“You think you're the only girl he's fallen for? I've seen your kind so many times. He's hurt so many women. I'm only trying to help you,” she claimed. “Take my advice, Janice. Stay away from Jackson. Or else.”
I was about to ask, “or else what?” but she scurried off into the dark hallway. I swear I heard laughter. I began to wonder. Should I tell Jackson about the weird encounter? Ask about him being suicidal? I thought back to the first time I saw him – with the nurse and the rope. Was he really trying to commit suicide? I thought about just asking him. Just ask him in the middle of laughing. “Hahaha, hey, are you suicidal?” Would that fly? Would that be too insulting? I had to find out. The more I thought about it, the more I had to KNOW. If anything was to develop between us, I had to KNOW.
I made the choice.
I'd ask him in the morning.
Noises outside my door. People mumbling. A woman cried. Oja, the woman that I saw on the ground, on her face when I first arrived, was being escorted away by men in lab coats and black gloves. A man was walking with the warden, chatting about something important. I would later know this man as Dr. Kilt.
Pepper's son.
PEPPER ANN
I didn't disappear into the dark like she says. I just waited there. I knew Jackson was watching nearby...waiting for me to leave. I wondered what she would do next. Did she believe me? Had my plan worked? Did I scare her good? Jackson walked out of his room, knocked on Janice's door, and went inside.
DAMN.
The strength in my legs gave out, and I fell to the floor.
“I love him so much,” I wept. “I'm his woman – ME. He said he loved me. I believed him. I should've known better. Why am I letting him control how I feel? I don't want to feel this way anymore. This has to stop. I have to do something.”
I held the wall and climbed to my feet. I felt tired all the time. Too heavy. Coffee helped sometimes; but just sometimes. Janice...Janice...Janice. That name was going to haunt my dreams, I knew it. She'd torture me. What were they doing in her room? What were they doing in there? What were they doing?
My heart raced. I was getting dizzy. I could imagine Janice getting a sharp rock right to the temple and dying there on the grass, blood spurting everywhere. Jackson would cry and run off. Later, he'd knock on my door and fall into my arms. He'd say how sorry he was that he ever left me. He would want to be with me. He would NEED me.
Seeing all this...made me feel better. I felt alive again. Things were going to be all right: The plan was boiling in my mind. I went over to my pal Woodrow's room and had a little talk with him.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
I grinned. “I want you to push her down the stairs.”
“Why don't you do it?”
“I have to be around the warden. When Janice has her little accident, they'll all say, 'Well, couldn't have been Pepper; she was with Miss Veronica.' See how it works?”
“How much will I get paid?”
“I can give you $100.”
Woodrow put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. I had to get him on board. He was the only one capable of pulling this off for me. This 87-year-old man was an ex con. Back in '74, he was convicted for murdering a Samoan woman. He didn't know her. He was paid by her husband to do the job. Woodrow took the $100, cut off her head and hands and feet like he was ordered to for some reason, and paid his cable bill. When he was in court, he said nothing. He was a man of his word. I prayed that a little bit of that greed – and honor – was still in him.
Walking back to my room was a hassle. It took all my concentration to not fall down. It was always embarrassing. Each day, even though I was living with my fellow elderly folk, I could FEEL their pity applause. “Go, Granny, go!” That sort of thing. Just leave me alone. Pretend I'm not here. Don't look at me.
When I finally made it to my room, I eased myself into bed and exhaled. Felt like I was walking for hours. Maybe I was. My feet hurt. My back was numb. If only there was something to take. All this money in the world – all these advancements in science – and no one came up with some kind of “youth” pill? It didn't seem right. Maybe the government was keeping it from us for themselves. I got up and went to my closet. The pot inside was boiling. Well...I'd come up with something. My concoction was working so far. Soon I'd be a hundred. I opened a shoebox and took out a rat and dropped it into the pot. I stirred. I dipped a cup into the stuff and drank. I felt strong again. I felt YOUNG again. But my invention wasn't perfect. I looked in the mirror. Nope. No change. Still old. Still wrinkled. Still sad-looking. I didn't even bother to look into my mouth. I got half of it right – the inside part. But more important (to me) was the outside. I wanted to LOOK young again. Inside, I felt like I could run a marathon, that I could karate-chop a stack of bricks, bicycle UP a volcano, jump up and down for hours, kick a football, dunk a basketball, punch a horse in the face, and, most importantly, make love with Jackson all night long.
