Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (7 page)

 
          
 
"They won't let you wear pants?”

 
          
 
Duke smiled weakly. "Therapy."

 
          
 
"Keeps the memory green," Hector
said with a glance back over his shoulder. "Never let you forget what
kinda asshole you been. They made me wear a bag over my head for two days. . .
. Said I was too worried about my image. No big thing."

 
          
 
Preston
felt his pulse thundering in his temples. I will not let them make a public
display of me. His fingertips tingled. He recognized the onset of
hyperventilation. He stopped and breathed deeply. A fuzziness was creeping up
his neck.

 
          
 
Hector arrived at a glass door. As he held it
open for them, he noticed
Preston
's
complexion, which had turned the color of goat cheese. "Samatter with
you?"

 
          
 
Preston
pointed to the tube of ash dangling from Hector's lips. "Can I change my
mind?"

 
          
 
Hector grinned and flipped a pack of
cigarettes from his T-shirt sleeve and shook one loose for
Preston
. A Camel regular. The nitroglycerine of
smokes. "Survival," he said as he gave
Preston
a light. "What it's all about."

 
          
 
Preston
inhaled deeply, and his outraged alveoli immediately rebelled. He coughed and
sputtered.

 
          
 
"First one's always a bear," Hector
said. "Give it two or three, then it'll grip you good."

 
          
 
The taste was foul, dirty.
Preston
took another drag. This time he coughed but
once, sharply, and he could feel a soft warmth spreading across his chest. A
third drag. There. Not so bad. "Fifteen years," he said.

 
          
 
"In ten minutes it'll be your buddy
again. You'll need it. Muthafuckas done stole your best friend."

 
          
 
That tone of voice. Dolores Stark, then Chuck,
now Hector. Certitude. No doubts, no questions. In less than three minutes.
Hector had learned all there was to know about him. Or thought he had. And
Hector was just an inmate.

 
          
 
No! We are not all alike. If Faulkner declined
to accept the end of man, I decline to accept the sameness of all men. We are
each blessed with our uniqueness.

 
          
 
Aren't we?

 
          
 
Hector slipped two more Camels into
Preston
's pocket and ushered him and Duke through
the door. out into a quadrangle enclosed by the four adobe buildings. It was
large, probably a square acre, and contained a swimming pool; an exercise area
featuring a jungle gym, a set of parallel bars and some free weights; and three
small copses of palm trees that gave shade to painted wooden benches.

 
          
 
As they walked toward one of the other
buildings,
Preston
asked Hector, "How long’ve you been
here?"

 
          
 
"Here? Forty-one days."

 
          
 
"But I thought—"

 
          
 
"Yeah, but I always fuck up so they have
to keep me longer.''

 
          
 
"Always? You've been in other . . .
places?"

 
          
 
"A couple. Hazelden, St. Mary's,
Smithers, Betty Ford . . . lessee ... oh yeah, and Fair Oaks. I've seen the
U.S. of A."

 
          
 
"Why?" The word had barely slipped
from Preston's lips when he realized that it sounded nosy, critical. Do not
piss this man off! "I'm sorry. I—"

 
          
 
"What's to be sorry?" Hector
shrugged. "They say I can't function without structure. I get out, I take
dope. I don't hurt nobody. I just take dope."

 
          
 
"These places . . . they don't help
you?"

 
          
 
"Sure they help me. I don't take dope in
here, do I?" Hector pointed to a wooden sign over the door of the building
they were approaching. "Here we are." J

 
          
 
"Chaparral," Preston read.
"Quaint." 1

 
          
 
"Yeah. They's all named after Stone's
flicks. That" there's Bandito. Over there's Geronimo. Twenty freaks in
each, boys and girls together. Main building's Peacemaker."

 
          
 
They entered Chaparral, passed in the entry
way a pay phone and the door to a lavatory, and came to the common room. It was
an unadorned rectangle, half of which was taken up by what an interior designer
would call a conversation pit—a sunken floor filled with low squooshy couches
and chairs. The other half contained four round tables (each with six chairs),
a refrigerator, a sink (piled high with ashtrays) and a coffee machine.

 
          
 
"Not bad," Duke said. "Where is
everybody?"

 
          
 
"Lecture. Today's Dr. Lapidus
on"—Hector recited from memory—"chemical triggers and the alcoholic
reflex."

 
          
 
"You don't go to lectures?"

