Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (35 page)

 
          
 
There's too dam much pain in the world.

 
          
 
Marcia. She went up there to plead Marcia's
case, to get Marcia's job back for her.

 
          
 
And?

 
          
 
She had said what she had to say, and maybe
Banner said yes, maybe no, but she started back and . . .

 
          
 
What?

 
          
 
Never got here.

 
          
 
Why not?

 
          
 
Because she couldn't.

 
          
 
What does that mean?

 
          
 
She just couldn't.

 
          
 
That's bullshit. That . . .

 
          
 
Oh my God!

 
          
 
Preston
switched off the light, walked to the window, opened it, climbed out and began
to run.

 
          
 
The sound floated over the still night air,
clarion clear. If a security guard had been patrolling in one of the electric
golf carts, he couldn't have missed it. But perhaps he would have fled,
convinced he was fantasizing or being tantalized by the spirit of some
long-dead child.

 
          
 
The voice was high and soft, not wistful or unhappy
but placid as a little lake in a forest glen. But a lake without life, as if
killed by acid rain.

 
          
 
The sound chilled
Preston
, made the hair rise on his arms and the
back of his neck.

 
          
 
"The itsy-bitsy spider Went up the
waterspout. Along came the rain, And washed the spider out. Along came the sun,

 
          
 
And dried up all the rain, And the itsy-bitsy
spider Went up the spout again. ''

 
          
 
He came over the sand rise, the erosion
bulwark at the farthest point of their walks, and stood looking down at their
hiding place.

 
          
 
She had dug a pocket in the sand and lay in
it, staring up at the moon, with the fingertips of one hand climbing her other
forearm in time with the song.

 
          
 
". . . the itsy-bitsy spider Went up the
spout again.”

 
          
 
She stopped. Without moving, without seeming
to see him, she said, '*Hello, Scott. I've been hoping you'd come."

 
          
 
He skidded down the face of the bulwark and
sat beside her. He took one of her hands and held it. It felt as if all the
muscles had been removed. Like holding a lamb chop.

 
          
 
"Are you okay?"

 
          
 
“The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout.
..."

 
          
 
“Priscilla?"

 
          
 
“Did you know you can't kill yourself by
eating sand? You get full too fast.''

 
          
 
Very slowly, he lay her hand across her
stomach and lifted her shoulders and drew her into his lap, so her head rested
against one of his thighs. He stroked her hair. It was as gritty as if she had
been boiled in a wave and slammed against the ocean floor. He saw in the
moonlight that her bottom lip was split and puffy, and there was a bruise on
one of her cheeks.

 
          
 
"Can you tell me?" he said.

 
          
 
“Is that Eloise?" she asked, pointing at
the sky.

 
          
 
It took nearly four hours for him to learn
what had happened. The moon was down, and her constellation, Eloise, hung
directly overhead.

 
          
 
Weeping seemed to pull a plug that allowed her
to cleanse herself. She had been singing, and tracing the outlines of Eloise,
and telling him that sand bugs tickled when they crawled over you—for she had
lain buried in the sand, with only her face exposed, for all of today's
daylight hours—when suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, tears had erupted
and her throat had caught and she had begun to sob in the spastic,
strangulating way of a chastised child, clutching one of his arms so tightly
that after a while her fingers cramped and he had to help her pull them off,
one by one.

 
          
 
After that, she was quite coherent.

 
          
 
Preston
's
deduction had been on the money: She had decided to go up to Xanadu to
demand—to plead, to beg—that Banner reinstate Marcia and Dan. She had been
convinced that Banner had nothing to do with their dismissal. No one who had
been through drug addiction, no one who had felt the frailty of the human
spirit, who had known the loneliness of the black hole, could fault another for
seeking love and accepting it gratefully—from whomever, wherever, however.

 
          
 
The decision must have been made by a board of
detached, self-righteous racists.

 
          
 
When she arrived. Banner was there, but not
there— drifty and dreamy one minute, edgy and twitchy the next.

 
          
 
He was delighted to see her, had fixed on her
as a gift from God, some sort of manna sent down to liberate him from whatever
demon had gripped him.

 
          
 
He asked if he could hold her.

 
          
 
She said no, she had come to talk about
Marcia.

 
          
 
He didn't know what she was talking about,
didn't know who Marcia was. That made her feel better, confirmed her assumption
of his innocence. All she had to do was explain the injustice to him, and he
would correct it.

 
          
 
He offered her a drink.

 
          
 
She said what did he think she was, suicidal?

 
          
 
Nonalcoholic, he said. For God's sake. What
did she think he was, crazy?

 
          
 
She said she didn't come up here to socialize.

 
          
 
He said was having a glass of grape juice
socializing?

 
          
 
All right, she said, and he gave her what he
called no-kick champagne.

 
          
 
But as soon as she took a sip she knew he had
lied to her because you can't disguise the warmth it makes going down. There
might have been more than alcohol in it, too, because as much as she felt angry
at him, as much as she wanted to throw the glass at him and walk out, those
feelings seemed to be separated from her, like someone else's, and deep down
inside her she didn't care. About anything.

