Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (19 page)

 
          
 
Speaking of sex . . . maybe she'd go join Dan
in the shower. Always a good way to start the day. Better than a Bloody Mary.

 
          
 
The phone rang. She thought of not answering
it. She hated the telephone. It was a bearer of bad tidings, especially at
seven in the morning. The best she could hope for was a wrong number, or maybe
a computer offering free dance lessons.

 
          
 
As she listened to the caller from the clinic,
all her lubricious thoughts seeped away. Her work day had begun.

 
          
 
"Who was that?" Dan came out of the
bathroom, buck-naked and scrubbing his hair dry.

 
          
 
"Your princess and my Yalie have been at
it again."

 
          
 
"What happened?"

 
          
 
"Security guard caught them necking in
the desert last night."

 
          
 
Dan draped the towel over his shoulder and
filled a coffee cup. "I thought you talked to him."

 
          
 
"Twice! I leaned all over him, told him
he was victimizing her, told him no matter what she looks like she's really
about twelve, gave him the whole arrested-development number, told him what
he's doing is hitting on his daughter.''

 
          
 
"You think it's true?"

 
          
 
She shrugged. "I'm not a shrink. I just
wanted to disgust him. WASPs disgust real easy."

 
          
 
"And he said . . . ?"

 
          
 
"Denied everything. Fucker's a master of
denial. Reminds me he's married, Priscilla's just a friend, what's wrong with
having a girl as a friend, they haven't done anything, not going to do anything
... He won't admit his marriage has already hit the iceberg and it's probably
too late to keep it from going to the bottom."

 
          
 
"He can mess her up something fierce
..."

 
          
 
"You think I don't know that?"

 
          
 
"... playing his sophisticated games with
her. They don't mean anything to him, but she's like a
Vietnam
boat person landing in
San Francisco
. New rules, new world. You tell her black's
white, she'll kiss your hand and follow you anywhere. She's probably already
made him her father and her brother. It's no big step to—"

 
          
 
"I know. And they leave here and he goes
back East and there it is again: The world has fucked her over."

 
          
 
"You got to throw him out."

 
          
 
She paused. "Not yet."

 
          
 
"Then wherf!” Dan shouted. "After
he's humped her in the bushes? He's got no right to wreck her head. That's the
rule and you know it: Kill yourself if you want, but you're not taking anybody
with you."

 
          
 
"First I want to make sure what really
happened. Some of those security guards shouldn't be allowed to play with
anything more complicated than a coconut. Then I'll have one last talk with Joe
Ivy."

 
          
 
"Talking to him's a waste of time. You
just said so."

 
          
 
Marcia shook her head. "Trying to
embarrass him's a waste of time. Now I'm gonna scare him."

 
          
 
"What, threaten to throw him out?"

 
          
 
"Worse." She kicked off her running
shoes and walked into the bathroom.

 
          
 
She was at the front door, on her way out to
her car, when she noticed the package on the floor. "What's this?"
she called to Dan, who was in the living room reading the paper and having a
last cup of coffee. She always left the building ten minutes before he did—a
precaution lest someone from the clinic, a janitor or a cook or another
counselor, should drive by and see them leaving together. Dan's own apartment
was two buildings down the road in the Montevista complex, but the buildings
were identical and only a dedicated sleuth would have remarked that he seemed
to be coming out of the wrong one.

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"This package."

 
          
 
“It came while you were in the shower."

 
          
 
"He came to the door?"

 
          
 
"He rang from downstairs. I buzzed him
up."

 
          
 
"What did he say?"

 
          
 
"Nothing. He just wanted to be sure this
was your apartment."

 
          
 
"You signed for it?"

 
          
 
"Of course."

 
          
 
"With your name?"

 
          
 
"What did you want me to sign?" He
chuckled. "George Bush?"

 
          
 
Marcia picked up the package and looked at it.
Anger and fear rose together inside her like a bilious stew. She carried the
package into the living room, dropped it on the coffee table and sat beside Dan
on the couch. She wanted to slap him, to shriek at him, to grab him by the
throat and terrify him. But he was trained to dismiss hysterical theatrics, so
she swallowed her anger and clenched her fists so hard that she drove her
fingernails into her palms, and she spoke in a soft, controlled, superficially
loving but profoundly condescending voice.

