Aspic Salad (148)

PSI-4

“Is it a boy or a girl?” the whispered voice said.

An impatient sigh and another whisper, “Jenny, it’s a boy. He had pants and a tie.”

“Girls can have pants and a tie. It’s just clothes. He doesn’t have a moustache.”

This doesn’t seem right, Mordecai thought hazily, but he didn’t want to wake up enough to figure out why. There was knowledge and sensation waiting at the edge of consciousness that he was pretty sure he wouldn’t like. Just now, all he knew was he was horizontal on a soft object and he didn’t want to move.

This is a couch.

Okay. Super. You’re a smart guy. Sleep now.

…but I don’t have a couch.

“Johnny and Rob don’t have moustaches.”

“Johnny’s face is messed up, it would look weird. And Rob likes Mom’s soap operas.” A pause. “Tommy, are we sure Rob is a boy?”

“I dunno, but Mom likes him better than Ed.”

“It’s because of the soap operas,” Jenny’s whisper said firmly.

There was something over him. It was heavy and his arm… His right arm must’ve been stuck against the back of the couch, because…

Listen, can you feel that? Like someone left an engine running and it’s been going on so long that’s the only reason you don’t notice it anymore? That is not a good feeling. I can promise you right now you are not going to like waking up no matter where your goddamn arm is, so why don’t you give it a rest?

…because I know I do not have a couch.

“Johnny’s things fit him, I think we should dress him up,” Jenny’s voice said.

Whoa. Okay. Wait. Hang on…

“Jenny, you don’t need to dress up every person who comes into this house! Just because Rob…”

“Erik lets me!”

“No he doesn’t!”

“Yes he does! Hats and shoes are okay, he just won’t let me take off his pants!”

Why in every god’s name has Hyacinth abandoned me on a couch with tiny children who want to…

Just then the engine turned over and he realized it would’ve been much smarter of him to pretend he had a couch.

“Oh…” he said. His throat felt choked with splinters, as if he’d been screaming.

No. Coughing. He did so again weakly. He felt something pinch in his side but he didn’t know if that was a broken lung or a broken rib. Either way, he didn’t want to break anything else. He tried to breathe evenly, but it was so hard. Every part of him resisted. His throat was splintered and his mouth was full of sawdust. And blood.

“Water,” he said. He coughed. Only a little, but the pinch was much harder and everything swam away for an instant before solidifying, like his brain was one of those weird aspic salads Calliope liked drawing and someone had just given it a swat.

Consciousness is an aspic salad. I’ll have to remember that. She’d like that. That sounds like something she’d say…

He heard a faucet running. He was vaguely aware they did not have running water in Hyacinth’s house.

You know what, though? Screw it.

It was wobbling again, but someone put something hard and damp in his hand, in his left hand, and that firmed it up. He rolled forward painfully onto his elbow and drank and drank.

“Mister, do you need more cough syrup?”

“I’m not supposed to,” he said automatically. He blinked and looked around. The empty glass slipped from his fingers and fell onto the blanketed surface of the couch.

This is not my house. But I guess I knew that, didn’t I?

There was only a single lamp burning; it had a frosted glass shade and it was turned low. The couch was a three-seater with padded arms which were just slightly too high to make a comfortable rest for a human head. A white blanket with a nubbly weave had been thrown over the whole thing in an apparent attempt to protect it. He had already ruined this blanket with several large, obvious stains, but he hoped the couch itself might be okay. Just in front of him there was a coffee table of the familiar species upon which one must not rest one’s feet. It had a lace doily and a vase on it. In the shadowy distance, there was a high-backed chair, a dinette set, some kitchen counters and a window with lamplight filtering past sheer curtains.

There was a dark-skinned child with huge, dark eyes like a sentimental thrift store painting standing to either side of the coffee table and looking concerned at him. A boy and a girl. A matched set, but the boy was taller. Apparently a rudimentary attempt to keep the composition interesting. They were wearing white clothing that might’ve been pajamas.

On the wall above the couch was a framed icon of a benignly-smiling woman with the longest nose he had ever seen.

“Is that Dayashri?” he asked the thrift-store children.

“Yeah,” the boy said. “We like her.”

“She’s a very nice god,” Mordecai said. “She tries very hard.” He attempted to clear his throat and made a weak little moan. He fell back against the couch and the engine, which had never really stopped running, cranked up to a roar. “Ah!” His arm. It was his arm. He couldn’t move his arm. It was bound against him somehow, but not stiff enough to keep it still when he jostled it.

