Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 Read online

  Nurse Bridget waited until Priscilla had returned the lighter to her purse. Then she took Priscilla's free hand in hers and looked at it. The fingernails had been bitten to the nubs, the skin around them ravaged and scarred.

  “I’m sure glad you’re here, dearie," she said.

  Priscilla snatched her hand back and buried it in the pleats of her skirt.

  Nurse Bridget stood, reached across the desk and, gently, removed Priscilla's sunglasses. "You won't be needing these," she said. "You won't have to hide anything, ever again."

  "Hi, Guy!" fifty voices shouted in ragged unison.

  Preston, Lewis, Duke and Hector sat in the back row of the lecture room. The director of the clinic, Guy Larkin, stood before a podium at the front. Behind him was a blackboard on which someone had chalked "Korsakoff's Syndrome."

  Preston looked at the backs of the people in front of him. There were T-shirts and sport shirts, heads of long shaggy hair and heads of close-cropped gray. An elderly woman was knitting.

  Preston heard a subdued belch to his right. He turned his head and saw Hector nibbling at a cigarette.

  Larkin smiled broadly and said, "Dr. Lapidus was scheduled to speak tonight about the effects of ethyl alcohol on the encoding of memory engrams—Korsakoffs Syndrome. But there's been a last-minute change."

  "Oh, damn!" someone said.

  Someone else said, "My friggin' favorite, too."

  Larkin held up a hand for silence. Then, with a flourish reminiscent of a camey barker introducing a two-headed woman, he rolled his wrist and extended his arm to a side door and proclaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen . . . Stone Banner!"

  The side door sprang open and in ran—ran—the man who had done more than any other (with the possible exception of John Wayne) to cement the modem myths about the American West.

  As Stone Banner took the podium and Larkin descended to a seat in the front row and most of the audience applauded reflexively, Lewis bent to Preston and whispered, "Isn't he gorgeous?''

  It wasn't the word Preston would have chosen, but he guessed it was appropriate. Officially sixty years old. Banner could have made a credible case for being anywhere from forty-five to seventy. He was deeply tanned, glamorously craggy, flat-bellied and fit. His mane of silver hair played nicely against the trove of gold that decorated him: a gold chain with gold crucifix around his neck, on one wrist a gold elephant-hair bracelet and on the other a gold chain-link bracelet, and gold rings on each pinky. He wore a silk shirt open to his sternum, tailored jeans and high-gloss cowboy boots.

  "Please, please." Banner held up his hands to quell the applause. "There are no stars here. We're all brothers and sisters in recovery." He closed his arms and raised his arms like Jimmy Swaggart and began, in his resonant baritone, "God, grant me the serenity ..."

  While the congregation chanted, Lewis bowed his head and whispered to Preston, "You know he's a miracle of modem surgery.''

  "How so?"

  "He's had so many lifts, they're worried if they try one more, the strain'll be too much and his nose'll fall off."

  When the prayer was done. Banner hooked one thumb in a belt loop, rested his other hand on the podium and turned his head slowly from side to side, making brief eye contact with everyone in the room. Preston noticed that Banner knew instinctively how to stand so that the overhead light highlighted his features and made him look like a Remington sculpture.

  "It's a high," Banner began, "a really great natural high to see all the new faces here, all the new lives about to begin. You may be scared, but let me tell you: Stone Banner was scared, believe it or not. You may be lonely, but Stone Banner remembers the loneliness . . . the shakes and the horrors."

  What about the third-person rule? Does he remember that? Where's the compulsory T? Or, because it's our candy store, are we allowed to indulge ourselves in regal syntax? Preston watched Banner as he recited the litany of his addiction—Preston didn't have to listen, for the words were predictable, the circumstances and situations only slightly more colorful than those experienced by ordinary mortals, the end inevitable (the retired cowboy riding into the sunset on a cloud of cocaine and vodka)—and he sensed that he was being treated not to a confession but to a performance: gestures melodramatic, choked pauses perfectly timed, shy smiles pleading for understanding.

  ''So there I was, in my private black hole, and suddenly I realized: I can't do it alone. And I looked up into the sky"—Banner looked up at the acoustic-tiled ceiling—"and I said, 'I can't do it, God, can you?' And He did."

  Banner smiled, and Guy Larkin applauded, which was the signal for everyone else to applaud.

