It was at that moment that Preston had felt the sour taste in the back of his mouth and had rushed for the door.
Marcia was concluding her chronicle of Lewis's recovery, saying that the key in his case was acceptance: He had to accept the hand that life had dealt him, had to play those cards for all they were worth, not waste a lot of time lamenting that he wasn't holding a pat straight flush, because many a determined player had made a winning game from a busted flush or a four-card straight, since so much of life is a bluffer's paradise.
Then, noticing that Lewis looked utterly baffled, realizing that she had wasted a terrific extended metaphor, she said, "Do you play poker, Lewis?"
Lewis shook his head. "Whist," he said. "And crazy eights when I was a kid."
"Well"—she smiled—"take my word for it. Play the cards you've got, accept yourself for what you are, and you'll do fine."
Now it was time for everybody else to say something about Lewis. Nobody had to, and a handful of people, mostly from Dan's group, who didn't know Lewis very well, didn't volunteer.
Priscilla's hand was the first to shoot up, from behind a couch across the room from Preston. Marcia pointed to her, and she stood.
"You're one of the nicest, sweetest men I've ever known," Priscilla said to Lewis, "and I wish you all the best in your life ahead. I know you'll make it." She blew him a kiss. "I love you a lot."
Wait a second here! Where does she get all this love she’s scattering around like grass seed?
Hector, the veteran of dozens of graduations from coast to coast, stood next. "When you come in here, you're one a the scaredest muthafuckas"—he looked at Marcia—"sorry . . . mofos ... I ever seen. But now you really shaped up, got your shit together. You showed everybody you got a real pair of cojones . . . pam the 'spression." He shot Lewis a thumbs-up sign. "Sock it to 'em, amigo."
Marcia then recognized Clarence Crosby, who said, "I don't know you real well, Lewis, but I'm not a bad scout, and I tell you this: You can play outfield on my team anytime."
There was applause, and a lot of laughter and a few whistles. Lewis turned even redder, and he busied one 1 of his fingers in the curl of his pompadour.
Duke didn't intend to speak, but Marcia pointed to him anyway and said, "Duke, you were Lewis's roommate."
"I guess Lewis taught me a bunch of things," Duke said, vamping as he got to his feet. "Like, don't judge a book by its cover. I mean, I didn't know what I was getting in for, but then I thought: Jesus, what did he think, 'cause when we met they wouldn't even let me wear pants 'cause I'd been dressed like a damn rabbit. But you've been a great roommate, Lewis." He smirked as the laugh line came to him. "And any time you need any condoms, you know who to call."
Duke grinned expectantly, but nobody laughed. Lewis looked at the floor. Duke said, "I make them, that's my business. I wasn't kidding." He sat down.
Twist sat in a chair in front of Preston, and Preston heard him muttering to himself, as if composing a statement. Preston leaned forward and touched Twist's arm and whispered, "It's okay, man, say it. You can't screw up worse than Duke did."
Twist nodded and started to speak as he unfolded himself from the chair. "Everybody feels sorry for his-self, I s'pose," he said, looking at the floor, "and I did too. Hell, it's not my fault if I'm a junkie. You would be too, if you was black and dumb and everybody puts you down alla time and all that other bullshit. But Lewis, he got more to feel sorry for than most folks, and he don't ever seem to show it much." He raised his eyes and looked into Lewis's. "What I mean is, you may be one weird dude, but I guess you're 'bout one a the best rummies I ever did meet. So good luck, man."
Preston patted Twist on the back, and Lewis smiled at him, and a few people applauded.
Preston was beginning to feel good. These were people who had probably never expressed a feeling for another person except perhaps a girlfriend or a mother, had certainly never articulated such a feeling before an audience. He was witnessing a kind of dawn, a birth of honesty and self-awareness, a reaching out by people whose lives had been tight little knots of isolation. Fascinating. More than that. It was . . .
"Scott?"
Preston started. Why was Marcia calling his name? He looked at her.
"I'm sure you have something to say."
"What?" He didn't have anything to say. Why was she dragging him onto the stage?
