Rummies

by Peter Benchley

  “I bet you did," said Lupone.

  "Give him a break," said Preston.

  Banner went on. "I didn't know what, of course ..."

  "Nooo," said Lupone. "How could you?"

  He smiled at Preston, and now Preston knew that Lupone was needling him, not Banner. He tried to step away from Lupone, but there was nowhere to go.

  "... and she denied it, said she was just out of sorts, maybe coming down with something. I asked her why she had come back, but she couldn't answer. / knew, though, and I told her: God had brought her back, for help. He had guided her footsteps to my door. I don't know, maybe that was my mistake ..." Banner wiped his eyes and sneaked a dab or two at his nose. "... because I left the room to get my car keys to drive her down here and check her in, and when I got back she was gone. I looked for her. I scoured the whole top of the mountain, calling out to her. But it was pitch-dark, there was no moon, she could have been anywhere. After about half an hour, I went back inside. I figured she'd had a cab waiting for her. I never saw her again." Now he was weeping openly.

  Larkin jumped up from his seat and stepped to the podium and put his arms around Banner. He nodded to a couple of people in the front row, and they joined him, and the three of them surrounded Banner like a chrysalis.

  Larkin raised a hand to the audience and, like Zubin Mehta, led them in a chorus of "We love you, Stone!"

  Lupone said, "I’m gonna puke."

  Watching, Preston felt an impulse to be genuinely moved. This was what it was all about. Comfort. Solace. We are not alone. But Lupone's cynicism throttled the impulse, confused it with doubt. So Preston felt anger, too. At Lupone.

  But what if Lupone was right?

  Banner untangled himself from the loving arms. He wiped his face and blew his nose and snorted, then gave each of his comforters a hug and sent them back to their seats. He stood at the podium and after a moment, composing himself, smiled for the first time.

  "You are my rock," he said to the audience, "my higher power. I need you. I love you. I thank you."

  This was the old Banner. He waved and grinned and accepted pats of congratulation from people who swarmed around his feet. He didn't step down and join them, though, nor did he invite them up to him.

  He's like a president, Preston thought. Affection, yes; familiarity, no; intimacy, never.

  He turned to say something to Lupone, but he wasn't sure what: to concede, perhaps, that Lupone had forecast Banner's every move, had predicted his every utterance. But perhaps to argue, too, to contend that Banner's behavior might, just might, have been more than a strung-out performance. Why couldn't it have been real?

  Lupone was gone.

  The crowd around Banner parted, as if pressed by a subsurface current, and Lupone's bald head, glowing with sweat, appeared at Banner's knees.

  Preston saw Lupone tilt his head back and say something to Banner. Banner didn't see him right away, kept smiling and patting shoulders and wiping his nose.

  Then suddenly Banner did see Lupone and heard what Lupone was saying, and he jerked upright as if he'd been goosed, and turned and rushed off the platform and out the side door.

  There was a brief commotion up there. Somebody must have mouthed off to Lupone, and Lupone must have decked him (or her) or maybe called his opponent a cocksucker or something and gotten hit himself, because suddenly people were scrambling to get out of the way, knocking each other into chairs and falling down and being trampled. And then, wading through the mass, swatting people aside like gnats, came the great black form of Chuck.

  “What say we retire for a glass of port and a quiche?" said Duke.

  “Timely," Preston said, "very timely," and he followed Duke out the door.

  They waited for Lupone in the corridor. He was one of the last to leave the room, and he sported a rosy bruise on one cheek and a couple of new lumps on the terrain of his lips.

  "Ungrateful fuck," he said as he walked past them without stopping.

  "What'd you say to him?" Duke asked as he and Preston fell in step beside Lupone.

  "Nothing! 'Hey, Stone, you're lookin' great.' That's all."

  "Man, he took off like a white-ass deer."

  "No wonder he got no friends." Lupone touched his lip. "Dick-head!" He aimed a kick at a standing ashtray and sent it careening down the corridor into a wall, where it fell apart with a raucous clang.

