The Contortionist's Handbook Read online

  I spent the afternoon keeping my eyes on them, playing two hundred dollars among the low-stakes tables with a poolside view. I’d run a halves count on a six-deck Twenty One shoe, watching the ebb and flow of the cards and betting small to stay off the casino’s scope. Winning is bad for anonymity. Being photographed and thrown out is even worse.

  The girls ordered cheap drinks and tipped cheaper, keeping their arm’s length giggle from the orbiting packs of men—fraternity hounds, lounge lizards and tanned and leathery minor royalty dripping strange accents, coconut oil and gold jewelry—simultaneously playing them and blowing them off. I tracked them to the bar that evening, sent them a round.

  “I’m headed back to New York for a business function.” I’m doing, Nervous but Sincere. “And my ex is going to be there. If I can ask a strange favor of you, I’ve got a hundred bucks and cab fare to wherever you want. I won’t bother you after that.” I fanned five twenties onto the bar.

  Inside a Las Vegas Boulevard souvenir shop, Cindi-with-an-i sat on my lap in a photo booth. I pinched her, told her to smile at the camera. Four bucks later, the booth spat out two strips of black-and-white stills of Cindi and me laughing and snuggling. The rest wanted pictures with each other.

  “You each take shots with me, first.”

  Cindi had black hair and soft, rounded bones in her face. Skinny, small breasts and a deep tan. But Cindi was still in Raymond O’Donnell’s Nevada safe deposit box when the ambulance took me to Queen of Angels. Jen was in my wallet. Jen was also skinny, but with a sharper face, spiky blonde hair, grey eyes, and a neon smile. The back of her picture said Danny, we’ll always have Mardi Gras.–Karen. Thrift store texbooks are rife with handwriting samples. I picked one that suited the photo—bloated letters with bold flourishes on the capitals—and mimicked it with a pink ballpoint. When they left, I had twenty-four new romantic memories, and they never saw my hand.

  Too many changers are too clean to withstand scrutiny. They carry brand-new wallets, empty but for a new driver’s license with a spotless record, and a new Social Security card. That’s when they start to blow it. Nobody carries his Social Security card.

  My wallet: a DF monogram—three dollars from a swap meet vendor—mink oiled and left on my windowsill for a month, then run through the rinse cycle. Driver’s license, video rental card (I rent documentaries I don’t watch to go with the magazine subscriptions I don’t read—I have to change hobbies a lot), credit card, ticket stub (The Divine Horsemen w/fIREHOSE at the Variety Arts Center), receipts (ATM, liquor store, strip club, gas station), work ID, Jen/Karen’s picture, an unused codeine prescription and business cards (mechanic, used record store, dry cleaner). The cops went through it, forgot it.

  My file: Paramedic’s report, ER chart. They ran my driver’s license, I know, because they want to know a criminal history to corroborate a diagnosis. John Vincent has been a ward of the state. My juvenile offender record is sealed, though they can still verify its existence. But Daniel Fletcher is a churchgoing taxpayer, minus the intentional parking tickets so I wouldn’t be a complete stranger to the System (if you’re too clean, they start digging deeper). And Daniel Fletcher has no medical or psychiatric history.

  You present a birth certificate at the DMV, they want to know why you’re getting your first driver’s license at age twenty-whatever. I’ve grown up Back East, never driven in my life. Anyone good at placing accents would peg me for East Rutherford. Never been there. But the utility and phone bill with the Bronx address, the Columbia University picture ID all matching the name on my birth certificate, are painless to fake. Time, effort, patience and a sharp eye for typefaces are all that are needed, and I have every one of them. After the tedium of the written exam and road test, I’m Daniel Fletcher. No criminal history, no psychiatric record, nothing. Sounds good, but the downside is no credit history, which needs to be built (I have to put large cash deposits on new apartments), which means a separate drill for the Social Security Administration to procure a number, which has its own pitfalls.

