Heat and Light (32 page)

Darren is grateful to be alive and stoned and kissing Gia Bernardi.

He is grateful to be spared the awkwardness, the punishing self-consciousness, of sober sex. For their first time, anyway. For just this once.

Gia nuzzles at his ear. “Back in a minute,” she whispers. “I have to piss like a racehorse.”

In a kind of daze Darren watches her go. He hadn't even considered bringing a condom. It would have seemed wildly optimistic.

Somewhere inside the car, Gia's cell phone rings. He tries to ignore the cloying electronic ringtone, the opening bar of a song he doesn't recognize.

The phone rings and rings.

The ringing is coming from inside the glove box. Darren sticks his head out the window, but sees no sign of Gia. Who is calling her at midnight?

(His brother's raised eyebrows when she ducked outside with Brando:
Just friends? Says who?
)

Gia's phone, briefly quiet, rings again.

Against his better judgment, Darren reaches into the glove box. He can't help himself. He simply has to know.

The phone's display shows a number with an unfamiliar area code, 210.

He returns the phone to the glove box, which is full of female junk: hand lotion, a hair clip, a tampon. Sunglasses, a CD case, Gia's lighter and cigarettes. And, at the bottom of the pile, a blackened
glass pipe, long as his hand and bulbous at one end—obscenely, scrotally bulbous.

Oh, Gia.

Gia lightning quick, skinnier than she used to be, tearing around the Commercial as if her hair, once again, is on fire.

What else had he failed to notice?

Somehow it hadn't occurred to him to ask:
Why were you looking in Shelby's medicine chest?
It's classic addict behavior, a truth Darren knows intimately. This is exactly why it hadn't seemed strange to him. He is still—and forever will be—that kind of person.

The mysterious Brando, who at least once during her shift stopped by the Commercial, though never for very long.

He is still holding the pipe when the car door swings open. Gia's face freezes. “What are you doing in my glove box?”

There is a terrible silence.

“What?” says Gia. “It's not like I do it all the time.”

Darren waits.

“It's a party drug, you know? Not, like, a daily thing. I quit for two months once. I can quit whenever I want.”

“You know everybody says that.”

(
It isn't heroin,
says another, treacherous part of his brain.)

Gia leans in close to him. “Well, I'm not everybody. I know you're an expert and all, but have you even tried it?”

They stare at each other a long moment. He is aware of his heart working.

“No,” Darren says.

FROM HIS CHILDHOOD BED
Darren watches the sun rise,
The
Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
open on his chest. After some hours there is a knock at the door, brisk, official-sounding. “Darren, buddy, are you awake?”

“Yeah, Dad. I'm up.” In fact he's been awake for thirty-four
hours. He's never been so awake in his entire life. He pulls on jeans and a sweatshirt and, because he can't immediately come up with an excuse not to, opens the door.

His dad—shaved, showered—eyes him uncertainly. “I thought you were going to help Bud open. Are you all right, buddy? You look a little—” He hesitates. The words for how Darren looks (
punked, tweaking, shitslammed
) are not in Dick's vocabulary.

“I was sick in the night. Some kind of stomach bug.” It isn't true but will serve as a useful cover, an explanation for whatever noises Dick might have heard.

(Creeping up the stairs with Gia behind him.
Take off your shoes,
Darren whispered, and she did.)

Is he imagining it, or does Dick look skeptical?

“All right, then. Get some extra shut-eye. You can go in later, if you feel better. If not, your brother can cover. Gia's off today.”

Darren's stomach lurches at the sound of her name. He hugs the sweatshirt around him, shivering, and closes the door.

The night at the drive-in comes back to him in a wave. He barely remembers making love to Gia the first time. Thirteen years of longing and he barely remembers it, the furtive coupling in the passenger seat.

At such times he is supposed to call his sponsor. He didn't call his sponsor. His sponsor has left the program.

They didn't make love, they fucked. Then they smoked more meth.

He pages through his
Big Book.

In our daily lives, we are subject to emotional and spiritual lapses, causing us to become defenseless against the physical relapse of drug use.

