Mercy Street(83)

It’s probably still there.

AT THE WELLWAYS QUARTERLY BOARD MEETING IN CHICAGO, security measures were debated, a substantial investment in the Boston operation. At the clinic on Mercy Street, a new system was installed.

The new system was cumbersome. The exam rooms and surgical suite were reinforced with steel doors, each controlled by a thumbprint reader. The readers were highly sensitive. Hand lotion confused them. After Florine circulated a memo to this effect, the staff came to work unmoisturized.

Extra cameras were placed in the waiting room, the call center. An additional guard was hired to watch the monitors, while Luis manned the metal detector and looked inside backpacks and wanded the patients before waving them through.

Despite these measures, certain questions went unanswered. For months, Claudia and Mary monitored the Hall of Shame, but no new photos were posted. The guy in the Sox cap (my photographer friend, Luis called him) was not seen again. As far as anyone could tell, he had never returned to Mercy Street.

As far as anyone could tell.

In the meantime, other things happened. The city turned its attention to politics, the upcoming presidential campaign. In New York, a B-list TV star descended an escalator, mugging for paparazzi. The world continued to turn.

That summer, without warning, the Hall of Shame went dark.

Questions remained. Who built the site, and why? Who owned the domain name? Wellways LLC mounted an investigation. Its legal counsel made inquiries. All requests for information went unanswered.

Luis’s photographer friend never returned, or maybe he did. Maybe he’s there right now, loitering on the sidewalk, wearing a different hat.

LIFE HAPPENS IN INCREMENTS. EARLY HUMANS UNDERSTOOD this, and so they invented time, a way of parsing the eternal.

A schedule was a critical component of right living, one of the necessary conditions for healing to occur.

Anthony worked the morning shift, seven thirty to two, with a ten-minute break in the morning and a half hour for lunch. Increments of time, filled with productive action.

He had not gone looking for the job. The job had come to him by way of his cousin Sal, who after his meteoric rise at Star Market had cut a deal with the competition and now ran frozen foods at Food Star, where he’d used his influence in invisible ways. This was the way of the world; Anthony understood this. His cousin had interceded in a saintly way, persuading the higher powers. Accordingly, blessings rained down. Anthony’s application was fast-tracked. In no time flat, he was brought aboard as a part-time deli counter attendant. After completing the ninety-day probationary period, he would be eligible for more hours. The possibility of full-time was dangled. No promises were made, but Anthony could read the writing on the wall.

The job was satisfying. The pay was unimpressive—at the end of the month, he had less in his bank account than he’d collected on Disability—but there were other compensations. Free uniforms, an employee discount. No health insurance—not yet—but this fact did not trouble him. The doctors hadn’t helped him anyway.

Other compensations. In the grand scheme of things, the paper-thin slicing of deli ham was of no great importance. Anthony knew this, yet he rose each morning with a sense of purpose. Instead of walking to St. Dymphna’s, he walked to Food Star, where his presence was expected and needed. At the deli counter he uncovered the slicer, checked the Use by dates, shifted the inventory. At seven thirty the first customers arrived—old people, mainly. A few of the regulars greeted him by name.

The conversations were not taxing. He never had to grope for something to say. A friendly hello, a word about the weather, Anything else for you? When he handed over their cold cuts, the customers thanked him. His smile brightened their day.

It was nothing at all like working on the internet, fixing broken links and correcting typos for the faceless Father Renaldo, who issued curt commands and was never pleased. Anthony had given his notice via email, the only means of contacting Father Renaldo, and so was denied the gratification of quitting in person, due to having a better offer. Two days later he received a cursory reply: OK, pls make those correx before you go. Yours in Christ, RC.

At one time he’d spent entire days staring at his computer screen. Now he checked email maybe once a week. His online friends quickly forgot him. People came and went all the time, changing screen names and profile pics, ages, genders, identities. It was all made-up, really. Nobody was anybody, and neither was he.

Excelsior11, his second-best friend in the world, had disappeared completely—why exactly, Anthony would never know. He knew only that he’d stuck his neck out, spent untold hours lurking outside the clinic on Mercy Street. In retrospect it seemed pointless, a waste of effort. He’d sent the man dozens, maybe hundreds of photos. What Excelsior had done with them was anybody’s guess.

At Food Star, Anthony saw people from the neighborhood—old classmates, friends of his parents. Several times a week he saw someone from church: Mrs. McGann and her senile husband, Mrs. Paone leaning on a shopping cart instead of a walker. Mrs. Morrison updated him on the barren daughter in Arizona. It was like old times.

Now that he had Food Star, he no longer needed St. Dymphna’s. According to Mrs. McGann, Quentin the Quick had been reassigned to a parish in Leominster. Anthony didn’t miss him at all.

HE SPOTTED HER FIRST, STANDING IN LINE AT THE FISH COUNTER, no more than ten feet away. They hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years. Naturally she had changed in that time, gained mass and solidity. Her hair was lighter than he remembered, the corners of her mouth sagging in some chronic disappointment. He thought she must have spent a lot of time frowning for her face to look like that. In a perverse way, this pleased him. The years spent with another man had not satisfied her. If she’d chosen Anthony Blanchard, her face might have frozen in an expression of joy.