  No job history, so one has to be fabricated for a new employer. Most driving and courier jobs are less concerned with job history than with insurance, which makes them easier to obtain. All told, the process involves more than most people outside of the FBI ever know.

  College kids propagate the folklore that gets them and other amateurs busted: You comb through a cemetery, find someone who died within a year of being born. One who’s your own age plus a few years. Counties didn’t used to cross-index birth and death records, so it was easy to fool the DMV. You write the state a request for a birth certificate, bring it to the DMV with a utility bill or picture ID, and you’ve got a driver’s license that says you’re twenty-one.

  That might work, and I mean might, if all you want to do is buy kegs for some jack-off Monday Night Football party from a liquor store that’s never had its license suspended. That might work if, in a given year, two dozen people don’t all apply for driver’s licenses that all happen to share the same first, middle and last name. If they do, it might work if the DMV doesn’t notice the astronomical coincidence.

  Keara, the sound of her showering in the morning, radio on—a half-second of being with her jumps into my brain, and all at once I miss her. I want out of here.

  ———

  “It’s okay to be nervous,” the Evaluator says. “This is probably a little unusual for you. Now, what I need to do here is very straightforward. I’m going to ask you some questions in order to gather some background information from you. From there, I’ll assess your psychological health, and the opinion that I draft regarding that is the only disclosure of our discussion that I will make. Anything else you tell me, barring the divulgence of a crime or risk to yourself, is strictly confidential.

  “This interview is mainly for insurance purposes, so that the hospital doesn’t release a person who’s a potential suicide risk. Is there any part of what I’ve just said that you do not understand?”

  “I understand everything.”

  Yes, I understand that he deliberately avoids the word routine because he knows that I know this is anything but routine, and he needs my trust. I understand that this is mandatory and therefore not an interview but an interrogation. If I forget that, I’ll never leave here.

  “Now,” the Evaluator continues, “I’m not here to trick you into revealing some hidden secrets or get you to commit yourself. If I find something worth looking into further, we can arrange a visit at your convenience to discuss that issue. Is all of that clear?”

  “It’s clear.”

  “So,” the Evaluator smiles, eyes crinkling behind his glasses, “Do you know why you’re here?”

  This is a variant of What can I do for you today? What brings you here? or How can I help you today? Read: Do you remember what you did to get here? Do you acknowledge and assume responsibility for your actions? A straight answer is best, then he’s going to want to come back to that later.

  “The doctor thinks I tried to kill myself.” True. Eye contact, now.

  “Did you?”

  “No.” True. Keep the eye contact, but don’t stare. Even the most honest person doesn’t maintain eye contact for more than half of a conversation. Exceed that fifty-percent threshold and you trash your believability.

  “Do you mind if I ask your opinion, then, of someone who actually does try to kill himself?”

  “He needs help quickly,” I say it without a pause. “Something’s very wrong.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, people go through bad shit and they just get through it. That’s the way it is. Suicide … I mean, something’s wrong with his brain. I mean there’s gotta be physical brain damage.” I’m emphatic, and I refer to him. No vague pronouns, because I’m talking about someone else, not myself, and that’s what he’s listening for.

  “It says here that you took quite a few painkillers.”

  “I know. My head hurt. I couldn’t get it
to stop.” True. No pause, mild emphasis and I look him in the eye.

  “Do you know how much you took?”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  “Okay. Let’s come back to that later.” The Evaluator leans back, crosses his legs.

  Convince this guy I’m not a head case. Whether or not I’m locked up is decided by a person who couldn’t pass the same evaluation under the same circumstances in a hundred lifetimes. He’s tagged me with at least one unfounded headache claim and at least one overdose, so I’ve got to think quickly.

  The Evaluator is mixing his cue cards with instinct, like knowing when to kiss someone for the first time or push a bluffer into folding. People that survive shark attacks were never attacked. Sharks can tell with a single bite—a short fin mako’s jaws can exert four ton of pressure per square inch—whether they’ll burn more calories digesting the kill than they’ll gain from it. Millions of years of evolution tell them whether to eat you or not. This Evaluator is going to swim in wide, concentric circles of safe subjects until he thinks I’m relaxed enough to spill my guts. Older evaluators like this one spend less time interpreting. They read you quickly, so signs are easier to convey. That works in my favor.