The girl put her hand over his mouth. He winced and she took it away. “You hafta be quiet,” she whispered. “Mom thinks we’re asleep. She’s downstairs. She doesn’t like you.”

“Okay,” he said hoarsely, but a bit softer. “Is she mad about the couch?”

The boy grinned. “She’s pissed about the couch, but Johnny said we had to put you somewhere.”

“Johnny…?” That pinged against a memory like a billiard ball, but didn’t quite knock it into the pocket. “Is he here?”

“No, he took Mr. Patel’s truck to go get that lady who made him cry,” the girl said. “He was gonna take you, but that didn’t work. We thought you were gonna die. We gave you that good cough syrup Mr. Patel keeps behind the counter. Don’t you remember?”

“I’m trying. I… I have a head injury.”

They were banging his head on the pavement, that’s why… Why were they banging his head on the pavement?

“Erik said you got gold lungs,” the girl said. “That’s why.”

“I have those too. I… Oh, gods, is Erik…?” He tried to stand, failed miserably and knocked his wounded arm against the couch again. He gasped, coughed, stifled it, and sipped slow, shuddering breaths while the pain ran through his body like a hyperactive two-year-old, knocking things over.

Oh, gods. Stop. Okay. Okay. Stop. Stop. Please just stop now. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Stop… 

It was a spoiled child; it wouldn’t listen and he was afraid to yell at it.

Diane used to be able to fix things like this. Oh, gods, he missed her.

It faded slowly like a cooling wire. But the engine was still running and he knew it wouldn’t take much to gun it again.

I can’t cough anymore. I can’t. I physically can’t.

“Children?” he said faintly. “I… I need that cough syrup, okay? Thanks.”

He drank out of the bottle. The taste was cloying and familiar, friendly even.

Oh, yeah. That’s the stuff I’m not supposed to have.

He shut his eyes and tipped back his head. Reality was fading in and out like some jackass was playing with the gain. Breathe. Don’t go back to sleep. I have stuff I need to do, don’t go back to sleep.

But I’m really tired. Can’t someone else do this?

No. You know how that goes.

“Mister…?”

“Did you say Erik was here, or did he go with John?” he managed, with minimal distortion. His teeth felt loose. He guessed that was probably also because they’d been banging his head on the pavement.

He almost remembered, but that part could come when it was ready. He was through pushing things. It hurt.

“He’s asleep,” the boy said. “In the chair.” He pointed.

“We gave him cough syrup too,” the girl said. “He was super scared, but Johnny had to go in case you were gonna die.”

There was a curled shape in the high-backed chair, with the ragged fringe of a blanket dangling off it.

Mordecai breathed a low sigh. It didn’t hurt too badly. “Okay,” he said. “Now I need to use your bathroom or else your mom is going to be even more mad at me about this couch.”

———

It wasn’t far. It was difficult but not far. He could see the door from the couch. They helped him walk. He could’ve used a bit more support, but the guidance alone was badly needed. He didn’t want to break anything. Not in the house or in himself.

The room was red, gold and purple. And sparkly. He was pretty sure it was sparkly and that wasn’t the head injury. Like, there were beads. Or sequins.

And there was, thank gods, a real toilet with a seat on it.

He sat on it, he was no hero, then he looked up to make sure he’d closed the door behind him.

He had, and there was more of that sparkly stuff between him and it. Maybe a beaded curtain or a sheer drape.

“Kids?” he said. “I need you to talk to me, because I keep passing out and if I stop answering I may be unconscious with my head in your toilet, okay?”

There was giggling on the other side of the door, “Okay!”

He attempted to take down his trousers. This was rather more easy than it should have been, as these were not his trousers. They were comparatively uncomplicated, made of pale fabric with an elastic waist. “Um, kids?” he called out. “Have you taken my pants?” He thought he remembered the girl saying something about that…

The boy answered, “No, that was Johnny!”

“You had upchuck and garbage juice and blood on you,” the girl said. “And mom wouldn’t quit yelling about the couch.”

“I… I have evidence of this. Yes.” John had left him his underwear, which was in a pitiful condition, but thankfully upchuck free. It also appeared he had refrained from voiding himself, which would explain why he needed to go now. “This is also not my shirt,” he noted. It was cinched tightly around him, over what he had to assume was his shirt, with the right arm empty and dangling and the body of it making a half-assed sling that had been secured with a belt. “Did John do all this with your mother yelling at him about the couch?”

