Rummies

  Granted, Preston hadn't approached the interview with a positive attitude. He disliked psychologists in general, had always thought of them as unctuous and patronizing, like television evangelists. If a man wanted to be called Doctor, Preston thought, let him get an M.D. and a degree in psychiatry.

  Granted, too, he had thrown a gauntlet to this particular shrink by introducing himself as "Scott Preston, B.A., M.A.," and by declaring that if the man insisted on being called Dr. Frost, he would prefer to be called Mr. Preston, which precipitated a three-minute exploration of Preston's hostility toward authority. Preston denied harboring any such hostility and explained that he simply saw no reason to accept Frost as an authority on anything just because he appended the entire alphabet to his name, and for all he knew Frost's several degrees were awarded by some diploma mill that advertised on the back of matchbooks.

  Frost's job was to analyze the results of the hour-long, 200-question, true-false ''psychological-profile test" taken by every patient and, after consultation with the patient, to conclude something definitive about the patient's history of substance abuse, mental stability, susceptibility to extreme emotions like anger, despair and passion, and, finally, the probability of his or her maintaining abstinence in the real world.

  Preston had tried to take the test honestly, but some of the questions had taxed his tolerance. In reply to the statement ''I believe that cats are stealing my luggage," for example, he had crossed out the true/false options and written, “Only on buses." And to the statement *'Water is my enemy" he had answered: "Damn right, and vodka my friend."

  Frost opened Preston's file and tapped the answer sheet with his pencil. "Your lack of respect comes through in your answers," he said.

  "I don't have much respect for fools," Preston replied, "especially fools with power. Whoever wrote that test is a fool."

  "All the questions don't pertain to everybody. They're not meant to. The test has to—"

  " 'I believe that grapes are fascist'?" Preston cited from the test.

  "Some people believe that."

  "Then they don't belong here."

  "Who are you to judge?"

  "Well, I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone who believes in his heart of hearts that Adolf Hitler was a grape has problems that stopping dope isn't going to solve.”

  "So now you're a doctor, are you?"

  Preston took a deep breath. "Look, your worship, let's stop slinging titles and get down to it: What does the test tell you about me?"

  "You're arrogant. You think you know it all."

  "Wrong. No, maybe not wrong, but the test doesn't tell you that. You've decided that because I'm being a pain in the ass."

  Frost leaned forward and let his flabby lips part in what passed for a smile. "I'm used to unhappy patients, Scott. I-"

  "Mr. Preston."

  "All right. Mr. Preston. I don't let my personal feelings intrude on my work."

  "Sure. . . . Never mind. Go on."

  "You're a loner. You don't like accepting help and you won't ask for help. You think intelligence is the answer for everything."

  "Nothing new there. Marcia figured all that out in thirty seconds."

  "Do you like Marcia?"

  "You bet."

  "Why?"

  "She's smart, she's honest, she doesn't make moral judgments. She is one terrific teacher."

  "She's black."

  "No kidding."

  "How do you feel about blacks?" That same flabby smile again.

  "I don't feel about blacks. I feel about people."

  "How does she feel about whites?"

  “How the hell should I know?" What is this man doing? "Hey listen, Sigmund ..."

  Frost waved his hand and looked down at the test sheet, withdrawing the question, dismissing the issue. "There's one very serious thing I should warn you about," he said, looking up. "I think you're in danger of committing suicide."

  "What?" Preston started out of his chair, then sat back. "That's horseshit and you know it. You have to tell me that. You have to tell everybody that."

  "I do? Why?"

  "Because everybody here has to be convinced that they're terminal. If they drink again, if they use again, if they so much as utter the words 'dry martini on the rocks' or 'cut me a line,' they're gonna die, from cirrhosis or AIDS or catching fire or sucking on the barrel of a gun. It's your franchise, dealing in absolutes."

  Frost shook his head. "The pattern is very clear." He tapped the answer sheet again. "You show all the signs of someone in danger of killing himself.''

