Needle Too (25 page)

“Go home,” he said again.

“You sure?”

“Absholuly.”

So that morning Emily booked our flight back to Florida for the next evening, though Perry insisted we save some money and ditch the rental car as he would arrange for ground transportation to the airport in San Francisco. On the following afternoon we headed to the convalescent home to meet him as directed, but when we arrived his nurse informed us that he was missing from the facility and I think I heard that song before.

“Well where the hell did he go?” I asked her.

“I haven’t the faintest clue…and he was heavily medicated,” she said in a strangely inappropriate and nonchalant kind of way.

“So your patients just walk the fuck out whenever they please?”

NO
, sir—our patients DO NOT just
walk the fuck out whenever they please
,” she said. “They ROLL the fuck out…though usually not without medical consent.”

With that, Emily and I stepped out of the hospital and into the parking lot to determine the next course of action.

“Hey,” was suddenly heard from behind as Perry trudged up the
parking lot ramp with a big bag of fast food clutched in his hand. “Anyone wanna hamburger?”

I was amazed at how quickly his speech was returning to normal, though there was now a sudden bit of sluggishness to it which I assumed was attributable to the medication his nurse spoke of earlier.

“How are you feeling, Perry?” Emily asked while ignoring the snack sack.

“High.”

“Aside from that,” I probed.

“Awesome,” he said surprisingly, though I suppose when it comes to health issues Perry has an unusual set of criteria.

Without inquiring further I cut to the chase:

“We have to get to the airport or we’re gonna miss the flight.”

“Then lesh go,” Perry said as he finished his food and tossed the paper bag into a receptacle before leading us to the other side of the parking lot where a brand new, bright orange, Volkswagen Bug with a racing stripe was waiting for us with the engine running.

“Cool ride, man—where’d you steal it from?”

“My driveway,” he said as he was about to get behind the wheel.

“NICE,” I said. “Imagine that, a car
AND
a driveway. You
must
be doing well—aside from the stroke and all. But I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive, so why don’t we just call a cab before we end up missing the flight…
and
dying.”

“Oh yeah,” he said as he stopped what he was doing and then
tossed me the keys while he took the passenger seat. “You drive.”

“You know, I don’t think your doctor’s gonna be too happy with you leaving the hospital in this condition,” I said before remembering who I was talking to.

“Yeah, I know—jush go, okay?” he responded and now we were
really
running late.

As I got behind the wheel and pulled away from the facility I suddenly found myself intoxicated by the ride and the scenery while the little, turbo, Volkswagen Bug sped up and down the hills of Sonoma and we headed toward the highway. Then, I was rudely ripped from my reverie as Perry seemed to be drifting away when something suddenly occurred to me:

“Hey, Perry—how the hell are you gonna get back?”

“Somebody will come for me,” he said in a groggy-sounding voice after thinking about it for a moment.

“Somebody’s gonna come out to the airport in San Francisco to drive you back to Sonoma?” I tried to confirm.

“Yeah.”

“Who?”
asked Emily as she looked at him with suspicious eyes.

“Some guy who works for me.”

Some guy that works for Perry? Hmmm…That in itself sounds suspicious but then again—he does have a new Bug AND a driveway
.

“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I said.

“Den don fucking dink.”

We arrived at the airport with a few minutes to spare and after parking the car, took a table in a concession area before heading to the gate.

“I’m gonna get a soda,” I suddenly decided. “You want anything, Perry?”

“No shanksh,” he said quietly while he sat there with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest as he became one with his medication.

“What about you, Emily?”

“No,” she answered sounding a little annoyed, but then when I turned around and headed toward the vendors she almost immediately tapped me on the back and at first I assumed she’d changed her mind:

“Craig, you’re a fucking idiot.”

Apparently she did not.

“He’s all fucked up and in no condition to be out of bed, let alone sitting in an airport!” she scolded me.

“Perry’s gonna do what Perry’s gonna do,” I told her as I paid for my soda.

“Yeah, I read that already and it’s getting old. This isn’t 1995 anymore, old man. We should’ve taken a cab to begin with and just left him standing there in the parking lot if we had to because he would’ve been better off!”

