Fear Itself

by Jeff Gelb

  “How the hell you been, man?” Bill demanded, grasping Collins’s hand in his insistent handshake.

  “Hangin’ in there, Billy,” Collins said. They slid into the booth whose table was already littered with a trio of empty beer bottles and an ashtray holding half a dozen crushed Marlboro Lights smoked down to their filters. “Been waiting long?”

  “Naw, half hour, an hour, like that.” Hardin turned in his seat and lifted his arm, signaling to the busy bartender across the room. “Yo, Murph,” he bellowed. “Another Bud and a club soda.” He turned back to Collins, his canines like a vampire’s fangs showing in his smile. “So, it’s been a while, man. Like six, eight months since I hopped the rails to Chicago.”

  “Yeah, I was kind of surprised to hear from you. I thought you were planning on hanging around out there for the long haul.”

  Bill let loose with his self-deprecating laugh and took a quick, powerful draw on his cigarette. “Best laid plans, right? Went home to patch things up with Karen, make another go at this being married thing …”

  “… And she tossed you out on your ass.”

  The laugh and he stabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “A bitch, right? Man, I’m starting to think I’m not cut out for marriage.”

  “What clued you, besides your three divorces? You can just barely handle one-night stands.”

  Bill arched an eyebrow and reached to pluck the bottle of beer the bartender was about to put on the table out of his hand. “One of ‘em doesn’t count, remember. I married Chrissie twice.”

  “Thereby proving,” Collins said, “that both of you are without clues.”

  “No shit. How’s your ball and chain doing?”

  “She’s got a name, asshole. And Rebecca’s doing great.”

  “Yeah, well, fuck marriage.” Bill Hardin lifted his beer in a toast. “To hedonism.”

  Collins tapped his bottle against Bill’s with a shake of his head. “Yeah, ‘cause look where it’s gotten you, pal.”

  “Don’t be bitter, Davey. Not everybody can be happy with a co-op mortgage and their American Express bill paid in full every month.”

  Listen!

  “Oh, please. You’re back eight minutes and you’re starting with me? Besides, I’ve been where the rent’s overdue, the credit cards’re maxed out, and I didn’t know if or when the next check’s coming in. There’s something to be said for having a bank account.”

  “Don’t get defensive, man …”

  “I’m not. I’m just saying …”

  “… In the soft, whining voice of complacency …”

  “The day I get complacent’s the day I hang it up. Stop putting words in my mouth.”

  “Your words,” Bill said between swallows of beer and a drag on his cigarette. The smoke curled out of his nostrils. “I’m just interpreting tone

  “No you’re not. You’re judging me by your standards. C’mon, man, you’re probably the best writer I know, but you’re so soaked in beer and self-destruction—”

  “Don’t forget flake and pussy,” he reminded him happily, smiling his devil smile.

  “—-yeah, and cocaine and babes, that your chops are totally fucked. But, okay, you went with debauchery over your writing, that’s your business. But I’m not about to excuse it for you either. A guy can work words like you ought to put some of that energy into writing instead of frying your brain and getting your wick waxed.”

  Bill’s eyes were wide and shiny behind the thick lenses of his glasses, the smile fixed and genuine on his face. It was just past noon, but he was on his fourth beer in less than an hour, and God only knew what had gone up his nose before he got here. “I know what I can do,” he said. “I knew I could be a writer or I could live my life the way I wanted. Being a writer takes giving it the whole wad, not just some. It’s the same with debauchery, man. And I like doping and whoring a whole hell of a lot more than locking myself away in a room to write, so that’s what I do. And,” another swallow of beer, “I’m pretty fucking good at it.”

  “Jesus, I could accuse you of giving blowjobs to German shepherds in Macy’s window and you’d cop to it just to prove what a big, fucking pervert you are.”

  “At least I’m committed to something, Davey,” he said around the mouth of his beer bottle, arching an eyebrow and fixing his friend with a wicked look.

  “Give me a break, you asshole. I’ve been writing and publishing over twenty years, busting my ass to sell books. All of them’re still in print … you remember the reviews the last two got?”