  “What should ..." Preston sought words that would give no offense. "What is it he should be grateful for?"

  "Where you think he gets his fuckin' coke?"

  Duke laughed. "Get off it, Puff. You were begging us for blow.''

  "Not me. Don Ciccio. The fuck you think I got a scholarship here? They like my clothes? Everybody scratches everybody's back, that's the way the world is." He turned on Preston. "I forgot. You don't buy any of it. That was all Guiding Light shit in there, straight from the heart. Keep believing it, pal. You'll live to be a thousand."

  Lupone veered off, into a lavatory at the end of the corridor.

  "You believe him?" Duke asked as he and Preston walked along the dark path to Chaparral. I

  "No. I think he can't stand the stripping process. What Marcia says: We all make our excuses because we're special. He can't stand being told he's like everyone else, won't join the common denominator, has to have the inside scoop, has to know things nobody else knows. If you don't have any self-respect, you have to make up things so people respect you."

  "You mean, Nobody knows the troubles I've seen.'*

  "Yeah."

  After a few more steps, Duke said, "Banner sure looked wrecked."

  "Yeah, but-"

  "Puffguts sure did spook him."

  "Who knows what he really said? Probably asked Banner if he knew where he could score some blow.''

  * * *

  The meditation walks had been canceled. Sandra, the counselor-tech, said it was because there might still be reporters creeping around in the bushes. The security guards had been told to arrest anything that breathed.

  The patients sat around the common room, speculating about the possible causes of Natasha Grant's demise. Someone conjectured that she had been killed elsewhere and dumped on the road. Someone else guessed that she had had a slip, got stoned at a Beautiful People party and, in grief and remorse, been hitchhiking back to the clinic when she was struck by a truck. Nobody talked about how Banner had looked at the meeting.

  Preston noticed that Lupone contributed nothing but sat back and chuckled knowingly at the various theories.

  I'm right. I know I am. He just wants to feel superior.

  He noticed, too, that Priscilla wasn't there. Either she had gone to bed or she had gone out and was waiting for him.

  He hung around for a few minutes, smoked a couple of cigarettes, then mumbled something about being tired and slipped away down the hall to the row of bedrooms.

  There was a light under Priscilla's door. He knocked. No answer. Maybe she was in the John. He listened for the sound of running water, heard nothing, and knocked again. Still no answer.

  He went to his room, wondering what to say if Twist asked him questions. But Twist wasn't there. Preston turned out the light, opened the window and climbed out into the cool night.

  He stood with his back against the wall and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

  He heard a scratching noise from a far comer of the building. A match flared and was cupped in some hands. Then the match fell to the ground, and the orange glow of a cigarette end hovered like a firefly. The smoker coughed and disappeared around the comer.

  Where was she? She couldn't be waiting in the open. There were no trees out here, no bushes large enough to conceal a human. He replayed in his mind the walks they had taken. There was only one possibility, at the very outer limit of the path surrounding the clinic grounds, where sand had been pressed into a bulwark to stop erosion. One night they had lain behind the bulwark and gazed up at the stars, and because neither of them knew anything of the heavens, h
ad perceived private constellations and awarded them silly names.

  She was there, pointing up at the sky and outlining their constellations and whispering the names to herself.

  She didn't hear him approach, for he had trod delicately through the soft sand, avoiding sticks and stones and clumps of low brush. He stood over her for a moment and watched, trying to still his heart. He hadn't spoken to her in days, and the longing had festered in him, until now—against his mind, against all reason-he was convinced that he was actually, truly, profoundly in love with her.

  Which, as soon as the thought coalesced in his brain, he condemned as arrant bullshit.

  He stepped off the bulwark and slid down beside her in the sand and said, "Hi."

  "Hi." She smiled.

  "Sorry I'm—"

  She kissed him. She reached up and put a hand behind his head and pulled it down to her and put her lips on his and . . .

  And nothing. That was it. There was no moving, no tonguing, no urgency, no passion. It wasn't a kiss; it was a smooch.