  "But I didn't come here tonight to bore you with my drunkography," Banner said. "I came here on a special mission. Normally, our graduations are done in the privacy of our own units, but tonight we're going to have a love-in. We're going to celebrate the graduation of a truly great lady. Ladies and gentlemen . . . brothers and sisters . . . please join me in ... in appreciating my friend . . . your friend . . . Natasha G.!"

  Banner stepped back, gestured at the side door and clapped his hands.

  The side door flew open, and with a wave and a grin, Natasha Grant wafted into the room.

  Preston said, "My God!"

  Lewis said, “Oh my!"

  Duke said, “And to think: I could’ve fallen on her . . . right on top of her. It would've been easy."

  What they saw now was the Natasha Grant not of fact but of fantasy, transformed, it seemed, by a legion of magicians. The bulges of suet were gone, the pasty complexion was now rosy, the frazzled Brillo hair was now a pillow of shining waves and curls. Her lips were a glistening magenta invitation. She pointed them at the audience and silently mouthed the words "I love you."

  Banner hugged Natasha, and she offered him her cheek and permitted his lips to pass within a millimeter of it. Then they parted and turned to the audience, and Banner held her hand and said, *'The journey isn't easy for any of us, but for some of us it's doubly hard. Some people, the public, see a silver spoon in our mouths, but they don't know that that spoon can choke us." He flashed a smile at Natasha. "Natasha G. was literally born in a trunk. ..."

  Natasha G. How cute. Pseudoanonymity. And as Banner started down Natasha's memory lane, Preston fancied a therapy session among public figures: Ronald R. , meet Ayatollah K., who overdosed on God. Ron had a reality problem, fried his brain with sweet dreams . . .

  The door behind Preston opened and quickly closed, and a woman sat in the empty chair across the aisle. He would not have bothered to look up if he hadn't smelled her. He recognized her perfume, a rich and spicy fragrance that, for reasons he had never questioned, had always triggered his erotic reflexes. It was called Opium. So he did look up, and for probably the twentieth time that day he vowed to apologize to the young author he had defamed as pretentious. Once again he felt he had been punched in the soul.

  She was beautiful. No, that wasn't enough. She was his ideal. She was all the passions of his youth in one manifestation: Donna Reed and Lizabeth Scott and Lauren Bacall, Scarlett O'Hara and Puccini's Mimi, Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina. She was purity and perfection, recklessness and vulnerability.

  She was sniveling, seized by sobs she couldn't stop and wanted to conceal. She rooted in her purse for a tissue and, when she couldn't find one, dabbed delicately at the tip of her nose with the sleeve of her sweater.

  She's wiping her nose with cashmere! Preston was captivated. The gesture was grotesque. His left brain decreed it disgusting. His right decided it was . . . sweet. He plucked a handkerchief from his hip pocket and leaned across the aisle and pressed it into her hand. Her eyes flicked up at him, shiny and blue, grateful and supplicating, meek and aware.

  Banner droned on in his paean to Natasha G.:

  "... and when she couldn't handle the pressure, why, someone was always there with pills or a glass of sherry or, later on, a little potato juice in her orange juice-just for an eye-opener.''

  Preston had to spe
ak to her, had to imprint himself in her mind as more than a mere handkerchief. But what could he say? All his gambits were twenty years out of date. He bent down and reached over and touched her arm and whispered, "What unit are you in?"

  She looked at a white card in her purse and whispered back, '' Chaparral.''

  "Great! That's a great unit. You'll love that unit."

  "How long have you been here?"

  English! My God, she's English! You heard it: She said "bean," not "bin. " "How long have you bean heah." A blond Vivien Leigh. Be still, my heart! "Oh ..." Preston faltered. He needed authority. Seniority. He couldn't tell the truth, couldn't say ‘eight hours.’ ". . .a while."

  The door behind them opened. Marcia stepped into the room and tapped the woman on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow. She rose and, without looking at Preston, went out into the hall. The door closed behind her.

  No! Preston was frantic. Not before you know how much we have in common. I went to Yale!

  "Today Natasha begins a new life," Banner proclaimed, "and she'll make it because she has new strengths. She has a higher power."

  Natasha interrupted on cue. "And my higher power, my friends, my dear, dear friends"—she opened her arms to embrace the universe—"is you!”