  Bill laughed and waved to the bartender for another round. “So what you’re telling me,” he said slowly, “is that the great unwashed who make Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel rich and a few pretentious dickweed reviewers who shouldn’t be allowed near a typewriter actually like your stuff.”

  “Let’s get more simplistic, why don’t we,” Collins sneered. “You think everybody but you’s an asshole. You figure it’s cool to sell your soul to the devil.”

  “Fuck the devil, man,” Bill said. “I got other priorities. And I’ve got my point of view and the rest of the world’s got its own.”

  Listen!

  Collins leaned back in the booth, suddenly exhausted by Hardin’s casual disdain, the smoke-clogged air and crushing rumble of human voices, by the rock music pounding from the jukebox. Its bass throb smacked at his ears, sending a vibration Listen! through him that was almost a physical presence commanding his attention. “I know I’m going to be sorry I asked,” he said, trying to ignore the heavy slap of the presence clawing through to his consciousness. “But you still haven’t mentioned the manuscript. I sent it to you over a month ago. You ever get it?”

  “Got it.” Bill leaned down and reached into the tattered, bulging old leather briefcase he always carried that was dumped on the floor under his chair, stuffed with newspaper and magazine clippings, file folders, books, and scraps of who knew what else. He came back with the photocopied manuscript of Collins’s Tales of Bernstein, its pages dogeared and soiled, and tossed it on the table between them.

  “I had to read this one twice,” he said. “Mainly because I couldn’t believe it the first time around.”

  “See, what’d I tell you? I’m already sorry.”

  Listen, listen, listen

  Hardin paused to light a fresh cigarette while the previous one still smoked in the ashtray. “I hope you are, man,” he said darkly, sucking in smoke with a hiss and losing his smile for the first time since Collins’s arrival. “‘Cause this thing sucks.”

  “That’ll make a swell quote for the book jacket,” Collirs snapped.

  “You telling me you thought there was any blood and guts to it?”

  Collins didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Hardin was talking, his voice vying for attention with the throbbing bass that had now settled somewhere in his gut. The answer is here, it beat over and over again, until the beat of his heart fell into synch with the unspoken but somehow audible words.

  “Okay, there was something to the premise, but the plot just wandered all over the fucking map. And the characters were nothing but cardboard idiots dancing to contrivances while you pulled strings that I could see on every page.” Hardin stabbed out the cigarette and leaned forward, fixing Collins with a look that scared him, that he couldn’t turn away from. “The stuff you used to write, man … that was raw. When I finished your first book, I could taste the blood in my mouth. But this shit you’ve been churning out since you got clean and happy … best-seller material with no emotion, no heat.”

  The jukebox changed records, a new song pounded on, but the beat was the same, shouting louder, growing angry. Its anger was becoming his. “So what’s that leave,” Collins said, his voice low and hard. “Everything’s going to be crap to you except what’s written by someone like you. Only you’re too fucking dissipated to sit down and do it. All you can do is pass judgment on the rest of us. The proverbial eunuch at the orgy, you can watch, you can give pointers … but you c
an’t fuckin’ do it, can you?”

  “I don’t have to be an asshole to know shit when it passes by me, Davey. Look, man, by my standards, you were never much more than a dilettante dabbling in hedonism, but at least you used to be willing to get your hands, not to mention your head and your dick, dirty. Now all you’ve got is some politically correct, oh so angstified urban yuppie riff going that doesn’t say squat. You probably think you’ve grown up, but all you’ve really done is give up, surrender to the big literary homogenizing machine that your wife and shrink’s got you convinced is so cool.”

  “Just because you’re unhappy’s no reason for everybody to …”

  “Oh, fuck that and fuck you if you really believe this’s about anybody but you. Shrinks are death to a writer. They want to make you healthy and happy, take away all your nasties and make you whole. Well, I got a flash for you, pal … art doesn’t come from happy. Art comes from disease and despair, from the shit stew of emotional turmoil that’s got to be kept simmering with every trauma you’ve ever experienced.”

