Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (9 page)

 
          
 
"Right. You know, Scott, the fun thing
about this disease is, it grabs everybody in a different way. Cheryl's friend
Karen, she didn't do anything either. She just drank half a bottle of wine a
day, every day, couldn't stop. And because she couldn't stop she got to hate
herself, couldn't stand how weak and worthless she was, couldn't see the point
of going on."

 
          
 
Marcia paused, and she looked at Preston and
wondered if the time had come. Was he strong enough?

 
          
 
Should she wait a day or two, let him get his
bearings before she . . . Piss on it. It's Miller time, Scott. Here we go.

 
          
 
"Let me paint a picture for you, Scott.
Let me paint a picture of a nice, sophisticated, college-educated,
upper-middle-class New York guy who doesn't know it but is drinking himself to
death ... a real hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool rummy. Okay?"

 
          
 
"If you must." Preston sighed
theatrically. "Go ahead: Take two from column A, two from column B, and
create your stereotype. But that's not me."

 
          
 
"No, no. I know. This'll just be a rough
portrait, a lot of guesswork. But let's say, if any of the things I describe
don't apply to you, raise your hand. Okay?"

 
          
 
"Sure." Preston hoped he looked
bored, hoped no one else could hear the locomotive sounds his heart was making.

 
          
 
"Let's see . . ." Marcia gazed at
the ceiling. "He grew up in a family where booze was part of the diet:
drinks with lunch, drinks before dinner, drinks at the country club. The rule
was, when you're happy you have a drink to celebrate, when you're sad you have
a drink to console yourself. In college he was proud of his capacity. He could
hold his liquor. That was the deal: A gentleman drank as much as he could hold,
no more.

 
          
 
"He got married, had a kid or two, kept
drinking. No problem. Then, in the past couple of years, a change: Once in a
while he'd say something or do something that the next day he'd feel like
apologizing for. Even worse, some days he couldn't remember that he'd said it
or done it. Maybe a friend would call up and say, 'Boy, you really tied one on
last night,' and they'd have a good laugh till he'd have to face that rough
moment and ask—with another awkward little laugh—if the friend knew how the car
had come to be parked sideways in the driveway, or maybe how the car had gotten
home at all."

 
          
 
Preston stared at the floor. He felt sweat
running down the crack in his ass. His ears popped as the muscles in his jaw
ground his molars together. He longed for oblivion.

 
          
 
"Don't forget, Scott," Marcia said,
a sunny smile on her face, “stop me whenever I miss the mark. By the way, does
the name Richard Speck mean anything to you?"

 
          
 
"Speck? No."

 
          
 
"Richard Speck woke up one morning a lot
of years ago, and he couldn't remember the night before either. Maybe he had a
good laugh about it, I don't know, but it didn't last long because what he'd
done the night before was knife eight nurses to death in Chicago. They say he
still doesn't remember doing it. He swore he didn't know he had a problem.
Anyway, that's not you. So: Our nice New York college guy, he and his wife
don't go out much anymore. Maybe it's because they're not asked much anymore,
or maybe it's because he thinks dinner parties are a bore, and the real reason
is he can't drink as much as he wants to at somebody else's house or at a
restaurant because, naturally, it'll be a little embarrassing when he falls
asleep at the table or shouts at the waiter—both of which he can do at home and
who cares. Oh, maybe the wife cares, but she's used to it, and if his kids
care, well . . . kids are taught not to criticize grown-ups, they just keep it
all bottled up inside themselves, and he doesn't have time to notice that the
kids aren't bringing friends home the way they used to. Maybe he has some vague
memory of the last time his kids' friends came over and he was standing there
waving a drink at the TV set and calling Dan Rather a jerk-off. Maybe not.

 
          
 
"Now, throughout all this, he has a
feeling—just a feeling—that this isn't exactly normal, and all he wants these
days is to feel normal. It used to be that booze made him feel good, really
good, but now the best he can hope for is normal. So he has a couple of pops
every hour or two, all day long, and most times he gets away with it fine, but
now and then he raises his voice when he shouldn't or challenges his boss over
some stupid thing or sleeps past his stop on the train. It's gotten to be more
than now and then, though. It's to the point where the people who love him have
decided to call him on it. But he thinks: What do they know? They don't have to
get through my day. They—"

 
          
 
"You know what this is?" Preston
interrupted. "This is every cliche in the book.''

 
          
 
"I see, Scott. And cliches don't apply to
you."

 
          
 
"Not ... not all of them. I'm not just a
catalogue of textbook behaviors."

 
          
 
"You're special."

 
          
 
"I'm me, that's all. Everybody doesn't
have to fit your cookie mold."

 
          
 
"Okay, Scott. How about you buy this one
thing: The deal's gone bad. The gentleman isn't holding the liquor anymore. The
liquor's got the gentleman. Cheryl, remind Scott. Give him the word."

