The Blind

NOVEMBER 14TH, 12:34 P.M.

It’s snowing outside. I’m up on the corner of my desk, staring out the window. The guys on the scaffold are still working, despite the change in weather. It’s been brutally cold, but for some reason, when the snow starts, it feels warmer. Like the snow is creating a blanket that covers the world and keeps it safe. The flakes are fat and wet and sticking to the cars parked on the street below. In the city, the snow only stays beautiful for a couple of hours. Once the plows come through, the perfect white shroud becomes a thick, gray sludge, sometimes piled to waist height. The only thing I miss about my house growing up is the way the snow stayed untouched.

My door is slightly ajar, and I hear the chatter of patients in the hallway. My office is across from the computer room, a popular spot for patients to try to break into porn sites or gather to chat with each other. There are two dilapidated couches and someone is always asleep in there.

I hear an unfamiliar voice outside my door, probably someone leaning against the wall outside the computer room. It’s a man’s voice, Brooklyn accent, and the hiss of missing teeth. His voice is loud and abrasive, but he hushes it down to a whisper scream to add a conspiratorial air to his story. I move to the crack in the door and listen to him without showing myself.

“It’s women—women get you into these places, man. No matter what you do, you can’t please ’em.”

“A woman got you in this place?” Another male voice I can’t quite recognize.

“Yeah, she did. My ex.”

“What did she do?” Whoever is telling this story is certainly commanding the attention of his listener.

“Well, she broke up with me, first of all. Then she went and started fuckin’ my best friend. Mmm-hmm. And you know that ain’t right. So, I had no choice; I had to get her back. Ain’t nobody gonna disrespect me like that.”

“How’d you do it? How’d you get her back?”

He hushes his voice back down to the whisper scream: “I killed the bitch.”

“You killed her?” The listener gasps.

“Man, shhhhhh! Shut the fuck up, yo. I ain’t gonna tell you nothing you keep hollerin’ like that.”

“How’d you do it?” the listener whispers back. I’m still eavesdropping from my office. I’m not concerned yet—these kinds of grandiose stories are not uncommon here. Some patients treat the unit as if it were prison, and the scarier they make themselves appear, the safer they feel, so bullshit stories about murders are rampant.

“Ha. I’ll tell you how I did it. She had a house in the Bronx, right? And she would let her dog out the back to run around and piss and whatever. So one night, I went to her house, and I waited for her to let that dog out. Once I seen the dog, I jumped the fence and I grabbed him.”

I hear chairs from the computer room scooting across the floor, followed by a few short footsteps. The story is getting more listeners.

“He was some old shaggy piece of shit dog. I had a can of lighter fluid with me, and I dumped it all over that dog. He was so stupid, he started to lick it off. He liked it, too. Just kept lickin’ at that lighter fluid. But he stopped when I lit him up.”

“No shit? You lit the fuckin’ dog on fire?”

“Damn right, I did! And he starts barkin’ and yellin’ and shit, so I pick him up, and I throw his ass through the back window of the bitch’s house. It smashes the window, and the curtains got lit up, too. I could hear the dog, and it was screamin’ and then I heard Alisha, and she start screamin’, too. And she trying to put the dog out, and he dyin’ and the fire just getting bigger and bigger.” His voice is getting loud now, and I can feel my fists clenching.

“So, she says ‘fuck the dog, I gotta get out,’ and she runs out the back door, and where am I? Right there waitin’ for her. And it’s dark out, and she don’t even see me, so she runs right into me. I grab her and turn her around so she has to watch the house burn. I put my hand over her mouth so she can’t scream. You see that?” I can almost hear the craning necks looking to see what the storyteller is showing them. “Bitch started biting my hand. But she stopped biting when I popped her in the mouth.

“The house was going up fast, I mean fast, and it started to get hot and the smoke made it hard to see, so I pulled her back into the alleyway behind the house. She was kickin’ and pullin’ and she knew she couldn’t save nothin’, and so she stopped strugglin’ and just watched it burn. The fire was mad loud, and then when the trucks came, you couldn’t hear nothin’, not even screamin’. So I took my hand off her mouth, and I told her: this is what she gets for fuckin’ with me.”

“And no one saw you? You didn’t get caught?”

