The Waiting Room - Part 3

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One night, when we were still trying to sleep in shifts, psychokitten told me she was certain The Baby would get called out before anyone else.

Before The Baby came, phsychokitten lurked, staying near the walls. She had done something in the life before, or something was done to her. We don’t know more than that. She used to talk as though she wanted to tell you, or as though she already had and you’d forgotten. Now she talks of little besides The Baby.

“You can look at babies without looking away,” she told me once. “That’s part of what makes them special, I think. You can look at every little hair rising out of her skin, and stare right into her eyes, and she will look right back at you and smile. That’s what love is, maybe. Not looking away. You know?”

This night, while the rest of the room slept, she reached out two fingers to touch The Baby’s peach furred head. “She hasn’t done anything. I mean, if that’s what it’s all about – what has she done, you know? She doesn’t deserve to be here.”

“None of us does, though,” I said. “I don’t think that’s what it is.”

“Whyever though, you know? Whyever we’re here, she has to be the exception. She’ll get called out. She can’t stay here.”  

And what if she does? I wondered. What if she gets called out without me?

***

Cambridge hangs a threadbare sheet from the ceiling tiles and pushes it against the wall. He makes columns with headings in block letters with the fat Sharpie he keeps in his front shirt pocket.

“OK. OK OK. Who has birthmarks?” Three hands.

Psychokitten: “We’ve done that one before.”

It’s a familiar exercise by now. We don’t know why we’re here instead of other people. We grill one another mercilessly, looking for commonalities. If we find them, if we figure it out, everyone is released. That will be how it works.

“Fine. How many from Connecticut?” One.

It goes on and on. How many nail biters? How many adulterers? How many with ancestors on the Trail of Tears? Who is the middle child?

The caustic smell of industrial ink floods our sinuses.

“Who has lost a close friend?” Seven hands wearily raised. (Even The Officer raises his hand, only from the elbow, from over there in his spot by the door.) We count them and glance at one another anxiously, with a self-conscious excitement of the type you feel when they announce lottery numbers – you know it won’t be you. But … what if it is?

We wait.

When nothing happens, Cambridge jerks his shoulders forward. “Let’s drill down on this one, then,” he says. “We’re getting somewhere! We’re getting somewhere now.”

How old were we when it happened?  Marco was eight when his best friend was kidnapped on their walk to school. She was wearing red canvas shoes. He remembered the wide white of her eyes as they dragged her into the back of a rusty sedan while Marco stood motionless on the sidewalk. He recites the license plate number to us.

What year? Harry’s brother died in his sleep of an undiagnosed heart condition in 1998. They shared a bedroom. His brother counts, he says, because he didn’t have any other friends.

Were we there when it happened? I was there when Cory drowned. The ice was too thin for me to reach him. When the EMTs arrived, I’m told, I was lying in the grass staring into the water, a thin frost on my cheeks. I don’t remember, though. I only remember his whimper when he realized no one was coming.

The Baby wriggles and clenches her eyes tighter. There was no baby on the riverbank. This is not the riverbank. Wherever this is, I am here. And psychokitten is weeping, her forehead on her knees.

It isn’t working.

None of the answers match up.

It doesn’t matter how deeply we excavate one another. All we’re doing is poisoning the air. We’re still here. It isn’t working.

Begonia, who was ravenously engaged at first, shuffles off into a corner. Cambridge calls her back. “We all have to answer,” he says. “Begonia, we all have to answer or we’ll never figure this out.”

The edge in his voice makes The Baby jerk. She begins to cry. I pull her close, her warmth filling my chest.

No one is making The Officer answer. These rules are arbitrary.

“Begonia!” In three fast strides he is there, his knuckles already whitening on her shoulders.

“That’s not my name,” she hisses, pulling to break from his grip. 

“What are you waiting for?” he screams into her ear.

“Stop!”

It’s my voice.

Cambridge whirls. The baby is wailing now.

psychokitten stands, wiping her eyes with her forearm, and pushes between Cambridge and Begonia to reach The Baby, taking her from me and wrapping her up in her arms.

No one speaks or looks at anyone else for the long minutes to night.

***

I count the washcloths I have left, the number of diaper changes. My stomach growls.

My chest expands with some feeling that might be dread, might be excitement. Must be dread. How should I be excited when I realize the world might be ending?

“Marco,” I call quietly. He steps unhurriedly to my side. “Are you tired?”

