Rummies

  "Gimme a break, William. You put a number in case of emergency on the form when they admitted you. I call that number. I tell them the problem. They get hold of Mr. Ciccio. Bet on it." She held the quarter between her fingertips and wiggled it at Lupone. "What I don't remember, though, is is his nickname Mamba or Mambo? I mean, does he have rhythm or does he bite people? I don't want to call the man by the wrong name, like, 'Hey there, Mr. Mambo,' if that's not his—"

  "I'll take the fuckin' fall."

  "I know you will, William." She dropped the quarter into her pocket and returned to the spot in front of Lupone. "See how easy it is to be reasonable?"

  "I don't want to drown is all."

  "That's reasonable." She leaned forward and placed Lupone's hands at his sides and patted them, then raised a palm to his eyes and touched his eyelids and brushed downward, the way you close the eyes of a corpse. "Trust me."

  "Sure." Lupone chuckled. "You mean like they say in the movie business? In Hollywood, 'trust me' translates 'fuck you.' "

  "Ssshhh." She raised a finger to Hector and Twist and pantomimed that they should stand on either side of Lupone and make a cradle with their arms down near the floor. Then she gestured for Preston to get on his knees and raise his hands in front of his shoulders. She pointed at Cheryl—frail, dark-eyed and frightened—and directed her to one of Lupone's hands.

  When everyone was in position, Marcia said, "When you're ready, William."

  Preston looked up from the floor. To his left knelt Twist, to his right Hector. Their arms were locked together. All he could see beyond the arms was a field of broad checks that encased enough compacted suet to crush the life out of him.

  "How did your daddy die?" What would Kimberly answer? "He was fatted to death in a drunk tank somewhere in New Mexico. ''

  The field of checks teetered, growing larger, then smaller, larger, smaller. Then they grew larger and larger and larger, until they struck Preston's hands and his face. Locked arms of muscle and bone were driven into his chest. He was rocked back on his knees, pressed to the floor like a limbo dancer.

  He heard nothing but grunts, smelled an overpowering stench of Aqua Velva, felt his lips and nose splayed by something hard, round, bony and slick with sweat.

  Marcia looked down and thought of a creche. There was Cheryl, kneeling beside Lupone (eyes still closed) and holding his hand. There were Hector and Twist, their heads jammed against Lupone's chest because their arms were trapped beneath him. And somewhere under there was Preston.

  Lupone opened his eyes and looked down at the two heads—one black, one brown—nestled against his massive breast. "Hey!" he shouted, and he beamed. “Hey!"

  “Yes, William?"

  “They caught me!"

  "Uh-huh."

  “Be dipped in shit and rolled in breadcrumbs."

  "Really."

  "Didn't bust a thing."

  A plaintive voice, wailing like a departed spirit, wafted up through crannies in the mountain of flesh.

  "Here," Marcia said, extending a hand to Lupone. "Before we have to send Scott to intensive care."

  “Oh yeah," said Lupone, and he turned his head and shouted to Preston as if he were at the bottom of a mine shaft, "Sorry, pal."

  There was no way Marcia could haul Lupone to his feet, so she moved to the side and gripped his hand with both of hers and braced herself and yanked. Lupone rolled and Cheryl pushed as Marcia pulled, and finally, like an overturned tortoise, Lupone tipped up onto his side. A last shove from Cheryl sent him crashing to the floor, face down.

  "Mama!" said Twist, rubbing his arms to restore circulation before gangrene set in.

  Hector flopped backward on the floor and gasped. The pack of cigarettes in his T-shirt sleeve was as flat as a Frisbee.

  Preston was gray and twisted, like a contortionist who had gone too far and been left to die by a disappointed audience. He moaned and moved his limbs, and Marcia and Cheryl helped him to his feet.

  "That was great!" Lupone said, tucking in his shirt. "But I still don't get it. How come they give a shit? Me, I'da let me fall and then laughed my ass off."

  "You ever heard of John Donne, William?"

  "You mean the guy writes alla time about Harps?"

  "No. The one who said, 'No man is an island.' That one.

  "Kinda fuckin' Einstein is that? Who ever said somebody was an island?"

