Haunted

  With a nice word to say for every patient. A comment about what a nice collection of get-well cards you've arranged on the dresser. What nice African violets you grow in pots on your windowsill.

  Mr. Whittier loves these angel women.

  Always, for Mr. Whittier, the spotted, bald old man at the end of the hall, they say: What nice black-light, butt-rock concert posters he has taped above his bed. What a colorful skateboard he has propped beside the door.

  Old Mr. Whittier, bug-eyed dwarf Mr. Whittier, he asks, “What's shaking, ladies?”

  And the angels, they laugh.

  At this old man who still plays at being so young. It's so sweet, his being so young at heart.

  Sweet, goofy Mr. Whittier with his Internet surfing and snowboarder magazines. His CDs of hip-hop music. A brimmed cap, turned around backward on his head. Just like a high-school kid.

  An ancient version of their own teenagers in school. They can't not flirt back. They can't not like him a little, with his spotted, backward-capped head between earphones, listening to head-banger rock so loud it leaks out.

  Mr. Whittier in the hallway, parked in his wheelchair with one hand open, palm-up, he says, “Gimme five . . .”

  And all the volunteer ladies slap his hand as they walk past.

  Yes, please. That's how the angels want to turn ninety years old: Still with-it. Still hip to new trends. Not fossilized, the way they feel now . . .

  In so many ways, this old man seems younger than any of the volunteers in their thirties or forties. These middle-aged angels a half or a third his age.

  Mr. Whittier with his fingernails painted black. A silver ring looped through one honking-big, old-man nostril. Around his ankle, a tattoo of barbed wire shows above his cardboard bedroom slipper.

  A clunky skull-face ring rattles loose around one stiff, little-stick finger.

  Mr. Whittier blinking his milky-cataract eyes, saying, “How about you be my date for the high-school prom . . . ?”

  All the angels, they blush. Giggling at this safe, funny old man. They sit on his wheelchair lap, their muscle-toned, personal-trained thighs perched on his sharp, bony knees.

  It's only normal that, someday, an angel will gush. To the head nurse or an orderly, a volunteer will gush about what a wonderful youthful spirit Mr. Whittier has. How he's still so full of life.

  At that, the nurse will look back, eyes not blinking, mouth open a moment, quiet a moment, before the nurse says, “Of course he acts young . . .”

  The angel says, “We should all stay so full of life.”

  So filled with high spirits. Such pep. So perky.

  Mr. Whittier is just so inspirational. They say that a lot.

  These angels of mercy. These angels of charity.

  Those foolish, foolish angels.

  And the nurse or orderly will say, “Most of us did . . . have that kind of pep.” Walking away, the nurse will say, “When we were his age.”

  He's not old.

  Here's how the truth always leaks out.

  Mr. Whittier, he suffers from progeria. The truth is, he's eighteen years old, a teenager about to die of old age.

  One out of eight million kids develops Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome. A genetic defect in the protein lamin A will make their cells fall apart. Aging them at seven times the normal rate. Making teenaged Mr. Whittier, with his crowded teeth and big ears, his veined skull and bulging eyes, making his body 126 years old.

  “You could say . . . ,” he always tells the angels, waving away their concern with one wrinkled hand, “you could say I'm aging in dog years,”

  In another year, he'll be dead of heart disease. Of old age, before he's twenty.

  After this, the angel doesn't turn up for a while. The truth is, it's just too sad. Here's a kid, maybe younger than one of her own teenagers, dying alone in a nursing home. This kid, still so full of life and reaching out for help, to the only people around—to her—before it's too late.

  This is too much.

  Still, every yoga class, every PTA meeting, each time she looks at a teenager, this angel wants to cry.

  She has to do something.

  So she goes back, with her smile toned down a little. She tells him, “I understand.”

  She smuggles in a pizza. A new video game. She says, “Make a wish, and I'll help make it come true.”

  This angel, she wheels him out a fire exit for a day riding rollercoasters. Or hanging out at the mall. This teenaged geezer and a beautiful woman, old enough to be his mother. She lets him slaughter her at paintball, the colors wrecking her hair. His wheelchair. She takes a dive at laser tag. She half carries his wrinkled half-naked carcass to the top of a waterslide, again and again, all of one hot, sunny afternoon.