“Nah, man. Nobody even knew we was there. And she starts beggin’ and sobbin’ and slobberin’ all over, and that’s when I finished it. I just put my hand around her neck, and I squeezed. Didn’t even take that long.”

I feel my face contort into an angry grimace as I hear this macho bullshit. I find myself overwhelmed with disappointment at the pathetically appreciative response from the listeners. This sociopathic story, this admiration from peers—I’ll never understand this shit. The more I keep hearing it over the years, the more I feel like it’s seeping into me, disturbing my sanity. I keep listening and I hear some of the guys relaying bits of the story to latecomers. I even hear what sound like high fives. And then I hear raspy, almost panicked breaths. I hear a familiar voice now, shaking, furious. Tyler.

“You set a woman’s dog on fire? You threw her dog into her house and her house caught fire?” Tyler has obviously been listening, and he is appalled.

“Yeah, bro, and what?”

“And what? You murdered her? For cheating on you?” His voice is getting higher.

“You got problems, bro?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got fuckin’ problems.”

“Hi, guys!” I shout as I open my door and pretend I haven’t been listening. “What’s happening? How’s everyone?” It’s clear there’s tension in the hallway, and various patients have fled to the safety of the couches in the computer room. Everyone’s eyes are glued to Tyler and the storyteller.

“Hi, I’m Dr. James. I don’t think we’ve met.” I extend my hand to the storyteller, who has his eyes trained on Tyler. He ignores me. “What’s your name?”

“Floyd.” He still won’t take his eyes off Tyler. Floyd is about a foot shorter than Tyler is, but has probably sixty pounds on him. Tyler is vibrating with anger.

“Miss Sam, I don’t think you should be here right now.”

“Really, Tyler?” Chipper, unaware. “How come?”

“This man got no respect for women.” Tyler is shifting his weight from one foot to the other, clenching and unclenching his fists. Floyd doesn’t move. He stares, unblinking, at Tyler, waiting for him to act.

“Pitchers and catchers report in a couple months, you know.” Talking Yankee baseball with Tyler is my ace in the hole to defuse this without security or backup. “Floyd, are you a baseball fan?” I ask as I move to the space between them, and the air is thick with perspiration and rage. “Tyler and I are huge Yankee fans.” I’m a little taller than Floyd, so when I’m up close to his face, he has to shift his gaze to make eye contact with me. I’m obscuring his view of Tyler, so he’s forced to address me.

“Yeah. I could watch some baseball, miss.”

“America’s pastime. It’s a beautiful thing. Now—” I clap my hands together “—where are you gentlemen supposed to be? I’m sure there’s something productive we could all be doing instead of loitering here in the hallway, huh?”

No one responds to me, but several patients observing from the computer room peel themselves off the couches and move on. Tyler is backing up slightly, but I can still feel his breath at the back of my neck.

“No? Okay. But I’ve got things to do. Tyler? Want to walk me to my next group?” I know Tyler is a gentleman and he wouldn’t let a lady walk by herself if she asked for an escort.

“Alright, Miss Sam.” I hear his teeth grind as he steps in front of me and starts slowly moving down the hallway. I pull my glasses down my nose and glower at Floyd.

Tyler and I walk down the hall, and I again ask him about baseball. Completely distracted, trying to shake the story from a moment ago, he falters and mumbles. When we reach an empty group room, I step inside and ask him to follow me.

“Tyler, when you hear something like that and you react, it just feeds the beast. He was telling that story to get a reaction out of people. Let’s not give him the satisfaction, okay? When you’re disturbed by somebody, you walk away. You don’t engage. Come find me or another staff member if you feel you’re not able to take it, okay?”

“He killed that dog. I just got so mad when he said he killed that innocent dog and that innocent lady.”

“Yeah, me too, Tyler. Me too. But we can’t let it get to us, okay? We have to rise above it.”

“You think it’s bullshit? He’s making it up to scare the other patients?”

“Maybe. Maybe he’s making it up. But even if he didn’t kill an innocent dog or an innocent lady, you and I both know that there are innocent ladies and dogs getting killed every day. But we can’t go to pieces and get in fights because of it. You’re here to take care of you, not to worry about anybody else. Right?”

“Yeah. I know you’re right, Miss Sam. I’m here to worry about me. And the Yankees, because, last season, our pitching wasn’t looking so good.”

