Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 Read online

  “Okay, man," said Hector. “Let's boogie."

  Hector led the way down the corridor. Duke shuffled behind in his paper slippers. Preston brought up the rear, carrying his suitcase. The procession looked like a cartoon: the Pillsbury Doughboy leading a demented invalid who was followed by a worried porter.

  “Happened to your clothes?" Hector asked Duke. “Lice?"

  Lice! What kind of world do these people live in?

  “Long story. The old lady'l send me some." Duke paused. “Maybe."

  “I’ll lend you some," Preston said.

  Duke shook his head. "They won't let me. They say I gotta wear this thing, and everybody I meet I gotta explain why I don't have any clothes."

  "They won't let you wear pants?”

  Duke smiled weakly. "Therapy."

  "Keeps the memory green," Hector said with a glance back over his shoulder. "Never let you forget what kinda asshole you been. They made me wear a bag over my head for two days. . . . Said I was too worried about my image. No big thing."

  Preston felt his pulse thundering in his temples. I will not let them make a public display of me. His fingertips tingled. He recognized the onset of hyperventilation. He stopped and breathed deeply. A fuzziness was creeping up his neck.

  Hector arrived at a glass door. As he held it open for them, he noticed Preston's complexion, which had turned the color of goat cheese. "Samatter with you?"

  Preston pointed to the tube of ash dangling from Hector's lips. "Can I change my mind?"

  Hector grinned and flipped a pack of cigarettes from his T-shirt sleeve and shook one loose for Preston. A Camel regular. The nitroglycerine of smokes. "Survival," he said as he gave Preston a light. "What it's all about."

  Preston inhaled deeply, and his outraged alveoli immediately rebelled. He coughed and sputtered.

  "First one's always a bear," Hector said. "Give it two or three, then it'll grip you good."

  The taste was foul, dirty. Preston took another drag. This time he coughed but once, sharply, and he could feel a soft warmth spreading across his chest. A third drag. There. Not so bad. "Fifteen years," he said.

  "In ten minutes it'll be your buddy again. You'll need it. Muthafuckas done stole your best friend."

  That tone of voice. Dolores Stark, then Chuck, now Hector. Certitude. No doubts, no questions. In less than three minutes. Hector had learned all there was to know about him. Or thought he had. And Hector was just an inmate.

  No! We are not all alike. If Faulkner declined to accept the end of man, I decline to accept the sameness of all men. We are each blessed with our uniqueness.

  Aren't we?

  Hector slipped two more Camels into Preston's pocket and ushered him and Duke through the door. out into a quadrangle enclosed by the four adobe buildings. It was large, probably a square acre, and contained a swimming pool; an exercise area featuring a jungle gym, a set of parallel bars and some free weights; and three small copses of palm trees that gave shade to painted wooden benches.

  As they walked toward one of the other buildings, Preston asked Hector, "How long’ve you been here?"

  "Here? Forty-one days."

  "But I thought—"

  "Yeah, but I always fuck up so they have to keep me longer.''

  "Always? You've been in other . . . places?"

  "A couple. Hazelden, St. Mary's, Smithers, Betty Ford . . . lessee ... oh yeah, and Fair Oaks. I've seen the U.S. of A."

  "Why?" The word had barely slipped from Preston's lips when he realized that it sounded nosy, critical. Do not piss this man off! "I'm sorry. I—"

  "What's to be sorry?" Hector shrugged. "They say I can't function without structure. I get out, I take dope. I don't hurt nobody. I just take dope."

  "These places . . . they don't help you?"

  "Sure they help me. I don't take dope in here, do I?" Hector pointed to a wooden sign over the door of the building they were approaching. "Here we are." J

  "Chaparral," Preston read. "Quaint." 1

  "Yeah. They's all named after Stone's flicks. That" there's Bandito. Over there's Geronimo. Twenty freaks in each, boys and girls together. Main building's Peacemaker."

  They entered Chaparral, passed in the entry way a pay phone and the door to a lavatory, and came to the common room. It was an unadorned rectangle, half of which was taken up by what an interior designer would call a conversation pit—a sunken floor filled with low squooshy couches and chairs. The other half contained four round tables (each with six chairs), a refrigerator, a sink (piled high with ashtrays) and a coffee machine.

