Night Shift

by Stephen King

  The wait in the outer office was shorter this time. When the receptionist told him to go in, Donatti was waiting. He offered his hand and smiled, and to Morrison the smile looked almost predatory. He began to feel a little tense, and that made him want a cigarette.

  "Come with me," Donatti said, and led the way down to the small room. He sat behind the desk again, and Morrison took the other chair.

  "I'm very glad you came," Donatti said. "A great many prospective clients never show up again after the initial interview. They discover they don't want to quit as badly as they thought. It's going to be a pleasure to work with you on this."

  "When does the treatment start?" Hypnosis, he was thinking. It must be hypnosis.

  "Oh, it already has. It started when we shook hands in the hall. Do you have cigarettes with you, Mr. Morrison?" "Yes."

  "May I have them, please?"

  Shrugging, Morrison handed Donatti his pack. There were only two or three left in it, anyway.

  Donatti put the pack on the desk. Then, smiling into Morrison's eyes, he curled his right hand into a fist and began to hammer it down on the pack of cigarettes, which twisted and flattened. A broken cigarette end flew out. Tobacco crumbs spilled. The sound of Donatti's fist was very loud in the closed room. The smile remained on his face in spite of the force of the blows, and Morrison was chilled by it. Probably just the effect they want to inspire, he thought.

  At last Donatti ceased pounding. He picked up the pack, a twisted and battered ruin. "You wouldn't believe the pleasure that gives me," he said, and dropped the pack into the wastebasket. "Even after three years in the business, it still pleases me."

  "As a treatment, it leaves something to be desired," Morrison said mildly. "There's a newsstand in the lobby of this very building. And they sell all brands."

  "As you say," Donatti said. He folded his hands. "Your son, Alvin Dawes Morrison, is in the Paterson School for Handicapped Children. Born with cranial brain damage. Tested IQ of 46. Not quite in the educable retarded category. Your wife--"

  "How did you find that out?" Morrison barked. He was startled and angry. "You've got no goddamn right to go poking around my--"

  "We know a lot about you," Donatti said smoothly. "But, as I said, it will all be held in strictest confidence." "I'm getting out of here," Morrison said thinly. He stood up.

  "Stay a bit longer."

  Morrison looked at him closely. Donatti wasn't upset. In fact, he looked a little amused. The face of a man who has seen this reaction scores of times--maybe hundreds.

  "All right. But it better be good."

  "Oh, it is." Donatti leaned back. "I told you we were pragmatists here. As pragmatists, we have to start by realizing how difficult it is to cure an addiction to tobacco. The relapse rate is almost eighty-five percent. The relapse rate for heroin addicts is lower than that. It is an extraordinary problem. Extraordinary."

  Morrison glanced into the wastebasket. One of the cigarettes, although twisted, still looked smokeable. Donatti laughed good-naturedly, reached into the wastebasket, and broke it between his fingers.

  "State legislatures sometimes hear a request that the prison systems do away with the weekly cigarette ration. Such proposals are invariably defeated. In a few cases where they have passed, there have been fierce prison riots. Riots, Mr. Morrison. Imagine it."

  "I," Morrison said, "am not surprised."

  "But consider the implications. When you put a man in prison you take away any normal sex life, you take away his liquor, his politics, his freedom of movement. No riots--or few in comparison to the number of prisons. But when you take away his cigarettes--wham! bam!" He slammed his fist on the desk for emphasis.

  "During World War I, when no one on the German home front could get cigarettes, the sight of German aristocrats picking butts out of the gutter was a common one. During World War II, many American women turned to pipes when they were unable to obtain cigarettes. A fascinating problem for the true pragmatist, Mr. Morrison."

  "Could we get to the treatment?"

  "Momentarily. Step over here, please." Donatti had risen and was standing by the green curtains Morrison had noticed yesterday. Donatti drew the curtains, discovering a rectangular window that looked into a bare room. No, not quite bare. There was a rabbit on the floor, eating pellets out of a dish.

  "Pretty bunny," Morrison commented.

  "Indeed. Watch him." Donatti pressed a button by the windowsill. The rabbit stopped eating and began to hop about crazily. It seemed to leap higher each time its feet struck the floor. Its fur stood out spikily in all directions. Its eyes were wild.

  "Stop that! You're electrocuting him!"

  Donatti released the button. "Far from it. There's a very low-yield charge in the floor. Watch the rabbit, Mr. Morrison!"

  The rabbit was crouched about ten feet away from the dish of pellets. His nose wriggled. All at once he hopped away into a corner.

  "If the rabbit gets a jolt often enough while he's eating," Donatti said, "he makes the association very quickly. Eating causes pain. Therefore, he won't eat. A few more shocks, and the rabbit will starve to death in front of his food. It's called aversion training."

  Light dawned in Morrison's head. "No, thanks." He started for the door. "Wait, please, Mr. Morrison."

  Morrison didn't pause. He grasped the doorknob . . . and felt it slip solidly through his hand. "Unlock this." "Mr. Morrison, if you'll just sit down--"

  "Unlock this door or I'll have the cops on you before you can say Marlboro Man."