 
          
 
"Daniel ..."

 
          
 
"Hmmmm?" He was reading the
basketball line scores.

 
          
 
"Why is it we play hide-and-seek about
living together?"

 
          
 
"For heaven's sake, Marcia. . . ."
He glanced up from the paper. "We've been through this—" He stopped,
seeing the intensity in her eyes. He sighed. "Okay. I say it's because
we're not married. We live in a conservative, blue-collar community, and people
who live together are sinners. You say it's because we're . . . we're-"

 
          
 
“An Oreo cookie. You are white, a card-carrying
member of the master race, and I am of the Negro persuasion. In the good old
days, right-thinking people would have hanged us by the neck until we were
dead. Now, in the age of enlightenment, they might settle for burning down our
house and riding us out of town on a rail, covered with tar and feathers."

 
          
 
"And I say you're being paranoid. No one
gives a hoot. They're too wrapped up in car payments and overdue rent and how
to feed their kids and—"

 
          
 
''Wrong. When things are bad and there's
nothing they can do about it and they can't figure out why they're getting
shafted, people blame dragons. Jews are dragons. Blacks are dragons. We're
dragons."

 
          
 
“You're crazy."

 
          
 
“Am I?" Marcia paused. She closed her
eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose, searching for a new tack.
"Okay," she said after a moment. "Forget our landlord. Forget
our neighbors. What about the people at Banner? The board. Remember, these are
people who think civil rights means the right to keep slaves."

 
          
 
"How could they find out?"

 
          
 
"You don't think they'd care enough to do
their very best? To find out, I mean."

 
          
 
"How could they?"

 
          
 
Marcia picked the package off the coffee table
and placed it between them on the couch. "The guy who delivered this, what
was he, UPS?"

 
          
 
"I don't know."

 
          
 
"Did he wear a uniform?"

 
          
 
"I didn't notice."

 
          
 
"Do I order a lot of stuff from the
Sharper Image?"

 
          
 
"How should I know? I don't—"

 
          
 
"What do I need from the Sharper fucking
Image?" Her anger overflowed. "An electric fork? A nuclear-powered
razor? You see me throwing my goddam money down the toilet?"

 
          
 
"What's the matter with you?"

 
          
 
"Look at the package, Dan." She held
it up and pressed it to his face. "Look at it."

 
          
 
He pushed it away. "I see it."

 
          
 
"We're in the last few years of the twentieth
century. Computers run our lives."

 
          
 
"So?"

 
          
 
"When was the last time you saw an
address label from a corporation that probably does fifty million dollars a
year . . . when was the last time you saw an address label from a company like
that handwritten?''

 
          
 
Dan looked again at the package. He said
nothing, nothing at all.

 
          
 
PRESTON WAS LATE, the last to arrive in
Chaparral's lounge area, and all the chairs, couches, bean-bag pillows and
squooshy cushions were filled. The members of both therapy groups were there,
assembled to celebrate Lewis, who sat on the throne of honor: a Windsor chair
placed in the center of the room. Lewis wore white espadrilles, no socks, white
ducks, a red-and-white candy-cane-striped silk shirt and a red silk neckerchief
knotted at the side. He was trying to look serious, but he couldn't stop
grinning and touching his hair.

 
          
 
Preston
thought Lewis looked like a waiter at a pretentious
New Hope
restaurant, one of those androgynous types
who come to your table and say, "Good evening, my name is Sean, I'll be
your waiter tonight. Before I take your beverage order, may I tell you our
chefs specials?" and then reels off the entire menu from memory, including
the things nobody ever eats, like brains in black butter and squid in its own
ink, and then ends with a flourish as if expecting applause for reciting the
whole damn Koran without a mistake.

 
          
 
It was an uncharitable thought. Lewis was a
nice guy, genuinely and unselfishly nice. He was graduating. Let him have his moment.