"Words are your living, Scott. Come on. We can't all be spectators."
She read my mind. It 5 like I've got a neon sign hanging over my head. He looked at Lewis, who was smiling at him, expecting a pearl of eloquence and insight. If she hadn't called on him, he could have kept his mouth shut and nobody would have cared. But he couldn't decline now. Don't rain on Lewis's parade.
“I don't know what I can add," he said as he pushed off from the floor. He reached for nice words. "You're a man of courage, Lewis," he said, "a man of grace and compassion. And if those three things can't help you make it, then we're all doomed."
Lewis grinned. But Marcia just gave her head a little disappointed shake and said, "Nice, Scott. Right from the heart."
Preston didn't know why, wasn't sure how, but he knew he had been slapped in the face.
Marcia took a slip of paper from her shirt pocket. "I have a note here from Cheryl, Lewis. You know she's over at the hospital having another biopsy. The note reads: 'I love you, Lewis. I'll miss you. I don't know if there's a God, but I know you're a big part of my higher power, so wherever you go for the rest of your life, I want you to know that I'll be praying for you.' " As she handed the note to Lewis, as she said, "This is yours to keep," she glanced at Preston.
Lewis used the end of his neckerchief to wipe his eyes, and he said, "Is she okay?"
"She hasn't had a drink today," Marcia said, and she touched Lewis's shoulder. "That's all any of us can ask for. The rest of it's out of our hands."
She had something else in her hand now. "This is yours too, Lewis," she said, and she held it up for all to see. "God knows you’ve earned it. And God will help you keep earning it."
It was a Banner medallion, a gold-plated coin about the size of a fifty-cent piece. From this distance Preston couldn't see any of the details on the medallion, but he had seen one in a Lucite block in the shrink's office. On one side was the entire Serenity Prayer, on the other a horse rampant, with rider. You were supposed to carry it with you always, in your pocket or on a chain around your neck, were supposed to touch it whenever you had the urge to have a drink or swallow a pill. Preston wondered whether he'd bother to carry his.
After this morning, he wondered if he'd ever get one.
It was Lewis's turn to speak. He looked at the medallion for a long moment, then clutched it in both hands. He sniffled noisily, and when he looked up his eyes were full of tears.
“Faggot," he said, and what few ambient room noises there were—rustles and coughs and wheezes and squirms—ceased as if a plug had been pulled. "Fruit ... flit .. . fairy . . . sissy . . . homo . . . queer . . . gay . . . poofter . . ." He looked from face to face around the room, and though tears ran down his cheeks, he smiled. "Rummy . . . lush . . . drunk . . . wino . . . alky . . . Aren't those nice words?" He paused.
"Who are we, all of us? How do we define ourselves? Are we what we do for a living? Are we what we believe? When I came in here, I thought all I was was some combination of those two things: a faggot wino, a rummy fruit, a gay lush. Not smart or kindly or thoughtful or interesting. Other people may have thought of me as a creative designer who worked twelve-hour days. Other people appreciated that I gave to every charity in the state of Florida. Not me. All that mattered to me, all I could see when I looked in the mirror was a drunk fairy. Period. But after four weeks with you all, I know different." He looked at Marcia. "Especially you." He held out one of his hands, and she took it. "You taught me that I am me! I am a good person! And anybody who doesn't like it can go . . . can go . . ."He laughed as he spoke. "... piss up a tree."
He stood up and
said to Marcia, "Thank you for my life," and he wrapped her in his arms.
Some people were crying. Several others were trying not to. Even Preston felt a burning behind his eyes.
They lined up then in single file, and one by one they hugged Lewis. When Preston reached the front of the line, he opened his arms and prepared for the awkward embrace, but Lewis stepped backward and held out his hand instead.
"It's okay," Lewis said, smiling. He took Preston's hand and shook it and leaned forward and whispered, "Don't hate Marcia. All she's trying to do is force you to find the love. It's in there. You just have to find it." He released Preston's hand and turned to the next person in line.
