Two Nuts and a Bolt

CHAPTER ONE

New York City Mayor Mitch Kronenberg strutted, well more like waddled into the staff meeting room at Manhattan’s Municipal Building with his usual aplomb. There were thirteen out of the city’s twenty-four department heads gathered and standing as he made his usual animated entrance.

Take your seats gentlemen, urged the Mayor.

Education Commissioner Beth Graylock, the lone woman gathered here, cleared her throat in response to the snub.

"And ladies. Uh, lady. You’ll pardon me Ms. Graylock."

As you wish, said Graylock in a tone suggesting she was still miffed.

The Mayor was a short and stout no nonsense guy with a very noticeable Napoleon Complex. He made no secret of the fact that his two favorite New York City mayors had been Fiorello La Guardia who stood all of five feet tall and more recently Abe Beame who stood not much taller. Of the two Beame was the mayor he admired most. Beame had presided over the city during its darkest hours, when The Son of Sam had been terrorizing its streets and when the Big Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy. Kronenberg remembered as a kid growing up in an apartment over his dad’s garment district apparel boutique when the Daily News Headline had caused a furor amongst the city’s millions of residents. The headline had read Ford to City – Drop Dead. Whether Gerald Ford had said those actual words or not had been immaterial. Beame became a de facto hero for not abandoning ship and steered the city out of financial collapse without the president’s help.

Kronenberg had another reason he loved Beame. Beame had been the first full-fledged Jewish mayor of the city which had paved the way for Koch, Bloomberg and now himself.

Let’s make this short, began Kronenberg. I have to be back at city hall in one hour. I’m giving a key to the city to Jon Luc Pierre.

The Mime? asked Consumer Affairs Commissioner Frank Boyle incredulously. Whatever did he do besides keeping his mouth shut? Well for a Frenchman that’s a plus anyway, continued Boyle sounding jaded and also amused by his own cynical humor.

Luc Pierre foiled that bank robbery. Don’t you remember? The robber had a gun to his head and Pierre began doing an imitation of a chimpanzee scratching himself. The robber started laughing so hard he pee’d in his pants, dropped his gun and Pierre picked it up. Guy had been wanted for three other holdups.

Boyle stared at the mayor blankly as if hearing this news flash for the first time.

You ought to read the papers more Frank, said the mayor sarcastically.

There was a chorus of snickers from the other commissioners, some of which no doubt was aimed by the group at garnering favor with their autocratic boss.

As formidable and larger than life the mayor’s personality was, he wasn’t without fear. When the incumbent’s third term had expired, Kronenberg, a republican had fought hard and long against his rival and had not exactly won by a landslide. The so-called 100 day honeymoon that many elected officials are said to have with the electorate after first taking office had long passed. While his poll numbers were still above 50 percent they were nowhere near the 65 percent approval rating that he had just six months earlier.

Reflecting this reality, the Mayor tugged nervously at his necktie, then poured himself a glass of water. He took several sips and stared out at his minions. They all seemed to be trancelike, as if incapable of moving in any direction other than that which he instructed them to. It had been in vogue for the past seven or eight years for disgruntled citizens to label their leaders as zombie governments. For a brief moment, the Mayor wondered if he was in fact presiding over just such a body. There was no time to reflect on this at length. The mime would be waiting.

Kronenberg looked to his right. He always started to his right. Earl?

Parks and Recreation Commissioner Earl Mitchell, one of three African American commissioners on the mayor’s staff gave a terse report about the beginning of summer cleanups at some of the City’s beaches. Coney Island in particular was a mess. I’d swear there are barges dumping garbage in restricted areas. But we put extra men on it and also got some much needed help from volunteers for the Sierra Club. Beach looks presentable. Brighton Beach was another disaster but we managed to cover that as well.

Good, said the Mayor. Jerry? asked the Mayor moving onto the next panelist, Commissioner for the Department of Aging Jerry Doan. Doan himself was well past seventy years of age and had been serving at this post seemingly for most of that time, in other words forever. Much to some of the other commissioners’ amusement, Doan had fallen asleep. Jerry! blurted out the Mayor. I hope we aren’t boring you.

Doan awoke with a start. Excuse me. No sir. Umm, the architects will be finished with the plans for the new Rego Park senior center by mid-September. Inexplicably there’s been a spike over the past two months in calls to the Grandparent Resource Center. Seems more parents are walking out on their families. If we don’t get some additional funding we might be in for a rough run.

