Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott Page A

already.
    “Theo,” he says, with that absurd, uncomprehending voice he has.
We’ll do everything together
. “You came to see me.”
    I shake my head, put the flowers on the stand next to him, and sit on the window ledge with my hands folded in my lap. The view below is flat roofs and smokestacks. A nurse walks by the room pulling a four-wheeled dolly full of plates and urine samples.
    “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Doctor says I’ll be out in a couple of weeks. Check this out. I press this button and it injects morphine. Want to try? I’ll dose you up. It’s
craaaazy
, man.”
    “They gave you morphine.” I smile and I consider it, but I don’t do it. We met in Western when I was twelve and Petey fifteen. I shouldn’t have been there. The walls were soundproofed and the doors locked from the outside. Petey had been stealing cars and driving them around Park Ridge and Elmhurst. He took them from the city and drove them out to the suburbs where there are houses with green lawns and trees in front. He watched the mothers send their children off to private schools.
    When they brought him to my room I raised my hands and folded my arms over my head. “Don’t come near me,” I told him. He was the ugliest kid I had ever seen. I had my own problems. “I haven’t shot dope in years,” I say, plucking the needle from his arm, wiping the blood on my pants. I make a fist and squeeze my forearm. With my other hand I push the pin into my wrist and Petey presses the button. It feels nice, like a hand over your face.
    “That’s all you can get for ten minutes. Better take the needle out.” I pull the needle out and smile at Petey. The IV hangs between us. He presses the button and morphine squirts on the floor. “I guess you could have gotten more,” Petey says. “Hee hee.”
    I shake my head. “Big Petey.” The words come out of my mouth slowly, my lips are stuck. “You never win any fights,” I say, rubbing my chin and my cheeks, trying to stretch my face. “I bet you spend more time getting beat up than you do sleeping. You always got beat up.”
    “Not like you,” he says. “You had protection.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, still shaking my head, leaning into the window, comforted by the glass and the rising smoke from below. We’ve never talked about Mr. Gracie before. Mr. Gracie, bringing me back into the room every Tuesday night. Afterward, the long walk back through the corridors of the ward. The electric buzz of the hallways. The rooms locked from the outside and the boys sleeping. Mr. Gracie walking behind me but still hovering on my back, then unlocking my door and closing the door behind me. The rumble of the lock. Petey lying awake, waiting for me. His eyes like mirrors. The high wears off quick as it came. I clear my throat and try to be the voice of reason. “My wife, you know.”
    “You didn’t invite me to your wedding,” he says, like it’s our own private joke.
    “I didn’t invite anybody to my wedding. It wasn’t much, just her family, some friends of hers from school. Wet chicken.” Petey leans forward, as if he was going to sit up on his elbows, then winces and slowly leans back into the pillows.
    “Tell me about your wife.”
    “We were married in Houston. Mosquitoes the size of elbows and smog like soup. You can’t even see the sky. It’s the worst place I’ve ever been. I never thought a city could be that ugly.”
    “Was it bugly?” he asks. “Butt ugly?”
    “It was fugly,” I tell him. “Fucking ugly. Don’t be an idiot. Stop following Maria. That guy she’s with, he’s an animal. It’s not safe.”
    “What’s your wife’s name?”
    I put my hand up. “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” I say. Petey smiles, then winces again. It occurs to me that it’s my fault. “Zahava,” I say. “You’d like her. Everybody does. She’s easy to like. She smiles a lot. She likes to have a good time. She used to do a lot of cocaine but she