“You’re damn right about that.”

NOVEMBER 14TH, 9:21 P.M.

I’m sitting on my couch waiting for Lucas to show up with takeout. He said he was going to be here an hour ago, but he’s not here yet. I’m trying to read a book, and I have to close one eye to see the words. I’m distracted and hungry, and I keep checking my phone to see if Lucas is going to text me. Nothing. I texted him thirty minutes ago, asking when he’s planning on arriving, but I didn’t get a response. I reread the same page over and over again.

My glass is empty now, and so is the bottle next to it. When I’m anxious, I drink faster than I should. Even though it’s cold outside, colder than the last few Novembers, I’m still drinking white wine. I carefully wipe up the condensation on the coffee table with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and tiptoe to the recycling bin. I plop the still-sweaty bottle into the bin and crack open the twist-off lid of another one. It’s better if Lucas doesn’t know that I already drank a whole bottle. As I’m tiptoeing back to the couch, my phone buzzes and my foot catches the leg of the coffee table.

It’s Lucas. Buzz me in, forgot my key.

I write back, You have to push the button first; it won’t work if you don’t buzz.

The buzzer blares a long and angry scream into my apartment, and I depress the button to release the door. I can see Lucas’s bad mood on the grainy security camera. He slaps the up button for the elevator. He usually takes the stairs, because I’m only on the third floor, but when he’s pissed, or drunk, or carrying something, he takes the elevator. Tonight, it seems he’s all three. I leave the front door ajar and return to the couch. I pour a small glass of wine and clutch it as I wait. I pull my knees up to my chest and hunker down into my pillows.

Lucas marches in the front door and promptly dumps the take-out bag on the floor. He shoves it into the kitchen with his foot and angrily peels off his coat.

“Well, you could offer to give me a hand.” He huffs at me. I pop up off the couch and greet him with a kiss on the cheek. I pick up the take-out bag, which is filled with something that has gone cold, and I lift it onto the kitchen counter. Lucas is very obviously on drugs. His hair is matted down to the back of his neck and his collar is soaked with sweat. He is clenching and unclenching his jaw, and he has thick white spit gathered in the corners of his mouth. Cocaine. He doesn’t say anything else to me and instead walks to the bathroom to tidy himself up. As I hang his coat on the back of a barstool, I reach into his pockets to see what I can find.

A half-smoked pack of cigarettes next to an unopened pack. A black Bic lighter with gouges at the bottom from using it to open bottles. A crumpled credit-card receipt from First Wok with today’s date on it. The time stamp was from two hours ago. I stuff the contents back into his pockets and reach into the breast pocket. A rolled-up fifty-dollar bill with one end wet and the other end powdery, and a tiny empty bag that used to house a gram of cocaine. Adrenaline burns in my stomach as I drop the contraband back into his coat.

I sit down on the couch and take a big gulp of wine. I light a cigarette and wait to hear the toilet flush. He usually muffles the sounds of his snorts by flushing the toilet. He probably has another bag in there with him. My building is old, and so is the plumbing. He overflowed the toilet once from flushing too many times because he was snorting so many lines. Somehow, he still thinks I haven’t figured out what he’s doing in there. I hear the telltale flush, and then he appears outside the bathroom door.

“Whew, sorry about that,” he says as he plops down on the couch next to me. “Been a long day, and I’m lugging this Chinese food here, and I can’t find my keys, and I just got frustrated. Hi,” he says, turning to me and kissing me on the mouth. “How was your day?”

I can taste the coke and it immediately makes my lower lip numb, so I pull away from him and wipe my mouth. “My day was fine. How was your coke?”

“Oh, Sam. I don’t want to get into this.” He rolls his eyes and flaps his hands at me. “I had a long day and I needed a pick-me-up. Brian from the office was holding and he gave me a bag as we were leaving. We were working on a very important merger, and it was sort of a celebration. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I knew you would make a big deal out of it.” He reaches down and takes a sip of my wine. He is leaning forward on the couch, hovering over the coffee table, picking at the label on the wine bottle. He’s not looking at me. I’m not responding. Instead, I stand up and walk to the kitchen to get him his own wineglass. The adrenaline kick sobered me, and I feel like I haven’t had anything to drink at all.