  "What he was saying is, we're all in this together. If you hurt, I hurt. We can't go it alone, and if we try, we go down the tubes."

  "So?"

  "So"—she gestured at the others—"they caught you because they were saying. We know what kind of pain you're in because we've had the same pain and we want to help you. '

  "Yeah?" Lupone looked doubtful. "Never mind. I'm not a man forgets a favor." He walked over to Twist and said, "Here." He reached in one jacket pocket, then in another. His pockets were empty. He said, "Shit. I forgot. I owe you."

  “Forgot what?" Marcia asked.

  "They got all my money."

  "What d'you want with money?"

  "Gonna give 'em some."

  "Why?"

  "Why?'' Lupone looked puzzled. "They did me a favor."

  "They didn't do it for money, William."

  "So? Money's a convincer. Convinces you you did good, so maybe next time you'll do even better. Besides, I never knew a guy yet who couldn't use a couple bucks."

  Preston waited for Marcia's attack. He wondered if it would be direct or oblique, savage or subtle, a club or a stiletto.

  But Marcia laughed. Not a snide chuckle or a sarcastic bark but a spontaneous laugh of genuine amusement. She patted Lupone on the shoulder and said, "William, you are one hard-ass nut to crack, but I'm gonna do it."

  Preston gasped. Those are the same words she said to me! The same words! Exactly! What's going on?Does she say that to all the guys ? He wanted to call her out, to ask her, to challenge her supposed sincerity. But then he realized—amazed—that what he was feeling was not so much anger or righteous resentment as simple jealousy. He was being possessive. He wanted all the attention. He wanted to be special.

  He was behaving like a baby.

  Lupone winked at Marcia and said, ''Good luck, sweetheart."

  They gathered their chairs and formed their circle.

  "I should've welcomed Cheryl back first thing," Marcia said as she sat down. She turned to Cheryl. "How'd it go?"

  "I don't know. I won't know till the tests come back."

  Bambi, Preston thought. That's what Bambi would look like if Bambi were a bird.

  "It's out of your hands," Marcia said. "Right?"

  "Right."

  "No use worrying about it."

  "No. But that's easy to say."

  "Remember 'the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.' "

  "I remember."

  "You been saying the prayer?"

  "Not enough."

  "You like us to say it with you?"

  Cheryl hesitated. "Yes."

  Marcia held out her arms and they all joined hands and recited the Serenity Prayer—even Lupone, though he didn't close his eyes and didn't know the prayer and so just muttered syllables while eyeing the others to make sure they were serious and sincere and not engaged in some conspiracy to make him look like an ass.

  "Now," Marcia said when they were done, "I think we should talk to Twist."

  "Huh?" Twist said, evidently surprised at the sudden attention. "About what?"

  "About heroin."

  "What about it?"

  "What does it do for you?"

  "What's it do! Man, you know what it do."

  "Not for you. I only know what it did for me. Where does it take you?"

  "Away."

  "From what?"

  "From ..." Twist looked at the ceiling. "From . . . I guess all the shit."

  "That's what I want to look at. The shit."

  There was a knock on the door. Marcia frowned and left her seat and went to the door and o
pened it a few inches.

  A new arrival, Preston thought. It had to be. Therapy sessions were never interrupted except for earthquakes, terrorist attacks or new arrivals.

  It was Guy Larkin. He said a few words to Marcia. She looked at her feet for a moment and then took a breath and squared her shoulders, turned back into the room and said, "Cheryl?"

  For the first time since he had met her, Preston could actually see Cheryl's eyes, for they had widened so, and the skin beneath them had tightened so, that the eyes themselves seemed to be about to leave their stygian caves.

  She looked terrified. She didn't speak, didn't move.

  Marcia came back into the room and took Cheryl's hand. "We have to go see the doctor," she said.

  Cheryl nodded and allowed herself to be gentled out of her chair.

  Marcia put an arm around Cheryl and led her from the room. At the door, Marcia said to the others—and there was something awful about her voice, something stale and flat—"Everybody tell somebody else a secret."

  They stared at each other. Then they stared at the floor, then at their fingernails, at their shoes, at the walls, out the window. Somebody coughed. Somebody else cleared his throat. Twist untied one of his shoes, tied it again.