  "Not bad," Duke said. "Where is everybody?"

  "Lecture. Today's Dr. Lapidus on"—Hector recited from memory—"chemical triggers and the alcoholic reflex."

  "You don't go to lectures?"

  "Oh yeah, but I heard that sucker 'bout a thousand times and I never did drink anyway, so when there's people to pick up they send me." Hector started down a hallway.

  Duke said to Preston, "You want to room together?"

  Before Preston could reply, Hector burst into raucous laughter and said, "You slay me, man."

  In the hallway, Hector passed two or three doors, then stopped at one. He pointed at Duke, rapped once on the door and pushed it open. "Lewis!" he called.

  "I thought everybody was—" Duke began.

  "He had a tummyache." Hector smiled, the way a child does as he waits for you to discover the spider in your stew.

  From inside the room came the sound of a hair dryer whirring to a stop. Duke hovered at the door, Preston behind him. Just inside the room was the open door to a bathroom, and from this angle they could see in the bathroom mirror.

  They saw the reflection of a man of indeterminate age—possibly mid-forties, possibly mid-fifties. The skin of his face was shiny, as if it had been mechanically tightened. His hair was lush and full and champagne blond. It was styled into a pompadour into which he had wrapped three plastic curlers.

  The man saw them in the mirror too, and he beamed and said, "Well, hello!"

  Duke took a step backward, and for a moment Preston thought he would either faint or flee. But then Duke gathered strength from some inner well. He cleared his throat and said to Hector, "You are not a nice person."

  Hector touched Preston's shoulder and guided him farther down the hall.

  I am a character in an Edgar Allan Poe story. What will be behind my door? A minotaur? A satyr?

  His room was empty. Not just empty but vacant, containing no sign of another occupant—no clothing, no mess, no spoor. Never had Preston been so grateful for nothingness. He would have solitude, precious solitude, from which he could suck the sustenance necessary for survival on this hostile planet.

  Marcia Breck stood in the hallway and reviewed the patient-admission sheet on her clipboard.

  A Yalie, with a master's from Berkeley. Big hitter with a New York publisher. Kid in private school. Wife who can probably trace her family back to William the Conqueror. Country club. Volvo station wagon. Plays squash and tennis.

  A programmed life. Success foreordained. Acceptance inevitable and assumed from birth. A sense of entitlement. Polite, considerate, amiable. Illness an inconvenience. Alcoholism inconceivable, simply not done.

  Tight as a sphincter.

  She detested the type. They made her life miserable. They were smart, slick, superior, good with words and facile at parrying direct assaults and making them ricochet off into a mist of maybes. How do you cure someone you can't reach? How do you get him to deal with a problem he's convinced doesn't exist?

  Give her a street junkie any day, or a homeless wino or a brawling drunk or a truck driver who had jumped the median divider and wiped out a whole family. They had reached bottom; they knew they didn't just have a problem, their lives were on the line. She could talk to them in simple English, and they'd listen. They could identify with her story, could appreciate her as a Lazarus that they too might become. They recognized authority.

  Not like Yalies
with Volvos, who regarded treatment as a reunion where we all get together and iron out a few petty differences. Man to man. Good show.

  Okay, Mr. Scott Adams Preston, take your best shot. Make me earn my money.

  She rapped once on the door and pushed it open.

  He was hanging clothes in the closet. He was tall and slim, his hair close-cut and combed. His complexion looked good. He wore a tailored narrow-lapel suit, a button-down shirt and a rep tie. The polish on his shoes glowed in the sunlight that streamed in the western window.

  A living relic of the sixties.

  "Scott? I'm Marcia."

  Preston smiled and held out his hand. "How do you-"

  "I'll be your counselor."

  "Oh?" The smile stuck. "Oh."

  "You were expecting Spencer Tracy."

  "I wasn't expecting a—"

  "A woman."

  "No."

  "A black woman."

  "That hardly has anything to do with it."

  "No. Hardly." Stop it! Don't pick at him till you have to. You 'II have plenty of chances. She let herself smile. "How do you feel?"

  "Nervous."

  "That's all?"

  "What am I supposed to feel?"

