Play It Again

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

He stands up and stretches too. The clock over the bar says it’s ten after seven. That gives him twenty minutes to get across town; plenty of time.

  He settles his bar tab and leaves a tip. The bartender tells him thank you without really seeing him, just like everyone else never saw him, but that’s all right. He’ll be seen later tonight, he is sure of that.

  * * *

  Frank had been coming to the meetings here in St. Mark’s for twenty-two years. He had been leading the meetings off and on for the last eight. Although the position of secretary was supposed to rotate, somehow it kept coming back to Frank, and so he stood in front of them tonight and scanned the faces as he had so many times.

  There were two new faces tonight: a woman who had clearly come with Allison C, and a plain-looking man sitting by himself in the back row.

  Frank nodded and cleared his throat. “My name is Frank. I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Frank,” the others chorused back to him.

  After the standard opening of the greeting and a few quick announcements, Frank went back to his chair and the meeting began.

  A large man named Ben stood up. He was almost a caricature of a big drinker, with his red nose and big belly. He was sweating heavily, although the evening was cool. Frank recognized the signs: Ben was wrestling with an almost overwhelming need for a drink. Talking about it would help. So Ben talked.

  He talked about having a drink with the boys, how it had helped him know who he was, and how it had slowly turned into lots of drinks with the boys, and finally into drinking with or without boys, girls, or dogs. Until his life was a series of drinks, nothing more.

  When he was done, Allison’s friend introduced herself. Her name was Susan and she had a story to tell too. It was a familiar one: She’d started drinking just a little to ease the pressure of job and family expectations. The drinks steadied her, gave her confidence. She believed the family and co-workers really liked her more when she drank. So she drank more.

  Soon the downward spiral began: lost jobs, loved ones pulling away, her life crumbling around her, her health deteriorating. And now she had almost nothing left to lose—except her drinking, the one friend who had stayed with her no matter how bad things got.

  And now she realized it was not her friend at all and she didn’t know what she was going to do.

  There was a short pause when Susan sat down again. Then the other newcomer got to his feet.

  For a moment he just stood in the back of the room. Then he moved slowly up the aisle to the front.

  He turned and faced the meeting, an ordinary-looking man—and yet, thought Frank, there was something about his eyes. They were gray and gleamed coldly.

  “My name is John,” he said softly, “I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, John,” the others said.

  “I am—an ordinary man,” he said, looking around the room at them. “My face is standard issue—I could be anybody. When you see me on the street, you don’t give me a second glance, not ever. Even my name is ordinary: John. Everything about me is so completely plain that you would never guess there is a war going on inside me twenty-four hours a day.

  “I’m a drunk.”

  He paused here and swept his chilly eyes across the group. Frank felt a small shiver as the eyes passed over him, but he could not say why.

  “As long as I can remember, I have been plain. Average. Ordinary. Banal. Common. Prosaic. Routine, dry, dull, colorless, drab, lackluster, monotonous, tedious, uninteresting, everyday, unexceptional, mundane. Ordinary.”

  His voice rose through the last sentence, and when he paused it was so quiet Frank thought he could hear a mouse moving through the church upstairs and he realized he was holding his breath.

  “Ordinary,” John resumed quietly. “Except when I drink. When I drink I feel special.” He slammed his hands together and Frank nearly jumped out of his seat.

  “Drinking makes me special. I know that has happened to you too, or you wouldn’t be here. You like to feel special; we all do. We’re all human. The same things are inside all of us.” There was a strange gleam in his gray eyes as he said that, and once again Frank shivered.

  But John had them all in the palm of his hand, and Frank thought he had never seen anything like it, not in all his twenty-two years of coming to AA meetings. Sometimes there were meetings that degenerated into can-you-top-this sessions as each speaker tried to go one better than the speaker before. But this topped them all. This John was a real spellbinder.

  His story was not so different. It could have been the story of almost anyone here. But the way he told it…

  Frank felt gooseflesh forming up and down his back as John told of drinking a fifth of vodka a day before his fifteenth birthday. Something about the story seemed like a performance, and that was a little unnerving. But it was so compelling, Frank eventually let go and just listened, swept away like everyone else in the room.

  * * *

  Look at them eat it up. So gullible. So weak.

  Rabbits.

  They deserve to die, all of them. Huddling miserably together to trade their pitiful stories of puking and humiliation.

  And he feels the slow uncoiling inside him, the wonderful thing stirring, waking, becoming fully ready for what lies ahead.

  This is, after all, just a warmup, a curtain raiser. The featured entertainment will begin soon after.

  Very soon now.

  CHAPTER 25

  “I still think we ought to send the picture to the local news,” Casey said. “Let them put it on the air.”

  R.J., bent over to unlock his door, looked up at her. “You can’t really believe that,” he said as he pushed the door open.

  “I know you don’t like TV people, R.J., but you shouldn’t let a prejudice stand in the way of doing something right.”

  R.J. snorted as she followed him in. “If I don’t like cats, that’s a prejudice. If I don’t like piranhas, that’s common sense.”

