Chapter Two - Paper Chase

“Ooooo, fish sticks!”

This was one of the excruciatingly emotional responses Neville had to endure during mealtimes. As usual, it was uttered by tiny but bubbly Clara, the resident with the sunniest disposition which, in his eyes, made her the least likeable. She reveled in banal observations, normally consisting of announcing the food already on his plate.

As she passed his table, she caught Neville’s eyes and he returned her smile with a squinty glare. Unfazed, Miss Congeniality continued past his table to meander into the serving line with a friend as Neville impaled green peas on his fork.

He sat alone most days. He liked it best that way and the other residents did, too. Every once in a while, a newcomer would plop their tray down at his table but after a few mealtimes, they’d discover the lengths he’d go through to remain antisocial. Armed with a magnifying glass to aid the bifocals he already wore, he’d pore through the newspaper, studying it like prepping for a final exam.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carol approaching the table and rolled his eyes. He would have pretended to be done if he didn’t enjoy those wonderfully crappy fish sticks so much.

Carol scooted up a chair, plopped her chubby elbow on the table and leaned in to Neville.

“Mr. Ramsey, how are you doing today, sir?”

A bit apprehensive to engage in conversation, it took him a moment to respond. Silence wouldn’t work this time. He’d tried it before. Better to engage so the conversation would have an ending.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Has anyone told you differently?”

“I just wondered if you ever wanted to talk about what happened with Mr. Johnson. I know you guys were close.”

Neville disguised a chuckle by masking it as a cough.

“Yes, Ms. Leonard,” he replied. “I was very heartbroken when he slipped out of this life. We all have to finish the dance at some point. At least he’d lived a full, long life. I don’t believe any of his background included babysitting old people in a home, but nobody’s perfect.”

Carol smiled. Neville was following his usual M.O. of begrudging responses topped with an insult. It was one of the few actions she could predict, unlike the surprise of seeing him wiped out on the floor beside his roommate a week ago.

She glanced over at his cane leaning against the table.

“How’s that working for you?” she asked.

He rolled his eyes. The night of the incident, he’d sprained his ankle and bruised his leg. To him, the cane was publicly humiliating but at least he escaped the possibility of a wheelchair. He picked it up, looked at Carol and faked a smile, seeming to say I’m using it – are you happy?

“Glad to see it, sweetheart. We don’t want another spill, do we? Well, I also wanted to give you a heads up that we probably will have another resident moving in with you. I’m sure he’ll be a nice man, just like Mr. Johnson.”

“When?”

“Not sure. But you’ll be the first to know - after me of course.”

As Carol walked away, Neville held his magnifying glass with his right hand while grabbing a magic marker with the left. He typically scribbled all through the newspapers, hording the remains of some in his room. During monthly cleanings, when the musty smell became noticeable, the staff would excavate them and he’d start anew.

Suddenly, he found his target and his heart skipped. The moment unlocked a room of confusing emotions. It always took his breath to see it, like a mention of an almost-forgotten childhood home or a veteran’s nostalgia of a former battlefield. As with other such weekly discoveries, the assurance of peace quickly followed the initial jolt. He was reminded once again of who he was.

He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He had done a battery check on his emotions and they were still there. He was living and breathing. Most of all, he was a survivor. Now it was time for a nap.

Carol knew that for every Neville, there were three or four dozen polar opposites. While the curmudgeon remained mum and distant, especially in regard to whatever events led him to the home, other residents were so ready to document their histories, she’d have to peel herself away, devising various procedures for escape.

Those histories came with the job. For most, they were their most valued assets and Carol esteemed them as such. While the average person or visiting relative might dismiss the lot of them as people that society forgot, she considered the greatness still present in their aged frames. She served former stockbrokers, school teachers, boxing champions, civil rights pioneers, pastors, night club singers and medical professionals. She was aware of their collective worth even if it was now hidden to others and, many times, to themselves.

Of particular importance to her was to instill in her staff a reverence and respect of their clients, a lesson that bore repetition during spurts of excessive unruly behavior. “Whether or not our residents are in their right minds or not,” she instructed, “we need to treat them as if they were our own flesh and blood. They’ve earned it.”

Some stored faded photographs as souvenirs of their journeys, visual guides to aid their struggling memories. Filling in the holes between snapshots, some were prone to exaggeration. Carol had no doubt of Frank Norman’s past as a medical doctor. His case history clearly indicated it. More unreliable, however, were his claims of being captured by and narrowly escaping primitive tribes in South American while performing missionary work.

On the way back to her office, Carol spotted Bill, mumbling into a cell phone while staring at an open telephone book. He received the book from his frustrated son, who delivered it during his usual weekend visit after being pestered about it for weeks.

“Bill Simmons,” he said. “You remember me, don’t you? We used to go out.”

On the other end, a nasally-voiced woman replied, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.”

The matronly manager walked up beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder as he hung up the phone.

“Wrong number,” he said.

Carol smiled and nodded.

“I have a lot of girlfriends out there, Ms. Leonard.”

