question would have been:
If that’s true, if it comes from trauma, then what happened to you?
“Okay, then,” she said. “Fine. You just remember what I said.” She thought for a second, then she flicked some invisible hair from her ear and looked right at me. She was wearing no makeup at all and was pale and skinny, but I still almost had to look away from her; it was painful, her beauty, like looking at the sun without those weird shades that have a slit in them that people wear for eclipses. “Pop quiz,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Obamacare: Pro or con?”
I closed my eyes. “I’m tired. I can’t—”
“Oh please,” she said. “I aced an Anthropology midterm at Rutgers on Xanax and methadone. On which note: Marcel Mauss.”
“What?”
“Marcel Mauss,” she said, stressing it this time.
I thought for a second. My brain was so slow. “Uh, magic. Or sacrifice?”
“Both, actually.” She gave a soft clapping mime. “Back to the start. Obamacare: Pro or con?”
“Pro?”
“Good. Word association. Pro.”
“What?”
“What word do you associate with the word ‘pro’?”
“Choice.”
“Good answer. ‘Life’ would also have sufficed. Next one: leather.”
I hesitated for a moment. “Notebook.”
“Martin.”
“Amis.”
“Eleanor,” she said.
“Rigby.”
“Good. I would also have accepted ‘Roosevelt.’ ”