Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (16 page)

 
          
 
He was enjoying himself, and not only this
moment, this afternoon. He felt good, a kind of cleanliness and balance. He had
been sober for fourteen days. He was sleeping for seven hours at a stretch—not
lying in a coma for four hours and then thrashing around in a sweat for the
next three—and was dreaming and now and then actually recalling his dreams. He
woke refreshed, confident that he could face the day.

 
          
 
Only once had he found himself longing for a
drink, during his session with the clinic's staff psychologist, an enormously
fat and insufferably pious young man (early thirties,
Preston
guessed) whose brass desk plate announced
him as "Myron Frost, B.S., M.S., Ph.D."

 
          
 
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.