Haywire by Brooke Hayward (android based ebook reader .txt) 📕

“God, I hope so. Ah. Look. Here’s one from Kate Hepburn.”

The nurse had just come back in and was looking at us both strangely. “He’s still asleep, I see,” she announced briskly.

“Superior deductive reasoning,” muttered Bill under his breath, his face buried in the latest flower arrangement. “Keenly observed. Look where sanity can get you—”

I stuck my elbow in his ribs. “Bill.” I could feel hysterical laughter coming on. “Be serious. I want to ask you a serious question.”

“What?”

I’d never dared ask him, perhaps because I was afraid of the answer. There was no telling why I was curious enough now.

“Well, have you ever been so depressed you wanted to kill yourself? I mean, have you ever thought about what would make you …”

“Hmm,” replied Bill, becoming serious very quickly. “Let me take you away from all this, my dear.” He extended his arm to me.

“Hold down the fort for us,” he said to the nurse; “we’ll be back.” He winked at her.

We walked down the corridor and around the corner to the elevator.

“I must be going stir-crazy,” I said. “It’s awfully nice to be out here, hideous as it is.”

“Let’s chow down,” said Bill. “I’m starving. I see a double Bloody Mary in my immediate future.”

“What about Father?”

“We’ll check on him after the play. Tell him what we think.”

“They won’t let us back in.”

“Private room. Different rules.” He snapped his fingers. The elevator doors opened.

I felt very gay (as if we were playing hooky) and, at the same time, guilty. Unfairly privileged. Charmed. And running the risk of missing something.

“Well, have you?”

“What?”

“Ever thought about committing suicide?”

“Often.” He ignored the riveted gaze of the other occupants of the elevator. “I’ve always held on to it as an alternative. If things got really screwed up—the idea of having another choice. I’ve never tried it, although I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. But thinking about it is a way of recognizing there is a choice. I’d like to think that my affairs would be in order. But, of course, if my affairs were in order, I wouldn’t be thinking about suicide.”

He chuckled to himself. Bill tended to communicate information in a way that was meant less for other people’s enlightenment than for his own private entertainment.

The elevator let us out into the lobby. Now he was lost in thought.

“Where do you want to eat?” I tugged at his arm. We moved toward the night.

“Shit, I don’t have any of the right clothes. I left Los Angeles too—uh—precipitously, you might say. It was seventy degrees there. I didn’t have a chance to unpack my ski gear. I need warm gloves desperately.”

“Russian Tea Room, please,” I told the cabdriver. “I wonder where Pamela was this afternoon.”

“Legal crap,” said Bill, rubbing his hands together. “Once I got frostbite skiing, and that screws your hands up whenever they hit the chill winds afterwards. Wanted to be a surgeon, too, oddly enough.”

“How would you do it?” I asked, staring out the window.

“What?” Bill glanced at me. “Kill myself? You do persist in these morbid notions.”

But I knew he was secretly pleased to be asked.

“I’ve always thought if I did it I would shoot myself with a pistol,” he replied matter-of-factly.

I wasn’t so sure about that. “What, shoot yourself in the head? Terribly gory.”

“No, I figure I can find my heart.” He laughed. “Quick. That’s the trick. Bang. Whatever pain there was would be so instantaneous it wouldn’t count. I decided a long time ago—back in the Menninger years—that if I did it, it would have to be one hundred percent for real. No false attempts. Pills would probably be the most pleasant way, except so many people fuck up and leave clues and get saved. Another thing about pills is if you do get discovered, the recovery period in the hospital is extremely unpleasant—I mean from the stomach pump to all kinds of crummy aftereffects. If a strong enough barbiturate like Amytal is in your system for any length of time, you’re futzing around with brain damage, kidney damage. Ideally, what you get is the spy pill. You just bite down on it—”

“Cyanide?” I could feel him opening up, relaxing.

“Yeah. Potassium cyanide. You’re dead instantly. No pain, all that shit. It’s funny, I have a thing about disfiguring my body. I suppose that’s why I’d rather shoot myself in the heart than in the head. I guess anybody’s who’s really serious just goes and jumps off a bridge. Which I don’t think I’ve ever had the urge to do.”

The experience of Menninger’s, I was convinced, had burned a small hole right through the center of his mind just the way a laser would, neat and clean. He’d spent the most formative years of his adolescence there. Wasted years, untold damage. A small hole in his brain that went right through his forehead and out the back. It wasn’t that he was crazy now—he certainly hadn’t been when he went in—but that empty spot explained a lot. It had been fashionable to send your children to places like Menninger’s in those days, if you didn’t have the time but did have the money. It took a lot of money. Bill had been sent up when he was sixteen. Two and a half, three years. I went to visit him once, flew to Topeka. Walked around the grounds. It looked like a country club, lawns as far as the eye could see. From the moment he’d arrived, he’d tried to escape. He’d broken out several times, stolen getaway cars, crossed state lines in them, landed in jail. Father had said, “This time I’ve had it with the kid. He’s really loco. Let him rot there.” And wouldn’t bail him out. Nine days in jail. Bill knew better than I about emotional detachment, although we’d all been given an equal head start.

He sighed and fished through his overcoat pockets for a cigarette and matches. “I always thought I’d check into a hotel with some creepy desk