 
          
 
But
Preston
didn't feel charitable. He felt empty, wasted, which wasn't surprising since he
had spent the past ten minutes clutching the rim of a toilet bowl and puking up
his guts, out of . . . what? Fear? Anger? Resentment? Frustration? He didn't
know and at the moment didn't care, but whatever it was had come on him like a
stroke or a seizure, had caused him to lurch out of Marcia's office and bolt
for the John. He had stopped in his room to wash his face and brush his teeth,
which was why he was late.

 
          
 
Marcia hadn't begun to speak, but she was
already circling Lewis like an auctioneer at a cattle sale. Preston knew she
saw him come in, wouldn't have been surprised if she fired a lethal dart at
him, but she ignored him as he looked around for an empty seat, didn't find one
and so sagged down onto the carpet and leaned up against a wall at the back of
the room. He assumed Priscilla was somewhere in the room, but he didn't look
for her. He was curious—curious? frantic!—to know if she, too, had been
subjected to an inquisition, but not desperate enough to risk eye contact with
her. He didn't need another session with Savonarola just yet.

 
          
 
"Dearly beloved," Marcia began
solemnly, "we are gathered here because"—here she smiled and stamped
her foot and gave herself a high-five—"because, god-damnitall, Lewis has
made it!" She applauded and everyone applauded with her. Lewis blushed,
and one of his hands fluttered over his hair like a hummingbird.

 
          
 
"You may wonder why it's so
amazing," Marcia continued. "After all, a lot of people make it
through Banner, and some of them actually stay clean. Lemme tell you what we
saw, I mean Dan and I, when Lewis got here. Here was a man with two and a half
strikes against him. He's a rummy, he's gay and he hates himself for being
both. It's all his fault. He's worthless, lower than snail shit, and his
Significant Other—not exactly a straight shooter himself—gets his jollies by
convincing Lewis that he's right: He is worthless."

 
          
 
Significant Other. Preston smiled and stopped
listening to Marcia's account of Lewis's ascent from the slough of self-hatred.
Of all the in-group terms, all the A.A. bumper-sticker slogans—like "One
Day at a Time" and "Easy Does It" and "Keep It Simple,
Stupid"—he liked "Significant Other" best. It used to be that
drunks had wives and husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends. Not anymore.
Nowadays, guys did it to guys, girls did it to girls, nieces shacked up with
uncles, deacons socked it to choirboys. Establishment labels became value
judgments, value judgments bred guilt in the nonconforming, and here in
treatment guilt was a villain. They had to find a neutral term, something that
would connote a relationship without judging it, something that would work as
well for a man married to the same woman for forty-three years as for a freak
who had taken to poking his pet llama.

 
          
 
Significant Other.

 
          
 
Preston's Significant Other was Margaret.
Technically. No question, though, in the past three weeks the relationship—in
Preston's mind, anyway, and he had no j idea what was going on in
Margaret's—had become much more Other than Significant. Probably because of the
isolation, the lack of contact. Possibly because of Priscilla.

 
          
 
Forget it. Forget Priscilla. Or if you can't
forget her, stay away from her. Or if you can't stay away from her altogether
(and that's downright impossible around here), at least ignore her.

 
          
 
Sure.

 
          
 
You better.

 
          
 
Or else.

 
          
 
He had been almost finished with his
therapeutic duty (this week, as "Mr. Clean," his task was to tidy up
the common-room kitchenette) when Marcia had snapped at him that she wanted to
see him in her office now. He had been expecting it, had prepared a reasoned
response that contrasted appearance with reality and cited Rashomon (he thought
he could get away with this, in private) as a paradigm. The security guard had
seen one thing; that was his reality. But interpreted reality was not
necessarily truth.

 
          
 
Preston would tell Marcia the truth.

 
          
 
Simple.

 
          
 
He never had a chance.

 
          
 
Marcia sat at her desk. Preston stood before
her. He had to. There were no other chairs in the room. Where the hell had they
gone? He towered over her, had the advantage of height, but by sitting down she
dominated him.

 
          
 
On purpose?

 
          
 
Probably.

 
          
 
For sure.

