Just Mel turned pink as a flamingo. "I made a mistake."
"Where is she?"
Just Mel murmured, "Deceased."
It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.
"Say what?" Twist said after a moment.
"You say 'dead'?" said Hector.
Just Mel nodded. "This morning."
Dead. Just like that. Where's Cheryl? Cheryl's dead. Oh yeah ? Pass the salt. Preston felt dizzy.
"Let her not have died in vain," said Just Mel. "Let's take a lesson from her. Let's let her weakness be our strength. Let's all say the Serenity Prayer in her memory."
He started to recite the prayer. Hector joined in, sort of, and Preston mouthed the words.
The people on the left side of the room looked uncomfortable. Desiree knitted faster, and the red-headed Corazon smoked faster. Raffi pared his fingernails.
"There!" Just Mel said when he had finished the prayer. "I don't know about you, but I feel better."
Glad to hear it. In his mind's eye, all Preston could see was an image of Cheryl, tiny and frail and gray, lying on a metal table. Cold. So cold.
"Desiree," Just Mel said, and he went and stood in front of her, "tell us what life was like with Khalil."
"He took dope," Desiree said, and kept on knitting.
"Yes, but what did he do?”
"Smiled a lot."
Just Mel sighed. "All right, then, what didn't he do? He didn't go to work, did he, didn't help out around the house?"
"He worked. If something was broke, he fixed it."
"But how did it make you feel, him spending all your money on dope?"
"Didn't spend my money. Spent his own." She performed a fancy maneuver that made the knitting needles click like a ratchet.
"But didn't you feel alone? Wasn't it like living with a dead person?"
"Sometimes." Desiree's eyes never left her knitting, but she smiled at some secret memory. "Not always."
"Why didn't you leave him?"
" 'Cause sometimes with him is better than always with most people."
"I see." Just Mel looked grim. He couldn't open any wounds. She wasn't playing the game. He turned to Corazon. "Is that how you felt about Hector, Corazon?"
She had been gazing fixedly at the ash of her cigarette—lost, it seemed to Preston, in some chemical reverie. It took a beat for the name to register. Then her head snapped up and she said, "He was bad. That is one sick motherfucker."
"How so?" Just Mel sat back and smiled.
Hector compressed his lips to suppress his own smile, and squared himself to meet the challenge, ready to dissolve in grief or explode in outrage, depending on what accusations had been mischievously programmed into the doxy by his buddy the pimp.
"You ever heard of Wesson Oil?"
"Of course. What does—"
The door opened. Margaret's head peeked in. She said, "Is this . . . ?" Then she saw Preston.
Shit!
As she stepped into the room, she said. ''I'm Margaret Preston. Excuse me for interrupting. Please go ahead."
There was a man with her. He was middle-aged, middle-weight, middling tall, a middle American, like the man on the television commercial who gets heartburn after dinner and his wife brings him Maalox and then he wants to go out for a banana split. He wore a brown jacket and beige slacks and brown cordovans and an ivory shirt and a brown tie with subdued yellow stripes in it. And a completely unnecessary collar pin.
Margaret found a seat and sat down and held her head up and looked directly—defiantly—at Preston. And this guy sat down beside her and . . .
Jesus Christ! He's holding her hand!
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 hearin
g 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.
It was Lupone. He put an arm around Preston and guided him down the corridor and spoke in a voice as low and rumbling as a freight train on a faraway track. "I got a deal for you. Raffi says he'll whack this Kirk if you want.''
''Oh?" Preston croaked.
''It's a shitty thing, jump the missus' bones while a guy's inna joint."
"That's ..." What should I be? Grateful? Surprised? Appalled? Outraged? No! Not outraged. The man is offering you a favor. "That's very nice of him. But why should he—"
"Call it professional courtesy."
"How can I—"
"Who knows? You run this publishing house, right? You say what gets printed and what gets squashed. Maybe someday some guy inna witness-protection program wants to narc on us, make a buck stabbing his family inna back with a kiss-and-tell book. You remember your friend Raffi who whacked that prick for you. Maybe you work it out so the book dies of natural causes. Whattaya say?"
What do I say? I say I've been drugged by Jivaro Indians and am having a hallucination.
What he said was "Puff . . .I'm grateful. Please tell Raffi I owe him one, just for the thought. But I figure it this way: If that's what her taste runs to, guys like that, then I'm better off without her."