  "I see." Preston gripped the seat of his chair, squeezing the rage into his fingertips to keep it out of his voice. "Could you tell me which answers led you to that fine conclusion?"

  "None in particular. As I say, it's a pattern. But it's very clear."

  "To you."

  "Yes."

  "Because you're trained."

  "Well, yes."

  "And you're going to put that in my file."

  "I am. I have."

  "Dr. Frost," Preston said, and slowly he stood up.

  "I'm leaving now, because if I don't I may prove you wrong and commit not suicide but homicide."

  Frost gave a little jump. One hand moved to the edge of his desk. "I think we should talk about your anger."

  There 5 a button under there. He pushes it and in comes the SWAT team.

  Preston walked to the door. *'I didn't have any anger till I came in here, so I know where it comes from and I know what it's directed at. It's very well focused."

  "All right. We'll talk again, Scott. Meanwhile, think about what I said. I worry about you. I think you're a potential suicide."

  "I worry about you, too. Doctor. I think you're a terminal asshole."

  Outside in the corridor, Preston looked at a water cooler and fantasized that its pipes were full of Stolichnaya, and he drank deep.

  Otherwise, the desire for the solace of booze hadn't occurred to him. Perhaps it was because in this artificial environment his entire existence was concentrated on the avoidance of alcohol. Perhaps it was because no problem—no tension, no anxiety, no worry—was permitted to fester long enough to require suppression. Everything was talked about immediately and exhaustively. Marcia's perceptions about him were spooky: He could hide nothing from her. She read his face and his voice, his answers and his silences, and she drew conversation from him as a tick draws blood from a dog.

  He had called her on it one day, suggesting jocularly that she had implanted herself in his brain like a monitoring device.

  All she said was "Say hello to your higher power, Scott."

  "What, you mean God?"

  “Not necessarily. Communication. Realizing you're not alone in the universe. Taking sustenance from other people. That's all the higher power has to be."

  “I don't get it."

  “You will."

  Perhaps it was the friends he had made, all of whom shared the same basic problem he had, all of whom talked about it constantly and without embarrassment. With glee, even. Duke, who delighted in horror stories—the gorier the better—and who had taken to embellishing his own to keep up with his fellows, while continuing to deny that he had a problem (he was just unlucky). Twist, whose disdain for drunks was beginning to be tempered by amusement—he thought they were like performing seals—though he still declined to acknowledge that they shared his purity of addiction. Priscilla. Priscilla was . . . was what? Despite the technical innocence of their relationship, Preston knew that Priscilla could become—was beginning to be, might already . . . say it! . . . damn well was—a. problem.

  He had called home only once, after the mandatory five-day waiting period—they knew that if they allowed you to call in the first day or two all you'd do was bitch and moan and beg the folks at home to get you out of here because you were being tortured by a cult of religious fanatics. He hadn't given any thought to the call before he placed it. Why should he? He was the warrior calling home from the front,
the loved one locked in durance vile, the adventurer reporting back from unknown shores of spiritual antipodes. Surely they were eager for contact with him.

  Kimberly answered the phone and squealed and said,

  "Daddy! How you doing?'' and "That's great!" and "Hey listen, I'd love to chat but I gotta go to study group 'cause we have this awesome chemistry test on Friday and if I don't get at least a B-minus we can just forget Brown or Penn or Middlebury, so keep it up. Dad, we miss you like mad, kiss-kiss," and she passed the phone to Margaret.

  Margaret had been waiting to hear from him. She needed to know where he kept the spare keys for the Volvo, which account she was supposed to deposit his paycheck in, whether she had to file new claim forms every time Kimberly had adjustments done on her braces or could send the bill to the insurance company, what she was supposed to tell Tom Trowbridge about why he would have to miss the next four Sunday doubles games at the club ("It would have helped if you'd called him yourself and told him," she said. He said, "I didn't exactly have time. This was all pretty sudden." She said, "You could have called from the airport." He said, "I wasn't thinking about tennis." She said, "Well, you could call him now and save me the trouble." He said, "Okay, I will. I'll tell him I'm on a business trip." She said, "Fine. If that's not asking too much") and whether it was Tuesday and Friday nights that the garbage cans were put out at the end of the driveway or Monday and Thursday nights.

