Metropolis Pt. 2, page 5
The guy whipped Julian’s leg with his crop. Then whipped it again.
It hurt like hell. “You sonofabitch!”
The guy laughed and snapped the crop close to Julian’s crotch. It felt like his leg was on fire. Julian whipped Bottom Girl to pass, but hit her in the nose with his crop and threw her off her stride. She fell back, and he nearly tumbled off her.
He got himself righted and rode Bottom Girl hard, the way Paulie said to, not sparing the whip. She extended into a full run again, even faster than before. Julian’s baggy silks flapped against his legs.
Bottom Girl pulled even with the dirty rider again. The guy flashed a glare at Julian and whipped his shin. This time, Julian was ready and took the burn, focusing on the angle to cut this jackass off.
“Good night, sweet prince!” the man shouted, and whipped Julian’s left arm.
Julian yanked back his arm, lost his grip on the reins, then his balance. He slipped from the saddle and slammed down under Bottom Girl. Her left hind hoof pounded his chest. He took a mouthful of dirt and rolled to a stop.
The other horses thundered past him. He knew enough to lie still, though he couldn’t have gotten up just then, anyway. A searing pain was spreading across his chest, and he couldn’t breathe.
A bell rang, and the sound of galloping hooves faded. A couple of track-hands rushed out to help him up.
When he’d caught his breath, he limped back to Paulie’s shed. His chest hurt like hell, and there were purple welts up and down his left arm. His leg was purple, too, where his silk pants were split open.
“Tough break, kid.”
“I would have won! The bastard on the seven horse whipped me.”
Paulie buzzed. “Yeah, I should have warned you Matteo rides dirty, and he don’t make idle threats, neither.”
“I hope he chokes on his winnings.” He went into the shed and changed back into his own clothes. He could still barely breathe. Maybe he had some cracked ribs.
When he got back out to Paulie, he sat a moment to get his legs back before he had to walk all the way into Metropolis. He had no fare for the train back.
“Took guts, I’ll give you that,” Paulie said, reading over his track bible.
“Guts aren’t going to cut it when I tell my girl I gambled away our last twenty-five bucks.”
Paulie put his pencil back behind his ear. “You got a dame?”
“I do, yeah, but who knows for how long. Truth is, I’m not even sure I can walk back to the city like this.” He rubbed his chest. “Can you spot me a nickel?”
“No can do. My book’s gotta be square when I cash out.”
Julian tried to stand, but his chest felt like it had a railroad spike in the middle of it. “Hey, Paulie, maybe for stepping in with Bottom Girl you got a square for me, you know?”
Paulie looked sidelong at him. “Hush up, you nitwit. You break your head in the fall?”
“Sorry, Paulie. I wouldn’t ask, but . . .”
The old bookmaker sighed and turned back to the stable yard. He then dug into his shirt pocket, pulled out a brown square, and unfolded it.
“Go ahead. Take a pinch.”
Julian pinched the white powder, dropped it under his tongue, and rubbed the rest on his gums.
Paulie nodded and put the square away. “That’ll help with the pain, but it ain’t gonna help with your lady.”
“I don’t deserve help.” Julian thanked him, struggled to his feet, and started the long walk back into Metropolis to tell Victoria he’d lost all their dough.
CHAPTER 7
JULY 3, 1999
REMINGTON HALL occupied almost half a city block at the heart of Metropolis. Once the grandest theater in the city, it was now virtually derelict. Its granite facing carved an impressive outline against the city sky, but the windows were dark and the doors chained shut. Save one. It was eight p.m., and Nick was standing at the corner of Market and Sixth Street, debating whether to go in. He took a swig from his pocket flask—not the first tonight—as traffic streamed by, horns blaring, cabs splashing through gutters. The sweet tang of exhaust filled the air. Then, finally, Nick put the snifter away, and ducked inside, hoping Jimmy hadn’t steered him wrong on this group therapy thing.
Just past the door, a skinny guy in a leather vest, with a long braid, stopped him. “You here for PTSD support?”
