Louse by David Grand Read Free Book Online Page A

and 6:00 A.M. , when Poppy is most alert. They will often discuss various aspects of Paradise and then turn to the TV. They watch old movies I call into Godwin Beeles at the television station at the beginning of the evening. It isn’t uncommon for Poppy to pick the 1947 EKG Production of
Dying With No Tomorrow in Sight
, a melodrama about a blind Christian folk singer and his semiretarded wife whose child, a brilliant musical prodigy, is dying of leukemia. The film stars Felonius Barnum as Dr. Felonius Barnum, the brilliant and determined young doctor incapable of curing this young girl’s fatal illness. There are many close-ups of Dr. Barnum’s moistened, haggard eyes as he looks down onto the bed at his ailing patient. Somber horns and strings rise through apologies and consultations as montages of the young girl’s musical genius flash back to more glorious times. Dr. Barnum battles until the very end of the film, when the story reaches its climax and the doctor throws his hands over his face and barges out of the hospital room. The mother, distraught and inconsolable, guides the blind father to a bed post, then falls over the dead little girl. A close-up of the mother’s face reveals strange contortions as she holds up her daughter’s hands and pretends that the child is once again playing a piano concerto.
    More often than not, when Dr. Barnum visits, he and Poppy watch the patrons in the casino downstairs on the closed circuit network. With the Zenith Space Commander in hand, Poppy flips from the roulette wheel to the craps table, to blackjack, baccarat, and the slot machines. They mostly search for desperate faces, for losers who have fear in their eyes, the ones groping for their wallets and begging the cashiers for a new line of credit. Poppy will wait to find a close-up of a face or a manner just like this. And when hedoes, the two old men linger over it with their eyes. They don’t say a word to each other. They simply invite it into their stillness and sit with it in silence.
    Tonight, however, Dr. Barnum appears to have come to discuss Paradise. Once a week, as a rule, he retrieves the blueprints of Paradise from Mr. Moorcraft, the Head Engineer, and delivers them to Poppy’s chambers. They then discuss the updated designs, the most recent acquisitions, the deals that need to be made, and so on and so forth. Though I have never seen one of the diagrams, I know that Paradise is Poppy’s greatest endeavor to date and is the origin of all the intermittent explosions in the distance. We are told that with each detonation we are brought closer to Paradise and the closer we are brought to Paradise the more secure we will be in our futures. The more G. sways with the violent thrust of the detonations the nearer we come to realizing another of Poppy’s accomplishments, and thus, the closer to fortune we come. What’s more, we have been promised that all of us who achieve trustee status upon Paradise’s completion are secured a place in its wings.
    â€œBring me that chair over there, Mr. Louse,” Dr. Barnum orders.
    â€œYes, sir.”
    I walk to the southwest corner and retrieve the chair. I carry it over the papers to where the doctor is standing. I nestle the legs into a brochure, a tuft of tissue, and several dailies with the same picture of a rocket ship lifting away from the earth, plumes of fire billowing over the crowns of palm trees.
    Dr. Barnum stretches a pair of rubber gloves over his hands, takes hold of Poppy’s wrist and feels for his pulse. He delicately replaces Poppy’s hand onto the bed and looks over to me in theshadows of my corner. For some reason he looks suspicious of me. I wonder if it has anything to do with Poppy’s increase of Librium. By Poppy’s orders I am giving him twice the dosage indicated on the bottle. I’m not sure why he has ordered me to add the extra dosage; at the same time, when considering his physical