A Thousand Naked Strangers - Kevin Hazzard Page 0,55

mud whom no one wants to sit next to, a furious-looking teenager talking to himself, and a couple—completely cracked out—pretending they don’t need to be here. A lone man paces the room. His Members Only jacket is zipped up all the way, and his hat has CIA printed across the front in big yellow letters. He eases up next to me and leans in close. “I’ve lost my documents,” he whispers. “All of them. My mints are gone, too.”

It’s 11:55 now, and Cordell throws a shoulder into the wall, shakes his head at some ethereal accusation, and stares at me with red, wild eyes. “I can’t take this anymore,” he stammers as sweat runs down his face. “I gotta do something.”

“Just . . . just be cool. I’ll get the nurse. Stay here.”

I throw open the doors leading to an area marked STAFF ONLY and bang on the first door I come to. A slow-moving sleepy-eyed woman answers. “Look,” I tell her, “you have a patient in triage who’s threatening to kill himself. I need to speak to the nurse.”

If she senses my urgency, it doesn’t register on her face. She tells me flatly that the nurse will be with us in a moment. I look down at my watch. Thirty seconds. Maybe Marty was right. Maybe I should’ve sedated Cordell. I run back to triage, but when I get there, Cordell is nowhere to be found. The CIA man is still there, though.

“You haven’t seen my mints, have you?”

I spin around, looking for a place a three-hundred-pound man could hide. And there it is: the bathroom. I rush over and grab the handle, but the door’s locked.

Three, two, one. Midnight.

And then a calm voice from beyond the door. “Who’s there?”

“Cordell? What are you doing?”

“Relieving myself.”

“You’re what?” I ask.

“I’m relieving myself.”

I laugh. My back is covered with nervous sweat, and I lean my head against the wood.

“I haven’t had a good movement in a week,” he says. “The gasoline, it binds me up. And this is the only place they can’t infiltrate.”

“So that’s what you meant by . . . Good. Good. That’s really good news, Cordell.”

“Can I have some privacy?”

“Sure.”

• • •

I don’t know what happened to Cordell after we left. I don’t know what treatment he underwent, how long it took to silence the voices, how long he remained on Thirteen. It’s hard to keep track of any patient, let alone one locked behind the padded walls of Grady’s psych ward. I do know we saw him again, but everything that preceded our next meeting had been lost amid the shifting sands of his chemically imbalanced mind. It’s not so for everyone. Some people love to talk, need to talk. Deacon Brown is one of those people. He’s been on Thirteen, and he’ll share his story with anyone who’ll listen.

“My name’s Deacon Brown. I was abducted by aliens.”

Right now he’s got a man by the arm and is telling his story. “I’m not kidding,” he says. “Aliens. Snatched me right up.” Deacon’s the first to admit he’s an alcoholic. He’s also, unapologetically, a repeat offender. “I’m a mess,” he says, staring into the man’s face with those big yellow eyes. “Look at me. Sheeit, I’m wearin’ someone else’s pants.” None of that matters. He’s crazy and he’s got problems, maybe, but that doesn’t make him a liar. “Aliens,” he says. “Honest to Christ.”

His abduction happened on Ponce. He was sleeping off a bender in a little patch of weeds next to the grocery store when, out of nowhere, a flash of light. Blinding. Whole damn world lit up. And then, before he knew it, hands. A whole mess of them. Reaching out from the big nothing, grabbing him, lifting him. He didn’t go easy. Aliens or not, you weren’t just gonna snatch Deacon Brown from a good sleep. He kicked, he yelled, he threw a few punches, but what can one man do? Against aliens. Nobody goes through the trouble of flying in from another galaxy to be fought off by a single drunk. So up he went. Levitation.

And then he was aboard the ship. Nothing but blaring lights and cold steel. The aliens held his arms and his legs, took his clothes, even took away his box cutter. Then they tied him down. Above he saw a glimmer: something long and sharp and probably lethal coming right at him. He screamed. His skin was pierced and he felt a burning sensation, as if being cooked from the