Submit a new budget proposal to the Comptroller but don’t expect miracles. He’s not the fairy godmother you know, said the Mayor callously.

The Mayor had made his way halfway around the table when he came to Salvatore Barbieri, his Commissioner for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Up until this point in the meeting the various commissioners had laid out problems and questions but none that were earth shattering.

Barbieri, a licensed psychiatrist was a cum laude graduate of Johns Hopkins University and was extremely high maintenance. Like the Mayor he had grown up in the City, Little Italy to be exact. Also like the mayor he loved the city. However that was where the similarities began to give way to glaring differences. While the Mayor had previously been a businessman, Barbieri had developed a thriving psychiatry practice. Barbieri harbored a belief that professional people had it all over businessmen. Hell, in his mind most businessmen were just money hungry scam artists. He only had to look several blocks over at Wall Street where not a year went by that crooked hedge fund managers, leveraged buyout experts, pension fund managers and other financial bigwigs were being put in jail.

In a way though, Barbieri was the consummate hypocrite. He had an innate distrust for people obsessed with upward mobility yet he already had his own sights set on someday becoming the Mayor’s successor. When he would drive down the FDR Drive and pass Gracie Mansion he would fancy himself living there someday. He was strikingly handsome and prided himself on the rather shallow assessment that he looked like a mayor should look. Tall, dark haired and well built he was a Renaissance Man extraordinaire. He had as many talents as fingers. He was a scratch golfer, could play Stairway to Heaven on his guitar and in the kitchen could whip up a gourmet quality Beef Stroganoff or Baked Alaska in the blink of an eye. Yet the problem with Barbieri was that he took himself too seriously. It was also sad that many people confided in him and imparted their deepest darkest secrets. Clients put their trust in him. Yet he had somehow become an empty suit. Perhaps it was an early midlife crisis on his part. He was only fifty years old but men had been known to burn out earlier than that. Sometime in the very recent past he had felt himself tiring of hearing peoples’ problems. ‘Whoever listened to his?’ was his rationale. His divorce from Vicky ten years earlier which had cost him a bundle and been like a knife through the heart hadn’t helped.

There was a certain underlying animosity between the Mayor and Barbieri. The Mayor realized that his underling would quite possibly try to unseat him in the next election. Yet that was three years off. This was here and now. Loathe him as he might, the Mayor also needed Barbieri. In a city chock full of neurotics, psychotics, disenfranchised and other people with a shopping list full of psychological ailments, the Mayor needed a take charge guy like Barbieri to level the playing field. On more than one occasion Barbieri had reminded the Mayor glumly of his favorite quote. The whole world is seven meals from anarchy, Barbieri would caution. The whole nation’s economy was stinko and the city was a potential cauldron of unemployed, underemployed and generally disgruntled citizens. Barbieri filled a purpose," thought the mayor as he asked him for his report.

Barbieri gave it to the Mayor straight. It was a gritty assessment of things that were going on in the streets. Mr. Mayor. Commissioners. In my five years on the job, four under your predecessor and one under you, I have never witnessed such an alarming increase in domestic disturbances, assaults, child molestations, rapes and other non-capital crimes as in ..

Excuse me Sal, interrupted the Mayor smugly but have you forgotten all crimes in the city are non-capital. I didn’t think I needed to remind you of all people that we don’t send people to the gas chamber here.

The Mayor’s trite jab annoyed Barbieri . He was just splitting hairs. "Ah sir, excuse my oversight. Anyway to get back to the point, began Barbieri, over the spring and into the summer we have seen a disturbing trend in the public. There seems to be this ethos of negativity gripping the city, and I’m talking all five boroughs. In short Mr. Mayor, people everywhere have become like packs of rabid dogs."

Oh come on Sal, said the Mayor annoyed. "You of all people, a trained mental health expert and you’re characterizing the citizens of our great city as rabid dogs?"

This is not theatrics Mr. Mayor, but if that’s what it takes to get your attention I’ll resort to that as well. The point is, there has been a complete breakdown of trust between people in every corner of the city. Some cases in point…

A chain of kosher delis has stopped serving hot coffee because they are afraid of being sued by money grabbers like McDonalds used to be when someone spilled the coffee on himself and alleged severe burning.

The Mayor stroked his chin and then outstretched his hand to one side, palm open as if to say That’s a big deal?

