Second Nature Read Online Free Page B

too big. His hair had been clipped so short Robin could see his scalp. There was a gash in the back of his neck, left when the barber’s hand had begun to tremble. Robin took off her yellow slicker and shook out the rain; she would have continued on to Stuart’s office at the end of the hall if she hadn’t seen a mouse scurry along the bench. Behind his back, the Wolf Man closed his fist over the mouse before it had the chance to dart away. Then he looked at Robin, suddenly, as if he knew he was being watched.
    Robin stayed exactly where she was, dripping rain onto the linoleum, even after the Wolf Man turned his back to her. Slowly he opened his hand, and the mouse ran in circles, as though dazed by the scent of human flesh, before scurrying off to hide in a heating vent. For weeks the Wolf Man had been thinking how easy it would be to tear out one of his doctors’ throats during their sessions together. The doctor would reach for a pen, or turn to look out the window, and he wouldn’t even know what was happening until his shirt was drenched with blood and clouds filled his vision. It was the same with a deer. Even if it was still struggling, you knew it had given up the fight when its eyes turned white, when it saw something so far away it wasn’t even in this world.
    The thunderstorm had moved in quickly, across the river, from New Jersey. The windows were rattling. Alone on the bench, the Wolf Man began to shiver. If he hadn’t, Robin would never have gone over to him. When she reached out and touched his arm, the heat from her fingers went right through his black coat and into his skin. She was the first person to touch him who didn’t have to. He still had blood blisters all over his hands and feet, and on rainy days like this the scar that ran along the inside of his thigh ached horribly. Lately, he had been remembering things that seemed to belong to someone else: forks and spoons set out on a kitchen table, slices of an orange on a blue china plate.
    “It’s just thunder,” Robin said.
    It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring. He knew that by heart. They thought he understood nothing, but he had heard them talking, right in front of him. The attendant who had kicked his shins while the handcuffs were clasped on was coming down the hall, tossing a set of keys in the air and catching them in the palm of his hand. The Wolf Man looked at the woman next to him; the heat from her touch moved upward, into his throat, until at last the words came out on their own, like birds rising.
    “Don’t let them take me someplace,” he said.
    When you spoke after so many years, the words actually hurt, each one a crooked bone, a fishhook, a burning star.
    Robin dropped her hand from his arm; her rain slicker fell at her feet. Something made her skin feel hot, and although it might have been pity, it might just as easily have been something else.
    The Wolf Man had known enough to keep what was inside him secret, and now he cursed himself. He should never have said a word. He looked down at the linoleum tiles on the floor; he tried not to breathe. The edge of the handcuffs cut through the skin above his wrists. In only a few hours, they’d transfer him and he’d be gone forever. Already, he was starting to disappear. Soon he would forget that the upturned leaves on the trees predicted whether or not it would rain, and that a rabbit dared not move if you covered its eyes. That was how they decided what to take down, at least he remembered that. They went after whatever was frightened and gave up easily. Anything that had the courage to stare you down, you let pass by.
    And so, in spite of the thunder, he raised his eyes. As soon as he saw her looking at him that way, he knew he hadn’t made a mistake. By then, Robin was telling the attendants that she’d been sent to pick up their patient. Later, in the hallway near the elevator, she would inform the social worker from the State Hospital that the transfer