  Because he's never been high, the angel steals dope from her kid's stash box and teaches Mr. Whittier how to use a bong. They talk. Eat potato chips.

  The angel, she says her husband has become his career. Her kids are growing away from her. Their family is falling apart.

  Mr. W., he says his own folks, they couldn't cope. They have four other kids to raise. It's the only way they could afford the nursing home, by making him a ward of the court. After that, they'd show up and visit less and less.

  And telling that, with some soft guitar ballad playing, Mr. W. will start to cry.

  The one wish he wanted most was to love someone. To really make love. Not die a virgin.

  Right then, the tears still rolling down from his stoner-red eyes, he'd say, “Please . . .”

  This wrinkled old kid, he'd sniff and say, “Please, stop calling me Mister.”

  The angel stroking his bald, spotted head, he'd tell her, “My name is Brandon.”

  And he'd wait.

  And she'd say it:

  Brandon.

  Of course, after that, they'd fuck.

  Her, gentle and patient. The Madonna and the whore. Her long, yoga-trained legs spread to this naked, wrinkled goblin.

  Her, the altar and the sacrifice.

  Never as beautiful as she looked, next to his spotted, veined old skin. Never as powerful as she felt, as he drooled and trembled over her.

  And, damn—for a virgin—if he didn't take his own sweet time. He'd started missionary-style, then had one of her legs in the air, splitting the reed. Then both her feet, gripped tight around the ankles and framing his panting face.

  Thank God for the yoga.

  Viagra-hard, he rode her on all fours, doggy-style, even taking himself out and poking at her ass until she said to stop. She was sore and stoned, and as he bent her legs to force her feet up, behind her head, by then her bright, fake angel's smile had come back.

  After all that, he came. In her eyes. In her hair. He asked her for a cigarette she didn't have. Taking the bong off the floor beside the bed, he torched another bowl and didn't offer her a hit.

  The angel, she got dressed and tucked her kid's bong under her coat. She knotted a scarf around her sticky hair and started to leave.

  Behind her, as she opened the door to the hallway, Mr. Whittier was saying, “You know, I ain't ever had a blow job before, neither . . .”

  As she stepped out of the room, he was laughing. Laughing.

  After that, she'd be driving, and her cell phone would ring. It would be Whittier suggesting bondage, better drugs, blow jobs. And when the angel finally told him, “I can't . . .”

  “Brandon . . .” he'd tell her. “The name's Brandon.”

  Brandon, she'd say. She couldn't see him, not anymore.

  It's then he'd tell her—he lied. About his age.

  Over the phone, she'd say, “You don't have progeria?”

  And Brandon Whittier would say, “I'm not eighteen years old.”

  He wasn't eighteen, and he had the birth certificate to prove it. He was thirteen years old. Now a victim of statutory rape.

  But, for enough cash money, he wouldn't squeal to the cops. Ten grand, and she wouldn't suffer through an ugly courtroom drama. F
ront-page headlines. All her lifetime of good works and investments reduced to nothing. All for a quick fuck with a little kid. Worse than nothing—her the pedophile, now a sex criminal who would need to register her whereabouts for the rest of her life. Maybe get divorced and lose her kids. Sex with a minor carried a mandatory five-year prison sentence.

  On the other hand, in another year he'd be dead of old age. Ten grand was a small price to pay for the rest of her life.

  Ten grand and maybe just one little knob job for old times' sake . . .

  So of course she paid. They all paid. All the volunteers. The angels.

  None of them ever went back to the old-folks' home, so they never met each other. To each angel, she was the only one. Really, there were a dozen or more.

  And the money? It just kept piling up. Until Mr. Whittier was too old and tired and bored to just fuck.

  “Look at the stains in the lobby carpet,” he said. “See how those stains have arms and legs?”

  The same as the volunteer ladies, we were trapped by a boy in the body of an old man. A thirteen-year-old kid dying of old age. The part about his family abandoning him, that much was true. But Brandon Whittier was no longer dying ignored and alone.