  The howl was a physical blow that set Collins reeling, slamming back in his seat, gasping for breath. Yes, yes, yes, in rising pitch until the metal throb shrieked like pain from a raggedly new and raw wound. The scream was mingled with maniacal laughter, the relief of truth unleashed. “I don’t believe …” Collins gasped, grasping for words that were his own and not those of the beast screaming in his gut.

  “Yes, you do,” Hardin hissed. He spoke, but the words were the beast’s, echoing inside him a split second after they left Hardin’s lips in hellish reverberation. You know what feeds art has to eat the soul of the artist. You believe you’ve been lied to and have lied to yourself because the truth is a frightful thing. You’ve stood too long at the precipice of that fear until you’ve become frozen. But the time’s come to choose. Back away from the edge, accept the pretense and live with it

  Or jump

  Collins’s fist shot across the table, smashing into the face with its devil’s glare hovering inches from him. It snapped back, blood spurting, fire flashing from glasses that flew from its face. Hot, red wetness splattered on his fingers, burning and pleasurable. Heat, heat was everywhere in him, around him, searing his lungs, pumping through his veins

  Jump

  over the table, red slicked fingers reaching for its neck while his fist pistoned into Hardin’s face, not caring what damage was done to the face or to himself, until he was pulled, dragged still flailing madly from his victim by the grasping hands of startled, yelling patrons.

  Collins let himself be held, panting, deafened to their words by the rush pounding through his head, blind to their faces by the haze of anger. Dizzied by the delicious scent of blood.

  Someone was helping Hardin to his feet, was he okay? Did he want them to call an ambulance? A cop? Hardin waved them off, shaking his head as blood oozed from his nose and cuts on his face, running down the contours of his lips, seeping over his teeth. No I’m fine no problem just a misunderstanding you can let him go it’s cool.

  Collins shook off the restraining hands and stared at Hardin who stared back, unblinking, seemingly unaffected by the beating he’d just taken. Collins whirled, smashing his way through the bar patrons who had gathered around to watch the fight, desperately seeking the door and escape as Bill Hardin watched.

  And smiled, blood and saliva coating the white of his teeth.

  “Jump,” he whispered.

  Rebecca Collins came home to find her husband sitting in the dark in the middle of the floor of his office, a hollow-eyed island in a sea of scattered and torn papers, a half-empty bottle of vodka clutched in his fist. He blinked at her when she turned on the light, his face a pale, unreadable mask that gave no reaction to the look of horror that greeted the vodka.

  “Jesus Christ, Dave,” she breathed. “What are you doing?”

  He shook his head and looked away. “It wasn’t working,” he said in a voice reeking of sadness and despair.

  She was afraid to take another step into the room. “How the hell could you …” she started, but stopped before she said anything that might further the damage. She searched her mind for the right words, the things they drilled into relatives of alcoholics at the Al-Anon meetings. Now wasn’t the time for recriminations, not when he was back on the bottle after almost four years of sobriety. No, now was the time for deep breaths, to seek composure and understanding.

  “What … what’s not working, babe?” she asked.

  Jump, into the abyss of truth, leave the lies and delusions of happiness behind

  The fragile, whispering voice had become strong, piercing the hiss and clutter of his denial and fear. He could hear again, for the first time in years, he could hear everything, clearer now for his attempts at suppression than he had ever heard it in his life.

  “Me,” he said and lifted the bottle to his lips to drink with enthusiasm, to satisfy the beast’s thirst after having withheld what it had craved for so long. “Us. Everything. I’ve been lying, Rebecca.”

  She won’t understand

  Her heart sank some more. “You mean … you’ve been drinking all this time, Dave?”

  Collins looked at the bottle as though unaware it was in his hand until she had discovered its existence. “No, not this, I haven’t touched a drop the whole time,” he laughed, again startled, this time by the sounds emanating from his throat. “About happiness. About contentment. About … about everything. This isn’t what I’m supposed to be … this thing that robs me of what I have to be to be who I am. “

  She can’t understand

  He held up his hands, stained reddish brown with dried blood. Rebecca recoiled from the sight and he laughed. “Don’t even try, Rebecca. You’re one of the ones who tried to make me forget that I need this,” he looked with wonder at the bloodstains, then at the vodka bottle, “and this to be who I am. I didn’t need to be fixed, Rebecca. I wasn’t broken.”

