Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (29 page)

 
          
 
Lupone looked at
Preston
, then at Hector and Twist. They were all
staring at him with a kind of strange reverence.

 
          
 
He loves it.

 
          
 
Gwen said, "Somebody shot you?"

 
          
 
"No way." Lupones voice dismissed
the very possibility as unthinkable lese-majeste.

 
          
 
"What happened?"

 
          
 
"I shot myself."

 
          
 
"What ever for?"

 
          
 
"I was in the shithouse." Offhand.
Casual. No big deal.

 
          
 
"The where?"

 
          
 
"I had a tough day coming up, so I took a
bunch of bennies, eye-opener, and after a while I had a few seven-and-sevens
that put me in a shitty kinda no-man's-land, so when some guy said here, have a
Valium, I had a coupla them, which put the brakes right on it, but just about
the time I hadda go to work I was really fucked so I did a coupla lines. I
don't even 'member thinkin' about it, but I was checking to make sure I had all
six in my Smith and I musta said aw shit on it, 'cause next thing I knew I was
in the doctor's office and he was diggin' the sucker out."

 
          
 
Lupone looked at
Preston
and smirked, and
Preston
felt cool on his teeth and realized that
his mouth was open.

 
          
 
Gwen said, "You tried to kill
yourself."

 
          
 
"Hell no. An accident is all."

 
          
 
Gwen said to Hector, "Do you believe him.
Hector?"

 
          
 
"Believe him?" Hector started.
"You mean, believe him? He say that the way it is, that the way it
is."

 
          
 
"I don't."

 
          
 
Lupone lurched forward and almost toppled off
his chairs. "I give a fuck what you think, lady! Why would I lie?"

 
          
 
"That's what we're here to find out,
Guglielmo." Gwen smiled sweetly.

 
          
 
Preston
sneaked another glance at his watch. Its hands were paralyzed, quick-frozen by
the menace of Gwen. My treatment is over. This woman has nothing to offer me
but pain. He felt a sudden rush of anger at Marcia.

 
          
 
How could you do this to me? She had broken
him down and begun to build him up and then abandoned him. He began to
salivate, and a familiar taste permeated his spittle. More than anything else
right now, he wanted a drink.

 
          
 
The flash of recognition made him sweat with
fear. How could it be happening? One tiny frisson of fear, and the boozing
reflex kicks into gear? If it could happen here, in this sanctum of sobriety,
what would it be like the first time something went wrong in the real world?

 
          
 
He would never make it on his own.

 
          
 
"What do you think, Scott?" Gwen
said. "Is Guglielmo telling the truth?"

 
          
 
Marcia rode Dan as if he were a Brahma bull,
bracing herself with her hands to keep from falling off as he bucked and
whinnied.

 
          
 
They hadn't made love in the morning for
weeks, and she was tempted to roll away and tease him for a while, to prolong
her pleasure. But she sensed no urgency to his writhing, he wasn't ready to
fire quite yet. This was their second go-round in the past two hours, and his
trigger wouldn't be as sensitive this time. If she was wrong, too bad; they'd
try again in another couple of hours. They had plenty of time.

 
          
 
They had nothing but time.

 
          
 
The bulletin had come at six-thirty. She was
up, had taken a shower and was having a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang.

 
          
 
It wasn't a telegram, not a Federal Express
envelope nor a UPS night letter. It was a plain white envelope with the
clinic's logo in the top left-hand corner . . . delivered by a state trooper,
for Christ's sake! (What, were they worried she'd attack a
Western Union
messenger?)

 
          
 
As soon as she looked at the envelope, she
knew what it was. She didn't have to read the message inside.

 
          
 
It was addressed to her and Dan.

 
          
 
Both of them.

 
          
 
At her address.

 
          
 
But the smokey insisted that she open it and
read it in front of him, and when she had finished, he asked if she understood
it, did she have any questions.

 
          
 
Yes, she said, she understood it; no, she had
no questions.

 
          
 
The smokey tipped his hat and said, "Have
a nice day," and left.

 
          
 
She sat in the kitchen and read it again while
she finished her coffee. She had to lay the sheet of white bond on the table,
for her hands were shaking so badly that she couldn't hold it steady. At first
her rage was wild and unfocused, like a hive of frantic bees. She tried an old
trick and imagined that she was plucking her angers from the sky one by one and
examining them and crushing them, and she was interested—and mildly amused—to
discover that one of them was Martin Luther King. She was furious at him for
leaving her.

