Lithium

I

Gloves

“I used to be an actor.” He placed the cigarette in the ashtray and picked a glass of water with his gloved hand and drank some with both his lips inside the glass.

“Is that right?” The heavy set nurse responded while picking toys off the white table.

“Yes.” He brought the cigarette to his mouth and stopped. “Nothing big, but they liked what I did.” His bald head shone in the bright white light coming from the overhead metal fixture.

“Anything that I may have watched?” She still didn’t look at him but put the toys in a white basket by her side.

He smiled and rubbed his brow. His eyebrows were shaven and his eyes seemed dreamy. “Rosemary’s Baby?”

The nurse turned and looked at him for the first time during this conversation. “You worked with Polanski?”

“Yes, I was bloody Satan in the copulation ritual scene.” He smiled.

“I hate to say this but I think the Lithium is finally reacting.” She lifted the basket and held it close to her bosom. “You still need the gloves I see.”

“Yes. Please stay, don’t leave.”

“Ali, I have to put these toys back and then I have to visit the ward. I’ll come see you tomorrow.” She started walking.

“No, Doloris, please listen to my story. I’m not making it up, I was an actor.” The cigarette had almost ended. “And please don’t take the toys away, I need them.”

***

They strapped his hands to the wooden chair and stripped the gloves off his hands and he screamed to have them back. The huge man in white held his head as Dr. Deedee plunged a needle into his neck.

“Ali. Ali… Can you hear me?” Dr. Deedee bent a little and rubbed Ali’s hand. The medic let go of his head and it slumped. “Ali. Blink if you hear me.”

Ali did not blink, he smiled and said something inaudible; his speech slurred.

“What did you say Ali?” Dr. Deedee came closer.

“Bad Lieutenant. Shoot me up doc. I like whatever you put in my neck.”

***

He lit another cigarette as Doloris pulled a chair besides him.

“You have until eleven and then I’ll leave.” She said this while trying to settle into her chair.

“Yes, yes. Thank you.” He put the cigarette in the ashtray and looked at Doloris.

“Go on, tell me your story.”

“Well, to tell you the truth there isn’t much to it.” He kept looking at her and suddenly squeezed his lower lip.

“And that’s not too bad either, because you only have ten minutes.”

“Well, I did a film where I played an old comic book artist.” He looked away and smiled. “It was a short feature, forty eight minutes. I got killed right after the opening credits and spent the rest of the film in an open grave.”

“And?”

“Well, they liked my character – said I was dripping with pomaded promise. Now all I drip with is SSRI residue.” Ali smiled again.

“Ali, if this is about how bad you feel here, you are scheduled for a meeting with Dr. Deedee at four.” Doloris tried to inject austerity into her voice.

“The four O’ clocks are only for animation, drug time at the tavern. I’m too stoned to even remember my mother’s name.” He paused. Scratched his knee and looked up again. “I’m sorry.”

“What did you guys call the movie?”

Ali’s face suddenly glowed like someone had lit up a candle inside his skull. “We called it Moonchaser.”


II

The Movie

The doorbell screamed profanity until the visitor took her finger off for a few seconds and then again the silence was boorishly penetrated.

“Take your goddam hand off that bell, you’re killing me!” He shouted over the blaring noise. The bell stopped ringing.

“Who’s there?” He looked towards the door, head slighted raised. No one answered.

“Who the f*ck’s there?” Still no answer.

BRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGG. The doorbell went crazy again, Jeremy cringed in his chair and put his hands to the ears. He put the cigarette to his mouth and placed both hands on the hand rest to lift him a little from the wheelchair and fart.

“Quit ringing the bell, I’m coming.” He stopped dead as he noticed something on the floor; the bell stopped ringing that very moment. Jeremy looked up towards the door and then back towards the floor.

A voice whispered from the other side, “Hello Jeremy, open the door; I’m only a fan.”

Jeremy froze in his chair, his hands still on the wheels and his eyes glued to the photograph that lay on the floor. The picture had become yellow with time and had been eaten into at the corners.

“Where’d you get that?” Jeremy’s eyes were still on the photograph and his hands had started to tremble a little. He put the cigarette out by crushing it on the wheel.

“You can’t keep a lady waiting in the rain Jeremy, open the door and we’ll talk.”