  "There's no 'supposed to.' " She paused. "Are you an alcoholic, Scott?"

  "No. At least I don't . . . well, people say I have a problem."

  "But you're not an alcoholic."

  "Define an alcoholic. I've stopped for weeks at a time, months even."

  "Let's not worry about definitions, not yet. What I see so far is a lot of denial."

  "So far? Fifteen seconds?" Jesus! Everybody knows everything around here!

  "Let me warn you about one thing you're going to feel, because you won't recognize it at first: loneliness."

  "I'll be all right. I'm pretty self-reliant."

  "Sure you are. You don't need people. Family, friends. You've got it together, right? Who's your best friend?"

  Preston looked away, as if searching for a name. What was this woman driving at? Was she going to call all his friends, involve them in this charade? Not bloody likely. *'I don't see what this is . . . Forget it. You wouldn't know him."

  ''Oh, I'd know him, all right. He's so close to you that you've turned to him every day. He's been with you in all the good times and all the bad. He's so close he's gotten inside you and consumed you. And now he's gone, Scott, and you're going to miss him. Your old buddy Jim Beam or Jack Daniel's, or maybe you've hung out with the exotics, like Comrade Stolichnaya."

  Preston's head jerked. He felt himself blushing.

  Marcia laughed. "It's that Russian, right? I knew it. Can't trust a Commie, Scott. Just when you're getting to be buddies, he up and deserts you." She reached out in a friendly gesture and touched his arm. He flinched. She left her hand there, forcing him to accept her touch. "You'll make new friends in here, friends who want to help you. 'Cause Jim and Jack and the Commie, they were going to do only one thing for you, Scott, and that's kill you." She removed her hand. "You've already made one friend. Duke asked if he could bunk with you. But he's already been assigned with Lewis."

  "Frankly, I think this is best for me." Preston gestured at the empty room. "I'm comfortable by myself. I don't mind solitude."

  "Uh-huh. If we do have to give you a roommate, do you have any preferences?"

  "Not really. Someone who reads, I suppose. Maybe likes the Mets, listens to ... I don't know . . . James Taylor . . . Beethoven."

  “What you'd call a peer."

  “I guess." Preston saw her nod and make a note on her clipboard. Perhaps she did understand him, did realize that he, his type of person, responded better to civility than brutality. They'd get along. "What about you? Did you have a . . . problem?"

  "Sure. We all did here."

  "And who . . . what . . . was your best friend?"

  "I loved 'em all . . . separately, together, one after the other, on top of each other. If it could be drunk, swallowed, smoked or poked, it was my friend. What finally got me, though, was elephant tranquilizers. We called them Dumbos."

  Preston felt his mouth tangle around a mess of "What?," "How?" and "Why?"

  "Because somebody had some. It was a new sensation. I was on the Jersey Tlimpike between Camden and New Brunswick. I guess I was going a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty. Everything was a blur-lights, other cars, the road. This trooper stops me, and I say, 'I know I'm speeding, officer, but my mother's had a stroke and I got to get to Helene Fuld Hospital before she . . . blah, blah, blah . . .'He says, 'Speeding, huh? Why n't you get out of the car, lady?' So I say, 'Sure thing,' only I can't. I try, but nothing works: arms, legs, nothing. He looks at me and this big grin cuts his face and he says, 'Lady, I don't know what you're on, but it's got some kick to it. You've been parked in the center lane of this road for the last twenty minutes.' "

  Marcia laughed and touched his arm again. This time

  he forced himself not to flinch. "That's when they convinced me I could use some help."

  "What did you do for a living?"

  "Back then? I was a hooker." She saw his eyes bug. The Mets, huh? Beethoven? How do you like them apples, Mr. Boola Boola? "How else could I support all my little habits?" She looked at her watch. "Group's in ten minutes. Don't be late."

  V

  THEY HAD FORMED a circle in the middle of Marcia's office, the five of them sitting in steel-framed, folding chairs, heads down, gazing at the floor, forearms on their knees, hands clasped loosely.

  Marcia spoke first.

