speculated. “Are you going to strap her down?” I love the idea of watching a client resist. They show a spirit and a sense of justice that I don’t have. From the beginning, I had been a passive case. Take me away, bring me home, take me away, bring me home. This was my fourth trip back to Loiseaux’s. I knew the way so well that, once I got my license, I could get a job driving the van. I knew I would provide a better ride than Happy Harley does. Stimulating conversation. Better music. A scenic route. The only thing lacking would be Happy’s irrepressible good cheer.
We stopped in front of the Haggards’, a pillared and porticoed faux colonial set back from the street and approached through an ornamental gate into a circular driveway. Outside, a Benz and a monstrous Land Rover stood ready to rumble. It was obvious, from his choice of vehicles, that Mr. Haggard suffered from small-penis syndrome. Nothing like raw horsepower to bolster the self-esteem of the limp-dicked. The covered portico was ringed with lights, blinking cheerfully as if announcing to the world that sanity and good cheer dwelled within. What a hoax. I pictured the Haggards as a family of psychic mutants, incestuous, abusive, Republican. Within dwelled violence and mendacity.
I like rich people, actually. Their children have interesting mental conditions. Not your standard ADDs or ADHDs that are easily medicated with the usual household drugs but disturbances in a more sociopathic vein. Anger issues. Sex issues. Authority issues. Mainly, my kind of issues. Issues that make you a person of some depth. Issues that make you an astute observer of the human world, a provocative conversationalist, a skilled manipulator of the powers that be. Beats knee jerking and head banging. I couldn’t wait to meet Miss Entropia.
Harley parked the van in front of the covered portico, but, true to procedure, he stayed inside. He turned on the CB and announced, “Pickup to Base, Pickup to Base. I’m at the site. Over.”
“Base to Pickup. We’re calling the client’s parents. Over.”
“I’m on it. Over and out.”
I loved those old-fashioned CB radios. They made everything sound so military.
Harley signaled his presence with three taps on the horn, as was the usual first step when doing an involuntary. The porch lights came on, the house suddenly awakening. Following the established procedure, someone would appear at the entrance, give the go-ahead nod, and then leave the door unlocked. The family would try to reason with their kid, who might have locked herself inside a bathroom with a medicine cabinet full of downers, or held a gun to her head, or shackled herself to a bedpost. Much conversation might ensue before Happy Harley was brought into the scene.
Once they decided they needed him, the lights would blink three times. Harley would rush in with a blanket that he would place over the involuntary’s head and shoulders to confuse and disorient her. Then, he’d quickly lead her out of the house and push her inside the van. He’d strap her to the backseat and then slide the side door closed with a bang. Sometimes, if the involuntary was a young kid, he’d wrap him up in his wrestler’s bear hug and bodily lift him into the vehicle, all the time cooing endearments and positive thoughts. The whole maneuver would take less than sixty seconds. I’d seen it happen. This guy was a paragon of fluid coordination, a graceful thing to see.
Meanwhile, he warned me to stay put and not get in the way. “This will be easy,” he said, “if you don’t try to be helpful.”
The lights in a front window blinked three times, and the race was on. Harley was out of the van, a folded blanket tucked under his arm. Somebody opened the front door for him, and he didn’t slow his stride; moments later he emerged with his massive arms hugging a slight figure who, under the blanket that covered her head and chest, was wearing a shapeless black dress, ripped stockings, and pointy black ankle boots. I notice fashion touches.
The girl, I was glad to see, was putting up some resistance. She almost wriggled out of Happy’s embrace, and even as he used both arms to hold her, her feet inside their sharp-toed boots were kicking a quick beat on his shins. From inside the blanket I could make out a muffled stream of colorful complaining. He strapped her in with a yank on the seatbelt and slid the van door shut.
In a moment of inspiration, one of those impulses that rise like jewels from the brain’s primal core, I clicked shut all the door locks as Hansen was going around the van to the driver’s side. It was the loudest click I had ever made. Harley heard it, too. He tested the handle on the door, patted his pockets, then found himself peering in dismay at the keys dangling from the ignition slot. He met my eyes through the windshield with a cold stare.
The locking of the doors impressed Miss Entropia, who had shaken off the blanket to reveal a pale face crowned by a mop of black hair. She stared at me curiously out of her raccoon eyes. Our first meeting, and already there was a surge of energy between us. In an instant the three of us, Happy, Miss Entropia and I, understood that the power balance among us had shifted with a single click.
“You are so crazy,” she said, more in wonder than in praise.
“You were expecting someone normal?”
“I wasn’t expecting another patient.”
“We’re clients, actually.”
“Right. And that guy is not a goon, and Institute Loiseaux is not an insanitarium.”
“It’s not so bad. Most of us are really, really functional. ADD, ADHD, OCD. Take your pick,” I said, enjoying the status that came from experience. “The hardest period is the first ten weeks. No phone, no online, no TV, no games, no chats, no free time. They schedule you down to your toilet trips. Then you get used to having your life nicely arranged. Some of us are not good with decisions. I’ve been there off and on for a couple years.”
“And you’re glad to be going back, right?”
I hadn’t quite figured out glad, I wanted to tell her. I was not happy at home, certainly not with Tedious tormenting me, Iris betraying me, Dad retreating into his brown fedora, and Mother sweet but clueless. “Going back? That’s okay.”
Harley was pounding on the sides of the van, shaking it, jerking at door handles, as if his wrestler’s grip could intimidate the doors into opening.
“You are in so much trouble.” His shouting was muffled by the closed windows.
I shrugged and gave him a disarming smile, the one I use when I can’t explain myself and hope that circumstances will excuse me. In this case, I could just surrender and open the van and cut the damage. Ha, ha, just kidding.
Miss Entropia in the backseat had wriggled out of the belts and was trying to pry open the grill that separated the front from the back. “I don’t like it back here,” she said. “It feels like I’m in a cage already.”
Happy had stopped his yelling and pounding and was marching toward the house. He had clearly come up with an idea, and while I waited for the results of his brainstorm, I devoted my whole attention to Miss Entropia. Her eyes were squinting, her lips pressed tightly, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her fury was downright cosmic.
I told her to stop pounding on the grill while I figured out a way to take it off. The panel was latched to the door posts, and it was easy to unfasten them and then lower the grill to the floor.
“See?” I held out my hands to show how simple the operation was when you put mind over brawn.
“You are smug,” she said, her expression softening.
I moved over to the driver’s seat so the girl