Well maybe your honor you’ve heard about the priests at St. Patrick’s Cathedral? Just the other day they instituted a policy of doing confessions via web cam because the priests are terrified of sitting face to face with the increasing number of violent parishioners. In Cardinal Lynch’s own words ‘our priests are scared shitless.’

"The Cardinal said shitless?" asked the Mayor, raising his eyebrows, his interest suddenly piquing. The Mayor who had just a few minutes earlier chastised Frank Boyle for not keeping up on current events now found himself looking uninformed.

Then there’s this, continued Barbieri, bolstered by a sense that he was now on a roll. There’s a new seeing-eye dog business that just opened in Woodhaven. But they’re not hawking Labrador Retrievers or German Sheppards, the standard breeds for this type of thing. They’re selling Rottweilers and Dobermans! The blind people feel like they’re sitting ducks on these streets.

Mr. Mayor, the people of your city, our city, just don’t trust each other anymore. Paranoia is spreading like wildfire. We’ve got to act before well…we implode.

Mayor Kronenberg shifted nervously in his seat. Where do you suggest we start?

Well in all due respect to my colleague Mr. Doan who earlier asked for more funding, I think my department is in more dire need of funding than his. Nothing from nothing but mental illness is a far bigger problem than Gramps having to raise his grandkids. Barbieri glanced toward Jerry Doan fully expecting a rebuttal but the Commissioner had fallen back to sleep. Our city mental health facilities are under staffed, overworked and walking a tightrope. They’re just not going to be up to the task of accommodating the increasing populace of mentally ill.

Well Sal, began the Mayor I sympathize with your situation. I really do. But you know the words to the song. The voters are tired of subsidizing manic depressives, suicidal whackos, and multiple personality misfits. The man on the street who pays his taxes and casts his ballot on Election Day doesn’t believe these people can be cured anyway. Ergo, he figures, why throw more money at something that just can’t be fixed.

In stereotypical Italian style, Barbieri began gesturing wildly with his hands. The distrust engulfing our city is at an epidemic level. You have a responsibility to take action.

The Mayor leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head exuding an air of exaggerated self-importance. Then he caught the younger Barbieri completely off guard. Sal, in all your years of practicing psychiatry have you ever cured a schizophrenic? I mean a first class paranoid basket case?

Well, we have had cases where we were able to greatly reduce the symptoms.

"Noble, but not enough. If you want me to go before the city council and ask for more money for an unpopular cause you’re going to have to do better than that. I want you to show me a success story. I want the story to sing!," exclaimed the Mayor.

Excuse me your honor?

Sing Sal…. Remember?... Arrivederci Roma! Didn’t your parents ever sing you that one while you were eating zeppole and sipping expresso at Ferraras? laughed the Mayor. Bring me a documented case where you took a knock down certifiable paranoid schizophrenic and successfully reintegrated him into the society and I’ll ask for your funding. You’ve got three months. Remember I want you to rehabilitate one of the worst nut jobs you’ve got.

May I remind the Mayor that we’ve been working on the common cold since the beginning of time and haven’t found a cure. You’re only giving me three months to perform a miracle? asked Barbieri sullenly.

"You’re the one who says the city is about to implode! How much time do you want?" demanded the Mayor impatiently.

Six months.

Okay six months. Remember I want you to demonstrate to me that you’ve completely cured a first class lunatic. I want you to present him to me personally, declared the Mayor.

Barbieri’s mind was already working on all cylinders. I’ll do better than that your honor. I’ll bring you two!

Well? snapped the Mayor? What are you waiting for?

The umm meeting isn’t over.

For you it is, declared the Mayor. You’ve only got six months to do what I think is impossible. If I were you I’d vamoose because you’re going to need every second of time you can get.

Barbieri stood up and made tracks for the exit door. He wouldn’t have even bothered to look back had it not been for the Mayor’s parting remark.

Remember Sal, I want your guy to sinnnng!

CHAPTER TWO

Skip Jack, a long term patient at New York City’s Stuyvesant House Psychiatric Facility was singing. He stared at his drawn looking face in the bathroom mirror and rued his very existence. The song may already have been eight years old but he liked it. In some hackneyed way Adam Lambert’s signature tune summed up his own feelings about life.

