Self-Esteem (30 page)

He wants my son.

“
Yesssssiiiiirrrrreeeee
.”

Crawford only saw Jan smiling, her torso rotating to the audience. “Doesn’t that sound simple, folks? Yes. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

The audience was no longer human. Crawford only saw pieces — a pink mouth, black hair, green eyes. He was desperately looking for a face to focus on, someone to anchor him back to the real world. But it was just Jan, rippling on an ocean of human flesh.

“And if you haven’t checked it out yet, Dr. Crawford’s principles have been made into a fantastic children’s show called
The
Happy Pappy Show
.”

Now Crawford could swear he was hearing an applause track.

“And it’s a real treat,” Jan continued, the smile on her face getting wider and wider. “We’ve got to go to a commercial right now. But first, let’s show our home viewers what we passed out to our studio audience today. We’ve got a surprise for you, Doctor!”

A teenage page came up to Jan and handed her something. It looked like a piece of flesh.

“These are going to be available in stores soon.” Jan was distracted. “What? Oh. They’re already available in stores? Right now? You can go buy these in stores today?” She looked back into the camera. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” turning to the audience as if to say get ready. “It’s the new Happy Pappy mask!”

Jan and each one of the audience members, and even the crew, lifted a piece of fleshy rubber material from their laps to cover their faces.

Jan smiled tenderly. “Ladies and Gentleman, doesn’t that make you feel better?”

The new Happy Pappy mask. Lee, you sick fuck. Oh God!

Crawford was smothering. He couldn’t look away; there was nowhere to look. People started laughing — all of them. The faces started to bounce, each of them the killer in the bathroom, the killer who had taunted him for the last two and a half days. The sea of pink, dotted with some black masks and some brown, was distorted flesh coming to a boil.

Then the tune started to play, hitting Crawford like a belt in the face. He felt like he had just swallowed a basketball as he put his right palm to his throbbing stomach.

Then everyone started to sing.

“Be kind to yourself. Be fond of yourself. If you’re not a chum you’re a bum to yourself.”

“Come on!” Jan shouted, her microphoned hand flailing with gusto.

“Be a friend to yourself. Without end to yourself. Remember it’s the best you can do for your health.”

“Please,” Crawford said.

“I think he said something.”

“Please,” he said again, or thought he said, just before he vomited.

CHAPTER 15

Cal woke up and wondered if he was dead or alive. Only his sense of touch made him realize he was still bound, still lying in the dark. The blood covering Cal’s lip was dry, as he could feel the crusty surface with the bottom of his tongue. The room was now pitch black — if it was a room — and not even a light from under the door gave shape to the void. Something smelled like sulfur or boiled eggs or furniture polish or God knows what. Cal coughed and spat to get the taste out of his mouth.

“Hello?” a helpless voice said. “Cal, is that you?”

“Darrin? Can you hear me? Darrin?”

“I can hear you. I can hear you.” There was an echo following Darrin’s voice that made him sound far away but close at the same time. He could be in the next room or he could be sitting in a metal cage just a few feet away. He sounded meek and afraid — a complete reversal of his persona. “Are you okay,” he said, sounding on the verge of tears.

“I’m okay, I think. But I can’t move. I’m tied up,” Cal said.

“So am I.”

“Can you see anything? I can’t see a goddam thing.”

“I can’t see anything either.”

“How long have you been there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe an hour. That man moved me here.” There was silence for several seconds. “You know,
the man
. You know who I’m talking about?” Darrin asked strangely, like a child.

“What did you get me into?” Cal said.

Darrin didn’t make a sound.

“Answer me!” Cal shouted as he rocked from side to side, struggling with what felt like a straightjacket wrapped in duct tape. “Who told you to come here?”

There was only silence.

“Say something!”

“Some guy. Some doctor or something.”

Cal couldn’t believe how nonchalant Darrin was.
Why did I trust this pool hall loser?
Cal looked deep into the nothingness in front of him and tried to imagine Darrin’s face. He wanted to kill him right then. “A doctor? What doctor?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t.” Darrin’s tone of voice was now bordering on blase.