 
          
 
"Blindness," said Cheryl.

 
          
 
"Uh-huh. The disease has blinded you,
Scott. It isn't normal to have to take a sedative drug just to ignite the day.
It isn't normal to swallow so much of a chemical that it kills your memory. It
isn’t normal to shut down two-thirds of your sensory system every day of your
life." She leaned forward, forcing him to look at her. "How's your
sex life, Scott?"

 
          
 
"None of your business."

 
          
 
"Sure." Marcia laughed. "I've
been there."

 
          
 
Hector said, "One time it got so bad for
me that I warned God I'd sell my soul to the devil if He didn't give me one
more hard-on."

 
          
 
Lewis said, "I hope He said no, for all
our sakes."

 
          
 
Marcia raised a hand and stopped Hector before
he could threaten Lewis. She said to Preston, "Forget the portrait. Can
you tell us why you drink, Scott?"

 
          
 
"Sure. A combination of conditioning and
a high-pressure life. Publishing doesn't pay well, but it demands a lot. You
feel you—"

 
          
 
"Stop! No more 'you.' No more 'one.' No
more impersonal third-person singular. You can't skate away with
generalizations. I want to hear 'I.' "

 
          
 
He nodded. "I feel I have to maintain . .
." He stopped. "Man, that feels awkward."

 
          
 
"Doesn't it though? You're
learning."

 
          
 
"Anyway, I—we—wanted a house and a car
and a kid who goes to good schools. At work there's a lot of pressure to find
the best-seller. I try to write magazine articles on the side, do movie
reviews. You know what it costs to keep a child in private school, pay a
mortgage? Before the first of January is over, I'm looking at out-of-pocket
after-tax expenses of about fifty thousand dollars. I—"

 
          
 
"Wait a sec. Let's make a list here. The
reasons you drink the way you do are, one, a high-pressure job; two, a lot of
financial demands; three, it's just a habit. Is there a number four?"

 
          
 
"Opportunity, I guess. Every day there
are business lunches, cocktail parties. It's a boozing business."

 
          
 
"So we'll call number four peer pressure
or environment." One at a time, like a child counting for its mother, she
raised four fingers.

 
          
 
Preston sensed a new danger, another knife
being unsheathed.

 
          
 
"I'll grant you, Scott, that's heavy
stuff. I don't know how you've survived this long."

 
          
 
Here it comes. He said, "You don't have
to patronize me."

 
          
 
"Yes, I do," she said. "I
really do. Because for a college boy with a brain, you are without a doubt the
stupidest /mc^ I ever did meet."

 
          
 
Preston had been prepared, so he was able to
be angry. "What's this good cop/bad cop routine?" he said. "One
minute you're my friend, the next you're sticking it to me."

 
          
 
"I'm your friend, Scott. But friends
don't like friends to lie to them. Don't take my word for it. Hector, what did
you think of Scott's explanation?"

 
          
 
Hector said, '' Horseshit.''

 
          
 
Cheryl, unprompted, said, "Right
on."

 
          
 
Lewis looked at Preston and said, "Why
isn't everybody in publishing with kids in private school a falling-down
drunk?"

 
          
 
"What we're trying to tell you, Scott, is
you don't drink because you have problems. You have problems because you drink.
And you drink the way you do because you can't not. It's got you, Scott, and it
ain't gonna let you go. You gotta shake the fuckin' monkey off your back and
kill the sucker.''

 
          
 
You don't drink because you have problems, he
repeated to himself. You have problems because you drink. Wait a second. That
is a revolutionary thought. He didn't have anything to say, but his mouth must
have been open because Marcia raised a hand.

 
          
 
"Don't argue, don't question, don't
fight," she said. **Just think for a while. You got enough to chew
on." She slapped his knee. "And listen. And if you have something to
contribute, then speak, because we're going to try to help Cheryl deal with her
loss of Karen.'' She took Cheryl's hand. "It feels like a little bit of
you died, doesn't it?"

 
          
 
"Yeah," Cheryl said, "and I
only knew her three weeks."

 
          
 
"You know why it hurts so much?"

 
          
 
"We had a lot in common?"

 
          
 
"That too, but more: It was the first
intense relationship you ever allowed yourself to have, the first one you
didn't shut off with—"

 
          
 
Suddenly a shriek erupted in a room nearby—a
pained and painful, ear-piercing, genuine goosebumper of a human cry of agony.

 
          
 
Preston started out of his chair, wide-eyed,
frightened. Marcia grabbed him by his belt and slammed him back into his chair.
No one else had stirred.

 
          
 
"Don't worry about it," Marcia said.

 
          
 
"What was thatV

 
          
 
"Self-expression." Before she could
reassemble her words to Cheryl, another shriek exploded and dissolved