 
          
 
That was the last thing she remembered until
the next morning, this morning, when she woke up on a couch in the living room.
Her first thought was relief at discovering that she was dressed exactly as she
had been, but when she moved she realized something was wrong, not just the
cuts and bruises, but her clothes didn't feel right. It was the way her sweater
bound the sleeves of her blouse.

 
          
 
"What do you mean?"

 
          
 
"You know how when you put a sweater on
over a shirt, you always have to shake down the shirt sleeves and straighten
them out because the wool grabs the other material?"

 
          
 
Don't ask this question. Don't do this. He
couldn't not. "So you think he—"

 
          
 
"It doesn't matter."

 
          
 
"Doesn't matter!"

 
          
 
"I thought about it all day, in the sand.
It doesn't matter, because they already raped away my soul."

 
          
 
"Who did?"

 
          
 
"Everybody."

 
          
 
She had heard the TV coming from the library.
She went in, and there was Banner, watching cartoons in his undershorts and
drinking orange juice with probably something in it because it had a pale,
watery look to it.

 
          
 
He didn't answer her when she asked him what
had happened, just kept watching the Road Runner escape from Wile E. Coyote. He
didn't even look at her when she said she was going to report him, just said in
a voice that made her think for some reason of an iguana, "Who to?"

 
          
 
She hadn't had time to think, she said, but
she was going to tell somebody, maybe the police, because he was a hypocrite
and a liar and a bunch of other words that came to her at the time. Even then
he wouldn't look at her, and she got so angry she wanted to pick up a fire
poker and smash him with it, but at last he turned that big mane of silver hair
and sneered at her and said, "Go ahead."

 
          
 
They won't believe you, he said, because
you're just a junkie who couldn't take it anymore and went over the hill and
got yourself some shit and then fell down a couple times.

 
          
 
They'll believe me, he said, because I'm—and
he winked at her as he said it—a saint.

 
          
 
Then he turned back to watch Road Runner.

 
          
 
She wouldn't let
Preston
take her to the hospital, wouldn't agree to
see the doctor, refused even to have a talk with Nurse Bridget.

 
          
 
“It's okay, Scott," she kept saying in
rejection of the several options
Preston
advanced
for vengeance. “It's okay."

 
          
 
As if the weeping had purged her not only of
pain but of rage.

 
          
 
As if this were the fate she somehow deserved.

 
          
 
The only thing she wanted was an apple. She
was hungry.

 
          
 
What,
Preston
wanted to know, what was she going to tell
Larkin?

 
          
 
“Nothing."

 
          
 
“Then I will. And if he won't do anything,
I'll—"

 
          
 
''You will not!” she snapped at him. '"My
life is my business."

 
          
 
"But you can't just—"

 
          
 
"It's okay," she said, and she
smiled and squeezed his hand and started back to the clinic. The rims of the
hills to the east were in faint relief against the gradually lightening sky.
"Really. It is.”

 
          
 
Preston
lay
down for an hour, hoping to sleep, but his brain played and replayed fantasy
scenes of horror at the mountaintop Xanadu. When Kimberly was young, he had had
nightmares about her being abducted or murdered or beaten by nannies, and he
had pacified himself in the restless dawn by imagining the ghastly retribution
he would wreak. Now he conjured a vision of Stone Banner, skinned alive and
hanging from a chandelier by his balls.

 
          
 
He found himself trembling with fury, so he
got up and took a shower. He was the first one in the dining hall.

 
          
 
Larkin must have intercepted Priscilla on her
way to breakfast, and whatever she told him must have satisfied him—Preston
assumed that Larkin was so grateful to see her alive, in one piece and not
intending to file charges, that he would have accepted a story of her being
shanghaied by gypsies—because he went through the cafeteria line right behind
her and carried on an animated conversation with the shrink. Frost, while he
filled his tray with granola, yogurt and fruit juice.

 
          
 
Preston
had
saved a place for Priscilla at his table, but she passed behind him and went to
a table in the comer, and ate alone.

 
          
 
All day he kept tabs on her—waiting for her
after group, barging into line beside her at lunch, cornering her before the
afternoon lecture—asking her if she was all right, urging her please to see
someone, hoping to spark anger or outrage, waiting for the moment when she
would take him aside and say she had called the police or that her parents were
contacting the board of directors or at least that the redoubtable Preble,
Plunkett and Twyne were on the case.

 
          
 
But it was always the same: a blank little
smile, a touch on the arm and ''It's okay, Scott."

 
          
 
Marcia had accused him of victimizing
Priscilla, and here she was—victimized? Forget “victimized." Lobotomized!—by
The Banner Clinic's own holy eponym.

 
          
 
It was okay, was it?

 
          
 
For her, maybe. Not for him.

 
          
 
They say living well is the best revenge? Fuck
that. Revenge is the best revenge.

 
          
 
What kind of revenge?

 
          
 
Nuclear.

 
          
 
Terminal.

 
          
 
Dream on.

 
          
 
He couldn't work it out alone.