 
          
 
She had a manila folder open on the desk.
Inside was a piece of paper with a lot of typing on it. The arresting officer's
report. She scanned the paper, then shut the folder and looked up at him. He
saw that her eyelids drooped, giving her a look that was less angry than
carnivorous. Like a reptile. She was going to eat him.

 
          
 
"Last night, at nine forty-five p.m., you
were seen—"

 
          
 
Preston put one hand in his pocket and raised
the other, trying to look casual, in command. "The guy's a jerk. He wanted
to see something, so he saw something. Nothing hap—"

 
          
 
"You were kissing her."

 
          
 
"No. I mean, not exactly. If anybody was
kissing anybody, she was kissing me. We were talking, about friendship, if you
want to know, and she—"

 
          
 
"Don't pull your glib pop-psych bullshit
on me, Scott. The two of you were kissing, right?"

 
          
 
Preston
sighed the sigh of a martyr. "If you say so."

 
          
 
"I say so. Jorge Velasquez says so. The
'jerk.' He makes seven-fifty an hour, Scott. He supports three kids, a wife
with a club foot and a mother-in-law dying of Lou Gehrig's Disease. In the
daytime he pumps gas. He hasn't had a drink or any weed in six years. How long
has it been since your last drink, Scott?"

 
          
 
Uh-oh. "I apologize. But he came on
like—"

 
          
 
"How long, Scott?"

 
          
 
"Seventeen days."

 
          
 
"How many steps are there in A.A.,
Scott?"

 
          
 
Preston bit his lip, forcing the rising anger
back into its pit. "Can we skip the seminar? You want me to grovel, I'll
grovel. But just—"

 
          
 
"Answer the question!"

 
          
 
"Twelve."

 
          
 
"How many have you dealt with?"

 
          
 
"Two, maybe three."

 
          
 
"Which ones?"

 
          
 
Preston began to relax. Her attitude was
becoming clinical. He could answer questions. "Well, number one: I know I’m
powerless over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable. Two and three are
tough, fuzzy—the higher-power and turning-it-over-to-God stuff."

 
          
 
"What about number four?—'We made a
searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.' "

 
          
 
"It's not something you do all at once.
You do it—"

 
          
 
" 'You?' Who's 'you'?"

 
          
 
"
I.
All right. I. I do it a little bit every
day. I chip away at it."

 
          
 
"And what have you turned up?"

 
          
 
It was getting easier. A chat. He wished there
were a chair so he could sit down, not stand there as if this were a
court-martial. "A lot of my problem's self-esteem. I have a really crappy
opinion of myself, deep down. It's something I suppose I'll have to work on all
my life."

 
          
 
She didn't say anything, just looked at him
with those hooded eyes and tapped an eraser on the desk. Then she bit.

 
          
 
"I wouldn't bother," she said.

 
          
 
"What?" He must have misheard her.

 
          
 
"Why fish in an empty lake, Scott? Your
self-esteem can't be as low as it should be. 'Cause deep down, where it counts,
in the core where the truth lives, you're a shit."

 
          
 
All Preston could manage was "Hey
..." before his throat closed.

 
          
 
“Who wants to take inventory of a warehouse
piled to the ceiling with cases and cases of shit?"

 
          
 
Preston
didn't know he had spoken, thought he had only thought the words "What are
you doing!" until he saw her start out of her chair and slam her hand on
the desk.

 
          
 
"What am I doing? It's what you're doing,
Scott, and what you're doing is taking. Take, take, take. You're like a hyena
or a buzzard or something that sucks the eyes out of the weak and weary.''

 
          
 
"Can I say something?" He had no
idea what he wanted to say. He wanted to stop the assault.

 
          
 
"Go ahead."

 
          
 
"Yeah . . . well . . . you know, it takes
two to tango."

 
          
 
She blinked and hesitated, looking for the
meat beneath the banality. There wasn't any. "Oh, very good, Scott. Very
aware. Very profound. And the Holocaust was really the Jews' fault for not
standing up to Hitler, and the kids in the ghettos could make something of
themselves if they'd only for God's sake get a job. There're no victims in
life, right, Scott?"