ASYLUM, Part II
In the Flahertys’ car we scratched our names into the dry, crumbling foam of the ceiling, alongside Benny, Maureen, Go Sox, JJ, Laurie n’ Lara, and Dropkicks Rule. We parked along the side of a quiet road on the north side of the hill. The boys had flashlights in the glove compartment and knew the path, paved with slick dead leaves and worn almost as wide as the promenade in the park by the Charles River.
“Wait till we get up there,” said Mark. “There was a murder here in the seventies. One patient hacked up another with an axe. Buried the body parts all over the grounds and kept the teeth as a souvenir.”
“Gross!” Sheila socked Mark in the arm.
We came out of the woods onto the enormous lawn spread around the hospital. The sky was starless and milky with city light, the building a black, bottomless shape ahead of us. I tripped over something hard in the grass and fell.
“This is the cemetery.” Brendan caught my arms and pulled me up. “Gotta watch your step with the markers.” He swung his light and found a small stone cylinder in the grass, the number 158 etched on top. “Go slow.” I clutched his arm, imitating Sheila’s grip on Mark.
The boys led us to a window at the end of the building. The place was laid out like a cross, a short spine with two long wings spread on either side. A clock tower rose from the center. There was a window at the end of what the boys said was the male wing. It was boarded over like the rest, but when they grabbed the board, it swung back as if hinged. Two stumps had been set in front of it, forming stair-steps.
“Up we go, ladies.” Sheila’s Flaherty helped us up, and mine caught us inside. “You ready to see some spooky shit?”
The beams of their flashlights crept around what must have been a common room. A few wooden couch frames stood at haphazard angles, strung with threads of frayed upholstery and batting. An empty bookcase lay on the floor. Each shelf was labeled: tobacco, soap, belts, socks, misc. Scales of diseased paint peeled from the walls.
I could hear Sheila crossing the floor in the dark, scuffing her feet against empty bottles, cans, and boxes. We heard a crunch of glass and she said “oh.” The boys lit up Sheila’s legs and we saw a fluorescent light bulb partially pulverized under her sneaker.
“Be careful. Some of these floors are all rotted out.”
We held our Flahertys and their lights and moved slowly down the hallway. Doors to patient rooms drifted on their hinges. A little gray light from outside glowed in their windows, carved up by bars and perforated shades. At the far end of the hall, just inside the circle of the flashlight beam, a dark exit sign hung over a door furred with rust. To the right of it was a wire cage containing a desk, probably for the on-duty nurse.
“Think they can really salvage the frame of this place?” Mark thumped on a wall, and Sheila shushed him. “What? You afraid of disturbing some one?” He leaned into Sheila and she swatted him away, but smiled.
“They’ll gut the place for sure, but they’ll keep the exterior walls,” said Brendan. “But the contract will be huge and they’ll have to give Doherty his cut for not using his guys.”
“Those guys don’t want to fuck with this place.”
“Not the point, though. Doherty’s local. . This job, and the big paycheck attached, should go to him. Even the city guys know that. They use out-of-state workers, they got to give Doherty compensation.”
“Only Pat Doherty can get paid for not getting a job,” said Mark.
Brendan stopped and turned around, shining his flashlight in Mark’s face. “No more business, especially because you don’t know shit about shit. Come on.” He pulled me down the hall.
“Well fuck you very much,” Mark said, but he didn’t come after Brendan as we walked through the exit. I looked back and saw Mark tickling Sheila, pinning her to the wall while she giggled and writhed.
Brendan waved his light straight up. We were inside the tower that stabbed up from the center of the hospital. The floors had all collapsed, and the walls rose many stories. All around us was the flotsam from the rooms above, smashed iron bed frames and pipes, wire nests and chunks of plaster. A beam on the third or fourth floor had remained intact. A ragged fringe of floorboards threatened to spike us where we stood.
“Damn,” I said.
“You gotta see hydrotherapy.” Mark came up behind us and pointed his light toward the back of the room, where there were more metal doors, with small diamond shaped windows. Behind the first that he tried was a cache of shoes, stack upon stack of boxes spitting rubber soles and kinked laces.
“This one, I think.” Behind a middle door lay a row of oval porcelain tubs. They contained various levels of murky water, black as coffee.
“Cool,” said Sheila.