  Preston said, "I . . ." and everybody looked at him. He didn't know what to say. Tell somebody a secret? Tell who? And what secret? Recite his sexual fantasies? Talk about the time he padded his expense account?

  They were like a car with the ignition removed. All the machinery was in place to drive the group, but the spark, Marcia, was gone.

  Lupone said, "What?"

  Preston shrugged, forced a wan smile. "I don't know." Maybe Lupone had a secret. Maybe? Definitely. The trouble was, Lupone's secrets were probably grounds for indictment. "You got something?"

  "Stick it up your ass," Lupone said, hostile again. Suspicious. Closed. Marcia had opened him up a crack, but as soon as she left, he had slammed it shut.

  "What the fuck ..." Twist said.

  So they quit.

  Duke was sitting in the common room, struggling with a crossword puzzle. The other members of Dan's therapy group lounged around too, smoking, reading the bulletin board, eating ice cream. They never had any free time, didn't know how to cope with it, and some of them were growing anxious. Their routine had been broken, without explanation. They looked at their watches every few seconds, unconsciously desperate for the big hand to reach the top of the hour and signal their next structured experience.

  "The hell's a medieval serf?" Duke asked as Preston came up and pulled out a chair.

  "Esne," Preston replied, and he spelled it.

  "Kinda dumb-ass word is that?" Duke filled in the blanks. " 'Help wanted: esnes? Good pay, great benefits? Make a career in esneing?' "

  "Dan get sick?"

  "He's in there." Bailey pointed with his pencil at the closed door to Dan's office. "With the fuzz."

  "Why?"

  "Butterball swears she heard the cop say something about Natasha Grant." Duke shook his head. "Butter-ball doesn't always play by the rules. Other day, she decided her drinking problem is because of her sins. She hasn't been to confession enough. Like God said, 'You don't want to 'fess up? Okay. Zap! You're a rummy.' So we all had to sit through a whole hour of the gory details."

  "And?"

  "Like Jimmy Carter. She's never done dick worth moaning about, but she's thought all sorts of trash. Sinned in her heart. It was a mayonnaise serenade."

  Preston sat there and helped Duke finish the crossword, but he was useless when Duke began the cryptogram—finding five clues and then unscrambling the highlighted letters to make a final answer. He had never been able to do those things, his mind didn't work that way, just as he had an encyclopedic memory for phone numbers, but only one way: He could match almost any name with a phone number, if he had ever heard it, but if he was given the number and asked to dredge up the name that went with it, he couldn't do it.

  He looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes till lecture time. He could go back to his room and . . . what? Read "The Big Book"? Memorize today's prayer from Twenty-four Hours a Day! Add to the list of outrages he had committed against others, outrages that would have to be chronicled and confessed to one of his peers for completion of his Fifth Step work? Forget it. Who were his peers here, anyway? Twist? Lupone? Duke? Yes, Duke. Close, if not on the button. And of course Priscilla. But "peer" wasn't exactly the word his mind conjured up when he thought of Priscilla.

  Careful, there. Elitist thinking, Marcia would call it. Everybody's your peer, Scott. In our sickness there is oneness.

  Sure. Booze is the great leveler.

  What was today's lecture? He got up from the table and strolled over to the bulletin board by the cigarette machine. Probably something about how Chateauneuf-du-Pape rots your pancreas. Or another slide show on child abuse. (Christ! They'd actually shown pictures of a seven-year-old boy who'd been raped by his shit-faced father. That was supposed to make you stop drinking? It had made Preston want a drink, just so he could forget the pictures.)

  The bulletin board was full of announcements of A.A. meetings, N.A. meetings (specializing in junkies), Al-Anon meetings (for the Significant Others and Codependents of the hard-core abusers), support groups, therapy groups, Twelve Step groups—all programs within the Program designed to welcome the graduate into the womb of happy abstinence. And help him or her make it through the night.

  He was still searching for the little printed slip that would announce the lecture title when Marcia came in.

  She stopped, surprised to see Preston, and said, "I thought you were sharing secrets."

  "It doesn't work without you."

  "You better learn, Scott. Can't take me home in your pocket." She pushed the door open again. “Let's take a walk. I was coming to get you anyway."

  "Me? Why?"