For the first time in what seemed like ten agonizing years, Jeremy shifted his gaze to the door knob and started pushing the wheels of the chair. As he crossed the old photograph he looked at it again and it splashed a feeling of abject guilt in him. He looked away and winced as if he’d stepped on a nail.

“Jeremy, open the door, I hate rain.” Jeremy had found the voice familiar the first time he heard it but now he was able to tell who it was.

“Sameera?” He was now bending forward and turning the door knob.

“Yes sweetie.” The door opened and Jeremy felt the rain on his face brought in by the wind. Sameera was drenched but her cigarette burned between her lips as if it rained around it.

Jeremy just looked at her, the trembling in his hands had stopped but his face had become a more yellow tone of pale. The leathery skin crumpled as he frowned, the veins bloated around the temple. “Where’d you find that?” He looked at the floor where the old gray and yellow picture lay.

Sameera pushed the door a little more, placed her hands on the hand rests of the wheel chair and brought her face close to his, “Jeremy oh my sweet Jeremy, how I love the old crippled artist with a bad bad past…” Jeremy flinched and moved his head back; Sameera smiled and pushed his chair away from the door and towards the table where his sketching tools were placed. She picked the old picture on their way to the drawing table.

Jeremy finally spoke after a long silence, “What happened to you?”

“Like some f*cking martyr wrote: ‘They put the sun in the back of a big moving truck and drove into the horizon’. You never leave this s*it hole, do you Jeremy?”

He didn’t answer and kept looking at her and once braved a glance towards the photograph.

“Here, looks like you could use some poison.” She dragged on the cigarette and fixed it between Jeremy’s lips. He pulled it out and held onto it.

“Where’d you get that?” Jeremy pointed to the picture and repeated. “No one took a picture, no one f*cking took a picture.” He shouted, Sameera snarled and her canines shone as the yellow light bounced off them. Her face changed a little and that was enough for Jeremy to never shout at a woman again for at least two hundred years, give or take. The cigarette fell to the ground; Sameera picked it and started smoking.

“Alright handsome, here’s the deal; listen very carefully, your history depends on it.

***

III

The Fan

Dr. Deedee sat in his brown leather chair and picked up a file from his table. He adjusted his glasses and read through the papers.

Finally he took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes and put the file back. Deedee unlocked his drawer and rummaged through some papers. At last he found what he was looking for; a video with a cover jacket that showed a woman dressed in black smoking a cigarette in the rain. A smaller picture towards the right hand bottom showed an old man with long silver hair slumped over a table with a pencil in his left hand. Below the picture it read “Introducing Ali as Jeremy Jerome”

“Looks like we’ll have to fill you up with some more juice Jeremy. Yes it sure does seem like it.” The doctor whispered this as he put the video back and locked the drawer.

IV

ECT

They tried to grab him, all five of them and he continued to scream. They strapped him to the stretcher and pushed him down the hall. Doloris watched with glazed eyes.

“DO NOT F*CKING ELECTROCUTE ME AGAIN!” Ali Shouted. He moved his gloved hand violently under the white leather constraint.

“It’ll all be alright Ali, please be calm.” One of the medics spoke from over his head.

“I’ll be calm, I’ll be calm, just keep those wires away from me. Please” He started crying.

They pushed the stretcher into a room and injected him in the arm, Ali winced and tears rolled down his eyes. “I want my GI Joes.”

“Get him his GI Joes.” One of the medics shouted into the hall.

Dr. Deedee walked in. “Hello Ali, why are you making a noise?”

Ali kept silent.

“Well?” The doctor walked around the room and spoke to one of the medics. “The usual: Diazepam 40, Dormicom 35. That should take care of his GI Joes.”

Ali watched in fear as the medics shifted him to the wooden chair and tied his hands and feet and neck. He thought of the days before this madness, before the constraints and the fucked up prescription drugs. A medic held his head as another stuck rubber patches to the sides of his skull and fixed the electrodes into a tiny metal orifice in the patches. He also fixed a piece of plastic between his teeth.

“He’s ready.”


***

“I used to be an actor. I used to be an actor and now I’m dead.” He stared at the closed window.

“You’re not dead. Drink your water Ali, and try taking those gloves off sometimes – your hands need some air.” Doloris touched Ali on the head where a bruise had developed. “Tell me about those other films that you guys made.”

Ali turned his head from the window to look at Doloris, his eyes shone. “Well there was this film where I played a cop with a retarded kid. They said I had talent, now all I have is these toys and the shut window to look through.”