Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (14 page)

 
          
 
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 . . .

 
          
 
'' Yevahsatonanybuddy sfuckinhead?''
Preston
jerked upright, his hands before him to
ward off a blow. "What? What?"

 
          
 
“I say, yevahsatonanybuddy sfuckinhead?"

 
          
 
There was a monster at the door, framed in the
dim light from the corridor.

 
          
 
"What?”

 
          
 
"What the fuck this 'what' shit?" A
foot kicked out and slammed the door. A hand brushed a wall switch and turned
on an overhead light.

 
          
 
He was six feet tall or more, dark as an old
and lovingly tended saddle, perfectly bald. He wore jeans, high-top black
sneakers and a white T-shirt. He looked like he was made of whips, for all his
sinews stood out in relief against his skin. His eyeballs were the color of
rose wine. Beads of sweat clung to his head like droplets of rain on a waxed
car.

 
          
 
"I say one more time, nice and slow: Has
you yes or has you no ever sat on anybody's fuckin' head?”

 
          
 
"Wha—? No!"

 
          
 
"Well, you gon' have to sit on my fuckin'
head lickety-split, 'cause I'm on a bad fuckin' jones." He shivered.

 
          
 
"A what?" Wake up! Lord, let this be
Act Two of the dream!

 
          
 
"Whaffor you keeping whattin' me? You
don't know 'bout jones?"

 
          
 
"No!"
Preston
clutched the sheet to his chest. He
wondered if he could make it out the window before this maniac killed him.

 
          
 
"God damn!'' He kicked the wall. "I
told them motherfuckers not to put me in with some fuckin' rummy." He
kicked the empty bed, jamming it against
Preston
's. He took a step toward
Preston
, stabbing a finger at him. His pink eyes
were wide, and a rivulet of drool ran down his chin. "Listen up, sumbitch
..."

 
          
 
Preston
dropped the sheet, put a foot onto the floor, guessed that he could make the
window in two steps. If he shoved his bed back against the monster's knees . .
.

 
          
 
"You get me a junkie in here now, else .
. ." He stopped and his eyes rolled back and he moaned and grabbed his
stomach and began to shake. He tottered, stumbled against the wall, whirled and
fell face-forward onto the empty bed.

 
          
 
Preston
leaped up, sprinted across the room and yanked open the door. The corridor was
empty. He ran into the dark common room. “Help!" he shouted. *'Somebody
help!"

 
          
 
Somewhere in the building Bruce Springsteen
was singing.
Preston
followed the song to a little office in the
back of a dark cul-de-sac he hadn't known was there.

 
          
 
A pudgy young woman with a pockmarked face,
wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a name tag and safari shorts with more
pockets than a pool table, was sitting at a desk and making notes in the
margins of a ratty copy of Erich Fromm's Beyond the Chains of Illusion. She
looked up as
Preston
rounded the door.

 
          
 
“I need a junkie!" he gasped.

 
          
 
She smiled. "Are those underpants or a
bathing suit?"

 
          
 
Preston
looked down, and as he moved, the fly of his boxer shorts opened and the head
of his pecker peeked out.

 
          
 
"Underpants," she said.

 
          
 
He covered his crotch. "I need a
junkie."

 
          
 
"You've found one." She extended her
right arm and pointed to a ladder of scars on the inside of the elbow.
"What can I do for you?"

 
          
 
"There's this . . . this person . . . who
keeps telling me I have to sit on his head because he's got a problem with
somebody named Jones."

 
          
 
She laughed and reached across the desk and
pulled a clipboard toward her. She ran her finger down a list of names.
"You're Scott Preston."

 
          
 
"He's hallucinating!"

 
          
 
"No, he's not. He's just on a bad jones.
Let's see . . . Hassan. Khalil Ali Hassan, aka Twist." She pushed the
clipboard away. "You don't know about jones?"

 
          
 
"That's what he said. Then he kicked the
bed. Then he fell down."

 
          
 
"Heroin withdrawal. There's good jones,
when you just sort of feel like shit for a while, and bad jones, when you get
the shakes and the shivers and the sweats and the pukes and cramps like you
can't believe. He won't bother you."

 
          
 
"He wants me to sit on his head!"

 
          
 
"Don't do it. It's a free country."

 
          
 
"He'll kill me!"

 
          
 
"Tell him to fuck off. He gets pushy,
smack him in the chops. Shape he's in, one good whack and he'll fold."

 
          
 
Here we go again. The certainty. The cool. The
omniscience. He wanted to scream at the woman, to grab her by the throat and
force her to dial 911. To do something.

 
          
 
But what he did, of course, was lean forward
until he could read her name tag and then say, "Miss . . . Sandra ... I
have never hit another human being in my life. I would miss, or I would break
my hand, or I would drive him into a homicidal fury."

 
          
 
And what she did, of course, was smile and
say, "There's a first time for everything, Scott."

 
          
 
He took a deep breath, not sure that he
wouldn't begin to cry, not much caring if he did. "I beg you," he
said. “Come with me. Maybe he needs help. I wouldn't know what to do. Maybe
he's dead. Come with me."

 
          
 
“Sure, Scott." She stood up. "We aim
to please."

 
          
 
As they walked down the corridor, Sandra kept
glancing at his shorts. "I've never understood why people wear those
underpants," she said. "Doesn't your dick get cold?"

 
          
 
"It isn't outside that much."

 
          
 
"I'd think your rocks'd rattle around,
too." They arrived at the door to his room. "Anyway, whatever turns
you on. . . ."

 
          
 
Sandra pushed open the door, and
Preston
followed her inside.

 
          
 
"See?" she said. "Sleeping like
a baby."

 
          
 
"He's in my bed."

 
          
 
He was curled up in a fetal ball, the covers
pulled over his shoulders. A sweat stain was spreading on the pillow. He was
snoring and shaking.

 
          
 
"Tell you what, Scott. You want to move
him, move him. But if I were you, I'd sleep in the other bed."

 
          
 
"Yes. Right."

 
          
 
" 'Night, Scott."

 
          
 
"Thank you."

 
          
 
At the door, Sandra turned and said,
"Just for safety's sake, put your wallet under your pillow. If he wakes up
in the middle of the night and doesn't know where he is, he may get frightened
and decide to go over the hill. You never know what he'll want to take with
him."

 
          
 
"Right. Good idea. Under the
pillow." That way he 'II have to kill me to get my wallet.

 
          
 
When Sandra had gone,
Preston
got his wallet from his trousers and tucked
it in the waistband of his shorts.

 
          
 
Then he pulled the mattress off the empty bed
and dragged it into the bathroom.

 
          
 
It fit, mostly, with one end under the sink
and the other curled up against the door.