 
          
 
She went into the bedroom and sat on the bed
and touched Dan's cheek and said, "Hey." When he was awake, she read
him the message. It was in the form of a memorandum (to both of them,
conspicuously at the same apartment number, let's not kid ourselves, we've
known all along) from Lawrence Victor Tomlinson, chairman of the board of
trustees of The Banner Clinic and (unnoted but well known) chief executive
officer of a chemical conglomerate and bosom buddy of several U.S. presidents:

 
          
 
You are, hereby and effective immediately,
dismissed from the staff of The Banner Clinic for conduct unbecoming employees
of the Clinic. You are banned from the Clinic grounds. Your personal effects
will be sent to you. You will receive by mail two weeks' salary. Your health
benefits will terminate at the end of the current month. You are reminded of
the declaration of confidentiality signed upon your employment, any violation
of which may occasion civil or criminal prosecution, or both.

 
          
 
"Conduct unbecoming?" Dan said.
"What does that mean?"

 
          
 
"It means"—Marcia kissed
him—"that in this white-bread world, nobody likes Oreo Cookies."

 
          
 
"That's ridiculous."

 
          
 
'"You tell me, then."

 
          
 
Dan was silent, and Marcia imagined that she
could actually see gears mesh in his head. After a moment he said, "What
are we going to do?"

 
          
 
"First thing, I thought we'd go downtown
and find the scraunchiest dealer we can and buy all his worst shit and eat it,
and when we got a really bad buzz going, we go machine-gun Mr. Lawrence Victor
Tomlinson and the rest of the board. Is that a great idea or what?"

 
          
 
Dan didn't smile.

 
          
 
Mistake. Irony isn't his long suit.
"Don't worry, baby"—she touched his cheek—"I'm kidding."
She paused. "But we are gonna have to be there for each other. There's a
little bastard inside me right now, and he's saying, 'C'mon, Marcia, let's go
grab a couple of yellows, maybe a red or two, pop 'em down and forget the whole
thing.' "

 
          
 
"What about the Human Rights
Commission?"

 
          
 
"And say what? You think they'll admit
they canned us 'cause I'm a jungle bunny? Forget it. They canned us 'cause
we're living in sin, sets a bad example for unstable patients, et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera. They have the right."

 
          
 
"We'll get married."

 
          
 
"Sweet, Daniel, but too late." She
leaned across his legs and propped herself up on one elbow. "You want to
hear sick? We've just been run over, no prospects of anything, about six bucks
between us, and I'm wondering how some of my drunks are gonna make it. They
don't know how dependent they are, and they're gonna get a new counselor who
could be Joan of fuckin' Arc and won't be able to get through to them, and they
won't know why and she or he won't know why, and they're gonna think. Hey, I've
just been shafted here, and they're right. There are some of them right on the
edge, like
Preston
, they're just putting their bricks in place
and there's no mortar to them yet. A little push, they can go either way."

 
          
 
Dan said, "They've got to give us
references. I mean, we're good.''

 
          
 
"Good doesn't count, baby."

 
          
 
"I don't get how you can be so damn
cool." He was annoyed. "You're just gonna give up?"

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"Aren't you mad?"

 
          
 
"Sure."

 
          
 
"So what are we gonna do?” He threw back
the covers, but Marcia didn't move off his legs, so he was forced to he there,
naked.

 
          
 
"You're so pissed," she said and
touched him, "let's see you loose the fateful lightning of your terrible
swift sword."

 
          
 
When they were finished, they sprawled on
their backs on the bed. Marcia left a leg draped across Dan's midriff, and she
stared at the ceiling.

 
          
 
When her pulse had slowed to nearly normal,
she said, "What's your pleasure—professionally, I mean-survival or
revenge?"

 
          
 
Dan considered. "We can't have
both?"

 
          
 
"Maybe. Probably not. I vote revenge.
Survival is just survival. I gotta do something makes me feel good."

 
          
 
"Like?"

 
          
 
"What say we try to bring down the
temple?'*

 
          
 
"Dream on. How?"

 
          
 
"You knew Natasha better than anybody.
Did you swallow that line of Stone's?"

 
          
 
"She was pretty together when she left.
But you never know what—"

 
          
 
"I think it stunk. Like he had a dead
fish in his pocket. Where were you sitting?"