He keeps picking at the label until I sit back down and pour him a glass of wine. I refill my own glass and lean back, silent. I know the coke isn’t going to let him stay quiet for long, so I wait and give him the rope to hang himself.

“I’m not trying to lie to you,” he implores me. “It’s just that we’ve had this coke conversation so many times, and I told you that I was going to cut down, but honestly, it just comes with my business.”

“This isn’t the ’80s, you know.”

“Maybe not wherever you live, but in the finance world, the ’80s are the revered decade. Everyone is hoping to get back to that, and sometimes, we behave as if we are back to that. It’s not a big deal; it’s not about you.”

“Lying to me is about me.” We are both smoking cigarettes now, and the smoke is hanging in the air like a gray aurora borealis.

“I shouldn’t lie to you, you’re right.” He turns to look at me and squeezes my knee with his left hand, his cigarette tucked between his fingers. He holds his wineglass with the other hand and continually slurps tiny, noisy sips. He is looking at me with wild eyes between his little sips, and he begins rubbing my thigh.

“Why were you so late tonight?” I ask.

“Because Brian and I were doing drugs, Sam. How many times do I have to explain this to you? You don’t need to punish me; I’ve already admitted it. Can’t get anything by Detective Sam.” He pulls his hand back, and his cigarette leaves ashes on my pants.

There were about thirty seconds when I had the upper hand as he was apologizing, and now I see it falling out of my grasp and rolling under the couch. Of all the things that Lucas does and then lies to me about, for some reason I have attached myself to the cocaine. The Serenity Prayer has taught me that there are some things I cannot change, but for some reason, I think his coke use is one of the things I can. Baby steps. I’m chipping away at the vices. One day I’ll have the strength to stop him from all the other damage he does, to me and to himself.

Lucas is reeling now, angry that I caught him. I’m contemplating my exit strategy when he suddenly pops up to his feet and offers me a hand to help me off the couch.

“Why don’t we eat something? There’s all this Chinese food in the kitchen; let’s just have a bite to eat and forget this shit ever happened, okay?” He is clenching my wrist and pulling me into the kitchen. He takes two plates out of the cabinet above the sink and slaps them both down on the counter. He reaches into the First Wok bag and pulls out two white cardboard containers. Lucas drops my wrist and it falls to my side with a thud, and he begins unloading lo mein and sesame chicken onto the plates. I can see him getting angrier and angrier with each shake of the to-go containers; I start slowly backing out of the kitchen.

“Where the fuck are you going? You asked me to come over and bring dinner, and here I am, preparing dinner for us. Don’t sneak out of here and pretend you didn’t ruin our evening together with your accusations and your detective work. Here—” he shoves a plate of cold Chinese at me “—eat this. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” He leaves his plate on the kitchen counter and stalks toward me with his head bowed and his eyebrows clamped in rage. I’m holding my plate between us with both hands, backing up.

“Thank you for bringing Chinese food, but I didn’t ruin our evening. You’re the one who came over hours late and coked up.” I keep backing up.

“So, I ruined the evening?” he growls.

“Look, the evening doesn’t have to be ruined at all—” I implore him, but as soon as he’s close enough, Lucas slaps the plate out of my hand, and sesame chicken and lo mein and broken shards of plate scatter on the floor around us. He pushes the mess out of his way with his foot and keeps lumbering closer to me. I hold my hands up against his chest and try to push him off me, but he is too big, and too angry, and already nearly on top of me.

“Hit me,” he says calmly, with a twisted grin. “Hit me, since I fucked everything up. I ruined dinner, didn’t I? So hit me.” He starts yelling and chest bumps me, sending me stumbling back into the wall. “Hit me!” He points to his jaw and chest bumps me again, and now I’m pinned between him and the wall, and I can’t find the room to squirm out. I feel the handle to the closet door with my left hand, and I try to pull it open, but Lucas’s big arm is over my head, holding the closet door closed. “Hit me,” he says again as his other hand rises up and grips me by the throat. “Hit me!”

NOVEMBER 16TH, 9:14 P.M.

