The Running Man

MINUS 091 AND COUNTING

The doctor sitting on the other side of the table in the small booth wore glasses with tiny thick lenses. He had a kind of nasty, pleased grin that reminded Richards of a half-wit he had known as a boy. The kid had enjoyed crouching under the high school bleachers and looking up girls’ skirts while he flogged his dog. Richards began to grin.

“Something pleasant?” the doctor asked, flipping up the first inkblot. The nasty grin widened the tiniest bit.

“Yes. You remind me of someone I used to know.”

“Oh? Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Very well. What do you see here?”

Richards looked at it. An inflated blood pressure cuff had been cinched to his right arm. A number of electrodes had been pasted to his head, and wires from both his head and arm were jacked into a console beside the doctor. Squiggly lines moved across the face of a computer console.

“Two Negro women. Kissing.”

He flipped up another one. “This?”

“A sports car. Looks like a Jag.”

“Do you like gascars?”

Richards shrugged. “I had a model collection when I was a kid.”

The doctor made a note and flipped up another card.

“Sick person. She’s lying on her side. The shadows on her face look like prison bars.”

“And this last one?”

Richards burst out laughing. “Looks like a pile of shit.” He thought of the doctor, complete with his white coat, conning around under the bleachers, looking up girls’ skirts and jacking off, and he began to laugh again. The doctor sat smiling his nasty smile, making the vision more real, thus funnier. At last his giggles tapered off to a snort or two. Richards hiccupped once and was still.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me-”

“No,” Richards said. “I wouldn’t.”

“We’ll proceed then. Word association.” He didn’t bother to explain it. Richards supposed word was getting around. That was good; it would save time.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

The doctor produced a stopwatch from an inside pocket, clicked the business end of his ballpoint pen, and considered a list in front of him.

“Doctor.”

“Nigger,” Richards responded.

“Penis.”

“Cock.”

“Red.”

“Black.”

“Silver.”

“Dagger.”

“Rifle.”

“Murder.”

“Win.”

“Money.”

“Sex.”

“Tests.”

“Strike.”

“Out.”

The list continued; they went through over fifty words before the doctor clicked the stem of the stopwatch down and dropped his pen. “Good,” he said. He folded his hands and looked at Richards seriously. “I have a final question, Ben. I won’t say that I’ll know a lie when I hear it, but the machine you’re hooked up to will give a very strong indication one way or the other. Have you decided to try for qualification status in the Games out of any suicidal motivation?”

“No.”

“What is your reason?”

“My little girl’s sick. She needs a doctor. Medicine. Hospital care.”

The ballpoint scratched. “Anything else?”

Richards was on the verge of saying no (it was none of their business) and then decided he would give it all. Perhaps because the doctor looked like that nearly forgotten dirty boy of his youth. Maybe only because it needed to be said once, to make it coalesce and take concrete shape, as things do when a man forces himself to translate unformed emotional reactions into spoken words.

“I haven’t had work for a long time. I want to work again, even if it’s only being the sucker-man in a loaded game. I want to work and support my family. I have pride. Do you have pride, Doctor?”

“It goes before a fall,” the doctor said. He clicked the tip of his ballpoint in. “If you have nothing to add, Mr. Richards-” He stood up. That, and the switch back to his surname, suggested that the interview was over whether Richards had any more to say or not.

“No.”

“The door is down the hall to your right. Good luck.

“Sure,” Richards said.