  And, the same way he'd bagged one angel after another, this wasn't his first experiment. We weren't his first batch of guinea pigs. And—until one of those stains came back to haunt him—he told us, we would not be his last.

  7

  Morning starts with a woman yelling. The woman's voice, the shouting, is Sister Vigilante. Between each shout, you can hear the butt of a fist pound on wood. You can hear a wooden door boom and bounce in its frame. Then the yelling again.

  Sister Vigilante yells, “Hey, Whittier!” Sister Vigilante shouts, “You're late with the fucking sunrise . . . !”

  Then the fist, pounding.

  Outside our rooms, our backstage dressing rooms, the hallway is dark. Beyond that, the stage and auditorium are dark. Pitch-dark except for the ghost light.

  We're each getting up, grabbing some clothes, not sure if we've been asleep an hour or a night.

  The ghost light is a single bare bulb on a pole that stands center stage. Tradition says it keeps any ghost from moving in when a theater is empty and dark.

  In theaters before electricity, Mr. Whittier would say, the ghost light acted as a pressure-relief valve. It would flare and burn brighter, to keep the place from exploding if there was a surge in the gas lines.

  Either way, the ghost light meant good luck.

  Until this morning.

  First it's the yelling that wakes us. Then it's the smell.

  Here's the sweet smell of the black muck Lady Baglady might find slumming in the bottom of a Dumpster. It's the smell of a garbage truck's gummy, sticky back mouth. The smell of swallowed dog mess and old meat. Chewed and swallowed and packed tight together. The smell of old potatoes melting into a black puddle under the kitchen sink.

  Holding our breath, trying not to smell, we're feeling our way out our doors and down the black hallway, through the dark, toward all the yelling.

  Here, night and day are a matter of opinion. Until now, we just agreed to trust Mr. Whittier. Without him, whether it's a.m. or p.m. is a matter for debate. No light comes from the outside. No telephone signals. No sounds.

  Still pounding the door, Sister Vigilante shouts, “Civil dawn was eight minutes ago!”

  No, a theater is built to exclude the outside reality and allow actors to build their own. The walls are double layers of concrete with sawdust packed between them. So no police siren or subway rumble can wreck the spell of someone's fake death onstage. No car alarms or jackhammer can turn a romantic kiss into a belly laugh.

  Each sunset is just when Mr. Whittier looks at his watch and says good night. He climbs up to the projection booth and throws the breakers, blacking out the lights in the lobby, the foyers, the salons, then the galleries and lounges. The darkness herds us toward the main auditorium. This twilight, it falls room by room until the only light left is in the dressing rooms, backstage. There, each of us sleeps. Each room with one bed, one bathroom, a shower, and a toilet. Room enough for one person and one suitcase. Or wicker hamper. Or cardboard box.

  Morning is when we hear Mr. Whittier in the hallway outside our rooms, shouting good morning. A new day is when the lights come back on.

  Until this morning.

  Sister Vigilante shouts, “This is a law of nature you're violating . . .”

  Here, with no windows or daylight, the Duke of Vandals says we could be trapped in an Italian Renaissance space station. We could be deep underwater in an ancient Mayan submarine. Or what the Duke calls a Louis XV coal mine or bomb shelter.

  Here, in the middle of some city, inches away from the millions of people walking and working and eating hot dogs, we're cut off.

  Here, anything that looks like a window, draped with velvet and tapestry, or fitted with stained glass, it's fake. It's a mirror. Or the dim sunlight behind the stained glass is lightbulbs small enough to make it always dusk in the tall arched windows of the Gothic smoking room.

  We still hunt for ways out. We still stand at the locked doors and scream for help. Just not too hard or too loud. Not until our story would make a good movie. Until each of us becomes a character skinny enough for a movie star to play.

  A story to save us from all the stories of our past.

  In the hallway outside Mr. Whittier's dressing room, Sister Vigilante slams a fist on the door, shouting, “Hey, Whittier! You got a lot to answer for this morning,” and you can see the Sister's breath puffing steam with every word.

  The sun hasn't come up.

  The air is cold and stinks.

  The food is gone.