  There was a burst of applause, and someone shouted, “We love you, Natasha!"

  "Oh yes," Natasha responded. "The love is flowing between us like a roaring river."

  Preston lost control. While everyone applauded again and a few whistled and a couple shouted declarations of love, he slid off his seat and crawled the few feet to the back wall and pushed open the door and squeezed through the opening out into the hall—and found himself staring at a khaki skirt and a pair of coffee-colored knees.

  "Hello, Scott," said Marcia.

  "Oh. I . . ." He saw the blonde standing beside Marcia. She looked frightened.

  She held out his handkerchief and said, "Here. I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean—"

  "No, no." He scrambled to his feet. "I just ... I mean, I thought you might need some help with your bags."

  Marcia said, "I think we can manage."

  Code. What she was really saying was: Never try to shit a skitter.

  "Right," he said. "Well . . ." He held out a hand to the woman. "I'm Scott."

  She didn't shake his hand, just gave him his handkerchief. "Priscilla."

  "Right. . . . Nice to meet you."

  The sounds of applause and cheers came from inside the lecture room.

  "You're missing the good part, Scott." Marcia picked up Priscilla's suitcase.

  "Right. Well ..." He turned back toward the door, but he didn't go in. He stood and watched the white linen skirt and the navy blue cashmere sweater and the fall of golden hair follow Marcia down the hall and out into the night. Then he leaned against the wall and pressed his head to the cool plaster. What are you doing ? You are coming apart! You are a married man!

  The door to the lecture room sprang open, and Hector barged out, the flame from his lighter already igniting the cigarette in his mouth and singeing his Zapata mustache. He saw Preston and said, "I know what you mean, man. All that love shit makes me sick too."

  Duke came out and grabbed Preston's arm and led him down the hall. "Hey," he said, smiling, "you don't waste time."

  "I wasn't—"

  "I been trying to figure why a smart guy like you comes to a joint like this. Now I know."

  "You do?"

  "Damn right. You've found yourself a nookie farm."

  At ten o'clock that night, someone—Preston didn't recognize the voice—walked down the corridor and rapped lightly on each door and announced, "Ten o'clock." Whoever it was was this week's Town Crier. Announcing the time twice a day, at bedtime and reveille, was a "therapeutic duty." Each patient was assigned one, to add even more order and discipline to his or her tightly structured day. A list on the bulletin board in the common room had told Preston that this week he was "Hazel"—his duty was to vacuum the hallway outside the bedrooms.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette. He didn't want the cigarette, it didn't taste good, it burned his throat and fuzzed his tongue. But it was something to do. Smoking passed the time.

  He had no radio, no television. They had confiscated his books. His head felt like a crowded subway car, packed with irritable, impatient, uncomfortable people longing to breathe free. Since this morning—this morning! It felt more like a week ago—his brain had been besieged, barraged, battered and overdosed with turmoil, terror and emotion.

  He wished he could remove his head and put it in a drawer till morning. Tell yourself a story. Make up something about a princess with golden hair, trapped in a castle of sorrow. But he wasn't a storyteller. He was a midwife for other people's stories. He tried to summon from memory parables or sonnets, couplets or limericks—anything to give him remove from his thoughts. All that came to him was a fragment of Yeats:

  "Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those honey-colored Ramparts at your ear. Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair. "

  Useless. Counterproductive. All it did was redirect his brain back to the sorceress who had suddenly . . . what? Punched me in the soul.

  What must it have been like for her to grow up so lovely? Was there a brain beneath all that beauty? There was pain, certainly, for why else was she here?

  He went into the bathroom and flossed and brushed his teeth. That killed two minutes. He took a leak. Thirty seconds. He returned to the bedroom and had another cigarette. He debated going to sleep. No. If he went to sleep now, he'd be up at four. Two hours to stare at the wall.

  Then he remembered the two books Larkin had given him. He had stuffed them into the bureau, behind his shirts. He knew they weren't stories, didn't tell diverting tales of derring-do. But they were words, at least, and maybe they held an anecdote or two. He opened a drawer and shoved aside his shirts.

  He left "The Big Book" where it was—he wasn't ready for a lot of A.A. cant—and retrieved the little black Twenty-four Hours a Day. He propped up his pillow and leaned against the bedstead and opened the book at random.

