“How many Percocet did you take today?”
“Two when I woke up, and two before you came.” He checks his pill case. “Maybe more.”
R2-D2 scratches at the back door. For the dog the only thing worse than being with Danny is being without him. Danny wants to watch an episode of an old sitcom but I want to finish the interview so I can leave.
“We only have a few questions we missed from last time, then done. Sound good?”
He mutes the television. “Do you think that sounds good?”
“Please remember I’m here to help you, and that your answers will not be shared with anyone except your attorney.”
“And the whole courtroom,” he says.
“Not without your permission. Number five. Are you able to achieve erection whenever you want, occasionally, or not at all?”
He flips through silent channels. “Not at all.”
“That means never.” I read the questions quickly, in an even tone. “Have you achieved erection at all since the accident?”
“Once or twice.”
“That would count as occasionally.”
He punishes me for the enthusiasm. “Check me out,” he says. “Brad Pitt coming through.”
I write: occasionally. “When you achieved erection, how long did it last?”
“A minute or two,” he says. “Not long enough for Clover to go for hers.”
“Are you able to ejaculate whenever you want, occasionally, or not at all?”
He shifts in his seat, stalls. “If I can’t get an erection, how could I ejaculate?”
“Sometimes in sleep, you’re able to … without really … also, it is possible to ejaculate while having a flaccid penis.”
“You’ll have to teach me that trick. What’s occasionally again?”
“Anywhere from one time on,” I say.
He hears my impatience, pouts. “Write down occasionally.”
Danny used to be quick to joke, according to his friends, but the accident triggered another man’s temper. He yells at Clover, the kid, the dog. He doesn’t even walk the same, Clover told me. This personality change is why certain lawyers present brain injury cases as fatalities. The client’s first life has ended.
“Are you able to go to the bathroom without assistance from anything or anyone?”
He waits for a truck commercial to finish before answering. My phone vibrates in my pocket with messages, e-mails. “I’m able to piss but not the other thing,” he says.
“You’re able to urinate,” I say. “All the time, occasionally—”
“All the time.” He lifts the waistband of his jeans to show me a diaper.
“How do you relieve yourself of fecal matter?”
He points to a stack of medical supplies in the corner. “I use gloves to remove what I need. Six or seven times a day. I don’t know when I have to go, that sensation or whatever is gone. I keep checking.” He slumps into himself on the chair. He’s crying, shoulders shaking, holding the remote like a sword.
I want to tell him that tears are a bother and a waste of time. “This is normal for someone with your injury,” I say. “Most of my clients can’t achieve erections at all.”
“I lied.” He pats his crotch. “There’s nobody fucking home. I sit here and diddle my life away as my wife screws everyone in New York.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” I check my phone. The florist, Sam.
“You’re weird today. Distracted, jumpy. Phone calls. Why are you so anxious to leave? Hey.” He launches out of the chair with surprising speed and stands over me.
The self I put away during these interviews returns as I slide my phone and book inside my purse. I am alone in a house with an unstable man who, even injured, can physically overpower me. I must leave without upsetting him further. “That’s good information, Danny. We can stop.”
“That’s it?” He shakes his arms over me, as if trying to rid a tree of fruit.
Excited by his owner’s motion, R2-D2 leaps up and down against Danny’s leg, barking.
I stand, my bag already looped over my shoulder. “I won’t bother you anymore.” As I walk to the door every atom in the room takes on the wrung-out nature of incident.
As Danny’s adrenaline wanes, his pain returns. He sits on a pile of magazines on the coffee table. “Sometimes I feel like I’m watching my family from far away. Like they’re on a stage and I’m in the nosebleeds. There’s even a little me, a little Danny. I want to join them but my limbs don’t work. I want to say to the little me, stop fucking everything up. My voice gets stuck. After a while, I think, well, why don’t they find me? They’re too far away. They may not even be my family. I may be using all this energy to signal to the wrong people. Do you know what I mean?”
“It’s disassociation.” I pause in the doorway. “A lot of my clients have it. You’re not alone.” I want to think about my grandmother. I want to buy a dress and get married so something new can happen.
“You got somewhere to be?” His volume reaches its highest and most pained register. His loneliness is tangible, it could leave with me and ride in the passenger seat of my car. “It’s no fun sitting with the crippled guy?”
His pleading eyes match my own peeled insides. Against my better instinct, I decide to be honest. “The truth is. I’m getting married. You’re my last appointment for the week.”
“Married.” His eyes brighten. “That’s a happy thing.” He pulls a faded wooden box from a shelf. He lifts the lid, revealing a gun. I open the screen door and step outside.
“Wait,” he says. “That’s just what’s sitting on it. What a shitty thing to do,” he apologizes. He holds the gun as if it is a delicate bird. Placing it aside, he removes a paper from the box. “A poem,” he says. “A good one.”
“Why do you keep a poem in a box with a gun?” I say.
“I like it.” He studies me. “Maybe I’m dumb. Will you read it?”
“I’m no good at poetry, Danny.”
“Okay, but keep it,” he says. “I hope he’s a good … man?”
“Yes.” I am surprised by this consideration. “A human man.”
“I didn’t know whether you liked men or women,” he says. “You’re like…” He makes a muscle, gives a bodybuilder’s pose.
As I’ve been many times during our interviews, I am insulted and flattered. “He’s a…” But like when explaining the Internet to a bird, my mind empties. “… very hard worker.”
“You got a bridal party?”
Another reason you don’t tell them anything. The digging. “No,” I lie.
“Brothers? I can’t imagine you with sisters.”
“Brother, singular,” I say. “Older.”
“No one understands you like your siblings.”
“I’m sure that’s true with many siblings but not with us. We don’t talk. He’s…”
“An asshole?”
My laughter surprises both of us. “A playwright,” I say. “Who likes to use other people’s lives in his plays. And, last I saw him, addicted to heroin.”