  Something hit him hard between the shoulder blades. He turned to see that it was Casey’s shoulder bag. It was heavy. It hurt.

  “I am not a piranha,” she said. “Buster, you had better respect what I do or I’ll teach you the hard way.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you,” R.J. protested. “I just meant—”

  “What is it you think I do for a living, R.J.?”

  “I know what you do. I’m sorry about the piranha remark.”

  “Because you have been making cracks about this just about nonstop, and I’ve had it up to here.”

  “All right, all right, for Christ’s sake, I said I’m sorry.” R.J. held up both hands.

  She snorted at him and spun away toward the bedroom.

  R.J. followed.

  “Casey. Would you hold it for a second?”

  She kept going into the bedroom.

  “Casey.” He leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. She pulled away but turned to face him.

  “Listen,” he said, “we’re going to be cooped up together for a couple more days. Don’t be so touchy, okay?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Was I being touchy?”

  “Yeah, you were.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry if I overreacted. But you’re not touchy, are you?”

  “Look—”

  “So I guess if I made remarks about your profession, you wouldn’t mind, isn’t that right?”

  “Casey—”

  “Because I think that taking pictures of other people screwing without their knowledge, for money, must be about the vilest, sleaziest, scummiest, rottenest thing in the world, and I would think that the kind of brainless, heartless, soulless, amoral orangutan who does that sort of work would be the last one to make remarks about what normal people do for a living, wouldn’t you agree, R.J.?”

  And she turned away, leaving him with his mouth hanging open.

  * * *

  The next day was one of the hardest R.J. could remember.

  The tension between him and Casey had got
ten worse. They ate a miserable, cold dinner with no more than ten words between them. The high point of the meal came when he passed her the salt and she said “Thank you.”

  And yet, that night, he had figured he was in the dog house and went to sleep on the couch. In the middle of the night he opened one eye, aware that he was no longer alone.

  She stood there in the harsh light from the window, looking down at him. She did not say a word. He wasn’t sleeping, exactly, but he figured he must be dreaming. The look on her face was soft, inward. Her expression was like that found in one of those Renaissance religious pictures of the Madonna.

  Then she raised both arms over her head and slipped off her nightgown. She stood there naked. The hollows of her body glimmered. Neither of them spoke.

  She slid down onto him, stretching out on top of him on the couch.

  For a moment she just lay there. R.J. could feel the warmth of her body against his. His pulse pounded, jump-started from sleep to top speed in one heartbeat. He reached a hand up and cupped her butt. He dug his other hand under the weight of her hair and rested it on the back of her neck. He felt her sigh heavily against his neck, and then she lay her mouth on his.

  Once again they made love, gently this time. When they were done she got up, still without a word, and went back into the bedroom.

  In the morning he couldn’t be sure it had happened. She was cool and distant as they got ready for the day, eating her plain yogurt and fresh fruit.

  R.J. had always had trouble focusing until after his coffee. He slurped it fast, wanting to say something, anything, to get her to talk, to help him figure out what the hell was going on. But by the time he had cleared his head and was ready to speak with her, she was gone.

  R.J. finished his high-cholesterol breakfast of bacon and eggs, had a final cup of coffee, and went to the office.

  * * *

  Wanda was already there when he arrived.

  “Morning, Boss,” she said cheerfully.

  “Good morning,” R.J. said, but his heart wasn’t really in it. “Any messages?”

  “Mrs. Burkette called,” she said, trying to hide her feline amusement.

  “Oh? What did she say?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Wanda said.

  “Uh-huh. Fine. Nothing else?”

  “That’s it.”

  R.J. went on into his inner office and closed the door. He stuck a cigar in his mouth, leaned back in the chair, and tried to persuade himself that he was working. He didn’t have any luck.

  What the hell am I doing? he wondered. My mother’s killer is out there and all I can do is sit in this goddamned overstuffed chair.

  He tried to believe that he was doing all he could. He ran over the list: Uncle Hank was polishing up the profile down in Quantico, Arthur was digging around in Hollywood, and Hookshot’s army was circulating, armed with the composite picture. There was no other lead to exploit, no other opening—but he felt he should be doing something more than leaning back in his chair and thinking about Casey.

  The only problem was that he couldn’t think of anything worth doing.

  So R.J. sat in his chair for three-quarters of an hour. At the end of that time he’d had enough and stalked out the door.

  “I’ll see you later,” he told Wanda.

  “Bye, boss,” she called after him, flinching as he slammed the door.

  It was raining again. It seemed like it had been raining a lot lately, like every time he stepped outside. He knew that wasn’t true, but that’s what it felt like.

  He dropped his soggy cigar in the gutter and started walking anyway. Maybe walking in the rain would work as a kind of penance, help him put his life back on track through suffering. Maybe it would help clear his head, give him perspective.

  On the other hand, maybe he’d just get soaking wet and catch pneumonia.

  The rain let up after ten blocks, settling into a light drizzle. Still, by the time he got to his mother’s apartment he was wet to the skin.