…Hey, slow it down, whatdya want from me? Whatdya want from me? Yeah, I’m afraid, whatdya want from me. Whatdya want from me? There might have been a time when I would give myself away, oh once upon a time I didn’t give a damn…"

A sudden crash and the sound of breaking glass coming from his adjoining bedroom was a stark reminder that another day in what he called God’s Zoo had begun. He whirled around not even bothering to put on his shirt and dashed into the bedroom. Myrna was at it again. She had somehow commandeered an old broomstick and had completely smashed the overhead light. Now she was already attacking his bed flipping over the mattress as if it were a mere featherweight object. She had a completely deranged look on her face. Her frizzy auburn hair stood on end like David Lynch’s Eraserhead character. Skip wondered if she had ever been married or at least have had a boyfriend. He cringed at the thought of waking up to her every morning.

The doctors at Stuyvesant House characterized Myrna as suffering from Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Skip would always cut to the chase and tell the doctors that Myrna was just a pain in the ass.

I told you I don’t like pillow shams, wailed the bellicose Myrna. How many times do I have to tell you?

What are you another Mommy Dearest? You got a bitch with wire hangers too maybe? asked Skip derisively?

You want to throw down? snapped Myrna in a gravelly voice.

Skip was short but stocky, usually able to handle himself. However Myrna was your archetypal bikini whale. Skip knew that she probably doubled up on him in body weight. As mad as he was at her intruding into his personal space yet again – it was becoming almost a once a week routine – he knew he was no match. "Damn, he thought if I hit her she won’t even feel it with all that body mass. If I try to wrap my arms around her and wrestle her to the ground well that would be like trying to wrap your arms around one of those Muir Woods redwood trees."

For a brief moment Myrna and he locked eyes. She was definitely throwing him one of her patented death stares. She was standing in such a position that it would be impossible for him to try to escape the room. Skip felt a panic attack coming on. To Skip’s relief there was a sudden announcement over the Hospital’ Section Two PA system. Room sixteen. Code Mr. Strong!

Skip started out snickering but soon crescendoed into a full blown laugh. Everyone in Stuyvesant House, at least the long termers such as Myrna and himself knew what Code Mr. Strong meant. Myrna was toast and she knew it. Instantly a bevy of able bodied orderlies clad in white pants and immaculately clean white tee shirts descended upon Skip’s room. Myrna didn’t go down without a fight but what she had in anger she lacked in stamina. Soon she began huffing and puffing and ended up nothing more than a 280 pound ball of silly putty in the orderlies’ hands. They carted her out of the room.

Skip looked at his room, now in chaos and decided that at the moment he was not up to the task of restoring it to order. He was hungry and there was a short window of opportunity to have breakfast for the patients in each section. He was always hungry. All the psychotropic meds they fed him like candy caused constant and insatiable hunger and thirst. Skip knew the meds caused this but there was little he could do. Classified as a paranoid schizophrenic he was on meds’ watch. Every night when he was given his dose of Zoloft and Risperidone the nurse who administered the meds would make sure he placed the meds in his mouth, swallowed water and then stuck out his tongue. That wasn’t the end of the drill however. The nurse would then stick a large wooden tongue depressor in his mouth and probe all around making sure the meds had been swallowed. And they called him paranoid.

One night the indignity of this entire procedure had flipped Skip out and when the female nurse stuck the tongue depressor in his mouth, Skip had bitten down hard on it causing it to break in half. Then he had spat the splintered piece of wood, meds and a little saliva just to make his point right in the nurse’s face. From that time on, he had been assigned to a hefty and very business-like male nurse who on his very first night of meds’ duty had promised Skip that if he tried spitting at him he would be minus a few teeth.

Besides the whole hunger thing there was another reason Skip hated all the meds. There had been several psychotic episodes that had accompanied his taking of all the crap that the psychiatrists had prescribed. The first such episode came many years back. The shrinks had been pumping him full of Navane for several months into his incarceration. However, Skip had still been causing trouble in the ward, constantly getting into scrapes with other patients and the staff as well. So one evening, some brilliant quack had decided to prescribe a dose of Haldol instead of the Navane. Skips’ entire body chemistry had already become accustomed to the Navane. Within a half hour of taking the Haldol, Skip found himself lying in his bed convulsing. He was shaking uncontrollably. One minute he felt hot and clammy. A minute later he felt cold. Eventually the sensation of feeling cold became the prevailing symptom. Skip had run to his shower and put on the water as hot as he could make it. He stood in the shower for some twenty minutes and swore he saw God. Then he went back to his bed where he passed out, butt naked and slept until the following morning. It had been one of the most fitful sleeps he had ever had, replete with ghoulish nightmares and sensations that his soul was leaving his body.

