Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (33 page)

 
          
 
Just Mel consulted his list. '*And you are . .
. ?"

 
          
 
"Kirk," said the man.

 
          
 
"Great! Welcome, Kirk. This is Hector and
Hector's—"

 
          
 
"Just a second,"
Preston
said. He glared at Margaret. "Who the
hell is Kirk?"

 
          
 
"It's not your turn, Scott," said
Just Mel.

 
          
 
"I wasn't talking to you."
Preston
didn't take his eyes off Margaret.

 
          
 
"It's Hector's turn, Scott. You'll have
to wait your—"

 
          
 
"Fuck you, Mel."

 
          
 
Kirk said, "I say!"

 
          
 
Margaret shook her head.

 
          
 
Just Mel said, "That's uncalled for,
Scott."

 
          
 
Preston
said to Margaret, "Who the hell is Kirk?"

 
          
 
"Kirk is my friend, Scott," she
said, head even higher. "Kirk cares for me. I think the term you use is .
. . Significant Other.''

 
          
 
"See?" said Just Mel. "That's
who Kirk is."

 
          
 
Preston
ignored him. "I'm your husband! What the hell does that make me?"

 
          
 
Lupone chuckled and nudged Hector and put his
hands up to his temples and extended an index finger on either side of his
head, making horns.

 
          
 
Preston
saw
it and didn't care. "Yeah," he said, "I mean, except for a
cuckold."

 
          
 
"What's that?" Hector whispered to
Twist.

 
          
 
"Must be like the shaftee," said
Twist.

 
          
 
"Scott," Margaret said, "I
thought it would be a kindness to—"

 
          
 
"I’m out of the house—I'm in a
hospital—for three and a half weeks and already you're bofling your brains out
with a stranger?"

 
          
 
"Hold on there, mister!" Kirk was on
his feet. "You can't—" He turned around, for someone was tugging at
his coattail. It was Raffi. Raffi didn't say a word, just pointed at Kirk's
seat and smiled the smile of Kipling's snake, and Kirk, who must not have been
a thoroughly stupid man, sat down again.

 
          
 
Margaret said, "You're disgusting. I
should've known ..."

 
          
 
"Known what?"

 
          
 
Just Mel stood up and went to the center of
the room. "Scott," he said, "let's analyze the space you're in
now."

 
          
 
"It's the space you're in, asshole,"
Preston
said. "You're in my way."

 
          
 
Margaret said, "I could've written you,
Scott. I could've told you on the phone. But I thought it would be a kindness
to tell you in person, here, where you have friends and support and people to
talk to. People who'll help you understand."

 
          
 
"Tell me? What, that you and—"

 
          
 
"That I'm leaving you."

 
          
 
"For"—
Preston
pointed at Kirk—"for him?”

 
          
 
"Very wise," Just Mel said to
Margaret. "Very wise to share it with us. That's why we're here."

 
          
 
"Mr. Larkin thought so."

 
          
 
Larkin! The bastard! He might warned me.
Preston
exhaled. "Okay, Margaret, make me
understand. Make me understand why you're leaving me for a . . . a shoe
clerk."

 
          
 
"Typical." Margaret sneered.
"Kirk is an arbitrageur."

 
          
 
"Holy shit," Hector said.
"What's that?”

 
          
 
"Shafter," said Twist.

 
          
 
"Kimberly?"
Preston
said. "I don't s'pose she has anything
to say about this."

 
          
 
"Kimberly is very fond of Kirk, Scott.
He's already like a father to her. ..." She paused, dagger poised.
"The father she-"

 
          
 
"Nice, Margaret. Very nice."

 
          
 
"Kirk doesn't drink. Doesn't touch a
drop. He can't. You see, his mother was . . . was ..."

 
          
 
Kirk squeezed her hand and said, "It's
all right, honey." He looked around the room and said (the bravest man in
the world), "Mother was a drunk."

 
          
 
"No shit," said Lupone. He elbowed
Hector. "Ain't that disgusting?"

 
          
 
Just Mel frowned at Lupone and said,
"Thank you, Kirk, thank you for sharing that with us." He had an
idea. "I think we should all thank Kirk, don't you?"

 
          
 
Kirk smiled humbly.