“And Erik was crying,” the girl said.

“Wow,” Mordecai said. “You’d really think I’d remember something like that!” He shut his eyes and tried to push aside just how goddamn humiliating this situation was so he could go and have it over with.

“You were coughing pretty good!” the boy told him.

“You threw up on our newspapers!” the girl said.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I’ll pay you for them.”

“It’s okay, we get new ones in the morning!” the girl said.

“Okay,” he said. Come on, he told himself. He was aware there were certain systems that tended to shut down in an emergency, but that was over and he really needed things to start moving again. Not just because he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up and come back here later if he couldn’t pee now.

He looked down at himself and thought, Catheter, very sternly. As if his bladder might be psychic and responsive to threats. He woke up with one of those after he almost got gassed to death during the siege. He did not enjoy draining into a bag like a steak in some fucked up marinade and above all else he did not want Hyacinth to be the person arranging him for the privilege.

“Mister, did you fall in?” the boy asked.

“No, I…” He smiled and breathed a weak sigh, relieved. “I’m just shy, apparently. I’m okay. Do you guys do your own decorating?” He felt like he was peeing in a cabaret. Which he supposed was not out of character for some of those places.

“I picked out the little monkey with our toothbrushes in him!” the girl said.

“He is lovely!” Mordecai said. The object was sitting on the edge of the sink with four toothbrushes sticking out of its head. It appeared inexplicably pleased about this. He set it aside so he wouldn’t knock it over while attempting to clean himself up.

There was a mirror with a painted gold frame above the sink. He winced back from his reflection, then leaned in closer to examine it with morbid fascination.

Honestly, he’d looked worse. It was hard to quantify how, but when he’d caught glimpses of himself in the mirrors at the hotel, on several occasions he’d screamed. This wasn’t screaming bad. More like… More like aw, that’s a real shame bad. He could tell that was supposed to be a human being in there, not a sunken-eyed zombie with the flesh only clinging to its skull in strings.

He waved at the human being in the mirror and it waved back in tandem, confirming the state of things.

Both eyes were swollen and darkening with bruises beneath. His lips were cracked and split, with dried blood running over them from his nose and gathering in the corners of his mouth. There was a gash with bruised flesh around it in his forehead, and another in his cheek. Blood had run out of one of his ears, but it had already dried too. His nose was a total loss. He didn’t have the most elegant model in the first place, you might call it ‘noble’ at best, but the redesign looked like a car crash. He felt it with careful fingers and turned sideways to examine it in profile.

Don’t heal this way, he told it, as he had attempted to intimidate his bladder. I don’t care how you look, but I want to be able to breathe through you again, so don’t get any ideas. And that goes for you too, he told his arm.

They liked to say colored people were made out of rubber. ‘They’ were obviously idiots, but there was a kernel of truth in there. Colored people rarely scarred, and when they took damage they healed fast. That was great for simple cuts and bruises, but fractures needed to be set. When your bones started trying to knit themselves back together within minutes rather than hours or days, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room — so to speak. If you left it more than an hour or so you were running a risk of what his parents had called ‘freeze,’ and what Hyacinth had told him was a ‘soft callus.’ Not bone, but almost bone, and if you wanted to move the fragments into place properly you had to break it and it got very annoyed about that and sometimes shot little chunks of itself into your bloodstream that went up to your brain and killed you.

He leaned over the sink and looked into his bloodshot eyes. “So I can remember that thing about how my bones are trying to murder me, but not what the hell movie we saw this afternoon or who was holding that blanket over me and banging my head on the pavement. Head injuries are hilarious.”

“Are you okay in there, Mister?” the boy said.

“No, not really,” Mordecai said. He was looking for something and he wasn’t quite sure what. He’d know it when he saw it but he wasn’t seeing it. “Um… Kids, there’s not any paper in this bathroom.”

The girl said, “Ew.”

The boy said, “Use the bodna.”

“I think I either don’t know what that word means or I’ve forgotten it.”

“It looks like a teapot,” the boy said. “You pour water on your hand.”

“Ah.” Mordecai nodded, regretted it, and stopped. “No, I don’t need that. I’ve got blood all over me and if I try to clean up with these nice towels your mom’s going to kill me. I need something I can throw away.”