“I guess.”
“You got a referral?”
Nick pulled out the flyer Jimmy had given him. “Jimmy Mallen, down at Mendel Plaza. Look, if it’s full—”
“Nah, put out your arms.” The guy ran a wand over Nick’s body. “Can’t be too careful. All right, you’re clear. Juice and cookies on the left. Theater’s off-limits. We’re in the foyer.”
That was a bummer. Long as he’d lived in Metropolis, he’d never seen a show here. Back in the day, it had been opera and symphony mostly. Sometimes musicals on special engagement. From what he understood, the foyer was used for formal affairs—fundraisers, political rallies, and the like. But that had all stopped long before he was born. No one seemed to know why the property owners had never sold or reopened.
Nick passed through a second set of doors into a huge foyer. It must have been a hundred feet long and fifty wide. At the far end of the room, a handful of folks were already seated in a circle of chairs. Nick grabbed a cup of orange juice and a couple of cookies from a card table just inside the doors—figured they’d cover his breath—and headed hesitantly toward them.
Dark marble columns on each side rose three stories to an ornate filigreed wood ceiling sixty feet above. Six cascading chandeliers hung down over the green-and-red marble floor. Half the lightbulbs were out, but it still looked damned impressive. The walls were fashioned of the same charcoal marble as the pillars and caught the lights in dull gleams.
The reflective acoustics were amazing. Every footstep echoed out, announcing him before he even got to the ring of chairs.
“Welcome.” A man maybe fifty-years-old, wearing a three-piece suit, a chain watch, and sporting a tightly manicured beard and mustache motioned him to an empty seat. “I’m Dr. Andrew Beadys.”
“Nicholas Santori.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Nicholas. We’re just about to get started. Please join us.”
Nick sat in a metal folding chair with the other nine people in the circle besides Dr. Beadys. He finished his cookies and juice while everyone settled in.
“First, thank you all for coming,” Dr. Beadys said. “I see a few familiar faces tonight, but most of you are new to me, and so I’m guessing you’re also new to any kind of therapeutic support for your stress—other than medication.”
A few people in the group laughed.
Dr. Beadys took a small wood cylinder from his inner suit-jacket pocket, unscrewed the cap, and pulled out a toothpick. “Before I begin, anyone else care for a cinnamon toothpick? They’re great for the fidgeters among you, and they taste wonderful.”
No takers. He put one in his mouth and tucked the holder away. “All right then, let me level set on why we’re all here tonight. PTSD has its primary roots in the study of trauma in returning war veterans, almost always involving the death of a fellow-at-arms or the threat of death to the individual himself. My own study and therapeutic practice proceeds from the notion that this same stress is experienced not only in war. The death of a someone in your family or a friend can bring on these feelings. This all sound familiar?”
Everyone nodded.
“So far, so good, then.” Dr. Beadys rolled the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “PTSD is usually characterized by reexperiencing the mortal event through flashbacks and dreams. For all intents and purposes, the sufferer is reliving the painful moment. And my research shows that witnessing these events, even in our dreams, can have the same effect as real-world events do. The mind and body simply don’t know the difference.”
A woman with a shaved head and cheek piercings raised her hand. “I heard if you die in your dreams, you really die.”
Dr. Beadys chuckled. “What you’re describing is largely a myth. But let me frame this another way. How many of you here tonight have never been to war, never actually witnessed death, or even felt the threat of death?”
Nick raised his hand, along with four others.
“And yet, if I were to ask,” Beadys said, waving his toothpick at the people with raised hands, “I’m guessing you’d all say you’re here because your dreams are plagued by visions that present, if not death itself, some horror that threatens your or someone else’s safety. Is that a fair assessment?”
Everyone nodded.
Beadys returned his toothpick to his mouth. “And as a result, you’re all probably familiar with prazosin, or risperidone, or Dalmane, or Restoril, and certainly spirits.”
“Spirits, sir?” a short, stocky guy in jeans and a buzz cut asked.
“Liquor, my boy,” Dr. Beadys said.