The second time they fucked in his childhood bed, where he'd once slept in footie pajamas.

Dick takes out his hearing aid at night, a mercy. Possibly he heard nothing.

Darren's sponsor is no longer in the program, being dead.

By the time Gia got dressed the sky had lightened. Four
A.M
., an hour Darren hadn't seen in years.

It's important to remember that the desire to use will pass. We never have to use again, no matter how we feel. All feelings will eventually pass.

His sponsor's name was David Grady. Like soldiers, they called each other by last names. Devlin and Grady. Darren had enjoyed that, the manly camaraderie he'd never before felt. If only he could talk to Grady at this moment.
I fucked up. I relapsed on meth.

He knows exactly what Grady would advise.

I can't just
leave,
Darren would tell him.
Who else is going to help her? I'm a fucking drug counselor.

You're a fucking
addict,
Grady would say.

Downstairs, Dick is puttering around in the kitchen. Darren hears water running, a scrape of cutlery. His dad will be gone all day, at the V.A. hospital in Latrobe, where his buddy Chuckles is having something—a knee? a hip?—replaced.

When Grady relapsed, he relapsed on heroin.

The long drive to Baltimore, his silent apartment. In a few hours Darren will be sitting in a meeting. He will admit to God, to himself, and to other human beings the exact nature of his wrongs. He will do this in some unfamiliar church basement out in the county, among suburban strangers. At any meeting in the city of Baltimore was someone he'd counseled, copped from, or used with. In this one way Baltimore is, like Bakerton, a very small town.

The subterfuge troubles him. The subterfuge is a little squeaky.

As we grow, we learn to overcome the tendency to run and hide from ourselves and our feelings. When we feel trapped or pressured, it takes great spiritual and emotional strength to be honest.

The subterfuge is unavoidable. If anybody at Wellways caught wind of his relapse, he'd be quickly out of a job. He allows himself to imagine it, month upon month of empty days. It is not an exag
geration, it is entirely accurate to say that the free time might kill him. His fear of free time was the entire reason he'd come back to Bakerton in the first place.

Where he relapsed on meth.

He steps into the shower, his heart still racing. Is he having a heart attack? How much meth did they smoke, exactly? Five hits, ten, fifteen? Is five hits a lot of meth?

The feeling is not pleasant.

The feeling is vaguely familiar, a distant cousin of the jangly desperation he remembers from snorting coke, a drug he tried—long ago, with considerable tenacity—to like.

It isn't Bakerton's fault. In
life
addiction is normalized: the chocoholics, the shopaholics. He had simply picked the wrong substance. He wishes he were hooked on phonics. That he had chosen shopahol.

In the kitchen he forces himself to eat a piece of toast. He doesn't want a piece of toast, which is not heroin. Meth, like toast, bears little resemblance to heroin. So why does it make him crave heroin?

Because everything makes him crave heroin.

Because he is a fucking addict.

He loads up the car and sets out driving. He is maybe a quarter mile from his brother's house when he hears a faint clanging in the distance.

The clanging grows louder.

By the time he pulls into Rich's driveway the noise is breathtaking, a shrill duet of machinery,
Concerto for Jackhammer and Dentist's Drill.
To a person in his fragile state it is nearly sickening. He cuts the motor and steps out of the car. A moment later his brother's front door opens. Rich stands on the doorstep, shading his eyes, and yells something unintelligible.

“WHAT?” Darren shouts.

Rich comes toward him—dressed, unusually, in pressed trou
sers, a button-down shirt, and tie. “Darren, man. That's some vehicle you've got there.”

“It's a good car.”

“For an elf.” Rich peers inside. Darren's duffel bag is on the passenger seat,
The
Big Book
lying atop it. “Going somewhere?”

The racket makes Darren's teeth hurt. “Can we go inside for a minute? I can't hear myself think.”

They go in through the front door. Even indoors, the noise vibrates his spine.

“Ignore the mess.” Rich kicks aside a child-size sneaker. “Shelby took the kids to church.”

“You're not going?”

“You're joking, right?” He loosens the tie around his neck. “This isn't for church. This is something else. There's coffee left.”