Then there had been a more recent traumatic event where shortly after taking his meds at night he had complained of sniffles and a nagging cough. This time some amateur at the nurses’ station had issued him a tablet of Coricidin which was known for not mixing well with psych meds. Again, within a short period of time an acute attack came over him. He began experiencing a feeling as if his entire head was empty. He literally had felt as if his brain and skull had been removed from within his head. When he tried to complain to the night nurses he began slurring his words uncontrollably. They had had the audacity to insinuate that Skip had been drinking. They threatened to put him on a twenty-four hour observation unless he promised to immediately bed down for the evening. Again he had headed for the showers. This time he hadn’t seen God but he swore he saw something akin to Hendrix’s famed purple haze.

Skip grabbed his shirt from the bathroom and walked out of his bedroom, hearing beneath his shoes the cracking of shards of glass that had once been his bedroom light. As he entered the hallway he was immediately approached by a younger male patient, bipolar and delusional, who Skip only knew as Manny. Manny was a Latino and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know why Manny had taken this as his first name. Manny was an in-your-face irrepressible Boston Red Sox fan. It didn’t matter to Manny one bit that living in New York City constituted living in enemy territory if you loved the Sox. It also didn’t matter to him that Manny Ramirez was many years’ removed from the game. Manny Ramirez had been one of the catalysts in the Red Sox’s reemergence as a baseball contender. This year’s baseball season was only two months’ old, the Sox were in first place and the Manny that stood in front of Skip, his eyes glistening with delight was completely animated.

When I was on the team with Curt, Johnny Damon, Big Papi and all the guys we used to laugh at the sign on one of the overpasses on Boston’s Storrow Drive. It said reverse curve, but someone had changed the letters and added letters on the sign to read reverse the curse. We sure did that. We reversed that curse and look at the Red Sox now. They’re making me proud to call them my former team.

Skip looked at the short, skinny kid from God knew where and felt sorry for him. Skip had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic many years back, more due to an unfortunate turn of events than to him actually being mentally challenged. His actions at Fort Worthington in New York State had been categorized as those of someone paranoid when in fact they had been merely self-defense. As a young man, Skip had often visited his uncle who was stark raving paranoid in the next town over. Skip’s grandmother had warned him that the more you hang around crazy people, the more likely you’ll become crazy yourself. Skip had now spent eight grueling years in mental institutions, four at Bellevue and the last four at Stuyvesant House and it had in effect made him rather crazy. The environment he now called home had made him paranoid. However, Skip was still a very bright and worldly thirty five year old never married man. As he looked at Manny he felt frustrated. He couldn’t count all the times he had tried to just lay out the facts to Manny in an effort to make him see that he wasn’t Manny Ramirez the former major league player. He felt pity for Manny but he also felt hungry and edgy from his confrontation with the dreaded Myrna just minutes ago. So today there would be no soothing words or sugar coating coming from Skip toward the tiny Manny, who looked much more like a horse jockey than a home run king.

Look Manny. There was never a curse on the Red Sox. That whole Babe Ruth being traded to the Yankees causing the Sox to be cursed thing, it was all just bull. Now I’ll tell you about someone who really reversed the curse. His name was Ozzy Osbourne. Ever hear of him?... No, probably not. He really knew how to reverse the curse. For all these years vampire bats had been going around gouging themselves on other animals and peoples’ blood. Then Ozzy one night at a concert goes and bites the head of a bat right off. Damned that Ozzy had brass balls. I’m sure Ozzy sucked some of that ol’ bat’s blood. I’ll bet all those vampire bats think twice now before sucking another person’s blood. They used to say there existed the curse of the vampire. Ozzy reversed that curse man, see what I mean?

The young Latino just looked at Skip expressionless. Skip realized he hadn’t convinced Manny that he was living in a fantasy land. So Skip turned and hastened down the hall.

It was a bright sunny day and if it weren’t for the fact that Skip was forcibly incarcerated in Stuyvesant House it may not have been such a bad place to stay. All the walls were painted in pastel shades to convey an air of cheerfulness about the place. It was a fool’s game for sure. The designers of this facility had apparently been of the naïve belief that they could make this place pleasant. Unfortunately the designers had no control over the building’s future occupants – crazy people. There were big plate glass windows everywhere that allowed for maximum amounts of daylight to penetrate the confines. Ceilings were raised at twelve to fourteen feet to imbue a feeling of spaciousness. They didn’t want patients getting cabin fever. That could get messy. Furniture was all vinyl and plastic. There were no wood or metal chairs, tables or lamps. These could become weapons in the hands of a deranged patient.