 
          
 
Just Mel raised his hands to conduct the
chorus.

 
          
 
Lupone nudged Hector, who nudged Twist, who
nudged
Preston
, and before Just Mel could mouth the first
consonant they shouted in concert, "FUCK YOU, KIRK!"

 
          
 
The silence that followed was broken by
Corazon's coda to Kirk: "What a flamer."

 
          
 
Kirk's smile collapsed. Margaret's face had
the reddish-purple color of a cheap
Beaujolais
.
The veins in her temples throbbed as if beetles were in there trying to escape.
She and Kirk stood up and, holding hands, walked to the door.

 
          
 
“I’m glad I came, Scott," she said.
"It makes me feel much better about my decision. You’ve made it very easy
for me. You'll be hearing from my lawyer when you get out."

 
          
 
She opened the door and went out. Kirk
followed her, and before Kirk shut the door behind him
Preston
heard him say, "he gets out. He is
very, very ill."

 
          
 
"Well!" Just Mel said when they had
gone. "We certainly have something to talk about now. Scott, let's look at
where your head is. How does all this make you feel?"

 
          
 
How do I feel? How about ''like I was hit in
the head by a hammer''? Or "slugged in the stomach by Mike Tyson"?
How should I feel when seventeen years of my life have just been declared
invalid . . . worthless . . . expunged? How about "punched in the
soul"?

 
          
 
But all
Preston
said, evenly, as he pulled his eyes away
from the door, was "Get off my case, Mel."

 
          
 
"That's alcoholic thinking, Scott. We
have to—"

 
          
 
"Hey, Just Mel!" Lupone cut him off.
"Fuck off, why don't you. I wanna get back to what's-her-face and the
Wesson Oil. That sounded good."

 
          
 
Preston
heard nothing for the rest of the hour. He was pretty sure there was some
laughter, and he remembered a couple of shouts, but he spent the time inside
himself, doing exactly what Just Mel wanted him to: examining how he felt.

 
          
 
The anger didn't last long, only a few minutes
of routine, predictable reactions: hurt pride, the bitter taste of betrayal,
the bruise to his ego at the thought of Kirk preferred in his bed.

 
          
 
Guilt came next, the kind of searing,
sweat-inducing remorse that he recalled as the companion of his worst
hangovers. What have I done? I have embraced drink, destroyer of love. Why
couldn't I have quit last year or the year before that?

 
          
 
When had the balance tipped? When had the
damage become irreparable?

 
          
 
He would never know.

 
          
 
Then sorrow, a dead weight of grief at all the
times of joy that would be forever shrouded by the black cloak of his disgrace.
What was left to him? What was the point of—

 
          
 
Stop it!

 
          
 
He recognized the progression, envisioned the
seducer waiting for him to take the next step, over the threshold into the
realm of Who Cares? Forget it. Have a drink.

 
          
 
Today is the first day of the rest of your
life.

 
          
 
And what would the rest of his life bring?

 
          
 
Interesting question. Exciting, even.

 
          
 
He felt a sense of adventure.

 
          
 
New things were going to happen to him. Good
or bad, it didn't matter, they would be new.

 
          
 
Freedom.

 
          
 
Freedom to do what?

 
          
 
Priscilla. Oh, how natural the progression!

 
          
 
But what about Priscilla? For that matter,
what was

 
          
 
Priscilla? An adolescent trapped in a woman's
body. But an adolescent with the apparent capacity to turn hard as concrete
when the going got tough.

 
          
 
How would their relationship change now that
he was free? Would he still be her dearest, truest friend, or would she be
tempted to insert into their chaste goodnight kisses the tiniest slip of
tongue?

 
          
 
Talk about adolescence! he chastised himself.

 
          
 
The patients were permitted five minutes with
their Significant Others at the end of the hour. But since Preston's Other had
become quite Insignificant now that she had run off with this guy who she said
was Ivan Boesky but who looked like Willy Loman, he wandered into the hall and
smoked a cigarette while he waited for Duke to come out of his group.

 
          
 
He was staring at a framed cartoon poster of
two pigs kissing beneath a balloon that said "K.I.S.S."—an acronym
for "Keep It Simple, Stupid"—when he heard footsteps behind him and felt
a tap on the shoulder.