  First, he’ll assess my current mental state. This is called a Mental Status Evaluation. He’s laying the groundwork for the detailed questions, the personal details that could get me sent away indefinitely, or at least until a hearing. Anything goes wrong here and the rest of his questions are null and void. He’ll profile my most basic condition, such as how I’m dressed, how I’m acting and if what I say coincides with my behavior. If I say I’m fine but I’m bawling my eyes out, or I think I’m going to die while I’m smiling cheerfully, there’s a problem.

  He’ll try to establish that I know who I am, where I am and what day it is. That I’ve got my memory—immediate, short- and long-term. Hygiene is important. Someone in the depths of depression (for which I’m a candidate) throws grooming to the dogs. No shave, white scalp flakes salting their shoulders, untucked shirts and swollen guts pushing belly hair through missing buttons, an Evaluator will mark it down. I’d splashed water on my hands in the bathroom, finger-combed my hair and chewed a handful of mints from the urology desk on the way here.

  “How are you feeling now?” he asks.

  “I’m all right. A little groggy. My throat hurts.”

  “It’s swollen. Give it a day, maybe take a couple of aspirin. It should be fine,” he says, and writes Patient complaining of throat pain on the canary legal pad.

  “Mr. Fletcher—may I call you Daniel?” Turn the dial to Informal, lighten the mood and tighten the circles. The distorted fish do their back-and-forth soothing trick.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “You can call me Richard,” he says, then continues, “Daniel, I need to go through some exercises with you in order to identify a baseline in your thought process. I need to do this to be certain you’re able to accurately answer the background questions I mentioned earlier. That sound okay with you?”

  “Okay.” Asking my permission is a lie. I’m low on coffee.

  “Do you know where you are, Daniel?”

  “I’m in a hospital.” I’m at Queen of Angels Hollywood Presbyterian. Saw it on the scrubs (antifreeze blue-green, professional, calming) but don’t want to look too observant. They think your intelligence is out of bounds, they get a bigger notebook and order lunch.

  “Do you know which hospital?”

  I shake my head, push my hair out of my eyes.

  “L.A., somewhere.”

  He nods, writes shorthand annotations, HG and three x’s, circles the third x beside my abbreviated answer.

  “Do you have any idea where in this hospital you are?”

  “I’m on the third floor, I think. No windows in here, so it’s hard to tell anything else.” False. I know exactly where I am. Wallace walked me three hundred and thirty feet from the emergency room and took an elevator up four flights. Two right turns and three left, so I’m facing south. If there were a window in here, I’d be looking down onto Fountain Avenue.

  I lean back, cross my legs and fold my hands. Mirror. Trust me.

  “How do you know you’re on the third floor?” PM, three x’s and circles the third, again.

  “The elevator.”

  “Very good.”

  The Evaluator shifts in his seat, maintaining an open posture. He’s sitting at the corner of the table adjacent to me, instead of opposite. Legs uncrossed, left elbow resting on the arm of the chair (my chair has no arms—Wallace put me here), left hand rubbing his chin or mustache. His torso is exposed to say I’m not hiding anything. The most important thing to remember is that all of the pop-psychology magazine articles about body language are wrong. Crossing one’s arms or legs can indicate comfort or honesty just as much as it can defensiveness or barriers or deception. What’s important is knowing when to change body language, and how frequently.

  My file is out of reach, and he writes on his yellow pad, right-handed. Top left margin starting out at one point five inches and swelling inward as he moves down the page, a pattern that prematurely forces him to start a new sheet. He writes in cursive but keeps his letters far apart from each other.

  “Do you know what day it is?” he asks.