  "Sit down." The voice was as cold as shaved ice.

  Morrison looked at Donatti. His brown eyes were muddy and frightening. My God, he thought, I'm locked in here with a psycho. He licked his lips. He wanted a cigarette more than he ever had in his life.

  "Let me explain the treatment in more detail," Donatti said.

  "You don't understand," Morrison said with counterfeit patience. "I don't want the treatment. I've decided against it."

  "No, Mr. Morrison. You're the one who doesn't understand. You don't have any choice. When I told you the treatment had already begun, I was speaking the literal truth. I would have thought you'd tipped to that by now."

  "You're crazy," Morrison said wonderingly.

  "No. Only a pragmatist. Let me tell you all about the treatment."

  "Sure," Morrison said. "As long as you understand that as soon as I get out of here I'm going to buy five packs of cigarettes and smoke them all on the way to the police station." He suddenly realized he was biting his thumbnail, sucking on it, and made himself stop.

  "As you wish. But I think you'll change your mind when you see the whole picture." Morrison said nothing. He sat down again and folded his hands.

  "For the first month of the treatment, our operatives will have you under constant supervision," Donatti said. "You'll be able to spot some of them. Not all. But they'll always be with you. Always. If they see you smoke a cigarette, I get a call."

  "And I suppose you bring me here and do the old rabbit trick," Morrison said. He tried to sound cold and sarcastic, but he suddenly felt horribly frightened. This was a nightmare.

  "Oh, no," Donatti said. "Your wife gets the rabbit trick, not you." Morrison looked at him dumbly.

  Donatti smiled. "You," he said, "get to watch."

  After Donatti let him out, Morrison walked for over two hours in a complete daze. It was another fine day, but he didn't notice. The monstrousness of Donatti's smiling face blotted out all else.

  "You see," he had said, "a pragmatic problem demands pragmatic solutions. You must realize we have your best interests at heart."

  Quitters, Inc., according to Donatti, was a sort of foundation--a nonprofit organization begun by the man in the wall portrait. The gentleman had been extremely successful in several family businesses--including slot machines, massage parlors, numbers, and a brisk (although clandestine) trade between New York and Turkey. Mort "Three-Fingers" Minelli had been a heavy smoker --up in the three-pack-a-d
ay range. The paper he was holding in the picture was a doctor's diagnosis: lung cancer. Mort had died in 1970, after endowing Quitters, Inc., with family funds.

  "We try to keep as close to breaking even as possible," Donatti had said. "But we're more interested in helping our fellow man. And of course, it's a great tax angle."

  The treatment was chillingly simple. A first offense and Cindy would be brought to what Donatti called "the rabbit room." A second offense, and Morrison would get the dose. On a third offense, both of them would be brought in together. A fourth offense would show grave cooperation problems and would require sterner measures. An operative would be sent to Alvin's school to work the boy over.

  "Imagine," Donatti said, smiling, "how horrible it will be for the boy. He wouldn't understand it even if someone explained. He'll only know someone is hurting him because Daddy was bad. He'll be very frightened."

  "You bastard," Morrison said helplessly. He felt close to tears. "You dirty, filthy bastard."

  "Don't misunderstand," Donatti said. He was smiling sympathetically. "I'm sure it won't happen. Forty percent of our clients never have to be disciplined at all--and only ten percent have more than three falls from grace. Those are reassuring figures, aren't they?"

  Morrison didn't find them reassuring. He found them terrifying. "Of course, if you transgress a fifth time--"

  "What do you mean?"

  Donatti beamed. "The room for you and your wife, a second beating for your son, and a beating for your wife."

  Morrison, driven beyond the point of rational consideration, lunged over the desk at Donatti. Donatti moved with amazing speed for a man who had apparently been completely relaxed. He shoved the chair backward and drove both of his feet over the desk and into Morrison's belly. Gagging and coughing, Morrison staggered backward.

  "Sit down, Mr. Morrison," Donatti said benignly. "Let's talk this over like rational men."

  When he could get his breath, Morrison did as he was told. Nightmares had to end sometime, didn't they?

  *

  Quitters, Inc., Donatti had explained further, operated on a ten-step punishment scale. Steps six, seven, and eight consisted of further trips to the rabbit room (and increased voltage) and more serious beatings. The ninth step would be the breaking of his son's arms.

  "And the tenth?" Morrison asked, his mouth dry.

  Donatti shook his head sadly. "Then we give up, Mr. Morrison. You become part of the unregenerate two percent." "You really give up?"

  "In a manner of speaking." He opened one of the desk drawers and laid a silenced .45 on the desk. He smiled into Morrison's eyes. "But even the unregenerate two percent never smoke again. We guarantee it."

  The Friday Night Movie was Bullitt, one of Cindy's favorites, but after an hour of Morrison's mutterings and fidgetings, her concentration was broken.

  "What's the matter with you?" she asked during station identification. "Nothing . . . everything," he growled. "I'm giving up smoking."

  She laughed. "Since when? Five minutes ago?" "Since three o'clock this afternoon."

  "You really haven't had a cigarette since then?"