  She let him go and said, "That was for when we were so rudely interrupted."

  "I see." He wanted to try again, to lean over her and open his mouth and look into her eyes and enclose her mouth in his and encourage her to . . .

  Stop it!

  He said, "That was nice. We should do it again sometime."

  "I went up the mountain."

  Wham! I told you not to! Are you nuts? He said, "Why?"

  "He asked me to an A.A. meeting, I told you that. Then he asked me to another one. I asked Dan and he said it was okay. So I went. I thought it'd be fun."

  You drag me out here in the middle of the night to tell me about fun times at Stone's ?

  "Was it?"

  "No. It was ... I guess weird is what it was."

  "Tell me."

  "An A.A. meeting is supposed to be a lot of people telling about their experiences and helping each other, but when I got there it was just the two of us. He said a couple of others would be coming along, but nobody ever did."

  "So you left."

  "We had some sodas, and he'd put out cookies and things as if there were other people coming, and suddenly he started telling me how lonesome he was and all he needed was a friend, a real friend ..."

  The ballad of the lonely satyr.

  "... and I told him I'd be his friend, and he asked if he could hold me . . ."

  ''Hold you?”

  “. . . just like a friend, and I had to think about that, but before I could say anything the phone rang. He went to get it. I think it was from one of his cars."

  "Why?"

  "I heard him say, 'Where are you now?' and then 'Ten minutes! Holy shit.' Anyway, when he came back he was a different person. He said he was sorry, this had probably been a mistake, maybe we'd get together sometime soon, he really did want to be my friend . . . a lot of junk like that."

  ''Then you left."

  "He had picked me up, but he said he didn't have time to drive me back, he had an important meeting, did I mind walking. That's two miles. But it was a nice night and all downhill, so I said okay and started walking. I wasn't too far from the house, just at the top of the hill, when I saw these headlights coming up the mountain, coming fast. I didn't know if he could see me, so I got off the road behind a big rock. This limo zoomed past and stopped in front of the house. The driver got out. He went around to open the back door, but she was already out of the car.''

  "She?"

  "Natasha. I heard him ask her if she wanted him to wait, and she said. Yes, please, she'd only be a few minutes."

  "How did she look?"

  "Great. It was dark, but she was all lit up by the floodlights from the house. Her hair was done, she was made up, she didn't slur her words or anything, didn't stagger around. She was fine."

  "Then what?"

  "She went in the house and I walked down the mountain."

  "And her driver waited for her."

  "It wasn't her driver."

  "What d'you mean?"

  "It was Chuck."

  Preston leaned back on his elbows and looked at the sky, at the constellation Priscilla had named Eloise because it looked like a little girl (he didn't see it at all) and she liked the story of Eloise who lived in the Plaza.

  Priscilla said, "I don't think Stone was telling the truth tonight."

  "No," Preston said. "Neither do I."

  Twist was asleep and snoring like a diesel bus when Preston crawled through the window, so Preston let his clothes fall by the side of the bed and slipped between the sheets.

  He would have liked to call Marcia, but the only phone he could have used was the coin box in the common room, and eavesdropping was a favorite pastime.

  Besides, there'd be time enough to speak to her in the morning. He'd ambush her on her way to the cafeteria.

  PART THREE

  XIII

  "Where'd you get to last night?" Twist asked as Preston pulled out a chair and unloaded his tray.

  ''Nowhere." Preston mashed pieces of banana around in a bowl of All-Bran and watched Twist tuck a napkin into the neck of his T-shirt (its fibers stretched nearly transparent by his pectoral and deltoid massifs) and survey his breakfast tableau: four fried eggs lying on a bed of buttered grits and surrounded by a bulwark of bacon, sausages and ham.

  "I don't know why you bother exercising, Twist. Save a lot of time and effort if you started every day with a heart transplant."