“Of course I am tired. I am tired of this room, I am tired of Begonia’s snoring, I am tired of no longer knowing my own name--”

“No, are you tired? Yawning, physically tired?”

“Why?”

I show him the thin stack of washcloths in my hand. “I don’t think the lights went out.”

He swallows loudly. He glances at The Officer. “Let’s talk to Cambridge.”

I glance at our executive. “No point.”

Today – tonight – today -- Cambridge is slumped on the floor again.

“What’s wrong?” Harry has been watching us. He is standing too close to me.

I would keep this from him until we had some idea what to do, but he has already realized what’s happening. It’s not hard to see, now that we’re looking – on the countertop, where we put the deliveries, there are two single-serving cereal boxes and an apple. We’re being cut off.

Harry’s eyes follow mine. Then he glares at me, as though I am to blame for this – not just this, but everything. He whirls to take in the whole room, his head jerking toward the door. His movements are too loud, too fast, too big. His body yells.

“Hey! You!”

We all turn to look at The Officer in his chair by the door.

“What time is it?”

The Officer’s sunglasses shift and resettle. His chin has grown a red and grey stubble. He used to shave with a pocket knife, without lotion or cream. He used to be bigger. Now his yellowing, oil-stained cuff hangs loose around his wrist as he drops his hand to his belt.

He says nothing.

Harry steps closer. His voice drops to a low trembling.

“What time is it?”

The Officer sniffs. His lip curls slightly. His hand closes around the watch, and he raises it, face outward, to eye level. Harry steps forward to look. We all lean forward, a tidal slide, until we can see it, cracked and scuffed, the second hand jerking ineffectually.

4:06:32. 4:06:32. 4:06:32. 4:06:32. 4:06:32.

Somewhere in me, a desiccated voice of reason says it doesn’t matter that time has stopped. We can just wind it again, and start a new 18 hours. Eighteen hours light, six dark. We can flip the light switch right now, take turns counting out the hours minute by minute. We can fix this.  

But The Officer is control. The Officer is knowable. The Officer is order. There must be rules, even when we know we made them up. There has to be something to stand on.

I watch the second hand tic until my vision blurs. I’m sinking, I think, but I haven’t moved. I think the framework of toothpicks that has held me on my feet since my arrival has just been smashed with a whisper of real absurdity, and I’m afraid to move.  

On my right, Harry has sunk into a runner’s crouch, his teeth bared.

The Officer rises partway out of his chair. The air draws tight. Even The Baby lies tense and motionless in psychokitten’s arms, her eyes wide.  

“I was here first,” The Officer says.

His words rust in the air.

I hear Cambridge scuffle to his feet behind me. That gurgling—that’s Begonia chuckling, forcing air through the ancient phlegm in her throat.

“I know what you think,” The Officer turns to each of us. He nods at The Baby. “You think they’ll let her out. You think she deserves to go.”

psychokitten curls herself around The Baby. Her body seems to gain mass.

“No one leaves before me. I was first.” His tone is even and unhurried.

Marco moves a few steps toward The Officer. “Now, think for a moment. We have no control here. Who we think should go – that makes no difference. We all should go. But we all are here. What makes a difference is that we are kept alive, and it seems we are only to be kept alive if we sometime turn out the lights.”

“If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead,” The Officer says. “I’m forcing their hand. I’m not going to let them sneak her out of here in the dark of night. Not without me. They have to show themselves eventually, or she’ll die. We’ll all die.”

Marco begins to respond, but I can’t hear. Someone is screaming.

Where The Officer was, there are more bodies, bodies making noises that bodies shouldn’t make, thuds and cracks – there are too many fists to count, too many clawed fingers. Cambridge is on the ground.

I see a flash of light and beasts with teeth, grappling, combusting – who lit the fire? Who had things to burn?

I should move quickly when there’s a fire. Stop, drop and roll. We all know that. My feet drag me along to the cupboard, where I pull the door partly closed. This isn’t a safe place at all.

I peer through the crack of the door, and through the smoke I count all the people in the world.

Begonia cackles, her palms upturned, her hem flaming.

I count again.

Harry cries out. The Officer’s fist flashes metal.

They must be hidden in the black clouds, huddled under a chair.

I count a third time. My eyes sting. My lungs ache. The numbers go singsong in my head, a learning melody: me, two-oo, three … four, fi-iive, six …

Six.

psychokitten and The Baby are gone.