 
          
 
He had hoped to have the meeting at night,
during free time, when it might appear to be nothing more sinister than a bull
session, but tonight they were scheduled to board a bus for their first off-grounds,
civilian A.A. meeting, in the basement of the Methodist church in town.

 
          
 
So they met at dusk, before supper—
Preston
, Duke, Lupone, Twist, Crosby and Hector.
Preston
had assembled them carefully, feeling like
Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen, choosing them for their ingenuity, daring,
commitment and ability to keep their mouths shut. They gathered on the grass
beside the exercise area.

 
          
 
Preston
grouped them in a circle, sitting on the ground, creating (he hoped, for the
benefit of prying eyes) a tableau of an impromptu discussion of Fifth Step
priorities or individual approaches to long-term sobriety.

 
          
 
He told them what he knew, including his
assumptions about the blanks in Priscilla's memory.

 
          
 
“That stupid fuck,” Lupone said when
Preston
had finished.

 
          
 
"Fat lot you talk," said Twist.
"You and Raffi, you the guys gave him the blow."

 
          
 
“A guy's got a gun, don't mean he hasta shoot
somebody. A guy wants to stick shit up his nose, fine with me, I'll sell him
all he wants. But that ain't a license to fuck up little girls. Uh-uh."

 
          
 
"Or throw people off mountains,"
said Hector.

 
          
 
"We don't know that," said
Crosby
.

 
          
 
"Chuck knows," said Duke.
"Unless the tooth fairy's giving out Porsches."

 
          
 
"Anyway," Lupone sighed, "it's
no big deal."

 
          
 
Preston
said, "No big deal!"

 
          
 
Lupone shook his head like a disappointed
parent forced to discipline a child. "I call Raffi, Raffi checks with the
don. We whack Banner. Have to. He's bad news."

 
          
 
"No," said
Preston
.

 
          
 
"What you mean, no?"

 
          
 
"All that'll do is make him a
martyr."

 
          
 
"Bullshit!" said Twist. "What
it'll do is make him dead. He won't mess with Gloria no more."

 
          
 
"But nobody'll know why,"
Preston
argued. "There'll be testimonials to
him. Plaques. People will revere his memory. You want that?"

 
          
 
Lupone said, "We'll put a fuckin' note on
his chest. You know your problem, Scott? You don't wanna whack nobody. You're
one a them liberal pussies can't see the virtue of capital punishment."

 
          
 
“Nobody'll believe it, Puff! He says he's a
saint, and to a lot of people he is.''

 
          
 
Lupone chuckled. “So let's bum him at the
fuckin' stake."

 
          
 
“It'll make you people look bad, put a lot of
heat on the clinic. No more drying out juicers. No more helping junkies."

 
          
 
"I say horseshit!" Twist shouted. He
was about to shout again, but he saw
Crosby
looking over his shoulder and raising a hand in warning, so he stopped.

 
          
 
Just Mel was strolling by on his way to
Peacemaker, and Twist's expletive had made him veer this way. "Hi there,
fellows," he said. "Everything copacetic?"

 
          
 
Lupone glared at Just Mel and was about to
suggest that he perform an anatomical impossibility when
Preston
cut him off.

 
          
 
"Hi, Mel. Boy, this higher-power stuffs a
real bear."

 
          
 
"How so, Scott?"

 
          
 
"Well, Hector was saying that he regards
Corazon as his higher power, but Khalil here, he denies that a higher power can
be manifested in one human being because if that human being should die, then
one would have to conclude that God is dead. . . . Right, Khalil?"

 
          
 
"As rain, Scott." Twist was shaking
his head to conceal his smile.

 
          
 
"Higher power is difficult," Just
Mel said, and he crossed his feet and started to drop down.

 
          
 
"Please, Mel," said
Preston
, stopping him by catching his elbow.
"We'd like to thrash this one out ourselves."

 
          
 
"Oh. Right," Just Mel said,
straightening up. "But call me if you need a guide. The forest of the higher
power can be pretty dense.”

 
          
 
"For sure, Mel."

 
          
 
When Just Mel had entered Peacemaker, Twist
leaned forward and said, ''I gotta hurt Stone. No way he gonna get away with
messin' up Gloria. I gotta go up that mountain and hurt the man real bad."

 
          
 
Duke said, "You'll go to jail."

 
          
 
"Maybe.”

 
          
 
"For ten years?"

 
          
 
"I'll put a stocking on my head."

 
          
 
"Great. I should've thought of
that." Duke rolled his eyes.

 
          
 
"Hey, Duke, fuck you!" said Twist.
"You got a better idea?"

 
          
 
"Nobody disagrees," said
Preston
. "But we want to do it right.''

 
          
 
"How?" asked Twist.

 
          
 
"I don't know yet."

 
          
 
There was silence for a moment, and then
Lupone said, "Forty-eight hours."

 
          
 
"What about it?" said
Preston
.

 
          
 
"You got forty-eight hours to come up
with something. If you don't, I call Raffi."

 
          
 
"And if Raffi don't do it," Twist
said, "Puff and me, we will."