“Just wait. I’m sure we can scare up a few crazies for you, Sheila.” Brendan held his light under his chin. “You want to see your rooms? I mean, the girls’ rooms?”
“Funny, Flaherty, funny.”
The female ward was a mirror image of the hall we’d just come down, crumbling books and calendars, cardboard tubing, half-decayed pillows.
“Check this out! Family pictures,” Sheila yanked at Mark’s wrist and his light shone on glossy snapshots pinned up inside a patient’s room.
“I can’t believe people haven’t taken all this stuff,” I said.
Brendan shrugged. “Half respect, half fear. A lot of really bad shit went down here. I don’t think anyone wants to carry that energy home with them, you know what I’m saying?”
“Come on. You don’t really believe this place is haunted.”
“Weird stuff used to happen when we’d party up here. Footsteps and voices where there shouldn’t be. Like I said, really bad energy.”
“Give me a break. You don’t seem like the type,” I said.
“Well, Belmont, what type am I then?” Brendan turned off the flashlight and stepped closer. Our noses touched and I held my breath. Whoever moved first would lose. “For real,” he whispered, and goose bumps pricked up on my right arm. “There’s this one room, and I swear to god it’s colder than anywhere else in this place.”
The room was at the far end of the female ward. It was larger than most, and tiled instead of carpeted. A large skylight glowed gray over our heads. The floor was covered with lichen and ferns, brilliant green and gold in the battery light. An examination lamp hung from the ceiling, a round cluster of eyes staring down at a gurney in the center of the room. Leather straps dangled from the gurney’s rails.
“See? It’s cold in here.”
“It’s just the tile,” I told him. I knelt down and water seeped through my jeans at the knees. “It’s like a greenhouse.” I said, brushing my hands over the moss. “I wonder what they did in here.”
“Lobotomies.” He stepped closer and aimed his light straight into my eyes.
“That was the best they could do back then, I guess.” I squinted and pawed at the air, trying to block the light. “Thank god for pharmaceuticals.”
Brendan laughed quietly. “Speaking of which.” He pulled out his own vial and held it out.
Bitter brain liquor dripped down my throat. Up on my knees, the buckle of his belt and handle of the gun in his waistband were level with my face, pitted silver and smooth steel. I’d always guessed he and Mark had one, in the glove compartment beside the flashlights. Brendan pulled out the gun and set it on the gurney with the flashlight.
“That make you nervous?”
I shrugged like I’d seen plenty of fire arms up close. He fondled the leather belt at his hips and paused, smirking down at me on the floor. I held his gaze: no fucking way, buddy, not straight off the bat.
“Come on, Belmont. You know you’re slumming.” He snapped his t-shirt over his head and got down in the ferns with me. “Nice stems,” he said, as he drew my legs around his waist, and took root between them. A pray-for-us medallion clicked against my teeth. Brendan wore St. Dimas, the good thief, crucified at the right hand of Christ.
They dropped us off at Sheila’s place in the wet light of dawn. Sheila brushed the clods of moss off my back.
“How was yours?” she asked.
“Not bad. How was yours?”
“Big,” she grinned.
Brendan didn’t come around much after that. Doherty had promoted him. He was on his way to becoming a right-hand man. Mark got a new partner and started handling the money himself. He and Sheila stuck, so she had easy access to his gear. He started hanging out at the bar, getting dirty looks from Mike. We fed cops for free so they’d come fast if we had a problem, and I figured Mike didn’t want the cops seeing one of Doherty’s crew in his bar. Sheila said it was an Irish blood feud.
Sheila started slipping at work, taking too many cigarette breaks and too many drinks behind the bar. This was the problem at Brady’s; bartenders who’d been there too long got too comfortable. Even I could see it was only a matter of time until she got fired. When she finally did, though, it wasn’t her fault.
It was Sunday, the only night Mike went home before closing. Regulars came for football and free jukebox night. We played our favorite songs and made good money without having to work too hard. When it wasn’t busy, it was harder to ignore the silverfish under the dishwasher and mice behind the lobster tank. The tank was one of our points of pride, like the jukebox. The juke was curated by an older bartender in the crustiest Allston punk tradition and we were listed as Best Jukebox in the Phoenix every year. The bubbling tank held the cheapest lobsters in the Square, two single pounders with fries, corn, and salad for $15.95. Some nights the lobsters lay there, unmoving, and Francis would poke at them with the small wooden rake he used to pull them out for customers. A dead lobster couldn’t be left in the tank too long or the others would take him apart. Other nights the lobsters were active, crawling up the sides of the tank and taking back flips across the surface, as if they could escape.