  "I'm Marcia. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. I feel pretty good today, because I think Lewis had a real breakthrough yesterday telling us about his feelings for Kevin. I think Hector learned something from that, too, but it may be up to us to help him see what it was. And I feel good about Cheryl. She's been letting that bastard guilt ride her pretty hard, but maybe now she's ready to throw him in the dirt. I feel good that Scott's with us. . . ."

  Gimme a break! Preston grimaced and clenched his fists. Don't talk about me. Make believe I don't exist. He let his eyes wander around the circle, expecting to see someone nudge someone else, expecting to hear a derisive snigger. But all heads were bowed.

  "These twenty-eight days will be just the beginning for Scott. He's got a long, long road ahead, and it's up to us to be his guides."

  Marcia stopped and nodded to Hector, who sat to her right.

  Smoking wasn't permitted in therapy, but Hector, in whom nicotine withdrawal provoked panic that had once led to threats of violence against the clinic's Methodist chaplain, had been granted dispensation to pack his gums with snuff. He sucked his cud and thought of something to say.

  "I'm Hector. I'm a junkie. I guess I feel okay today, no problems. . . . But I got to say, I don't know what Lewis and what's-his-name . . . Kevin . . . got to do with me. Like, the last thing in the world I want to do—I mean, it comes after cutting my tongue out and maybe kissing goats—is—"

  Lewis sat up straight and opened his mouth, but Marcia pointed a finger, silencing him, and said to Hector, "It's not about mechanics. Hector, it's about relationships. We'll go into it later." She nodded at the fragile little bird who sat to Hector's right. Cheryl.

  "I'm Cheryl. ..." She sounded like a frightened kitten, as if worried that any sound above a whisper would give offense. Though Preston kept his head down, his eyes refused to look away from her. She was tiny and so thin that her head looked oversized and her bones seemed to be held together by her clothes. A cap of ebony hair surrounded a face made up only of lips and cheekbones, for the eyes lived in dark caves deep in her skuU.

  "I'm still sad that Karen graduated yesterday. I mean, I'm glad she made it through, but I'm really going to miss her. I see her starting out on a new life, and it scares me, 'cause I don't know how much of a life I can have and . . . well, I guess you could say I've got mixed feelings about it all."

  When, after a beat, Cheryl said nothing more, Lewis smiled at Preston and declared, "My nam
e is Lewis, and I have the gift of alcoholism."

  ''What?" Preston realized he had spoken out of turn, and he added quickly, "Excuse me."

  Marcia said, "Lewis, that's not fair to Scott."

  "Oh, all right." Lewis shrugged. "I'm Lewis and I'm an alcoholic. I'm a bit upset today because I have a new roommate whom I do not like. He treats me like I've got leprosy. Not that I'm not used to dealing with homophobes, but this one is particularly conceited in imagining that I'd ever want to put a move on him, and . . . well, it's just so tiresome having to justify yourself to every new bigot that comes along. Anyway ..." Lewis dismissed the thought with an imperious wave.

  Silence. Preston's time had come. He had nothing to say. What could he say that would mean anything to these people—a hooker, a junkie, a fruit and an anorexic? He had nothing in common with them. Their problems were theirs. If they wanted to blab about them, that was their business. His problems were his, and he'd deal with them. They couldn't understand.

  A drop of sweat fell from the tip of his nose.

  "Scott . . . ?" Marcia said softly.

  No way out. "I'm Scott, and ... ah ... I guess I wouldn't be here if I didn't have a problem, but ... I don't know . . .I'm nervous as hell."

  “Nervous isn't a feeling; it's a condition. How do you feel?"

  "Scared, then."

  "What are you scared of?"

  "I'm not sure, really. It's kind of like ..." Blessedly, the quotation came to him. "... that 'undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.' "

  Preston saw Hector and Cheryl exchange a mystified glance. They thought he was speaking Chinese. Good. Now maybe they'd believe him when he said he didn't belong here. His whole frame of reference was different from theirs. He was different.

  He did not see Lewis look at Marcia and then turn away with a barely contained grin of delicious anticipation.

  Marcia didn't raise her voice. It was as flat and matter-of-fact as a razor cutting through an artery.

  "Listen to me, you arrogant prick: I don't want to hear you quote anybody—living or dead, famous or not—in this group ever again. You got that?"

  Cheryl gasped. Hector and Lewis smiled.