  “Tuesday, the eighteenth.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “Yeah.” I don’t give up more than I have to, but I can’t appear obstinate or paranoid, either.

  “How is it you’re certain of the date?”

  “My headache started Friday. They usually last four days and I was fine yesterday when I woke up here.” I mime with my hands, pointing to here when I say here. Hidden hands say liar.

  At the mention of the previous headaches, he flips back two pages, makes a note where we’ll get back to that later and returns. He checks my file, resumes his inward creep down the legal pad. Pen poised, thumb and forefinger rubbing his moustache, he continues.

  “Okay, can you tell me the month and year?”

  I shift in my seat, glance to my left because I’m remembering a fact. “It’s August, 1987.” Sigh, clench my left hand, then open. I’m doing exasperated. Without words I’m saying Why are you asking me this?

  His first priority is to find out if I’m oriented, achieved via basic questions about where I am and how I got here, what day of the week or what year it is or who’s president. Same as when a field medic is checking to see if you’re coherent.

  His next task is to establish that I know why I’m here, which tells him I’m aware of what I’ve done. That is, what did I do? And do I know that I did it? Hopefully, he’ll link my why back to my assessment of reality.

  It’s a simple equation at heart, a clean chain of logic that forms a circle and bites its own tail. Question one: Do you know where you are? If you say a hospital, they can assume, for the time being, that you are sane. If they ask you if you know how you got there, and you say I cut myself, you’ve proven that you know right from wrong and are responsible for your actions. If they ask you why you cut yourself and you say to stop the voices in my head, that blows their first conclusion and you’re gone. But close the circle equation and you’re halfway home.

  “Daniel, I’d like you to count backwards from one hundred, in increments of seven, please. Do you understand?”

  I nod.

  “As far as you can, whenever you’re ready.”

  I have to act like it’s not easy, but that I can still do it. “Ninety-three… eighty-six…” I close my eyes for effect, mime with my hands. “… seventy-nine… seventy-two… sixty-five…”

  “Thank you. That’s far enough.” They almost always stop you between five and eight numbers into a count.

  Serial Sevens is a memory test, seven being the average number that can occupy one’s short-term memory. Poor short-term memory is a big indicator for depression, and I need him to rule it out.

  It’s easy for me, like any other number. I can shuffle
them in my head, easy as breathing. I can quantify objects and their units of measure with my eyes. Distance. Dimension. Angle. Volume. I know from looking. Measuring or counting doesn’t describe it. I just know, in a blink. Been doing it since I was a kid.

  The remaining tests: Registration. Attention. Recall. Language. Copying. The Evaluator names three objects that I’ll be asked to recall later. Ball. Tree. House. Then, Follow this instruction and holds up a card: Close Your Eyes written in fat marker. I close my eyes. Good. Now open. Take this piece of paper in your right hand. Good. Fold it in half. Now place it on the floor. Good. Holds up his pencil. Can you tell me what this is? I tell him. Points to his watch, same question. It’s your watch. What were the three words I gave you earlier? Ball. Tree. House. Usually one syllable, never more than two.

  The white male doctors from middle-class backgrounds always pick Dick-and-Jane nouns: cup, shoe, chair, grass, dog, cat, bird. Those with no children always pick children’s nouns: Ball, tree, house. The others, those from poor backgrounds who have struggled to get where they are, tell an abbreviated life story in single syllables: truck, street, fire, door, stairs, man, car. Female doctors wearing paisley scarves and Southwestern jewelry are more abstract: spring, fall, mom, dad, pet, sun, moon, rain. And they’re the toughest ones to fool.

  The Evaluator hands me a clean sheet of paper, a felt marker—can’t hurt someone or cover any mistakes—and a card showing two intersecting pentagons.

  “Now Daniel, I’d like you to copy this image exactly as you see it. Make certain you duplicate every point, and that the two objects intersect.”

  There’s a lot happening here. He’s testing perception, coordination, following directions, among other things. He never uses the word pentagon, and wants to make certain I can count the angles and faces.