This particular night, a guy I knew from prep school wandered in. I hadn’t seen him since graduation and was surprised, until I remembered he was at Harvard. His grandfather had donated a law library or something. He was drunker than I’d ever seen him at parties, took a booth alone, and grunted an order for a reuben.
“Marshall,” I said. He looked at me without comprehension. “Belmont Country Day?”
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
He wavered slightly in the booth and stared at me. “Didn’t you go to RISD or something?”
“Mass Art. I’m taking a semester off.”
“Oh.” He looked me over, fixing on the apron around my hips, the menu in my hand. “You work here?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I like it.” I shrugged. “The money’s good.” He stared down at the table for a minute. “You want a beer or something? On me.”
“Oh man,” he looked back up at me. “I’m fuckin’ drunk. Yeah. Bring me a Boston Lager.”
“Okay.” I turned back toward the wait station.
“I can’t believe you work here,” Marshall said, and I glanced over my shoulder. “This is where we come, like.” He looked me in the eye. “To slum it.”
I shrugged. I was a skeleton now. I went over to the wait station and punched in his order, and then leaned on the bar, waiting for Sheila to pour the beer. She was drunk and laughed too loud when the keg kicked and foam spewed from the tap.
“Cum stains!” she shrieked, swatting at the tide of beer spreading across her lap. Mark, sitting at the bar, brayed dully. “Rene!”
Nelson’s brother, the useless busboy, was on that shift. He banged dishes into the bin at the back of the room, then picked it up and used it to push through the swinging door into the kitchen. “Change the Sam!” Sheila called after him. The kegs were stacked in a complex arrangement in the basement, and they were the bus boys’ job. We never touched them. Ten minutes later, I went into the kitchen to pick up Marshall’s sandwich and a burger for one of Sheila’s customers at the bar. Rene was eating French fries and talking with Juan, the cook.
“Rene,” I said. “Did you change the Sam Adams? I have orders waiting.” Besides Marshall, four more customers had ordered Sam Adams Boston Lager. People tend to default to beers named for their cities.
“Kisa?” asked Rene with a round innocent face. He dipped a fry in ketchup and held it out to me.
“Lazy,” I snapped. I looked at Juan. “When I leave and he speaks English again, you tell him he’s lazy. Parasseux!”
Rene giggled and went, “Awwww.”
Back out front I dropped the sandwich in front of Marshall, who was almost asleep, and slammed the burger on the bar. Sheila jumped and stared at it. I could see her trying to remember who she was supposed to give it to..
“Your busboy isn’t changing that keg,” I told her.
“Goddammit.” Sheila dropped the plate in front of one of her customers, who handed it over to the guy who’d actually ordered it, a few stools down. She came out from behind the bar and stuck her head into the kitchen. “Rene! Come on, man, do your fucking job!” But he had ducked out the back and we could hear glass chiming against brick as he broke up the liquor bottles Mike couldn’t sell back to the distributors.
“You want me to try?” I said. I had tapped enough kegs in the dorms that I thought it couldn’t be that difficult.
“Yeah, thanks.” Sheila skipped back to Mark at the bar.
In the basement walk-in refrigerator, I crawled over the kegs, testing their weight. I guessed the one I could lift was empty, and set to work pulling the tap out of it. It came easily, with one sharp jerk, but a thick cord curled out to the carbon dioxide tank, and the tap hissed like a snake. I shook it around, hoping to discover how to turn the gas off by accident. The best course of action seemed to be sticking it in the next keg as quickly as possible. I stabbed and twisted, and was rewarded with a geyser of thick white foam, dripping off the walls of the cooler, covering my arms and soaking my hair. But I couldn’t keep the tap in the keg, no matter how hard I pushed or which direction I pulled. I jammed it back in the empty keg and returned upstairs, scrubbing at myself with a mildewed rag.
“Sorry,” I told Sheila. “I can’t figure it out.”
“Christ. What the fuck is Rene’s problem?” She slumped over the bar in defeat. “I guess we’re cutting off the Sam for the night.”