  She walked through the door and held it for him.

  She didn't speak right away, just walked beside him on the path that circled the exercise area, and since sudden unscheduled private meetings with counselors, doctors, shrinks or administrators were always bad news, and since Preston wasn't in a mood for bad news, he tried to stall.

  “What's this about Natasha Grant?"

  "What'd you hear?"

  "Duke says Dan's in there with a cop. He says Butterball says she heard the cop mention Natasha's name."

  Marcia paused, then nodded and said, "They found her body on the road."

  "When? What—"

  "Nobody knows anything. I'm told our fearless leader intends to speak to us all tonight, fill us in."

  "Banner?"

  "His own self. I don't know what he'll say . . . probably just give us the party line."

  What does THAT mean? There was an undercurrent of bitterness in her voice. Preston wanted to know why, was going to ask—what the hell, all she could do was snap at him—when she changed the subject.

  “You said you'd let Lewis know about Cheryl."

  The woman's got a lease on my brain! "Anything wrong with that?"

  '^No."

  "Then how'd you know about it? Jalapeno Pepper file a goddam report?"

  "Calm down, Scott. Lewis told me he was going to. He asked me if I thought it was okay."

  "He have to get a permit to pee?"

  Marcia stopped walking and put a hand on Preston's arm. "Scott ..."

  "What?"

  "Shut the fuck up."

  "Oh." Preston laughed. "Now that you ask me nicely, okay."

  Marcia smiled and turned back to resume walking, and she let her hand slide down Preston's arm and in behind his elbow, and she walked like that, with her hand sort of drooped in his arm.

  Preston felt weird, as if they were out walking on a date, but there was nothing male-female about the gesture; it was almost affectionate, like something his mother used to do when she'd come to see him at prep school. And he certainly didn't feel anything male-female about Marcia. He didn't think of her as a woman at all. In
this small world she was omnipotent and obviously omniscient.

  It was like taking a stroll with God.

  "Scott . . . Cheryl is going to die."

  "She is?" No! He didn't mean that. Or not just that.

  He felt a rush of adrenaline, then a fuzziness. 'I mean—"

  "Let me finish. You know she went for another biopsy. It came up bad. She's got almost no liver left, maybe an eighth, not enough to keep her going. Have you looked at her eyes?"

  “I can't see her eyes."

  "The whites of her eyes are yellow. Her skin's begun to go a kind of grayish orange. The liver's giving up. It's not processing the toxins anymore. It's shunting them by."

  "Alcoholic hepatic jaundice." He remembered the lecture. God, how could he forget it? After Dr. Lapidus had spoken—or rather sermonized, for Lapidus was a thin, wiry, intense man whose every pious word chastised his audience for committing suicide, while he chain-smoked Gauloises and wheezed like a recalcitrant lawn mower—they showed a videotape of an unconscious man strapped to a hospital bed, wearing a Chicago Bears football helmet to protect his head when he lapsed into seizures, connected to machines by tubes up his nose and down his throat. His skin was the color of a spoiled banana, all speckled and blotchy, his nails cracked and rotten. And as they all watched and Dr. Lapidus stood to the side and smoked and smirked, suddenly the man's chest heaved and a geyser of blood erupted from his mouth—it must have gone four feet in the air—and spattered the camera lens. There were two or three smaller spasms that produced muddy bubbles of viscous goo, and then the man's mouth fell open and his head lolled and his eyes opened, showing nothing but yellow because his eyeballs had rolled back as he died.

  Most of the audience had been paralyzed—horrified and sickened. But two jesters had jostled each other and said things like "Outrageous!" and "Far out!" Junkies, Preston guessed, whose deaths would be less spectacular if nonetheless final. They had always wanted to see a snuff film.

  “Does she know?" he asked Marcia.

  “Sure she knows. She has to make a decision."

  “Like?"

  “She can wait. She can accept it—if she can, and she's sedated now, so nobody'11 know for a while—and say her Serenity Prayer and just wait. Sometime—in a week or a month or maybe six months—her brain will overload with ammonia and she'll start hallucinating. She'll get incoherent and she'll be hospitalized and then it's just caretaking till the varices come along and kill her. Or, she can try to get a liver transplant."