  At last, she said, "How are you?"

  And he said, "Fine. How are you?"

  And she said, "As well as can be expected."

  Whatever that meant.

  And they hung up.

  Preston was hurt and confused. It had never occurred to him that they would write him off, that they had agreed between themselves (probably without ever exchanging a word about it) that the best way to cope with this unseemly interstice in their lives was to pretend that he did not exist, or at least that he had been removed to some dead zone from which nothing he thought, said or did could touch them. He empathized, sort of: They did not understand his affliction, they could not help him and they were not so masochistic as to want to share his pain even if they could, which they couldn't. Besides, they were, presumably, still angry, still resentful. He wondered how they would respond to the summons to come to Family Week, to the invitation to spend a thousand dollars to travel two thousand miles for the pleasure of regurgitating all their anger before a gathering of strangers. He wondered if they would respond. He hoped they wouldn't. He could survive without a replay of the scene in his office, thanks awfully.

  Preston turned the phone over to Hector, and the farther he walked away from it, the more his anger ebbed. The Volvo keys and the orthodontist and the tennis game evanesced like smoke rings. He didn't have anything to worry about here but himself—a sick thought, perhaps, but then, that was the point. He was sick. He thought for the first time, I am glad to be here.

  Priscilla shouted at Twist, “Come on, tall dark and gorgeous, throw the effing ball!"

  “Watch you mouth, Gloria," Twist growled at her, *'or I hit you upside you effin' head." Then he guffawed. ''Effin' head! I love it!" He turned back to face the batter and said, *'Okay, sumbitch, here come Dr. Doom."

  Clarence Crosby, who had been sitting on his bat as if it were a shooting stick, yawned with theatrical ennui. "Oh, we play in' ball today?" He stood up and waved the bat over the plate.

  Twist glowered at the plate, squinted as if receiving a sign from Dan, shook it off contemptuously, nodded at its imagined substitute, straightened up, shot minatory glances at first and second bases, windmilled his arm—once, twice, thrice—and fired a sidearm bullet at Crosby.

  To a man accustomed to seeing smaller, lighter missiles thrown at him at speeds of up to ninety-five miles an hour—balls that danced and jiggled, rose, fell and yawed—Twist's pitch was a floating white marshmallow. Crosby reared back on his left leg, pushed off and swung. He'd drive this sucker all the way to Santa Fe.

  But because he was batting cross-handed, his reflexive impulse to pull with his right hand and push with his left caused the bat to drop a few centimeters, so it made contact not dead-center but on the lower quadrant of the ball, and instead of disappearing at a forty-five-degree angle into the distant cactus and tumbleweed, the ball arced upward toward the stratosphere.

  “Shit!" Crosby said, forgetting where he was and assuming that anyone sober enough to draw breath could catch the ball and end the game. He tossed his bat and trotted toward first base.

  Preston saw the ball soar into the sky over right field. He saw that Lewis saw it too, saw Lewis's head loll back and his mouth drop open as he watched the ball climb toward the sun.

  “Lewis!" he called. "Yours!"

  But Lewis had taken root in the ryegrass.

  Preston started to run. The ball was still climbing,

  so maybe he could make it from left field to right before it fell.

  The ball reached its apogee and seemed to hang for an instant before it began to plummet.

  And then Lewis ran. His arms flapped like the wings of a startled egret. His feet were splayed like a duck's. He cried out, “Oh my! Oh my!" When he reached the general area where the ball would surely fall, he scuttled in tight circles, his arms stretched heavenward as if he were praying for rain.

  Preston saw that he could not reach Lewis before the ball or the ball before Lewis, so he stopped, and in one of those rare moments of comprehensive clarity his brain registered a framed scene and saw in it both the immediate future and the distant past. Lewis stood like an orant; the ball descended upon him, still accelerating, and Lewis made no adjustment to catch it, for never in his life had he had to catch a fly ball. He had never thrown a ball with his father, never had friends to play catch with. He had the hand-eye coordination of an infant.