BUT...it all meant diddlysquat if my body didn't want to work. I put a lid on the caldron and closed the closet. I stood there for a long time, thinking, thinking. That slop was missing something. I was missing a key ingredient. But what? I went back to bed. More tests had to be done in the morning. But I was hopeful. I had Jackson. Thinking about him made me feel better – made me happier.
“For now,” I said, “I can dream about you.”
That night, I dreamed of making love to Jackson. I hadn't dreamed of him in months. The sex was wonderful.
JACKSON
Why was Woodrow following Janice around? Was he making moves on her? How was I gonna handle this one? He was dangerous. Rumor had it that Woodrow killed a gang of Samoan women back in the '80s. They all had knives, but it didn't matter to him. I heard he was stabbed, but no blood came out. He was a beast! A REAL man. At least that's what I heard. Looking at the old man, you'd believe it. He had that confident, tough, chest out, straight-back saunter. He was not to be messed with. I had to be careful.
I turned a corner and walked into Pepper. She had her hands on my chest.
“Slow down, sailor, what's the hurry?”
“I told you never to touch me.”
“What's the matter? I'm not going to bite.”
I showed her my arm.
“Then what's this?”
“I told you not to surprise me,” she said. “Besides, that was a long time ago. I don't do those things anymore. I've calmed down. I'm normal.”
I tried to walk around her.
“I have to go.”
She fell.
“Oh! I've fallen and I can't get up! If only there was a strong man to help me up. But who?”
I picked her up.
“Dammit. This is the last time we talk. Deal?”
She laughed.
“Now you know I can't do that.”
Someone screamed. It was Janice. Pepper gripped my arm. She brought her face close to me, looking like she wanted to kiss. I tore her off and ran away. Janice was in a stairwell, holding onto the railing. Woodrow had his foot on her chest. I charged and yelled “HEY!” and when he turned around I socked him in the jaw. He went tumbling down the stairs, and I heard many bones snapping like firecrackers. Janice hugged me. She was trembling and weeping and hyperventilating. Her breaths were hot against my neck.
“Pepper! It was Pepper Ann,” she said, words echoing in the stairwell. “She warned me to stay away from you. Or else.”
I believed her.
A nurse ran into the stairwell and gripped the sides of her head and shrieked.
Woodrow was on his belly, but his head had turned all the way around. And he was still alive and looked at us in absolute shock. His mouth moved, but no intelligible words came out...just a strange creaking sound, like a door slowly opening. Janice wanted to look too, but before she got the chance, I forced her face into my armpit and dragged her outside. I, on the other hand, could not take my eyes off Woodrow's weird situation. The sight of him made m
e sick to my stomach. That wasn't my thing. I didn't get off on death. You know how people passing car crashes just have to look? Never me. I just kept driving. Why pollute my mind with such spooky imagery? I didn't even have the stomach for the gross details on the local news shows – but this time, I couldn't look away. For a second, I questioned my own purity. It would take a lot of soccer games to wash his disturbing image out of my mind.
The boss, the main honcho in charge, Veronica – the warden – took Janice, whispering soothing things to her. Janice kept nodding at whatever she said. Her hair was a noisy mess. I gave Veronica a stern look.
“Pepper tried get Woodrow to push Janice down those stairs.”
Veronica always had these two Russian girls by her at all times, both dressed in white and wearing those little hats with the red cross. These nurses/bodyguards were huge – muscular – arms the size of legs, and it was like they had no necks.
“Bring her to me,” Veronica demanded.
The two nurses grunted and ran away.
Behind me, in the stairwell, a nurse said:
“He's finally dead!”