“Babe, I’ll take care of it.” Mark stood up from the bar and slung his coat over his stool. “Just point me in the right direction.”
“You’re the best.” Sheila kissed his cheek and led him off to the walk-in, leaving me to cover the bar and my tables for a good twenty minutes.
Rene spoke English well enough to tell Mike that Sheila’d let a customer in the basement, breaking one of Mike’s taboos. And it was one of those fuckinguys, as Mike called the Flahertys.
“You letting your sleazy boyfriend case my restaurant?” Mike said, arms folded, eyes flat and black like jet buttons.
“It wasn’t like that.” Sheila was shrill. “Rene wasn’t doing his job, so Mark did it for him.”
“Whose fault is it gonna be when a week’s worth of cases goes from my basement to Doherty’s Variety? Huh?”
“I’ve worked here for two years. You think I’m going to screw you now?” Mike was impassive. “You distrustful bastard.” Sheila pulled her purse off a barstool with such force that the stool clattered to the floor. “I feel sorry for you. I feel sorrier for your wife and her kid, for having to live with such a cold prick.” And she was gone, just another set of blank shifts on the schedule that needed coverage.
I got night shifts on the bar. I got regulars. Baseball season started up and the Sox had a hot streak, which was good for tips. People were more generous when their team was winning. Cocktail tables were set on the terrace at the Highland. When I sat out at last call, I could smell the lilacs that bloomed behind brick walls on Brattle Street.
One night, the Flahertys came in again, both of them. I poured them each a Guinness and looked for something else to do, another customer to chat with or something behind the bar that needed cleaning. All was quiet. While I was trying to look busy, Mark went to the bathroom and Brendan said, “Hey, Belmont.”
“What’s up?”
He smiled and rubbed his chin. “I guess you’re probably used to guys who call.”
I turned my back like I had to grab something from the shelves behind me, and rolled my eyes. “I wasn’t exactly waiting by the phone.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I heard.” I looked down and scrubbed the spotless bar.
“I’ve been negotiating some union issues with the old hospital,” he said. Brown Guinness head flecked the hair around his mouth.
“Sounds like you’re moving up in the world.”
“Pat Doherty’s world, at least.” Like this wasn’t the only world that mattered to him. “Anyway, they started cleaning out the place. But now the whole condo project is stalled.”
“Is that good or bad?” I didn’t care, and was relieved of hearing more by Mark’s raised voice from the back.
“You got my girl fired for nothing, you lazy fucking chappie!”
“What the fuck?” I looked Brendan in the eye for the first time. He smiled a little and shrugged, and I knew that he’d only been distracting me so Mark could find Rene. I came out from behind the bar and crossed to the back. A tiny space served as an ante room to the bathrooms and the kitchen, and it was full of bodies. Rene had flattened himself against the girls’ room door, and his uncle Francis had Mark by the neck. Juan peered out from the kitchen, spatula in hand.
“Really?” Mark was saying. “You really want to start this? You know who I work for?” Francis stared him in the face with dead eyes. “Fuck that. Fuck that. All it would take is one call to INS.” I felt Brendan come up behind me. “You illegal Satanist motherfucker,” Mark said in a low voice. His mouth worked for a moment, and then a heavy glob of spit was running down Francis’ cheek. Francis drew back a fist and Brendan shoved me into the lap of a customer in the back booth.
“All right, all right. Enough.” Brendan pinned Francis’ arm, the one that wasn’t holding Mark, behind his back. Francis released Mark and I ducked between them and stared Mark down.
“You really think Mike would hire an illegal?” I asked him. “Get the fuck out of here or I’m calling the cops.”
“Come on, man.” Brendan released Francis and put an arm around Mark, drawing him out of the tiny room into the front of the bar. “Come on. We got things to do.” He patted his back and they left, stiffing me on their beers.
When the night ended, the new waitress and I stepped outside into air as soft and warm as flesh. Across the street, the Highland terrace was crowded, but quiet. They were all standing and facing us, like we were expected to bow. For a moment we froze, and stared across at all those unblinking eyes. It was a miracle or a horror movie. Then we realized that they weren’t looking at us. They were looking over our heads at the sky.
Light poured down at one in the morning. It emanated from something white hot, washing the clouds with the colors of poppies and fading into black around the edges. On a hill in the distance, a building was burning.
Read Part I here.