  January 2: Meditation for the Day You are so made that you can only carry the weight of twenty-four hours, no more. If you weigh yourself down with the years behind and the days ahead, your back breaks. God has promised to help you with the burdens of the day only. If you are foolish enough to gather again that burden of the past and carry it, then indeed you cannot expect God to help you bear it. So forget that which lies behind you and breathe in the blessing of each new day.

  What about accountability? What about promise? What kind of philosophy was this? "Don't blame me; don't expect anything of me."

  He turned a bunch of pages.

  July 27—A.A. Thought for the Day To paraphrase the psalm: "We alcoholics declare the power of liquor and drunkenness showeth its handiwork. Day unto day uttereth hangovers and night unto night showeth suffering. The law of A.A. is perfect, converting the drunk. The testimony of A.A. is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of A. A. are right, rejoicing the heart. The program of A.A. is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the first drink is clean, enduring forever. " Have I any doubt about the power of liquor?

  “ 'Uttereth hangovers?' " Preston said aloud. "Bull-shit, Billy Graham!" He slammed the book and flung it across the room.

  Listen to the words: ''sure," "perfect," "right." And all stated with the sublime confidence that they had been handed down by A.A.'s number one draft choice, God.

  He had been shanghaied into the God Squad.

  How could he deal with this? He wasn't even sure there was a God. And if there was a God, what was it? Why should it necessarily be some uppercase He? And no matter what it (He, She) was, Preston found it inconceivable that it (He, She) would have the time or the inclination to focus on the petty problems of an aging editor who could no longer drink like a gentleman. As a child, Preston had wept at the unfathomability of infinity bec
ause it struck him that if things had no beginning and no end, then the present (meaning his life) had no significance whatsoever in the scheme of things, since in all probability no scheme of things existed. Now he was being commanded to communicate with some incredible personification of the infinite.

  Forget it. He had twenty-seven days to go. If people could endure months of having their toenails torn out and their balls hot-wired in Argentine jails, he could survive twenty-seven days of self-righteous blather.

  Duke was right: Shut up, hunker down, and when you get out, just watch where you drink.

  The crier passed by his door again, saying, "Ten-thirty . . . lights out."

  Preston stripped to his boxer shorts, climbed into bed and turned out the light. He had no hope of falling asleep in this strange bed in this strange place, surrounded by these strange people, and without any chemical cradle.

  He sought a vision that would accompany him into unconsciousness, something warm and comforting. Home? No: the scene of the crime. Office? No: a nest of vipers.

  Priscilla. Ah, yes. He pulled the sheet up under his chin and closed his eyes and smiled.

  What room was she in? He decided she was in the last room on his corridor. He decided that it looked exactly like his room. He decided that, like him, she had no roommate, was sleeping alone. And as he was thinking of her, he decided that she was thinking of him, wondering who that bizarre, impulsive—but not unattractive—man was. She had been busy unpacking and had not had time to undress before the "lights out" call, so now she was undressing in the moonlight. (Was there a moon? Who cared? Posit a moon.) The sweater came off first, then the white silk blouse. The skirt was unwrapped (Was it a wraparound or a step-in? Never mind.) and draped over a chair. She kicked off her pumps and stood in the moonlight in her expensive, sheer, very brief underwear. White underwear. No. Beige. No. Better still, ivory. Yes, she stood there in her ivory underwear, just bra and panties, thinking of him. Then she reached back and unsnapped her bra and let it fall down her arms, and the moon highlighted her breasts. (Were they large or small? Sort of medium, between an orange and a grapefruit, say, artichoke-size, with discreet areolae and dainty nipples which, because she was thinking of him and sensing that he was thinking of her, were swelling until now they began to cast their own shadows.) She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and began to peel them down her legs . . . and suddenly there was a knock on her door and she hobbled to the door with her panties around her ankles—why didn't she put something on, was she crazy?—and opened it, and there was Guy Larkin dressed up like a fireman, complete with slicker and sloping helmet and fire ax, and he was telling her it was time for a fire drill and didn't she realize it was dangerous to have her panties down around her ankles, she'd never be able to run for her life like that, so she reached for her closet door and presto! Larkin was gone and she was all dressed again, so she had to start at the beginning with her sweater . . .