  “You’re an alcoholic, Dave. If you’d kept drinking the way you were, you’d be dead by now.”

  He was on his feet, roaring the beast’s roar, his roar, without realizing he had moved. ‘ 7 am dead,” he cried, pain and anger cracking his voice. “You and the shrinks and the twelve-step programs and personal managers killed me. Me!” The fist clutching the bottle thudded against his chest, splashing vodka over his shirtfront. “I let you all fuck with the one thing that gave me any real worth, any true, true happiness and fed my talent. My pain!”

  She was afraid now, her fear a scent that stained the air and he liked it. How long had he feared her disapproval that she should now be frightened of his? How much deeper, more righteous was his anger than her attempts to create the man she wanted out of the artist he had been? He swept his arm in a wide arc, taking in the paper strewn floor. “Nine fucking drafts of Tales of Bernstein, and still not a single paragraph that deserves to live … that’s what I’ve been reduced to, Rebecca. A failing hack, a scared, self-pitying used-to-be. I can’t do it anymore. I will not commit another fucking lie to paper,” he raged. “I will not live another goddamned minute as this shell of what I was!”

  Rebecca’s heart went cold. “Honey, please, you’re scaring me, okay? So you fell off the wagon, it happens. Remember, it’s supposed to be about one day at a time, but talking about killing yourself is …”

  Collins’s arm swung wildly, the bottle catching the edge of the desk and shattering in a spray of glass and liquid. She will never understand

  “Listen to me,” he sobbed, and he didn’t realize he was waving the broken bottle before him as he stepped toward her, but she did. “I’ve been starving myself because I thought I’d find my happiness through you, but it doesn’t work that way. Now I’ve got to be fed … I need food for it before it’s completely dead …”

  It was singing now, a wild, primal song that screamed in celebration of freedom reborn. Collins added his voice to the beast’s. Rebecca’s scream was wilder still, rich with fear and pain as the warmt
h and nourishment of her blood flowed down the neck of the broken bottle and over his hand.

  The beast licked its lips and began to feed.

  Dr. Raucher didn’t try to hide his annoyance when Collins stepped out of a doorway and blocked his way on the street to his Greenwich Village brownstone. The writer was wearing an old, ratty overcoat against the light autumn rain, his shoulders slumped as he dug his hands deep into the pockets. It took the psychologist an instant to recognize his client, and another to realize that there was something terribly wrong.

  “Dave, what are you doing here?” Raucher demanded.

  “I had to see you,” Collins said softly.

  “This really isn’t appropriate, Dave,” he said. “We should do this in the office, so why don’t you call me tomorrow morning and we can schedule an appointment to …”

  Collins took a shuffling step forward, into the illuminated pool cast by the streetlight. Raucher was taken aback by the staring black-ringed sunken eyes, the unkempt air.

  The rust red streaks like warpaint slashed across his cheeks and forehead.

  “I said I had to see you, Raucher.”

  And his voice. A low rumble from deep in his chest, not sounding anything like the man he had spoken to every week for so many years.

  Another step, and Raucher blinked, swallowing hard. Right then and there, his animal logic told him to back away, to run. But intellect decided he knew David Collins and had nothing to fear.

  “I have something to show you,” Collins said, calmly, drawing his hand from his pocket.

  “Tomorrow,” Raucher gently, but firmly. “In the office, Dave.”

  “Tonight. Up your ass, Doc.”

  Collins’s hand swept up, driving the blade of the kitchen knife up into Raucher’s stomach, slicing through tweed and cotton, driving into flesh and viscera. Raucher doubled over Collins’s fist as the air rushed from him and he felt a warmth ooze across his belly. Collins laughed, his free hand clutching Raucher’s collar to keep him from collapsing to the ground.