  He hadn’t started out to walk to the apartment, but that’s where his feet had taken him, and he didn’t argue.

  Tony held the door open. “Hey, Mr. Brooks. You’re wet.”

  R.J. stepped into the lobby. “Yeah, Tony, I know. That happens to you when you don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.”

  Tony shook a finger at him. “You get outta those wet clothes, Mr. Brooks. You’ll get sick or somethin’.”

  “Yeah, I will. Thanks, Tony.”

  On the elevator up to the apartment, R.J. wondered again what he was doing here. He hadn’t come just to have a quiet place to sit and think. He was too antsy for that.

  As he unlocked the door he knew he was heading for his mother’s journals again. And it occurred to him that even though he was pretty sure they did not hold the key to his mother’s murder, in some way he felt certain they held the key to solving the turbulence that was slamming through him, keeping him so far off-center. By solving his mother, he might solve himself, and even Casey. It didn’t make sense, but he believed it.

  In her office he sat in the chair with a stack of the journals within easy reach.

  He reached for the volume on the top of the small pile. It was from eight years ago. He remembered the period well enough. His mother had made a whole series of “business trips” to New York. It had seemed like he was having to dodge her every other week.

  And somehow she would track him down, run into him on the street, and force him into accepting her invitations: to parties with her fruity friends, to the tacky, effete Broadway musicals she seemed to like, and to the awful, cloying Tea Room.

  He had been busy that year, and yet he had to put things on hold to trot after his mother, and he had resented it. She kept pulling him along, and he kept trying to get away—trying gracefully at first and, as the year wore on, trying any way he could, often rudely.

  All in all it had not been the most successful year in their relationship.

  He opened the book and began to read:

  I feel desperately unhappy about R.J. No matter what I try he keeps pushing me away. I can’t say that I blame him; I have always been a rotten mother, and now I suppose it’s coming home to roost. Still, it’s tearing into me like some horrible carrion-eating bird.

  I see him closing himself off from so much of the world—from practically everything except his work, which God knows is not very elevating, and I know he will pay for that later in his life. I shudder when I think how tiny and pointless my life would have been if it were not for the accidental exposure I’ve had to some of the arts. And now R.J. is halfway gone down the same road.

  And he won’t let me near him! I’m so frustrated I could scream. I feel like this is the greatest failure of my life—my own, my only son, and he can’t really stand to be in the same room with me. I can see that in his eyes when I manage to “run into” him—after hours of stalking and planning!

  He can’t wait to get away, to be anywhere but with me, and worst of all, I know it’s all my own fault.

  R.J. let the book drop into his lap.

  It wasn’t all her fault. Sure, she’d been an indifferent mother when he was a kid. She’d had a career, and she’d thought that was more important than hanging around the house and playing catch with her kid.

  A kid who was so self-centered he thought having Mom around whenever he wanted her was the most important thing in the world; and because she was out making a living instead, that made her a rotten person.

  What a jerk he was. He was still acting like that kid, couldn’t let go of a kid’s stubborn sense that he was the center of the universe and nothing mattered more than what he wanted.

  That was why he had pushed her away: because he had never grown up enough to admit that she had a life outside of his, so he had to punish her. Play by my rules or I’ll take my ball, kick down the playground, and go home.

  He had made his mother miserable because he couldn’t grow up, let go of her mistakes—
and his own—and let her be herself with him.

  And what a strong, patient person she was! She wouldn’t give it up, like anybody else would have—like he would have, for certain. She kept trying, right up to the very end. Trying to get him to wake up, to see her for what she was, to grow up, to let go of all the mean-spirited, small-minded bitterness he had made his life out of.

  She would reach out, he would push her hand away.

  She would try again, he would push her away again.

  He couldn’t open up to her and couldn’t understand that she was trying to open up to him.

  And now the same thing was happening with Casey.

  R.J. hadn’t cried since he was a kid, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  But he sure wished he could.

  CHAPTER 26

  It was full dark when R.J. left the apartment.

  What he had read, and what he thought about what he had read, had battered him.

  He thought about his mother, dead before he could really know her. He thought about his life, and what a total fucking mess he’d made of it.

  And he thought about Casey. She was right to think he was a—what had she called him?—a “brainless, amoral orangutan.” Well, he was that.

  He’d walled off everything inside himself and slid into a dirty business because he had to keep himself from feeling anything or he couldn’t even do his job.

  And now he was feeling things, and it was tearing him up, because he didn’t know how to do it. And because of that, when he needed more than ever before just to do his job, to find his mother’s killer, he was screwing that up too.

  R.J. started walking. He had no idea where he was going.

  He supposed he should check with Casey, to make sure she was all right. After all, he was supposed to be guarding her.

  But he wasn’t sure he could face her without bursting into tears and making a complete jerk of himself. So he just let his feet call the shots and wandered downtown along the edge of Central Park.

  He was so busy with the turmoil inside his head that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. And so when the man spoke to him, he snapped alert with astonishment.

  “Can I help you?” the man said politely.