I leaned against a wall. My food was coming back up. I had seen too much. Janice was staring at me as Veronica spoke, and I wanted to hold Janice, hug her, tell her everything was going to be okay. Seeing her eyes made the sick feeling in my belly go away. I saw ourselves in a big house on a mountain, away from the city, from the world. Just the two of us alone and in love. That was it. She was the one, man. The one. Was she thinking the same of me?
I could hear Pepper screaming from somewhere, “Stay back, Russians! I will disembowel myself, I swear! I don't even care anymore! Blahhhhhh!” That scream went on for a whole minute. Then those beefy nurses were dragging Pepper kicking and screaming. I could barely understand them due to their thick accents, but apparently Pepper waved a steak knife at them and threatened to perform jigai. It was how women committed suicide in old Japan.
The cops and ambulance arrived, and the home was quiet again. Pepper's son, Kilt, who was some hotshot doctor, stood by her as the cops slapped on the cuffs. Janice and I walked outside and watched, arm-in-arm, as Pepper was put into the police car. Halfway in, she turned around and spat a glob of goo at Janice, “I'll kill ya, bitch! I'LL KILL YAAA!
The cop-lady said something nasty in Filipino and shoved her in. Pepper looked at me and smiled and licked her lips and banged her head against the window. It cracked. Pepper rubbed her tongue on the glass, drooling all over it. Did she think that was sexy? That I would find it attractive? I told Janice how her final exit was bound to happen. She had pushed too many buttons; made too many weird mistakes. Sometimes Pepper broke out of the home. The police always find her at a church in Diamond Head called Dresela's Hope, and she'd always, always, always be covered in chicken's blood, performing unusual rites with her other old friends. She claims they're just doing “– Art projects for Jesus! God help us, we're just old people! We don't understand what we're doing! Where am I? How did I get here?”
The cops bought it all the time and simply returned them to the home. The home's big boss had enough, so now – finally – Pepper's gone for good. I hoped she would rot in jail. I was desperate for it.
Janice and I watched until the police car went up and over the hill, just to be sure this was all real. A small part of me feared that she'd BURST from the car and fly around on her broom and come after us. It didn't happen. She was gone, baby, gone. I kissed the warm woman by my side.
That night I accompanied Janice in her bed.
I was a true gentleman, if I may say so.
Emphasis on gentle.
CHAPTER TWO
THE PILL
JANICE
Jackson told me all about Pepper: Her having a rich preacher-husband and a church-mansion, and her crazy doctor-son that once fused a dog and a cat. This was Kilt, and he ran a private dental practice in downtown Chinatown. I can't express how grateful I was that Pepper was taken away – GONE from the home. Things around the place were noticeably nicer – peacefuller, if that's even a word. More and more children populated the home as the days went on.
Later, I finally got to see that clown Jackson hates so much. And yes, he was annoying. He had a painted red smile, but his eyes were dead. He looked bored. He yawned when juggling his fire sticks, yawned when doing his Cup & Ball magic trick, yawned when he sawed his assistant in half, and even yawned when doing a handstand. His whole act took thirty minutes. He packed up his stuff, clicked his heels together, and saluted us. “Smell ya later, Folksies,” he yawned.
He walked out. Jackson picked up a baseball bat that was just there for some reason and made to charge after the clown. I held him back.
“Peace be with you.”
His nostrils flared. “I'm gonna kill him! Before his act started, I asked him politely to not call us that WORD. And he still did it! I'm gonna beat some nonsense out of him.”
I held him tighter.
“Let it go. It's important to let it go. Stress is a killer,” I said. “Just breathe it out.”
He did, and his breaths came out in little shakes. I kissed him.
“Remember, you can always choose peace. Be the master of your emotions. Don't let them take over you. Choose peace. It's just a choice. No one is holding a gun to your mind.”
Feeling much better, he asked if I'd like to do some morning exercises with him. I said I'd be delighted, so we learned some karate from Mr. Gobayashi. He was a small, old man, but don't let that fool you. He blocked all our kicks and punches, and even came close to flipping Jackson over, but the supervising nurse warned that tossing an old man by the wrist might not be such a wise idea.