 
          
 
"Oh yeah, but I heard that sucker 'bout a
thousand times and I never did drink anyway, so when there's people to pick up
they send me." Hector started down a hallway.

 
          
 
Duke said to Preston, "You want to room
together?"

 
          
 
Before Preston could reply, Hector burst into raucous
laughter and said, "You slay me, man."

 
          
 
In the hallway, Hector passed two or three
doors, then stopped at one. He pointed at Duke, rapped once on the door and
pushed it open. "Lewis!" he called.

 
          
 
"I thought everybody was—" Duke
began.

 
          
 
"He had a tummyache." Hector smiled,
the way a child does as he waits for you to discover the spider in your stew.

 
          
 
From inside the room came the sound of a hair
dryer whirring to a stop. Duke hovered at the door, Preston behind him. Just
inside the room was the open door to a bathroom, and from this angle they could
see in the bathroom mirror.

 
          
 
They saw the reflection of a man of
indeterminate age—possibly mid-forties, possibly mid-fifties. The skin of his
face was shiny, as if it had been mechanically tightened. His hair was lush and
full and champagne blond. It was styled into a pompadour into which he had
wrapped three plastic curlers.

 
          
 
The man saw them in the mirror too, and he
beamed and said, "Well, hello!"

 
          
 
Duke took a step backward, and for a moment
Preston thought he would either faint or flee. But then Duke gathered strength
from some inner well. He cleared his throat and said to Hector, "You are
not a nice person."

 
          
 
Hector touched Preston's shoulder and guided
him farther down the hall.

 
          
 
I am a character in an Edgar Allan Poe story.
What will be behind my door? A minotaur? A satyr?

 
          
 
His room was empty. Not just empty but vacant,
containing no sign of another occupant—no clothing, no mess, no spoor. Never
had Preston been so grateful for nothingness. He would have solitude, precious
solitude, from which he could suck the sustenance necessary for survival on
this hostile planet.

 
          
 
Marcia Breck stood in the hallway and reviewed
the patient-admission sheet on her clipboard.

 
          
 
A Yalie, with a master's from Berkeley. Big
hitter with a
New York
publisher. Kid in private school. Wife who can probably trace her
family back to William the Conqueror. Country club. Volvo station wagon. Plays
squash and tennis.

 
          
 
A programmed life. Success foreordained.
Acceptance inevitable and assumed from birth. A sense of entitlement. Polite,
considerate, amiable. Illness an inconvenience. Alcoholism inconceivable,
simply not done.

 
          
 
Tight as a sphincter.

 
          
 
She detested the type. They made her life
miserable. They were smart, slick, superior, good with words and facile at
parrying direct assaults and making them ricochet off into a mist of maybes.
How do you cure someone you can't reach? How do you get him to deal with a
problem he's convinced doesn't exist?

 
          
 
Give her a street junkie any day, or a
homeless wino or a brawling drunk or a truck driver who had jumped the median
divider and wiped out a whole family. They had reached bottom; they knew they
didn't just have a problem, their lives were on the line. She could talk to
them in simple English, and they'd listen. They could identify with her story,
could appreciate her as a Lazarus that they too might become. They recognized
authority.

 
          
 
Not like Yalies with Volvos, who regarded
treatment as a reunion where we all get together and iron out a few petty
differences. Man to man. Good show.

 
          
 
Okay, Mr. Scott Adams Preston, take your best
shot. Make me earn my money.

 
          
 
She rapped once on the door and pushed it
open.

 
          
 
He was hanging clothes in the closet. He was tall
and slim, his hair close-cut and combed. His complexion looked good. He wore a
tailored narrow-lapel suit, a button-down shirt and a rep tie. The polish on
his shoes glowed in the sunlight that streamed in the western window.

 
          
 
A living relic of the sixties.

 
          
 
"Scott? I'm Marcia."

 
          
 
Preston smiled and held out his hand.
"How do you-"

 
          
 
"I'll be your counselor."

 
          
 
"Oh?" The smile stuck.
"Oh."

 
          
 
"You were expecting Spencer Tracy."

 
          
 
"I wasn't expecting a—"

 
          
 
"A woman."

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"A black woman."

 
          
 
"That hardly has anything to do with
it."

 
          
 
"No. Hardly." Stop it! Don't pick at
him till you have to. You 'II have plenty of chances. She let herself smile.
"How do you feel?"