There may be some substance on earth Darren needs less than he needs caffeine. He can't, at the moment, imagine what that might be.

“None for me. Just a glass of water, maybe?”

“How about a Sprite?”

“Sprite is fine.” Darren passes a hand over his head. “I can only stay a minute. I need to get on the road. I'm going home.”

Rich looks baffled. “You
are
home.”

“No.
You're
home.” His brother the good son, the husband and father. I'm not you, Darren thinks. I will never be you.

“I need to get back to Baltimore,” he says. “To go back to work.”

“Don't you have another month of vacation?”

“Two weeks. But that's not the point. There are other considerations.” Outside, the clanging reaches a crescendo. “I was supposed to work at the Commerical tonight. Maybe you could cover?”

Rich sighs. “Yeah, sure. Fine. It's not like I have anything else to do.”

“I'm sorry,” Darren says.

“What's the rush? You got a girlfriend down there?”

He ignores the question. “I've been here six weeks. That should count for something.”

The roar outside sharpens to a shriek.

“It does. It's been great for Dad. For me, too.” Rich frowns. “I don't get it. You looked like you were having fun. You and Gia.”

Gia.

“When's the last time you shaved?” says Rich. “You look like a bum.”

Darren thinks, I'm high on meth. A shave won't help.

“Thursday? I don't remember. Look, I can't just
stay
here. It wouldn't be good for anyone.” Does his brother even see him? It's a truth every addict knows, one Darren briefly forgot:
No one is paying attention.
In the interests of science, try it at home. Spend a solid week stoned, dopedumb, strung out on crack. Barring some outsize catastrophe, some grievous loss of life or limb, your nearest and dearest will not notice.

His brother looks startled by the edge in his voice, which is natural enough. Darren is a shrugger, not a shouter.

“I'm sorry I missed Shelby and the kids. Can you tell them good-bye for me?”

The brothers stand.

“I'm sorry for everything,” Darren says.

All feelings will eventually pass.

He takes a circuitous route to the highway, bypassing town entirely, wondering what Gia is doing at this moment. Even through sunglasses the glare is blinding. He drives in a lazy circle, the meandering country roads where his father taught him to drive.

This place, this place.

He accelerates around a curve and there it is, the old strippins—high and sloped, machine-graded to an angle not found in nature. The land looks sicker in the harsh light, backfilled acres that were supposed to recover. They haven't recovered. What's left is a treeless expanse, empty as a Russian steppe, the dry summer grass lit blond
in the morning sun. The grass looks plausibly healthy, but what lies beneath is altered forever. It will never be the way it was.

RICH WATCHES HIS BROTHER
drive away, the ridiculous toy car disappearing down Number Nine Road, which leads to Drake Highway. Which leads to the turnpike, the interstate, the Baltimore Beltway, Darren's unknown life.

Caught off guard, he hadn't said what he wanted to say.
Please don't go.
As often happens when it comes to his brother, he wishes for a do-over.

He heads back into the kitchen and empties Darren's pop into the sink. Outside, the noise kicks up again. It's no wonder he fails to hear the car in the driveway, no wonder he's startled when the doorbell rings.

His do-over.

This time he'll say what he really means.
Darren, man. I'm glad you came back. It's good to have you around.
But when he opens the door, the guy on his doorstep is not his brother.

“Mr. Devlin?” The man is older than he looks on television—liver-spotted hands, eyes deeply circled. He hands Rich a business card. “I'm quite early. My previous appointment canceled. I hope that's not a problem.”

“Nah, it's fine.” Rich studies the card. Paul Zacharias looks old enough to be his grandfather. He feels like an asshole, now, for asking an old man to drive all the way from Pittsburgh. “Sorry to make you come all this way.”

“Not at all. It isn't far.”

Rich thinks, It isn't? “I'm not much of a city driver,” he admits. He's been to Pittsburgh maybe five times in his life.

At the kitchen table he hands over a sheaf of papers: his contract with Dark Elephant, the two lab reports, the letter from the DEP. “Like I said on the phone, it's been tested twice. Both times it came back skunky.”