There was more quiet laughter. One gal in a Forces Marine jacket put out her hand. “Speaking of prazosin, you got any on you?”
Dr. Beadys leaned forward in his folding chair, took out his toothpick again, and playfully wagged it at her. “No, ma’am, but I submit that if you’ll trust me, I can ease your stress without chemicals.”
“You’ll have to buy me breakfast,” she said, wagging her finger back at him.
Beadys chortled and sat back in his creaking chair. “You’re a lovely girl, Angelina, but I’m afraid you’d have a hard time satisfying this old gentleman’s libido.”
She rolled her eyes. “Go on then, doc. Let’s hear about this magic you say you have.”
“Not magic,” Dr. Beadys said, “sound. It is half the reason I use this grand foyer in this magnificent old theater. The acoustics are breathtaking. Our words and footsteps carry out and echo back to us, creating a beautiful reverberation of ourselves.”
Nick could appreciate that. “The echoes are indirect signals. Reflections. And each of us becomes a secondary source.”
Beadys’s eyes widened. “Precisely. You know a thing or two about sound, it would seem.”
“A little,” Nick said. “What’s the other half of why you use Remington Hall?”
Beadys heaved a sigh. “Sentimentality, I suppose. I was a patron here before the owners built the new Rothschild Hall and left this beautiful old place derelict. You’ll find I’m a fierce one for romance.”
Angelina raised her eyebrows. “That’s one way of puttin’ it.”
“My therapeutic methods are to search the mind and memory with audiological techniques, words and sounds, that echo into the consciousness and memory and resound back with the images that plague one’s dreams and steal one’s sleep. I then help my patients confront these mortal events—real or imagined. Once we’ve revealed those moments, we can rob them of their sting.”
“So no cure,” a guy in a sleeveless denim jacket said.
“There is no cure for PTSD,” Beadys admitted, “but it can be managed. And that is precisely the course you’ve embarked upon this evening. My congratulations to you all for your courage. With that said, let’s take a short break before we get to the heart of our session here tonight.”
Everyone stood. Some stretched, some headed back for more juice and cookies. A few gathered in pairs to chat.
Nick hadn’t ever put much stock in shrinks. Not because he had any moral qualms with them. He just didn’t see it working for himself. Jen had tried to get him to go with her to talk to someone after Emily had died. He never did. He knew it looked like he was avoiding dealing with it all, but the truth was he was suspicious of folks whose stock and trade came by just talking.
Despite Dr. Beadys’s intriguing use of sound, Nick wasn’t interested in sticking around for the second half. What he needed was more pills. So he sidled up to Angelina and the guy in the sleeveless denim jacket, who were whispering near a pillar. “Hey, I’m Nick.”
“I’m Angelina. This is Ridge.”
He shook their hands. “Good to meet you both. Listen, can I ask an inappropriate question?”
“Only kind I’ll answer,” she replied.
He chuckled. “I’m not sure an hour of this is really in my future tonight. So I was wondering if either of you would know where I can chase down some prazosin?”
She slapped the vest guy’s back. “Me and Ridge here did the same thing the first time we came to one of Dr. Beadys’s sessions. Ain’t no one here gonna deal to you. Or even give you a freebie out of sympathy. But nice try. I suggest you buckle up for round two.”
A few moments later Beadys called them back to their seats. “Good to see you’re all still with me,” Beadys said. “I often lose a few to interminable bathroom breaks.”
More laughter.
“Now, let’s get to the heart of tonight’s session,” Beadys continued. “I’d like each of you to share with the group at least part of the dream or memory that brought you here tonight. Now, we’ve established that many of you have no real-world trauma to explain the nightmares you are reliving in your sleep. Yet, they seem all too real, don’t they? I’m going to submit to you that that is because they are real. They’re simply your own memories from a previous life.”
Nick scoffed. “Really? This whole thing is just a set up for the quackery about past lives?”
Dr. Beadys pivoted to Nick and removed his toothpick. “An interesting response, Nicholas. Please go on. Explain to me—to all of us—how you account for whatever dream so haunts you that you came here tonight in the first place.”