I’m at Nick’s talking to a friend, and although I’ve been told that he’s very sexy and charming, I haven’t noticed it until right this minute. He’s standing in front of me, and we’re flirting. Everyone else we know here is behind me, jammed in near the DJ booth. He’s looking at me with a pair of eyes that I have never seen in his head, and I feel like the universe is shifting and my stomach is flipping. He is devouring me and I don’t want him to stop.

He’s a player—we all know it; I have always known it. I watched him hook up with a prepubescent neophyte yesterday and he has been picking the low-hanging fruit for years. I see every woman fall for him; I laugh at them and silently hope they remember to wrap it up, and I giggle at the girls who are mad at him for the fuck-and-run. I’ve always considered him a decent soul, and at the same time I don’t see any of this right now. All I see is man. Man who can take my whole world and turn it upside down, just by paying me the slightest bit of attention.

Someone has taken out their camera phone, and of course this is a problem because everyone here knows Lucas, and I’m dating Lucas, and I should be thinking about Lucas, but I can’t even remember his name right now. I’m absentmindedly pulling my scarf up around my neck to keep the bruises from the other night obscured. We are all crammed together, taking pictures that someone will inevitably post on Instagram, and then all infidelity will be exposed and I’ll be the bad guy and Lucas will run from me and I will be alone and I can’t have that.

So I pose and I smile and I pretend that all the feelings I have rushing through me—the fire, the heat that’s pulsing in my veins, in my stomach, in my pants—all of this is not happening. And of course, he comes to stand next to me for the pictures, and he is almost in front of me, and he is kissing my cheek for the photo.

The group is closely huddled together, and without anyone else seeing, while we’re no more than a quarter inch from all our friends, he reaches his hand behind him, between us, and holds my breast. He’s killing me and he knows it and I love it and all I want to do is stay and take more pictures and have him keep his hands on me and all over me and take me away from here and make me something better and never, ever, ever leave me.

Somehow it’s all over and in a whirlwind, I’m on the street walking home. When we said goodbye he kissed me on the lips, but we all kiss each other on the lips, so this didn’t mean anything to anyone witnessing it. But we had never kissed on the lips before and mine are burning with man all over them, and I am walking home toward Lucas and I want to turn back and run into the arms of man, but Lucas will leave me and I can’t have that. But I need to see this guy again. When will we be able to do this? This is a mission and I must accomplish it, and I will have him no matter what it takes. His name is AJ. I don’t even know what it stands for.

NOVEMBER 18TH, 12:03 P.M.

David and I are sitting in his office, avoiding the world, eating our lunches. He usually brings something in, and I end up stealing half of it, or we go to one of the sandwich shops down the street. There’s a halal truck on the corner, and today we both got chicken over rice. We usually eat when the patients get their lunch, whether we’re hungry or not—that way we’re less likely to have visitors or intruders.

“Did you see Julie in the meeting this morning?” I ask, plastic fork between my teeth.

“Yeah, I saw her. Why? What’d she do?”

“She was doing her makeup in a Chanel compact at the fucking conference table.”

“Is that a big deal?”

“She works in a mental institution. Why does she care so much about how she looks? It’s pathetic.”

David laughs at me. “You really hate her, huh?”

“I don’t hate anybody. I just think she’s incredibly silly and she doesn’t belong here. She should be working at Bloomingdale’s.”

“You ever sat in on any of her groups?”

“No, have you?” David rarely engages in Julie shit-talking and gossip with me, because he’s mature and above it all, so I love when he descends to my level.

“Yeah, I was at the one that your patient stormed out of. The new guy, big dude.”

“Richard? The thing with the beets?”

“Ha!” David opens his mouth to laugh and a single grain of rice flies past me and sticks to the window. “Yeah,” he says, wiping his lips, “she was trying to delicately explain that some foods can change the color or consistency of pee and poop, and he just bolted. I think she wanted to get the message across that people panic when their shit turns red, thinking it’s blood, so she was trying to preemptively quell the anxiety.”

“Sure, which would make sense if anyone ever had beets here. What an idiot! Such a princess. I told you she shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, Rachel asked me to keep an eye on her because she’s been racking up complaints.”

“Really? How wonderful! Maybe Typhlos will give me an early Christmas present and fire her!” I joyfully scoop another forkful of chicken into my mouth.

“Yeah, don’t hold your breath. How is the new guy, by the way? Last we talked you were getting nowhere.”