“But I thought I was your woman, Bill,” she joked, patting his shoulder.

For a moment, anxiety left his face and he grinned.

“You’re alright, Ms. Leonard.”

She continued to her office, intent on finishing paperwork. She hadn’t been completely truthful with Neville. Her main mission was to see how receptive he’d be to having a new roommate so soon after Mr. Johnson’s passing. Whether he liked it or not, the new resident would be moving in Sunday afternoon. Deciding how to pull the recluse out of his room long enough for them to move the new guy in was a problem she was putting off until tomorrow.

It’s a commonly-held belief that once a person realizes they’re taking part in a dream, they wake up, their mind unable to suspend the reality of disbelief. That self-awareness, along with the inability to actually perish or see objects in color, is one of the “rules” that gets passed around like an unwritten code. Neville had always heard this, but he defied those constraints. He relished the ability to shape his subconscious escapes into works of art.

His dreams varied between epics and one-act plays, and most of the time he had full control. He attributed that to superior intellect, of course, even in his twilight years. Other people were, for all intents and purposes, idiots, marching like marionettes to a dimension dominated by puppies or romantic liaisons.

He entered his world like a worker punching a time card, creating his storylines based on his moods. They mostly ran dark, as was the case on Tuesday afternoon. He first appeared inside of a lavish mansion, quickly spotting his youthful mother seated on a sofa watching a television. He passed her to walk onto a marble balcony to take in the view.

Scattered upon the lawn of the estate stood personal representatives from stages of his life - people he instantly recognized from birth to present day. Even Ms. Leonard had her part to play, gazing up on an able-bodied Neville sipping from a goblet. He held up the cane to her and repeated the fake smile he’d given earlier before tossing it into the air.

Beyond those faces emerged a red blaze of lava-like fire inching closer to the grounds. The mob, upon whom he’d projected critical eyes, transformed into one of panic and hopelessness. He paused for a moment to take it all in. This was his reward. He turned back toward his mansion, fully aware of the approaching disaster.

He opened the door to return to his sanctuary, but inexplicably, he had a sense of uneasiness. When he glanced over his shoulder, the atmosphere had changed – the bloodied skyline was now cloudless and brilliant blue. Disturbing his world even further, he felt a presence, followed by a whisper.

“Hello, friend.”

As Linda placed her hand on Neville’s arm, it startled him out of the dream and he exploded with a scream, scaring her in the process. Their frightful duet echoed down the hallway, causing a few more palpitations. Groggy but awakening, Neville was angrier than usual. The blonde, ponytailed intern threw her hand in front of her mouth to mask her nervous laughter.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to straighten out her speech. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. You sounded like you were choking or laughing or something.”

He sat up, glaring, cursing under his breath and mentally re-writing her name to the death list.

“Was it a dream?” she asked.

He continued to glare, while she disregarded his reluctance to converse.

“It’s crazy,” she began. “I just remembered a strange dream I had last night. Isn’t that weird how you go through your entire day and something strange just makes that dream real all over again?”

Neville still sat in silence but Linda’s chatter prompted him to discover he’d forgotten all about the earlier dream, or at least the ending that had disturbed him. That was strange, but perhaps after she left him alone, he’d dig back into it.

“I think I dream about flying more than anything,” she continued, while Neville imagined the young girl in mid-air, dropping from a tall building, screaming for her life.

“When I fly in my dream, it’s like I’m swimming in air. Does that make any sense? And the strange thing is – I’m really afraid of flying. My cousin wants me to come see her in California and I tell her…..”

In mid-sentence, Linda’s thoughts are interrupted by a powered-on television, with a volume rising higher and higher. Balancing embarrassment and offense, Linda looked back at the bald man, who held a television remote in his hand. She forced a smile and turned to leave.

Walking toward the door, out of the corner of her right eye, she saw the loud television going black again as the resident powered it off. Before arriving at the door, however, she stopped and bent down, piquing the old man’s curiosity.

She stood up with a newspaper clipping in her hand, fresh ink clearly visible. She walked back to Neville’s bed with the article in hand.

“I think you dropped this,” she said, while glancing quickly at the text and markings.

She offered and he grabbed the paper, nodding his head in the slightest amount of appreciation. She paused for a moment before retreating and she noticed his right hand reaching for the remote again.

“Did you know him?” she asked, glancing at it, but not expecting anything more than the sound of The History Channel to roar again. Rather than point the remote, Neville was motionless.

Neville Ramsey had said many words to Linda through the years, but never anything that resembled an actual conversation between two friendly adults. Most of the time, she heard groans, expletives, commands and insults. Still, she continued to try, the latest such attempt occurring three seconds prior to a breakthrough she thought would never come.

Locking eyes, Neville gave Linda the courtesy of a response to a question she never thought would interest him. As he nodded his head affirmative, she couldn’t help but go double or nothing.

“How did you know him?”

She lost his eye contact and realized she’d pressed her luck. Still, there was progress and that would be just enough for one day. She started to walk away when his voice stopped her cold.

“I killed him.”