  The rest of us, together, we tell Sister Vigilante: Shush. People outside might hear and come to our rescue.

  A lock clicks, and the dressing-room door swings open to show Mrs. Clark in her stretched terry-cloth bathrobe. Her eyelids red and half open, she steps out, into the hallways, and shuts the door behind her back.

  “Listen, lady,” Sister Vigilante says. “You need to treat your hostages better.”

  The Duke of Vandals stands beside her. The same Duke of Vandals who went to the basement last night and sawed a bread knife through all the wires feeding into the furnace blower.

  Mrs. Clark rubs her eyes with one hand.

  From behind his camera, Agent Tattletale says, “Do you realize what time it is?”

  Into the Earl of Slander's tape recorder, Comrade Snarky says, “Do you know there's no hot water?”

  Comrade Snarky, the one who traced the copper pipes along the basement ceiling, following them back to the boiler for heating water, where she shut off the gas. She should know. She pried the handle off the gas valve and dropped the handle through a drain in the concrete floor.

  “We're going on strike,” skinny Saint Gut-Free says. “We're not writing any brilliant, amazing Frankenstein shit unless we get some heat.”

  This morning: No heat. No hot water. No food.

  “Listen, lady,” the Missing Link says. His beard almost scours Mrs. Clark in the forehead, he stands so close in the narrow hallway outside the dressing rooms. He slides the fingers of one hand under the lapel of her bathrobe. Leaning to press her chest flat with his, the Missing Link's hand makes a fist, and he bends his elbow to lift her off the floor by that fistful of flannel.

  Mrs. Clark, her slipper feet kicking in air, her hands grabbing around the hairy wrist that holds her, her eyes bug out, driving her head backward until her hair hits the closed door. Her head hits the door with a boom.

  Shaking her in his fist, the Missing Link says, “You tell old man Whittier he needs to get us some food. And get us some heat. Or get us out of here—now.”

  Us: the innocent victims of that oversleeping, evil, kidnapping madman.

  In the blue velvet lobby, we'll have nothing for breakfast.

  Bags holding anything made with liver, they were pin
cushioned with ten or fifteen holes. Everyone had to punch that ballot.

  Out in the lobby, every silver Mylar pillow, it's gone flat. All of us with the same idea.

  Even with the furnace not working, the air already cold, the food's gone bad.

  “We need to wrap him,” Mrs. Clark says. To wrap him and carry the body to the deepest subbasement with Lady Baglady.

  “That smell,” she says, “it's not the food.”

  We don't ask the details of how he died.

  It's better Mr. Whittier died offstage. This way leaves us to script the worst: His eyes rolling to watch his belly swell bigger and bigger in the night, until he can't see his feet. Until some membrane or muscle splits, inside, and he feels the rush of warm food flood against his lungs. Against his liver and heart. Next, he'd feel the chills of shock. The gray hair on his chest would turn swampy with cold sweat. His face, running with sweat. His arms and legs shake with the cold. The first signs of coma.

  No one will believe Mrs. Clark, now that she's the new villain. Our new evil supervixen oppressor.

  No, we get to stage this scene. We'll have him screaming with delirium. Mr. Whittier will be bleached pale and hiding behind his spread fingers, saying the devil is after him. He'll be screaming for help.

  He'll lapse into his coma. And die.

  Saint Gut-Free with his complicated words about the peritoneum, the duodenum, the esophagus, he'll know the official term for what went wrong.

  In our version, we'll kneel at Whittier's bedside, to pray for him. Poor, innocent us, starving and trapped here but still praying for our devil's eternal soul. Then a soft-focus dissolve and toss to commercial.

  That's a scene from a hit movie. A scene with Emmy nomination written all over it.

  “That's the nicest thing about dead people,” says the Baroness Frostbite, putting lipstick on top of her lipstick. “They can't correct you.”

  Still, a good story means no heat. Slow starvation means no breakfast. Dirty clothes. Maybe we're not as brainy-smart as Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, but we can tolerate some shit to make our story work.

  Mr. Whittier, our old, dead monster.

  Mrs. Clark, our new monster.

  “Today,” the Matchmaker says, “is going to be a long, long day.”