We were the only ones exercising. The others watched a television set that dangled from the ceiling by a metal rod. It was for their own good. Too many fights started over who got to watch which channel. A commercial played, and a curious thing happened. The old people came alive. Their faces lit up. Many of them smiled.
SMILED, I tell you.
A Korean woman with no cliched accent jumped up from her wheelchair with a big grin on her face, jabbing her skinny finger at the TV. “Everyone, come quick!” she said.
“It's playing again!” said an old man in sailor clothes. He reminded me of Popeye.
“Move a'soid!” said an old British man.
“I want it! I want it!” said a woman on crutches with a huge bandage-wrap covering one side of her burnt face.
“My kids are buying THIS for me,” said another. She whispered it to a friend, as if afraid the others would hear and steal it from her.
But what was IT?
I joined the growing group that huddled under the TV. Everyone was looking up and reminded me of baby birds ready for mamma to feed'em all worms.
The commercial played classical music while Dr. Kilt blabbed.
“Are you old?” he asked. “Are you lame? Does life feel dead to you? Is there no excitement in your existence? Well, have I got the answer to remedy your boredom.”
An image of a white and red pill filled the screen.
“Get Kilt!” the doctor said.
The scene changed, and then I saw all these old people dancing in a hip hop club called Pannies – and they were really moving. It was amazing. Many danced like robots and were challenging the youth. It looked like a grand old time. They were all smiles. It was unbelievable. Was I looking at young people wearing masks of old people? Was it all real? The scene changed to an old woman at a park, spinning a basketball on her finger. Jackson pushed by me.
“It's Oja! She's on TV!”
I wondered, so THIS is what Dr. Kilt did to her. And then I wondered darker thoughts. Did they force the pill on her? Was she a test rat?
“First I was lost,” Oja said, “but now I am found. Yippie!”
She was all over the place – dunking basketballs, jumping over hurdles and lifting weights and hitting home runs and arm wrestling a bald man that had so much muscle. She SLAMMED his arm down
and broke the table in two and won the match. The man shouted in pain and held his elbow and ran off, weeping. Oja jumped up, eyes to Heaven, mouth drooling. “I feel so young!” she said and punched through a wall. She pulled out a glass mug of piss-colored beer and drank. “I am invigorated!” she yelled. As youthful as she seemed...I found it odd that her voice was still old and crackly. The scene switched to a dojo, and, dressed in a karate uniform, Oja flipped over a young Asian man disguised as a robber.
Everyone around me cheered. At the end of the commercial, Oja gave the camera the thumbs up.
“Get Kilt!” she said.
And then she shrieked something unintelligible and dove her forehead through a stack of bricks. Burning bricks. She brought her hands together in prayer and bowed to the camera. There was no blood. Everyone clapped and hollered and stomped their feet, thanking Jesus and Buddha. They got on their cell phones and begged their kids to buy them this Kilt-thing. Some of the old people flat out demanded their kids buy them the energy pill. People paced all around the place with their phones glued to their greasy ears, many crying, pleading, mumbling. Some things I overheard: “You don't love me anymore!” “I hate you!” “I love you!” “Screw you!” “Thank you!” “You owe me!” “You came out of me!” and “I'll pay you back later.” Hanna Jert, a black woman in a white wheelchair, just sat there in a trance, eyes fixed to the screen. A nurse tried to snap her out of it – snapped her fingers in front of Hanna's face – but it was no good. The nurse even touched the old woman's eyeball. Nothing happened. Hanna wasn't smiling, but she did start nodding over and over again.
Someone in the room was playing the piccolo. People danced. All were merry.
I thought about Kilt all night while in bed, tossing and turning. My pillow was covered in sweat. I wanted some Kilt. Just a little sample. Just to see if it worked. I imagined myself running around and doing whatever I wanted that my body currently refused to do. I have to be honest. I was excited. An irritating part of me whined that I was betraying everything I worked for – all those hours of weight training for nothing, miles of jogging for nothing, healthy eating for nothing – all easily replaced by a big pill. And it was pretty big. The size of a double A battery, and you had to swallow it whole. No cutting it up. That was the rule. That, and don't give it to children 79 years old or younger.