“You don’t know? Who was he? Where’d you meet him?”

There was another long pause. And just before Cal could speak, Darrin said he couldn’t tell him.

Cal’s anger turned to fury. “You can’t tell me? You’ve gotten me tied up in a warehouse by some nutcase and you can’t tell me what’s going on?”

“I know,” he said with a peculiar joviality. “This guy’s nuttier than a fruitcake.”

“Who is he, Darrin?!”

Cal heard Darrin let out a deep breath, the echo making it sound like gas escaping from a pipe.

“I met this guy through…”

“What guy?

“The guy… your father introduced me to him.”

“My father? What kind of bullshit is that? You’ve never met my father.”

“Yes, I have.”

“What about the coke? I thought we were scoring some coke.”

“The coke… there never was any coke.”

“What?” Cal was still now.

“The man that tied you up, he works with your dad,” Darrin insisted.

Cal started moving his clenched fists. “Don’t bullshit me, you freak! My father doesn’t work with anyone. He’s a writer.”

Darrin’s voice was now even calmer. “He works with a lot of people. Think about it.”

“Like who?”

“You’re here because your father wants you to be here.”

“Stop saying that!”

“Cal, I’m sorry.”

A light came from the crack under the door that Cal could barely see between his bound legs. He heard the slow creak of the door, but it wasn’t the door in front of him. It was the door next to him.

“No more!” Darrin squealed. “Go away! I didn’t agree to this!”

There was a soft giggle. “It’s time for the show.”

It sounded like Darrin was trying to shout, but his mouth was covered. Then it sounded like a struggle of shuffling feet, kicking and bucking. Finally, the door slammed. Cal stretched his face into the vacuum, listening carefully, concentrating for a length of time he couldn’t determine.

First there was silence.

And it could have been any garden.

Then the faint sound of the
Happy Pappy Song
.

Then a muffled cry.

Then silence again.

Eight blue-sleeved arms covered Crawford from his shoulder blades to his knees, moving him forward like he was a battering ram aimed at the door of a medieval castle. Crawford could only see their shoes as well as his own, which were now covered in orange vomit.

Cheesy Cheesos again, Crawford thought. I remember now. I ate a bag of Cheesy Cheesos.

Crawford got to his feet and pushed four stagehands away, and then in one not-so-elegant motion, he started running through the backstage like an angry child deserting his own birthday party. A hand firmly grabbed him.

“What the hell was that?” Lee bellowed.

Crawford was breathing heavily, his lips still glossy wet from the bile that came out of his nose and mouth. “That was just me being myself. The real me. I’m a rock star, Lee!”

“My God!”

All of the production people on the show were getting out of Crawford’s way, looking relieved to see his departure. They already had one mess to clean up.

“Where are you going?” Lee fumed.

“I’m going home,” Crawford said, looking directly into Lee’s eyes, “to see my wife and my son, to see my family.”

“The loving family man, huh? That always works in a crisis.”

Crawford stopped. “Did you call them last night? Did you really call them?”

Lee’s anger subsided with a shake of his head, not as an answer but in resignation; he could say nothing.

“I better not see your face again,” Crawford said.

Lee gripped the Happy Pappy mask as he turned in the opposite direction. “Oh, you will.”

Crawford turned and went straight for the studio exit. Going out the door, Crawford faintly heard Jan say, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re back.”

Crawford asked a leering page where he might use a telephone before he realized he still had his mobile phone in his jacket pocket.

“Fuck it. Leave me alone,” he said, waving the kid away. First he tried the regular line at home but got the answering machine.

“Hello? Anyone there? This is Dad and I’m on my way home. Someone call me on my mobile phone when you get this message. Anyone. I’m coming home.”

Crawford felt that cold chill again when he hung up the phone.

What did I say? I said ‘Dad’
?

