Dirty in Cashmere by Peter Plate Read Free Book Online

in a white smock breezed in.
    â€œI’m Hess, your psychiatrist.” He announced his name in a congratulatory tone, giving me the impression I’d won the jackpot. “Let’s talk, boy.”
    I roused myself. It was a chat or a straitjacket. Hess squeezed onto the bed, deliberately crowding my space. He fired off an introductory salvo.
    â€œYou informed the cops you’re an oracle.”
    â€œI did.”
    â€œOracles were priests in ancient Greece. They made divine pronouncements. You’re not an oracle.”
    â€œWho says?”
    â€œI do. Are you suicidal?”
    â€œHell, no.”
    â€œThe police said you were going to jump off the bridge.”
    â€œThat’s their opinion, not mine.”
    â€œYour medical records cite you were shot in the head.”
    â€œYeah, I was. Last winter.”
    â€œYou’ve been traumatized.”
    â€œTrue enough. I’ve been catching hell lately.”
    â€œTrauma lends itself to disassociation. The separation of the body from the mind.”
    I didn’t take the bait. The separation I experienced wasn’t between my body and mind. It was between my mind and spirit. My mind forced me to do things I detested, like working for Heller and 2-Time. My spirit wanted to be free of earthly concerns.
    â€œMy mind and body are together. After all the shit I’ve been through? Nothing can tear them apart.”
    â€œYou need help. Medication is necessary. Your brain’s chemistry needs readjustment. Anyone who claims to be an oracle is mentally ill.”
    I didn’t care for that.
    â€œDo you want to remain hospitalized?”
    â€œNo, man, I don’t.”
    â€œThen admit you need help.”
    â€œOkay,” I improvised. “I need help.”
    â€œWonderful. I’m going to prescribe a mild dose of Haldol. An injection.”
    â€œDo you have to do this?”
    â€œIt’s the first step. A big one. After the injection we won’t put a seventy-two-hour hold on you. We’re too overcrowded so you’ll be released from custody. Just don’t end up here again. Because next time, you’ll stay. What do you say to that?”
    Not understanding why, just knowing it was happening; the colors in the cell were bright and the air smelled keen, I augured the future, a tiny sliver of it. Next year Hess would divorce his wife, lose the house to her, pay huge alimony, and get in a car wreck. And because I wanted to get out of the fucking nuthouse more than anything in the world, I said what he wanted me to say.
    â€œThanks.”

 
    SEVENTEEN
    An hour later the 48 Quintara bus thundered west on Twenty-fourth Street, jouncing by Galería de la Raza, Sol y Luna Hair Salon, and Morena’s Fashions before stopping at Capp Street. A drunk man in a smart gray suit boarded the coach and cut a path to the back, plopped into the seat next to me and began singing at the top of his lungs, launching into a bloodcurdling version of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” as the bus lumbered to Mission Street.
    I struggled to prophesy his future, to find out if I could do it. My nerves twitched. I sweated. My bad leg had a spasm. I saw zilch. My powers, if I ever had any, were gone. The Haldol had done a number on me.
    I changed buses at the next stop, climbed aboard a 14 Mission Express, took it to the Embarcadero and got off. From there, I did the Haldol shuffle to Mission Creek. I bumbled down a creekside footpath maybe twenty yards, saw a leopard shark with black and gold fins in the creek’s shallows. The shark lifted its flat head out of the water and looked at me, making inter-species eye contact before abruptly submerging underwater.
    It was a hell of a thing to see on Haldol.
    Having no clear memory of how I got back to Guadalupe Terrace, though certain I’d had another seizure along the way, because now my left arm wasn’t working for shit, I moseyed around the side of