“Hang on,” the boy said.

He staggered back to the mirror, opened his mouth and had a look at his teeth. The chipped ones in front from the pavement were already loose and one was missing. He hoped he spat it out somewhere; the idea that he’d swallowed it made him feel sick.

Colored people also did teeth quickly. Erik’s baby teeth had all gone over the course of three months just after he turned six, and his current set — save a few he’d lost when he hurt his head and incisor he knocked out running into a door after he held Auntie Enora — had only needed a couple weeks more to finish coming in. This had, of course, terrified the poor kid, who had gotten his idea of how people were supposed to lose baby teeth from Soup and Maggie — who were still losing their baby teeth.

He pinched a damaged tooth between thumb and forefinger and pulled. He didn’t want to swallow these ones. There was very little blood and no root at all, not like those teeth Milo bought from a store.

Oh, and I remember going downstairs to grab a couple sticks of butter and finding a box of human teeth smiling up at me from the worktable. I vividly remember that. Stupid head injury. What good are you?

He put the tooth in the sink, he didn’t like to throw it in the toilet, and went after another one.

Colored teeth were creepy.

They are not creepy, they’re just different, he told himself.

They’re not even different, he insisted as he yanked out a third. “White people teeth are different, that’s what. Colored teeth are…” There went a fourth. “…perfectly normal teeth!”

He gazed at a set of five cracked white teeth in a puddle of red blood arranged artfully around the drain of the sink. He didn’t feel right putting them down the drain either. Drains were disgusting. He’d had those teeth in his mouth a couple seconds ago! He knew what they tasted like!

Does… Does anyone know what teeth taste like?

“Okay, all teeth are creepy,” he allowed. “And eyeballs.”

“Hey, Mister?” There was a knock on the door and it popped open a crack. A brown roll of paper towels entered the bathroom, guided by a slightly darker and more reddish brown hand. It looked like the same brand they used back at the house, but these were the perforated kind.

“Fancy,” Mordecai said. He accepted the roll and he remembered not to smile. “Do you kids have anywhere I can put my teeth?” he asked.

“You have dentures?” the boy said.

“No,” Mordecai said.

———

There was a wastebasket where he felt comfortable leaving his teeth, wrapped politely in a paper towel. Then they walked him back to the couch and helped him sit down. The engine was still grinding away and the cough syrup was already starting to back off. He didn’t even get a decent high off of it, just a looming incoherence that he suspected was either concussion or exhaustion.

“Okay,” he said. “When Hyacinth gets here… Is somebody getting Hyacinth?”

“Yes,” the girl said. “Johnny.”

“I should know who that is but I don’t right now,” Mordecai said. He put his hand to his head and slumped back against the couch. “If I’m not making any sense later, please tell her I have taken an absolutely inhuman amount of cough syrup and show her the bottle. And I will not be requiring a catheter. And I have a head injury — she’ll work it out. Please tell Erik I’m okay and don’t let him have any more of that unless he really needs it and I put your toothbrush monkey on the back of the toilet in case you’re missing him later. Do not dress me up. I’m sorry I threw up on your newspapers.” He closed his eyes and slumped slowly and irrevocably to one side. “Consciousness is an aspic salad,” he said.

It dissolved.

———

Hyacinth was bouncing through the dark streets in a truck with one functioning headlight, sharing a bench seat with an eighteen-year-old barely-legal driver who was wearing one of Milo’s shirts. It didn’t fit him, he had buttoned it wrong, and she was beginning to regret not having more forcefully argued for taking his place behind the wheel, despite not being technically authorized on paper. (“It barely works, the heater is hooked up to the exhaust, you have to pop the clutch every time you hit the brake and the blinker engages when you lean too far to the left… Look, I can’t explain it, would you please just let me drive it?”)

She was also trying to perform a differential diagnosis of a patient with multiple injuries whom she hadn’t examined or even seen yet. This was undoubtedly adding to the young man’s stress, but she didn’t like to leave it until she got there. Neither of them were entirely sure her patient was going to be alive when she got there.

“…I really need you to help me nail this down. ‘Scary amounts of blood’ is not helpful. This is a scary situation. You are scared. We’re all scared. Are we talking cups or teaspoons or like a gallon jug?”

“I don’t know! It was all over the newspapers!”