The chill got worse as he dialed Dorothy’s mobile phone and then Cal’s. Dorothy’s number provided her curt directive — “Not here, leave a message.”

“Honey, call me.”

Cal’s phone just kept on ringing.

They might be pissed off. They might be trying to punish me by not picking up. Please just let them be mad at me. Please let them just be ignoring me.

Crawford went to the commissary and ordered two bottles of water. The room was almost empty except for the dozen or so cooks and waiters preparing for the after-show lunch crowd. A large screen TV in a corner behind the salad bar made Crawford wonder if the commissary staff had just seen his embarrassing performance.

Then it hit him.

Millions of people just saw me vomit on live television.

Didn’t they? he wondered.

Who gives a shit if they did? Good. I finally gave them the real me.

But what if they really did see me? he thought.

They might not have. Those camera people are pretty slick. They could have seen it coming and cut to commercial. Or cut to Jan. Or something else.

“Are you sure that’s all you want?” the waitress asked, pushing the bottles toward Crawford.

“Better give me three.”

The girl turned to grab another bottle, and Crawford drank one of them, with most of it running down his shirt. The girl put another bottle on the counter and said, “That will be twelve ninety, please.”

Four dollars for twelve ounces of water? Civilized. Very fucking civilized.

Crawford pulled out his wallet and looked into the girl’s eyes. He could almost see a reflection of himself vomiting. He knew she had to have seen it; everyone there had seen it. The whole goddam country had seen it. In no time there would be speculation in the press, in the media, discussions on talk shows and in op-ed pieces about self-help writers who get sick because of the pressure of TV appearances, or because of too much MSG, or too much medication, or too much plastic surgery, or too much booze. It would be everywhere.

Good, Crawford thought.
Maybe I can be a respected novelist after all.

As Crawford walked down the hall to the elevator then to the garage, every glance from every passerby indicated the news was out and spreading fast. Oddly though, his hangover was much better and his mood wasn’t that bad for a guy who had just humiliated himself on national television. He almost felt confident — like he only did when he had a good after dinner buzz and was getting ready to meet some kowtowing fans.

Maybe I can be William Faulkner. Or Hemingway. I could be Hemingway. Hemingway was a hack. But he got respect. He vomited from time to time.

“Bullshit.”

He wasn’t sure if he was fit to drive, not being drunk enough not to worry about it, but his fear for the safety of his wife and son compensated his semi-sober apprehension. Crawford tore out of the downtown garage after giving his stamped ticket to an attendant who grinned as if he knew something Crawford didn’t.

Go ahead and smile, asshole.

My God.
Self-Confidence.
That was the first one.
I should have learned from the first one.
“Self-Confidence comes from a lack of self-consciousness. The more we’re concerned with ourselves, the more we judge ourselves. And consequently, the less faith we have in ourselves and in our abilities.”

Didn’t I write that once? Or did I imagine I wrote it?

Faith
. Better known as ignorance in the secular world. Made him think of that great Bertrand Russell quote: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.” The intelligent just don’t have any faith.

Do you compromise your intelligence when you lose your self-doubt? Is doubt then just another form of selfishness?
Oh, who gives a shit? Freud created mass neuroses when he set out to cure it. Novelists are the real doctors of the soul, Crawford thought. Traffic was light, and Crawford imagined all the people deciding to stay at home so they could hear about Crawford vomiting on
Jan Live.

Self-confidence comes from a lack of self-consciousness.

Focus… focus, he thought.

Simply put, one of the worst things about alcohol is its uncanny ability to be a distraction from the most important things in life, tangible things that exist in the here and now. It allows (or perhaps requires) your mind to wonder aimlessly about crap like self-consciousness when you should be concerned with more important things like being a father and a husband, or deciding what you’re going to do about the psychotic criminal that’s been harassing you.

Self-Sobriety
, could that be a title? he wondered.

Crawford didn’t know
what
to do — about anything. Apparently, he could help millions of others but not himself. He just didn’t have the self-esteem.