“Yeah, but we didn’t do that.”

“No, we didn’t,” she agreed. “And since we didn’t we should at
least get him in a cab and take him back to Sonoma.”

“We don’t have the time or the money for that and we need to get back home and I HAVE to get back to work. Besides, someone’s coming to get him and he’s a big boy who makes his own decisions,” I said as I returned to the table where my friend was still wrapped-up in his arms and his medication. “Right, Perry?!”

“Huh?”

“You’re okay, right?! I don’t have to call a fucking ambulance or a cop to escort you home,
DO I?
”

“We’ve already had dish dishcussion,” he mumbled.

“Perry, I really think we should just put you in a cab and send you back to Sonoma,” Emily attempted. “You can always have your friend or employee or whatever come back later to pick up the car. Whaddaya think?”

“I dink you sh’go home.”

When we landed in Fort Myers Emily immediately pulled out her phone to check on Perry and it finally dawned on me that I
never
should have left him there alone at the airport like that, regardless of how stubborn
he
was or how selfish
I
was. But I suppose I always considered him to be an older, wiser, brother of sorts because even though I was the one who grew up in the city—he was the one with the street smarts. For better or for worse Perry was always the man with the plan, the big picture guy, the captain of the ship who would chart the course. He was the kind of guy that if stranded alone on a desert island with nothing other than sand and coconuts he’d come up with a recipe for Coconut Sandcake and not only survive the ordeal but make a fortune in the process. Indeed, for as long as I could remember it was always Perry who was in control and did the worrying, but never needed to be worried about REGARDLESS OF THE SITUATION.

“Yeah, well I think right now he needs to talk to you,” Emily told me in the midst of my soliloquy as she handed me the phone while we were en route to baggage claim.

“Hello?” I said, and though I didn’t hear anything from
Perry
, according to the P.A. announcement at the airport in San Francisco he wanted a word with me at the courtesy desk. “Oh man, he’s actually
paging
me.”

“No shit,” Emily confirmed.

“Perry…
Perry!”
I shouted into the phone which was beyond exasperating as I could actually hear him slurring something to someone in the background.

At some point the call was dropped, and after several successive but unsuccessful attempts to reach him, Emily and I suffered through a sleepless night ridden with angst and worry. Of course, Perry would survive the dangerous ordeal because that’s what he does, but it didn’t mitigate the fact that I failed him in just about the worst way imaginable.

On the following day the medical facility attempting to corral Perry called to inform us that at some point during the middle of the night he’d managed to return without anyone noticing and was apparently none the worse for wear. In fact, he recalled nothing of the trip to the airport, our departure or how he managed to get back to Sonoma, and within two weeks the vegetation around his heart cleared-up and he was sent home to finish recovering from the stroke. However, his poor health and impending surgery made pulling trees out of the ground forbidden fruit for the foreseeable future, and as a result Perry lost his business, his Bug AND his driveway and would be forced to stay with friends at least until the valve replacement which was scheduled for later that winter. And making matters
worse
, the lingering effects of his condition made his hands tremble so violently it was impossible for him to hold a
pen, which is of course an indispensable component to the repertoire of any waiter or waitress trying to survive. Consequently, he would be unable to revive the restaurant career due to the stroke he suffered at the ripe old age of 39—while
I
, of course, wasn’t as lucky, and in order to reserve my mornings for writing
Needle
I had to continue working at Stonewood as copywriting gigs were becoming fewer and farther between. Ironically, however, Emily—who had spent the entirety of her adult life behind a bar slinging drinks—was able to parlay her good looks and quick wit into an advertising-sales position with a real estate magazine in Sarasota.

By mid-March Perry successfully underwent his third heart surgery opting once again for a donor valve, and though he had no intention of ever mainlining anything again, the mere notion of a catastrophic failure resulting from a synthetic replacement took center stage when it came time to make the decision. Unfortunately, however, even after he had the surgery his hands continued to shake, and due to the fact that by now most of his missives were composed with two fingers pecking away at a keyboard he never bothered to learn how to write again.

