Three Stations

30

Morning at a sobriety station meant the time had come for all the zombies to dress and shuffle out the door, for station attendants to hose the floor and remake the beds with rubber sheets, and for Swan, the medic, coming to the end of a twenty-four-hour shift, it was time to drop into a chair and light a cigarette as if his life depended on it. Swan was not quite a doctor and not quite a pirate. He talked with his eyes closed. "God is dog. Dog is God. God is shit."

"It's catchy," Arkady said. "I heard it a few days ago when I came for Sergeant Orlov."

"As long as they're not hurting themselves or anyone else, they can say what they want. We take care of our guests. If they're bleeding, we put on a plaster. If they throw up, we make sure they don't choke to death. We even saw the legs off their beds so they won't be injured if they fall out. They fall out of bed a lot. We also afford them privacy."

Surely such a bed had a future in the furniture department, Arkady thought. The "Moscow Model," for shorter falls.

"The station log?" he asked.

Swan lifted a ledger-size book from his desk.

The log was simple: name, time of admission, time of release, condition and, in some instances, in whose custody or to what hospital. The fine of 150 rubles for disorderly conduct was picayune, but demotion at the workplace and grief at home could be serious. A hundred dollars could make all that disappear and Arkady would have expected Sergei Borodin to take that route, yet there was his signature boldly written in ink. Admitted three nights before at 20:45, released 23:00. Arkady noticed that according to the log, Roman Spiridon was admitted at the same time.

"Borodin said he wanted privacy, and then he gets the ward in an uproar with his 'God is shit' routine. That's all I need, trouble with the church."

"Did Borodin get drunk often?"

"Who said he was drunk?"

"He admitted himself?"

"It's like any club. There are special arrangements for regulars."

When Victor was brought in, a courtesy call went to Arkady to come fish him from the tank. It was an arrangement some might call collusion. More and more Arkady found he was deviating from the straight and narrow.

"So Sergei Borodin came to be alone."

"Who said he came alone?"

Arkady was befuddled. "Why would a sober man bring anyone to a drunk tank?"

The medic inhaled hard enough to make his cigarette spark. "Sometimes I think the sexual revolution completely passed you by. If you think about it, it's an intimate situation, isn't it? The nudity. The dark. The beds."

It took forever for the coin to drop.

"Here?" Arkady had never considered the drunk tank right for an erotic rendezvous.

"It's ideal for rough trade, for a customer who likes a touch of squalor and a little risk."

"Who with?"

Swan went back through the log. Every other week or so, the names of Sergei Borodin and Roman Spiridon arrived and left together. The one time Borodin came alone was the night Spiridon stayed home, slipped into the bath and opened a vein.

Swan said, "I noticed old scars on Borodin's wrist. He'd tried to harm himself before. It's really a call for help, you know."

"You mean Spiridon's wrist."

"No, look in the log. Spiridon came here alone, got half the drunks here shouting they were God and went his merry way."

That was at the same time Roman Spiridon was slipping into his bathtub, Arkady thought. Two Spiridons, two separate places. It worked for electrons but not for any larger entity.

Arkady showed the medic the photograph he had taken from Madame Spiridona. "Who is this?"

"Borodin. Sergei Borodin."

Arkady took it back. Maybe there were two Borodins.

"How well do you know him?"

"Just from here. To be honest, I sometimes have trouble telling them apart."

"You never talked to him?"

"The usual. He was kind of sad and shy. A suicide is a suicide."

No, Arkady thought. In the proper hands, suicide was murder.