  ''Lewis!" Preston called. "No!"

  The ball passed between Lewis's hands and struck him on the top of the head and bounced off onto the grass.

  For a second Lewis stood, and his head swiveled toward Preston and there was a look of bewilderment in his eyes.

  Then, like a poleaxed buffalo, he fell face down and lay still.

  Priscilla ran from second base, Cheryl and Duke from first, Marcia from beside home plate.

  Preston reached him first. He knelt beside him and saw that he was breathing. But there was dirt in his mouth and on his nose, so Preston rolled him over and sat down and rested Lewis's head in his lap.

  "Don't move him!" someone shouted.

  Someone else yelled, "Call the doctor!"

  By the time Preston had wiped away the dirt, he and Lewis were surrounded by a circle of mourners.

  "He dead yet?" asked Hector.

  "Nah," said Crosby. "It was a lousy pop fly."

  "Don't die, Lewis," Cheryl said. "I couldn't stand it."

  Preston stroked Lewis's forehead. "He's not gonna die. Are you, Lewis?"

  Lewis moaned. His eyelids fluttered and opened, and he saw the faces staring down at him. He looked up at Preston, and Preston smiled.

  "Did I catch it?" Lewis said.

  Crosby said, "Yeah. I was out by a mile."

  Twist looked quizzically at Crosby, then said, "Fuckin' A . . ."

  Lewis lay in Preston's lap, and his eyes traveled from face to face. Then they filled with tears, and the tears spilled over and ran down his cheeks.

  "Hurts, huh?" Preston said.

  "The fuck you think, man?" said Twist. "Get bopped in the gourd like that.''

  "No," Lewis said. "No. It's . . ." He sniffled and choked on a sob. He raised a hand and gestured at them all, and through his tears he grinned. "Nobody's ever cared for me before. I'm so . . . happy."

  Cheryl laughed and dropped to her knees and hugged Lewis. Lewis took one of Preston's hands and pressed it to his cheek.

  As in the stories of dying people who have out-of-body experiences and see themselves at the moment of death, so Preston imagined himself distanced from this tableau. What am I
doing? This can't be me.

  He looked up and saw Marcia. She was smiling at him, and when their eyes met she raised a hand and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

  IX

  WE'VE JUST DECIDED Something," Priscilla said.

  “Oh?" Preston held his breath as he awaited her latest epiphany. He never knew what would come out a her exquisite mouth. One night it had been "I think love you a little, but it doesn't mean anything because nothing's real here." Another night she had said, "I'm not sure if God puts people like me on earth as a trial for people like my parents, or if it's the other way around."

  They were in the desert, outside the boundaries o the clinic, and the night was so clear that Preston could believe that every star of every description that had ever been—quasars and pulsars, supernovas and giant dwarfs (whatever the hell any of them actually were)—had bee: convened to shine down upon them

  They were not supposed to be together. They ha signed out separately for brief, solitary “meditation walks," permitted between the evening lecture and bee time, and had left the unit at different times and by different exits. As usual, they had met in the shadows by one of the duck ponds and had begun a languid circuit of the grounds.

  And as usual, Priscilla walked holding not Preston's hand but one of his fingers, which now and then she squeezed to punctuate something she said.

  The walks had begun with a chance meeting—Preston strolling aimlessly outside as an alternative to the numbing, soporific boredom of reading Twenty-four Hours a Day or "The Big Book," or listening to Twist detail the manifold victories to which he had led Lawrence in the vineyards of snatch. He had found Priscilla kneeling alone, letting grains of sand run through her fingers as she wept at some cosmic loneliness she couldn't comprehend. He had said little that first night, had been thrilled to be with her and to let her talk and to murmur empathetic things that had encouraged her to accept a bond between them. For all he knew, she was so vulnerable she would have responded to a friendly lizard. He didn't care.