“I don’t know,” Nick said, “but it’s not some pseudoscientific theory about reincarnation.”
“I see,” said Beadys. “Then let me share with you how sure I am about my quackery by making you this simple proposition: You share something tonight with the group, then give me maybe two minutes after we adjourn to discuss it with you, and if you remain unconvinced, I’ll write you a prescription for the prazosin you’ve been trying to hustle from my other patients.”
Angelina laughed. “Busted.”
Nick nodded. “You’re right, that wasn’t cool, but I’m just being honest with you about this whole thing. I would think honesty is kind of important to any therapy session, group or otherwise. Regardless, I’m in. ’Cause I could really use those pills.”
“I appreciate both your honesty and your apology,” said Beadys. Then he opened the floor to the group.
Angelina went first. She’d seen civilians burned to death in an underground shelter in a conflict Nick hadn’t even known United Forces had been deployed to. Unlike her other comments, this story she related stone-faced and low-voiced, staring at the marble floor.
Ridge had been a door kicker for a special ops team. His buddy had died in Iraq while he was trying to keep him from bleeding out.
Everyone spoke and no one interrupted. Dr. Beadys didn’t offer any commentary or consolation. It was just one tragedy after another. Bitter memories echoing out into the grand old foyer and bouncing back at them in a thousand echoes. Some were real events, some were these “memories” Beadys had talked about.
Nick was last. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. The obvious thing was to talk about the screaming and the house, but for some reason he didn’t want to share those things with strangers. He couldn’t explain it. There was one other thing he could share, though. From the previous night. It wasn’t the house, but it felt connected somehow.
“I, uh, I’m on the street. It’s night. It’s wet like it’s been raining. I’m walking alone in the Thorp District somewhere. King Street, maybe. Anyway, no one’s around, and out of nowhere four guys appear. One of them coldcocks me, and I fall on the sidewalk, cracking my head pretty hard. Next thing I know they’re ripping money out of my hands and running off.”
Nick paused to think. Everyone remained silent.
“Anyway, I get up and walk another block to a hospital. I’ve never seen this hospital before, but seem to know where I’m going, because I take the stairs up a floor and turn into a room. It’s dark, though, like, too dark for a hospital. Maybe it’s just a hospice kind of place. A man is curled up on a mattress on the floor next to a small lamp, and I know it’s my father. There’s a woman sitting next to him reading him a book. She’s got a kerchief on her head. I feel like she’s been waiting for me, and I tell her I don’t have any money. That I was mugged. She stands and shoves me aside, leaving me there with the man on the mattress. I kneel down next to him. His eyes are shut, and he’s breathing kind of raspy through his mouth. I take his hand. It feels like bones wrapped in dry tissue. I don’t know why, but I somehow know he’s dying of liver disease. Like inside my dream, I have memories of him with mason jars filled with gin and grapefruit rinds, but the rinds have spots on them like they’re rotten. And I start to cry because I think if I’d been able to hang on to the money that was stolen, maybe I could have kept him comfortable until he dies. And almost as soon as I think it, his breathing stops, and I’m still holding his hand. I start sobbing and try to remember the last thing I said to him, but all I know is that it was harsh . . . and my sobs turn into wails, over and over, but no one comes . . .”
Nick’s last words echoed around the Remington foyer. No one spoke for several minutes. Dr. Beadys stared at Nick unblinking, his toothpick seemingly forgotten at one corner of his lips.
Angelina leaned over and whispered, “That’d mess me up, too.”
Beadys thanked everyone and adjourned the session. As the group shuffled out, their footsteps softly reverberating around them, the doctor came up to Nick to claim his two minutes.
“I appreciate your sharing your dream with us,” Beadys said. “It was quite powerful.”
“Not sure that’s how I’d describe it. More like frightening.”
Beadys took out his toothpick and tossed it on the floor. “You obviously know something about the nature of sound.”
“I do audio recovery.”
“As a hobby? Or professionally?”
