Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (13 page)

 
          
 
She was sniveling, seized by sobs she couldn't
stop and wanted to conceal. She rooted in her purse for a tissue and, when she
couldn't find one, dabbed delicately at the tip of her nose with the sleeve of
her sweater.

 
          
 
She's wiping her nose with cashmere!
Preston
was captivated. The gesture was grotesque.
His left brain decreed it disgusting. His right decided it was . . . sweet. He
plucked a handkerchief from his hip pocket and leaned across the aisle and
pressed it into her hand. Her eyes flicked up at him, shiny and blue, grateful
and supplicating, meek and aware.

 
          
 
Banner droned on in his paean to Natasha G.:

 
          
 
"... and when she couldn't handle the
pressure, why, someone was always there with pills or a glass of sherry or,
later on, a little potato juice in her orange juice-just for an eye-opener.''

 
          
 
Preston
had
to speak to her, had to imprint himself in her mind as more than a mere
handkerchief. But what could he say? All his gambits were twenty years out of
date. He bent down and reached over and touched her arm and whispered,
"What unit are you in?"

 
          
 
She looked at a white card in her purse and
whispered back, '' Chaparral.''

 
          
 
"Great! That's a great unit. You'll love
that unit."

 
          
 
"How long have you been here?"

 
          
 
English! My God, she's English! You heard it:
She said "bean," not "bin. " "How long have you bean
heah." A blond Vivien Leigh. Be still, my heart! "Oh ..."
Preston
faltered. He needed authority. Seniority.
He couldn't tell the truth, couldn't say ‘eight hours.’ ". . .a
while."

 
          
 
The door behind them opened. Marcia stepped
into the room and tapped the woman on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow.
She rose and, without looking at
Preston
,
went out into the hall. The door closed behind her.

 
          
 
No!
Preston
was
frantic. Not before you know how much we have in common. I went to Yale!

 
          
 
"Today Natasha begins a new life,"
Banner proclaimed, "and she'll make it because she has new strengths. She
has a higher power."

 
          
 
Natasha interrupted on cue. "And my
higher power, my friends, my dear, dear friends"—she opened her arms to
embrace the universe—"is you!”

 
          
 
There was a burst of applause, and someone
shouted, “We love you, Natasha!"

 
          
 
"Oh yes," Natasha responded.
"The love is flowing between us like a roaring river."

 
          
 
Preston
lost control. While everyone applauded again and a few whistled and a couple
shouted declarations of love, he slid off his seat and crawled the few feet to
the back wall and pushed open the door and squeezed through the opening out
into the hall—and found himself staring at a khaki skirt and a pair of
coffee-colored knees.

 
          
 
"Hello, Scott," said Marcia.

 
          
 
"Oh. I . . ." He saw the blonde
standing beside Marcia. She looked frightened.

 
          
 
She held out his handkerchief and said,
"Here. I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean—"

 
          
 
"No, no." He scrambled to his feet.
"I just ... I mean, I thought you might need some help with your
bags."

 
          
 
Marcia said, "I think we can
manage."

 
          
 
Code. What she was really saying was: Never
try to shit a skitter.

 
          
 
"Right," he said. "Well . .
." He held out a hand to the woman. "I'm Scott."

 
          
 
She didn't shake his hand, just gave him his
handkerchief. "Priscilla."

 
          
 
"Right. . . . Nice to meet you."

 
          
 
The sounds of applause and cheers came from
inside the lecture room.

 
          
 
"You're missing the good part,
Scott." Marcia picked up Priscilla's suitcase.

 
          
 
"Right. Well ..." He turned back
toward the door, but he didn't go in. He stood and watched the white linen
skirt and the navy blue cashmere sweater and the fall of golden hair follow
Marcia down the hall and out into the night. Then he leaned against the wall
and pressed his head to the cool plaster. What are you doing ? You are coming
apart! You are a married man!

 
          
 
The door to the lecture room sprang open, and
Hector barged out, the flame from his lighter already igniting the cigarette in
his mouth and singeing his Zapata mustache. He saw
Preston
and said, "I know what you mean, man.
All that love shit makes me sick too."

 
          
 
Duke came out and grabbed
Preston
's arm and led him down the hall.
"Hey," he said, smiling, "you don't waste time."

 
          
 
"I wasn't—"

 
          
 
"I been trying to figure why a smart guy
like you comes to a joint like this. Now I know."

 
          
 
"You do?"

 
          
 
"Damn right. You've found yourself a
nookie farm."