Hyacinth considered that, with both hands braced against the dash in lieu of a seatbelt. There was only a ragged stub of fabric between the door and the leaky upholstery to prove that someone had once given a thought to safety in the construction of this machine. Maybe half a thought. It was no wonder Mordecai couldn’t handle it. He would’ve been screaming to get out within two minutes even without a broken arm. “Could you still read the headlines?” she asked.

“What?” He turned to look at her. She got a brief glimpse of dark hair and huge eyes with dim light reflecting in them and she heard the noise of the blinker engaging before he turned back around and glued his gaze to the street like he was expecting an important plot twist instead of just an unwary pedestrian. He addressed the steering wheel, with both hands clenched on it. “I don’t know! Yes, I guess so. Something about Iliodarian tariffs! Who the hell cares?”

“How about the articles?”

“Miss Hyacinth, if you really need to know about the tariffs, I’m sure the ones at the bottom of the stack are fine!”

“So it wasn’t dripping off on the floor or anything?”

“Oh, he threw up on the floor too! Don’t worry!”

“Okay. Well, I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with blood that he swallowed. Which is something that happens occasionally when people are hitting you in the face.”

He engaged the brake, and probably the clutch, but nevertheless when he attempted to change gears there was a horrible grinding sound and the truck’s convulsions sprang the glove compartment open and hit her in the shins. Her knees were already practically up to her chin because there was a violin case where her legs were supposed to go. “Does it make any difference?” he said.

She nudged the little door closed and the latch tenuously engaged. “He might not be dead, I guess,” she said. The truck jerked backwards. She whipped her head around and realized with horror that he was attempting to parallel park this monstrosity. The front window of Herald Street News with its red elephant logo was visible through the rear window of the truck. “John…?” She swatted his hand off the gearshift. The knob was shaped like an elephant’s head. “John!”

“Huh?”

She leaned forward and spoke evenly, “Leave it and I’ll pay for it if you get a ticket.”

“Okay,” he said.

She had already barreled out of the door and was heading for the store with her doctor bag in tow. She left her purse on the seat. The lights were on downstairs and blazing through the window. A pacing, dark-haired woman in a green dress was also visible.

Mom’s gonna yell, he thought belatedly. He abandoned the truck with the keys in it (you had to hold it halfway between third and reverse to start it, anyway; it was like a combination lock), collected Hyacinth’s purse for her, and ran.

Mom was already yelling. She was darting a finger at Hyacinth with a furious expression and yelling, “Get that man out of my house! People are trying to kill him! I have children! I can’t have dangerous magicians in my house ruining the furniture, just because…”

Hyacinth was, and he should’ve realized this, ignoring it. She appeared to be looking for something. She turned and said, very politely under the circumstances, “Where are your stairs, please, John?”

“In the back,” he said. He ducked past his mother and pulled the beaded curtain aside.

“Ah, thanks very much,” Hyacinth said. She vaulted up them two at a time.

Gita Green-Tara grabbed her recalcitrant son by the shoulder and pinned him up against the doorframe so he couldn’t escape likewise. “You have to get rid of him, Johnny. The Vitts are after him. Your brother and sister are upstairs. They’ll burn down the store!”

He took her by both shoulders, set her back gently and crouched to address her, “We pay our money to the Naughts and Crosses, nobody is going to burn down our store, Mom. The Vitts are not after him, Ed is after him, and Ed is not after him anymore, because I’ve got that sorted. Hyacinth is going to put him back together and then we’ll go, but you have to let her do that first.”

“I always told you I hated that Edward!” she spat.

“I know.” He kissed her on the top of the head. “You were right and I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. It’s my fault, but that’s why you have to let me do this. I’m sorry it’s in your home and on your couch, but it’s my home too.” He put one foot on a stair and looked back at her with a frown, “We like Dayashri because she’s compassionate, Mom.”

“We like her because she removes obstacles, Johnny!” Gita cried.

“She does that because she’s compassionate,” John said. “You don’t have to come up if you don’t want.”

“I’m still making payments on that couch!” she called up after him.

———

Mordecai felt a familiar pressure on his forehead and sighed. He remembered this was a bad habit Hyacinth had picked up during the war and knew a real doctor would’ve put a hand on top of his head — because head injuries were hilarious and consciousness apparently had chunks of canned fruit in it like that even when it was only semisolid.

He decided it was safe to go back to sleep. It didn’t really matter if he didn’t have a couch.