  "No," he said, and began to gnaw his thumbnail. It was ragged, down to the quick. "That's wonderful! What ever made you decide to quit?"

  "You," he said. "And . . . and Alvin."

  Her eyes widened, and when the movie came back on, she didn't notice. Dick rarely mentioned their retarded son. She came over, looked at the empty ashtray by his right hand, and then into his eyes. "Are you really trying to quit, Dick?"

  "Really." And if I go to the cops, he added mentally, the local goon squad will be around to rearrange your face, Cindy.

  "I'm glad. Even if you don't make it, we both thank you for the thought, Dick."

  "Oh, I think I'll make it," he said, thinking of the muddy, homicidal look that had come into Donatti's eyes when he kicked him in the stomach.

  He slept badly that night, dozing in and out of sleep. Around three o'clock he woke up completely. His craving for a cigarette was like a low-grade fever. He went downstairs and to his study. The room was in the middle of the house. No windows. He slid open the top drawer of his desk and looked in, fascinated by the cigarette box. He looked around and licked his lips.

  Constant supervision during the first month, Donatti had said. Eighteen hours a day during the next two--but he would never know which eighteen. During the fourth month, the month when most clients backslid, the "service" would return to twenty-four hours a day. Then twelve hours of broken surveillance each day for the rest of the year. After that? Random surveillance for the rest of the client's life.

  For the rest of his life.

  "We may audit you every other month," Donatti said. "Or every other day. Or constantly for one week two years from now. The point is, you won't know. If you smoke, you'll be gambling with loaded dice. Are they watching? Are they picking up my wife or sending a man after my son right now? Beautiful, isn't it? And if you do sneak a smoke, it'll taste awful. It will taste like your son's blood."

  But they couldn't be watching now, in the dead of night, in his own study. The house was grave-quiet.

  He looked at the cigarettes in the box for almost two minutes, unable to tear his gaze away. Then he went to the study door, peered out into the empty hall, and went back to look at the cigarettes some more. A horrible picture came: his life stretching before him and not a cigarette to be found. How in the name of God was he ever going to be able to make another tough presentation to a wary client, without that cigarette burning nonchalantly between his fingers as he approached the charts and layouts? How would he be able to endure Cindy's endless garden shows without a cigarette? How could he even get up in the morning and face the day without a cigarette to smoke as he drank his coffee and read the paper?

  He cursed himself for getting into this. He cursed Donatti. And most of all, he cursed Jimmy McCann. How could he have done it? The son of a bitch had known. His hands trembled in their desire to get hold of Jimmy Judas McCann.

  Stealthily, he glanced around the study again. He reached into the drawer and brought out a cigarette. He caressed it, fondled it. What was that old slogan? So round, so firm, so fully packed. Truer words had never been spoken. He put the cigarette in his mouth and then paused, cocking his head.

  Had there been the slightest noise from the closet? A faint shifting? Surely not. But--

  Another mental image--that rabbit hopping crazily in the grip of electricity. The thought of Cindy in that room--

  He listened desperately and heard nothing. He told himself that all he had to do was go to the closet door and yank it open. But he was too afraid of what he might find. He went back to bed but didn't sleep for a long time.

  In spite of how lousy he felt in the morning, breakfast tasted good. After a moment's hesitation, he followed his customary bowl of cornflakes with scrambled eggs. He was grumpily washing out the pan when Cindy came downstairs in her robe.

  "Richard Morrison! You haven't eaten an egg for breakfast since Hector was a pup."

  Morrison grunted. He considered since Hector was a pup to be one of Cindy's stupider sayings, on a par with I should smile and kiss a pig.

  "Have you smoked yet?" she asked, pouring orange juice. "No."

  "You'll be back on them by noon," she proclaimed airily.

  "Lot of goddamn help you are!" he rasped, rounding on her. "You and anyone else who doesn't smoke, you all think . . . ah, never mind."

  He expected her to be angry, but she was looking at him with something like wonder. "You're really serious," she said. "You really are."

  "You bet I am." You'll never know how serious. I hope.

  "Poor baby," she said, going to him. "You look like death warmed over. But I'm very proud." Morrison held her tightly.

  * Scenes from the life of Richard Morrison, October-November:

  Morrison and a crony from Larkin Studios at Jack Dempsey's bar. Crony offers a cigarette. Morrison grips his glass a little
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  more tightly and says: I'm quitting. Crony laughs and says: I give you a week.

  Morrison waiting for the morning train, looking over the top of the Times at a young man in a blue suit. He sees the young man almost every morning now, and sometimes at other places. At Onde's, where he is meeting a client. Looking at 45s in Sam Goody's, where Morrison is looking for a Sam Cooke album. Once in a foursome behind Morrison's group at the local golf course.

  Morrison getting drunk at a party, wanting a cigarette--but not quite drunk enough to take one.

  Morrison visiting his son, bringing him a large ball that squeaked when you squeezed it. His son's slobbering, delighted kiss. Somehow not as repulsive as before. Hugging his son tightly, realizing what Donatti and his colleagues had so cynically realized before him: love is the most pernicious drug of all. Let the romantics debate its existence. Pragmatists accept it and use it.