Preston moved away, baffled that everyone seemed to be able to see so clearly inside him, and yet when he looked, all he saw was fog.
"Duke," Marcia called from the door to her office, "you and Scott take Lewis to his ride."
While he waited for Duke and Lewis to collect Lewis's bags, Preston went to the cigarette machine and counted out a dollar and a half in change. He was considering a switch to a menthol brand when the door to I the lavatory beside the machine opened and Priscilla emerged.
Two criminals who had been interrogated separately, and now each was wondering what the other had said.
Priscilla's eyes shifted to the background behind Preston, to see if they were being watched.
“Did they read you the riot act?" she asked.
“I’ll say. I tried to explain, but she wasn't interested."
Priscilla nodded. "Dan too."
“What did you tell him?"
"I told him to fuck off." She smiled sweetly. *'Is that how you say it? I wasn't sure." She touched his arm and walked away.
Duke and Preston each carried one of Lewis's suitcases, and as they walked through the corridors of the main building they flanked him, and he walked a step ahead, like a prime minister or a pooh-bah, and he said good-bye to people he passed, shook hands and hugged and shed a tear with Nurse Bridget. They stood by as he checked out and signed the release forms for Larkin and was given back the things confiscated when he had arrived: two books, a bottle of cologne and a prescription bottle of Seconal.
"I'm proud of you, Lewis," Larkin said as he watched Lewis toss the sleeping pills into a wastebasket.
"Not half as proud as I am, Guy," Lewis said, shaking hands.
There was no car in the roundabout when they got outside.
"Did you call a cab or what?" Duke asked Lewis, squinting into the distance, which shimmered in the heat waves rising off the road.
"What time is it?"
Preston looked at his watch. "Ten fifty-eight."
"I told him eleven o'clock," Lewis said. "He'll be here. Or else."
Duke said, "Or else what?"
"I'll make his life a misery."
Thirty seconds later a car appeared in the pass, and a moment after that the rented Oldsmobile turned into the roundabout. A young man got out of the car, warily eyeing Preston and Duke.
Young? On second look, Preston wasn't so sure. He seemed young, obviously wanted to be young, but it was hard to tell. He was sleek as a mink, tan, unblemished. His black hair—too black, impossibly black-was slicked back like one of those models for Calvin Klein underwear. He wore a gold Cartier watch on one wrist, a gold braided-wire bracelet on the other, no shirt, just a cotton sweater and (they saw as he walked around behind the car and popped the trunk) heavily pleated trousers and Italian loafers with no socks.
"Kevin," Lewis said as he hefted his suitcases and carried them to the car, "this is my friend Duke and my friend Scott."
Preston said, "Hi." par Duke said, "How y'doin'?"
Kevin acknowledged them with a little nod. He picked up one of the suitcases and put it in the trunk and said to Lewis, "I hope you've had a good month. Mine has been vile."
"Poor you."
"Poor me is right." He put the second suitcase in the trunk and closed it. “Joy quit. On a Friday, if you please."
“That must've made it hard for you."
“You don't know.'' Kevin returned to the front of the car and opened the door.
Lewis walked to Duke and, like a French general bestowing a Legion d'honneur, kissed him on both cheeks and said, “I’ll write you. You don't have to write back, but I'll write you." He smiled. "Maybe I'll take you up on your offer."
Lewis didn't kiss Preston. He just said, "May I ask a favor? Let me know how Cheryl is?"
"Sure," Preston said.
Lewis turned to the car and opened the passenger's-side door. Kevin was still standing there.
"Be nice, Kevin," Lewis said. "Say good-bye."
Kevin didn't say good-bye. He said to Lewis, "You know you look terrible."
"No, I don't," Lewis said. "I look wonderful. And don't you forget it." As he climbed into the car, Lewis turned his head to Preston and Duke and gave them a wink.
They waited until the car turned out of the roundabout and onto the road. They waved and saw Lewis wave back.
"Marriage made in heaven," Duke said.
Preston had reached for the handle of the front door to the clinic when they heard someone say, "Hey!"
They looked around. They even looked up, overhead, as if the voice had come from the roof. No one.