40

By the spring of 2006 I was cranking-out
Needle
at a steady pace. In fact, I took my eyes off the ball only once when Emily and I were invited on a cruise to the Caribbean where I swam with stingrays in Jamaica, ate tacos with Colombians in Cozumel, and realized the emotional highs and lows of playing black jack in a casino are remarkably similar to those of smoking crack in Hell’s Kitchen, as my money went up in smoke in a different way but at about the same pace. Fortunately, by April, however—we
maintained enough of our capital to put a small down payment on a small two-bedroom condo in the Cape.

Certainly, we hadn’t fallen victim to the property-flipping frenzy that seemed to be overcoming everyone around us, and though by now we would’ve preferred to escape from Florida, it was obvious that Savannah and Momma Marcott weren’t going anywhere and so neither were we. Consequently, it seemed logical to make the investment and at least temporarily become homeowners as we realized we could be paying off our own mortgage rather than the landlord’s and eventually recoup at least a portion of what would’ve otherwise been blown on rent. Unfortunately, the subprime loan we qualified for was arranged by a subprime mortgage broker whose good faith interest rate was about a full percentage point lower than what we were eventually provided with at closing. As a result, he handed me almost $2000 literally under the table and told us we could refinance the $170,000 apartment within a year. Of course, the last time I had that much cash in my hand I’d stolen it from a drug dealer, so at the time I was pretty thrilled with the arrangement because the implications of it were unclear. But within six months chinks in the armor of the subprime housing market would begin to appear as the subprime bubble had finally burst and people were not only losing their homes but their jobs, as so many worked for construction and real estate firms which were the first to begin the massive layoffs. All around Southwest Florida the mood was becoming grim and gloomy as lenders began foreclosure proceedings and homes were taken, businesses were lost and overwhelmed property owners suddenly began to throw their hands in the air and walk away. By December Emily’s magazine completely folded, and not long after that the few copywriting clients I’d been relying on had also disappeared as my earnings were now limited to whatever shifts I could scrounge-up at Stonewood.

In February, Emily and I both secured seasonal jobs at typically busy restaurants on Sanibel Island where we hoped we could maximize earnings during the winter months and save our home as
well as the thousands of dollars we’d put into it. But that season would end up being the most anemic in decades, and in March the bank actually
raised
our subprime adjustable mortgage rate while our 30-year-old condo, initially appraised at $180,000, was now worth 90,000. Of course, there was no shortage of individuals willing to exploit the situation even further by offering us between 50 and $60,000 for it and we probably should’ve taken one of them up on their offer. But I couldn’t help but feel resentful and victimized by the situation because unlike virtually everyone around us—we weren’t looking to get rich. Rather than continue to pay rent, we’d purchased property to remain close to those we loved in an area we despised—simply because we thought it would be more cost effective to do so. It ended up not being that but I should’ve known better. The moment I saw waiters and waitresses flipping houses and making tens of thousands of dollars overnight I should have realized something was up. But when you’re not looking to get rich, sometimes it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees. So in May as foreclosure threats were beginning to flood the mailbox and the reality of the situation came bearing down upon us we finally decided to throw our hands in the air and walk away as well…down the road…to Momma Marcott’s house.

Momma divorced Tom almost immediately after Jon died and had purchased a new home that wasn’t as grand as the other but was equally as beautiful, and unlike Emily and I and
soooo
many others she was actually able to grind it out and do what she needed to in order to retain her investment. And when Emily and I stampeded into her lovely abode she didn’t even ask for rent, though we did occasionally help out with a bill or two which was about all we could afford as our seasonal jobs were now out of season and we were once again out of work. Of course, Emily—young and beautiful as ever—was able to find something somewhere that would help cover our cost of living but I, getting older and uglier by the moment, wouldn’t be as lucky and it would be months before I could find any work at all.
Needle
, however, was only months from being completed and it had been a remarkable journey for me—not only as a writer—but as an addict trying not
to be an addict and to put the past in its proper perspective. Certainly, this was no easy task as the self-centeredness of my addictive behavior had been enmeshed in personal aspirations and the future I’d envisioned, but writing
Needle
forced me to examine myself and the decisions I’d made with a clear head and from a vantage point which truly helped me realize that in all things, distance
truly
lends perspective.