 
          
 
At
ten o'clock
that night, someone—
Preston
didn't recognize the voice—walked down the
corridor and rapped lightly on each door and announced, "
Ten o'clock
." Whoever it was was this week's Town
Crier. Announcing the time twice a day, at bedtime and reveille, was a
"therapeutic duty." Each patient was assigned one, to add even more
order and discipline to his or her tightly structured day. A list on the
bulletin board in the common room had told Preston that this week he was
"Hazel"—his duty was to vacuum the hallway outside the bedrooms.

 
          
 
He sat on the edge of the bed, smoking a
cigarette. He didn't want the cigarette, it didn't taste good, it burned his
throat and fuzzed his tongue. But it was something to do. Smoking passed the
time.

 
          
 
He had no radio, no television. They had
confiscated his books. His head felt like a crowded subway car, packed with
irritable, impatient, uncomfortable people longing to breathe free. Since this
morning—this morning! It felt more like a week ago—his brain had been besieged,
barraged, battered and overdosed with turmoil, terror and emotion.

 
          
 
He wished he could remove his head and put it
in a drawer till morning. Tell yourself a story. Make up something about a
princess with golden hair, trapped in a castle of sorrow. But he wasn't a
storyteller. He was a midwife for other people's stories. He tried to summon
from memory parables or sonnets, couplets or limericks—anything to give him
remove from his thoughts. All that came to him was a fragment of Yeats:

           
 
"Never shall a young man, Thrown into
despair By those honey-colored Ramparts at your ear. Love you for yourself
alone And not your yellow hair. "

 
          
 
Useless. Counterproductive. All it did was
redirect his brain back to the sorceress who had suddenly . . . what? Punched
me in the soul.

 
          
 
What must it have been like for her to grow up
so lovely? Was there a brain beneath all that beauty? There was pain,
certainly, for why else was she here?

 
          
 
He went into the bathroom and flossed and brushed
his teeth. That killed two minutes. He took a leak. Thirty seconds. He returned
to the bedroom and had another cigarette. He debated going to sleep. No. If he
went to sleep now, he'd be up at four. Two hours to stare at the wall.

 
          
 
Then he remembered the two books Larkin had
given him. He had stuffed them into the bureau, behind his shirts. He knew they
weren't stories, didn't tell diverting tales of derring-do. But they were
words, at least, and maybe they held an anecdote or two. He opened a drawer and
shoved aside his shirts.

 
          
 
He left "The Big Book" where it
was—he wasn't ready for a lot of A.A. cant—and retrieved the little black
Twenty-four Hours a Day. He propped up his pillow and leaned against the
bedstead and opened the book at random.

 
          
 
January 2: Meditation for the Day You are so
made that you can only carry the weight of twenty-four hours, no more. If you
weigh yourself down with the years behind and the days ahead, your back breaks.
God has promised to help you with the burdens of the day only. If you are
foolish enough to gather again that burden of the past and carry it, then
indeed you cannot expect God to help you bear it. So forget that which lies
behind you and breathe in the blessing of each new day.

 
          
 
What about accountability? What about promise?
What kind of philosophy was this? "Don't blame me; don't expect anything
of me."

 
          
 
He turned a bunch of pages.

 
          
 
July 27—A.A. Thought for the Day To paraphrase
the psalm: "We alcoholics declare the power of liquor and drunkenness showeth
its handiwork. Day unto day uttereth hangovers and night unto night showeth
suffering. The law of A.A. is perfect, converting the drunk. The testimony of
A.A. is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of A. A. are right,
rejoicing the heart. The program of A.A. is pure, enlightening the eyes. The
fear of the first drink is clean, enduring forever. " Have I any doubt
about the power of liquor?

 
          
 
“ 'Uttereth hangovers?' "
Preston
said aloud. "Bull-shit, Billy
Graham!" He slammed the book and flung it across the room.

 
          
 
Listen to the words: ''sure,"
"perfect," "right." And all stated with the sublime
confidence that they had been handed down by A.A.'s number one draft choice,
God.

 
          
 
He had been shanghaied into the God Squad.

 
          
 
How could he deal with this? He wasn't even
sure there was a God. And if there was a God, what was it? Why should it
necessarily be some uppercase He? And no matter what it (He, She) was,
Preston
found it inconceivable that it (He, She)
would have the time or the inclination to focus on the petty problems of an
aging editor who could no longer drink like a gentleman. As a child, Preston
had wept at the unfathomability of infinity because it struck him that if
things had no beginning and no end, then the present (meaning his life) had no
significance whatsoever in the scheme of things, since in all probability no
scheme of things existed. Now he was being commanded to communicate with some
incredible personification of the infinite.

 
          
 
Forget it. He had twenty-seven days to go. If
people could endure months of having their toenails torn out and their balls
hot-wired in Argentine jails, he could survive twenty-seven days of
self-righteous blather.