The Devil in Silver

Picture it: Pepper’s end of the bed tilted up about six inches higher than Coffee’s, and he’s popping a sweat because, even with the help, his injuries have made him weaker. And at the other end, you’ve got Coffee, concentrating more on the book in his right hand than the bed in his left. As a result, the frame wobbles and the legs at his end occasionally bump against the floor. Pepper wanted to give the man a few moving tips. (Paramount being: Use two damn hands!) But no one ever listens to a know-it-all so he tried a different tack.

“You ever reach that guy? The controller?”

“Comptroller,” Coffee corrected. “I spoke to a guy who worked for the man. A ‘fund-raiser.’ ”

“And what did this guy say?”

“He thought I was calling for New Hyde Hospital. Like maybe I was someone high up. He said I could probably talk to the comptroller if …”

“If?” Pepper couldn’t suppress a grin. Though with the trouble he was having holding up the bed it looked more like a grimace.

“If I was interested in donating to the campaign fund. I laughed when he said that and explained that I was a patient.”

The bed bonked the floor again, then screeched as the legs scratched the floor. Pepper wondered if the staff heard, but then he wondered if they would even care. Were patients allowed to rearrange?

“What did this guy do when you said you were a patient?” Pepper asked.

“He hung up.”

They reached the opposite wall and Pepper lowered his end. Coffee just dropped his. The whole frame twanged. Pepper’s chest heaved a bit from the labor. A month without work was like a month without exercise. He felt a little ashamed to have lost so much strength so quickly. But his mind wasn’t quite as weak. He’d taken his midday dose with lunch when he came in from the smoker’s court, but missing the morning dose still had made a difference. His mind felt more vigorous than it had in weeks.

“Where are you from, anyway?” Pepper asked.

Coffee seemed to stiffen, a conversation coming that he didn’t enjoy. “I’m from Uganda,” he said.

The glaze on Pepper’s eyeballs could’ve been used to coat a turkey.

“Uganda,” Pepper said. “Of course. I see.”

Coffee sighed. “It’s in East Africa.”

Pepper nodded as if he’d known all along. “Where else would it be?”

(Pepper had actually thought it was an island in the Caribbean.)

But then Pepper snapped a finger and said, “Idi Amin!”

At this Coffee seemed to deflate. “Still our most famous export.”

Coffee looked at the front door, and Pepper could tell this guy was about to run away. Maybe Idi Amin, the murderous dictator, wasn’t the best way to talk about Coffee’s homeland. Or maybe that just wasn’t what Coffee cared about most now. Pepper needed to bring the talk back to their situation here. They could talk about the glorious history of Samoa (Uganda!) later on.

“The mayor,” Pepper said. “The comptroller. Who are you going to try next? Department of Sanitation?”

“At least I’m trying something!” Coffee yelled back.

Pepper and Coffee pushed the bed up against the wall here. Coffee and Pepper’s beds were in the same position, lining the same wall, on either side of the room’s door.

Only problem now was that Pepper’s bed sat right below the ceiling tile that had cracked and fallen in the night before. Thankfully, someone on staff had come through and removed the pieces of tile (though they hadn’t swept up the dust) but the hole remained. Instead of sleeping under the stain, he’d be sleeping here? Pepper climbed on his bed slowly and rose to his toes. Slipping his head into the crawl space felt like he was slipping it into a tiger’s mouth. The top of his head felt hot. He remembered those two feet dangling down from the darkness. He tried to see to the other end of the room, where his bed had just been. Trying to make out the silhouette of Sammy’s body. But he couldn’t tell. Soon enough the dust floating in the air up there coated his forehead, his eyelids, his lips. He couldn’t stay up there any longer and he hopped down off his bed. He winced and clutched his chest.

“This isn’t going to work,” Pepper said. And he wasn’t just talking about where he’d rest his head. He meant maintaining. He meant facing whatever came next.

Then Coffee walked over to Pepper’s dresser and said, “Help me move this.”

The dresser looked like wood but wasn’t. Didn’t even seem to be some kind of plastic. It might almost have been made of cardboard, that’s how cheap it felt. If they’d painted fake drawers on the back of a refrigerator box, it wouldn’t have been much worse than this.

Pepper pushed the dresser and it slid so easily the move almost seemed graceful. He slid it until it was at the far end of this wall. Now it sat adjacent to the two windows in the room.

“You’ll make fun of me if I tell you who I’m really hoping to reach,” Coffee said.

Pepper tapped the top of the dresser. “Yes,” he said. “I probably will.”

When Coffee said the name it was unintelligible.

“Try again, my friend.”