The whole facility was only six years old. It had been erected when New York City’s other psychiatric facilities such as Bellevue and New York Presbyterian had become overpopulated to the point that the situation had become critical. Because security systems, medical equipment and other furnishings were so state of the art, often times the most deranged mental patients were now sent here where it was felt there was zero risk of their forging an escape.

Skip walked into the main lounge area where patients congregated to read newspapers, play games or watch television. The televisions were situated well out of reach of anyone shorter than an NBA basketball player so there was no danger of a maniacal person ripping a television from the wall and throwing it about.

The lounge was almost vacant at this time because most patients were already at the cafeteria for breakfast. Skip heard a muffled cry coming from the far end of the lounge. He glanced in that direction and saw Myrna’s rotund face peering through the tiny twelve inch by twelve inch glass window on the solid door to the quiet room. The orderlies had no doubt sequestered her there for awhile so she could cool down and think things out. Myrna wasn’t chillin’ however. Her face was scrunched up against the glass window and she as shouting at the top of her lungs. Skip could make out what she was saying. You bastards. You’re all a bunch of fucking bastards!

Skip walked over to the window and peered inside. Myrna was just being Myrna. She had stripped all her clothes off. She was a sly one for sure. Current state regulations prohibited any male staff from administering to a naked female patient. Myrna knew they would have to send in women when it came time to release her. The women staffers would be in for a roller coaster ride for sure, trying to subdue that two ton Tessey. For a moment as he glanced over at several of the nurses at the nursing station, each and every one looking more stressed out than the next, he wondered why anyone would want to work here.

Skip approached the nurses’ station at the front of the patient’s lounge which spanned almost the full width of the lounge itself. It was entirely closed in with shatter proof glass. There were small portals which nurses could open when they needed to speak to a patient. The staff at Stuyvesant House were a bunch of smooth operators. They knew that if a full blown patient uprising were to occur, a worst case scenario so to speak, they could lock the two entrance doors to the nurses’ station and hunker down inside behind the reinforced glass partitions until law enforcement arrived.

A short but very strong looking female nurse named Grace opened up one of the small portals. Like all staff members at Stuyvesant House, the nurse wore regular street clothes. The pointy heads who ran the hospital believed that staff members dressing just as the patients did would foster a sense of kinship and trust amongst the entire Stuyvesant family. The thinking was that patients would think of staff as friends who could be confided in. Skip would always remember a conversation he had with Bruno, a fellow schizophrenic when he had first been transferred to Stuyvesant House upon its opening. You want to know the real reason the staff doesn’t wear uniforms here? asked Bruno. This joint is too cheap to supply them.

The only thing that set staff apart from patients was that they wore laminated name tags. Grace was dressed in a loose fitting pants suit, the color powder blue. It was another wardrobe requirement of Stuyvesant House that staff wear light perky colors, the thinking being that it would create better moods among the patients and staff alike.

Grace was relatively new to the staff. Skip estimated that she had been working there less than two months but she already knew him. She liked to address him as Mr. Jack not because she thought it was businesslike but rather because she liked the ring to his name. "Yes Mr. Jack, how may I help you."

Can you take me down to the cafeteria?

Why do you always show up late and behind all the other patients? asked Grace sarcastically.

You know us paranoids, cackled Skip. We like to minimize our contact with other members of the species. Grrrr.

Grace smiled faintly. Skip wanted more than that.

Lighten up Gracie. Schizophrenia isn’t catching!

No but everything else about you is, said Grace matter-of-factly.

I’ll be back in a few, she announced to Trevor, an African American male nurse of lumberjack proportions.

Grace escorted Skip down a long spacious corridor decorated abundantly with ponytail palm trees and rubber plants. Skip quickly glanced out of the hallway window at the street traffic three floors below. Canal Street was already rife with traffic. Even from this distance he could make out the faces of oriental merchants at some of China Town’s various shops down below and across the street. The sidewalks were wall to wall people. Skip marveled at the dogged spirit of New York City’s Chinese immigrants. Somehow incredibly they were able to thrive even in the tightest of spaces. They seemed to relish working in crammed matchbox sized bistros, dishing