  "You grow up so hungry you eat wall paint and bush berries, then come talk to me 'bout what I eat." Twist dropped a sausage onto the yolk of an egg and folded the white around it—like swaddling a baby—and aimed the package at his mouth. "What's up your nose this morning?"

  "Nothing."

  Duke came to the table, followed by Hector, and because Twist was the only person in the Western world who hadn't heard about the paparazzo's rendezvous last night with Nurse Bronsky, Duke felt obliged to tell him the whole story, embellished with sound effects.

  Preston was grateful that he didn't have to talk. He could sit with his back to the wall and let his eyes drift around the staff section of the dining room, then to the door, then back again.

  Where the hell was Marcia?

  He had risen early and gone to wait for her in the parking lot. He had checked her office, in case she had had to take her car for servicing and someone had dropped her off. He had been the first patient in the cafeteria.

  Other people trickled in, and everything seemed normal. The serving women called the patients honey and lovey; the patients made lame jokes about the ingredients in the coffee.

  But when the staff section began to fill up, with Larkin and Nurse Bridget and Nurse Bronsky, with the counselors from Bandito and Geronimo, with the shrink and the doctors and the others who kept the engine of the clinic running, Preston sensed a difference. None of them ate alone, as some usually did, reading newspapers or whatever. They appeared to huddle around their tables. They spoke very little, and what they did say was uttered very quietly.

  It was as if someone had died during the night.

  Someone had died, of course—Natasha—but that hadn't happened last night, and it wasn't a secret. No one had to whisper about it.

  Then Preston noticed something else.

  Dan wasn't here either.

  * * *

  They waited in Marcia's office, in their circle—Preston, Hector, Twist and Lupone, and an empty chair that Preston had set up for Marcia.

  Preston looked at his watch. Five after. Marcia was never late for therapy.

  He wondered if the others felt the same uneasiness. But then Lupone let go a noisy fart and made a comment about needing more fiber in his diet, and Twist said he didn't need fiber he needed a cork, and Hector said something in Spanish and laughed, and Preston concluded that none of them noticed anything, ever.

  The door opened, and a woman strode in and shut the door behind her and walked over and dropped a pile of patient folders onto Marcia's
desk.

  She was big—probably five ten, a hundred and sixty pounds—and solid. She wore a plain black dress, no jewelry and practical black lace-up shoes. Her hair fit her head like a tightly curled champagne-colored bathing cap.

  She turned and stood behind Marcia's chair and looked down at them and smiled.

  She had terrible teeth—snaggled, askew and spotted brown and black.

  "Good morning!" she said cheerily. "My name is Gwen, and I'm an alcoholic and an addict."

  There was some South in her accent, but Preston couldn't place it. It didn't have the warm roundness of the Deep South, or the casual elisions of the Southwest. It was probably Tennessee or North Carolina, but whatever it was wasn't natural. It had been studied, either to get rid of something or to acquire something. Her teeth spoke of poverty, her clothes of determination, or bitterness.

  Suddenly Preston was frightened.

  Twist and Hector looked at each other. Lupone eyed the woman through his little slits, as if deciding whether or not to have her erased.

  "Well?" Gwen said. "What do we say?"

  No one said anything.

  "We say"—she raised her arms and shouted, grinning—"Hi, Gwen!"

  Silence.

  Lupone shifted his weight on his two chairs. "What we say is, who the fuck are you?"

  The smile didn't vanish, didn't even shrink. "I told you. My name is—"

  "Where's Marcia?" Preston said, hoping to hear— willing her to say—that Marcia had a cold. Or pneumonia. Or a broken leg. Something finite.

  "Marcia won't be with us anymore." She glanced at the folders on the desk. "Let's see, you must be—"

  "What?" Lupone said. "She croaked?"

  "Heavens, no." Gwen laughed. "I guess she just got another position. Moved on. We all must, sooner or later."

  "Bullshit!" said Twist.

  Gwen paused, still smiling, always smiling, as if the smile was stitched onto her face and anchored there by those rotten teeth. "One of the little changes we'll be making, Khalil, is—"