"You heard it," said Duke.
"I heard it." Preston shrugged and reached again for the door handle.
"Hey!" It was a dark voice, gruff, accustomed to being obeyed. "You wanna make a hunnert bucks?"
There were enough words this time to give them a directional fix. The side of the building. So they stepped back away from the door and looked that way.
A hand was sticking around the comer, holding a hundred-dollar bill.
"The hell are you?" Duke said. C mere.
Duke looked at Preston. "There are two of us."
"Yeah, but . . ." Preston addressed the phantom voice. "Why don't you come out of there?"
"Think I am, gonna rape you?"
"No," Preston said. "That wasn't—"
"C'mon!" The voice was urgent. "Please."
There was something about the delivery—hesitation, maybe—that said that "please" was a foreign word, like Weltschmerz or mal de mer.
They walked to the comer of the building and, like children playing hide-and-seek, paused and looked at each other before they peeked.
A grotesquely fat man was wedged between the building and the fringing hedge. He was of middling height and appeared to be as wide as he was tall. He wore a sports jacket woven into gaudy checks, a lemon shirt and a silk tie highlighted with multicolored circles, squares and kidney-shaped things and secured with a knot the size of a cantaloupe. His wide, flat feet were encased in enormous slip-ons now half-buried in the dirt beneath the hedge. This was not a man who could tie his own shoes. He was bald, save for a reef of beige fuzz that lapped over his ears and rimmed the back of his shiny skull. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. Sweat seemed to squeeze from every pore on his face, as if he were turning on a spit over a fire. He might have been thirty-five. Or fifty.
A hand made of five breakfast sausages springing from a bologna waved the hundred-dollar bill.
The other hand dwelt beneath the man's nose, touching one nostril then the other. He sniffled constantly, and each sniffle ended with a little whistle.
Duke perceived no threat, so he smiled and said, *'May I show you to a table?"
"Fuck you," said the man, and he pushed the bill at Duke. "Yes or no?"
"Who are you?" Preston asked.
"Fuck is this?" Sniff. ''Jeopardy?*' Sniff. "Just get me some toot." Sniff.
Duke said to Preston, "He's hallucinating."
Preston said to the man, "Do you know where you are?”
"Hey! Read my fuckin' lips!" Very agitated, one hand slapping his nose, the other jerking the bill around as if a fish had hold of it. "Take this and get me some toot! Keep the change."
Duke said, "He doesn't know where he is."
Preston sa
id, "Let's go call security."
They took a step back, started to turn away.
"Hey! No!" Frantic. Both hands dug in the jacket pockets. "Not enough, right? Want more, right? No problem! Here y'go." Bills flew out of the jacket, crumpled bills and folded bills, bills of all denominations. Some hung up in the hedge, some slipped into the dirt, some wedged between the pudgy fingers.
Duke looked at Preston. "This is one unhappy camper."
Preston said to the man, "I don't know where you think you are, but this is—''
"Make you a deal. Forget the toot. No toot. Toot's out of here. Valium. Fifty mills of Valium, you keep the yard. Okay?"
Preston pointed at the clinic. "This is a drugstore?"
“I know what the fuck it is! I can't go in there like this. I gotta go up or down, one way or the other. Can't stay in the shithouse. Been in the shithouse a couple hours, maybe more, I don't know, since they pitched me out and left me here."
"Who left you here?"
"They did."
"Who's 'they'?"
"Forget it."
"The point is," Duke said, "you got it backwards. This is the place they take all that shit away from you, not where they give it to you."
"You say."
"I been here three weeks, I oughta know."
"You been here three weeks, you're too fuckin' stupid to learn the ropes?"
"The guy's amazing," Duke said to Preston. "A psychic. He hasn't set foot in the door, already he knows the ropes."
"Believe it," the man said.
"How do you know?" asked Preston.
"Forget it."
Preston said, "This is a waste of time."
Duke said, "He's blowing smoke."
Preston said to the man, "It gets cold at night," and this time he and Duke got almost to the door before the man shouted, "Hey!"