"Yeah, but the insult ..."
Think! "She'll pay for the insult."
"How?"
"With regret,"
Lupone seemed to absorb the words like a sponge. Then he grabbed Preston's chin in one of his Smithfield hams and looked deep into his eyes and said, "I heard a Christian charity. The Sisters of the Rosy Sepulcher told me all about it. But you! You make the pope look like a shy lock.''
Then he kissed Preston. On the mouth. And walked back and told Raffi, who looked like he'd just heard that the Martians had landed at Grover's Mill.
Duke's group still hadn't gotten out, so Preston went outside and sat on one of the benches in the exercise area and had another smoke.
He replayed the scene with Margaret, waiting for the inevitable surge of pain. It didn't come. He guessed he was in a kind of shock. The pain would come later.
He wanted the pain now, wanted to know what it would be like, so he reached for it by summoning the image of Kimberly. His baby. He had lost her. Never again would he—
Balls! You don't own your children. How do you lose something you never had? Whatever he had with Kimberly wasn't lost. It was changed, maybe, but there was nothing he could do about that. And—who could tell?— maybe the changes wouldn't be all bad.
The pain wouldn't come. But sometime it would, sometime when he didn't expect it. He prayed it wouldn't be on some lousy day when he was all alone and found himself passing a dark and welcoming saloon.
To his surprise, he felt admiration for Margaret for having the guts to read the death sentence over the corpse of a marriage that had probably been clinically dead for a long time. If she could find happiness with Kirk, good for her.
A couple, visitors, came out of Peacemaker and saw him. The man said something to the woman, and the woman nodded and said something back, and they started toward him.
Preston knew right away who they were, and the first thing he thought was, I wish I'd put on a tie.
They were the Ralph Lauren twins, she in a casually tailored Ultrasuede suit and a casually cut silk blouse with a silk scarf tossed casually over one shoulder and an anchor-link gold chain around her neck and a gold Rolex on her wrist, he in jodhpur boots and a pinch-waist tweed jacket and a shirt that looked as if it used to be a tablecloth at "21" and a wool tie and a paisley handkerchief in his breast pocket and a gold Rolex on his wrist.
"Mr. Preston?" said the man.
"Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey."
They weren't surprised that he knew who they were. They were accustomed to being recognized, entitled to be known.
They shook hands, and Mr. Godfrey said, *'They said inside there—"
“. . .in group," Mrs. Godfrey interjected, evidently pleased to know an "in" word.
"... that you have been particularly—"
"... close to Priscilla."
Preston wanted to throttle her. She was one of those discreetly arrogant women who never say anything out of place, never raise their voices, but express their innate superiority to their husbands by never letting them finish a sentence.
"I like to think we're friends," Preston said.
"Do you have any idea—"
"... where she could be?"
"She didn't show up? At all?"
"We wondered if perhaps she's—"
"..
. afraid to face us."
"I saw her last night. She was looking forward to seeing you."
"I must say, we find their attitude quite—"
"... irresponsible."
"They say if she ran away—"
"... there's nothing they can do about it." Mrs. Godfrey kept the ball and ran with it. "They showed us their idiotic form that absolves them of all responsibility. I assured them that their form would be dross in the hands of our Mr. Preble."
Mr. Godfrey explained. "Of Preble, Plunkett and Twyne?"
Preston said, "I don't think she ran away. She would’ve told me. Or somebody. I know she would’ve."
"Then where—"
". . . is she?"
"I don't know." Preston reached for his cigarettes. He offered them to the Godfreys, who reacted as if he were serving a pate of cockroaches. "But I'm going to find out, I promise you."
"If you'd call us," Mr. Godfrey said, handing Preston a business card, "even if Priscilla won't—"
". . . any time, day or night . . ."
". . . we'd be extremely grateful and, you may be sure—"
"... our gratitude will not be simply a handshake and a pat on the back." Mrs. Godfrey smiled at Preston and took her husband's arm and turned him back toward Peacemaker.
Preston looked at the card and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He felt disheveled—hell, he was disheveled, compared with them—and dirty. The "dirty" was their fault.
Forget it. And since he had recently been proclaimed a paragon of Christian virtue, he added to himself, They know not what they do.
The Godfreys were almost at the door when Mr. Godfrey said, "You know what I need. Bunny?" and put a hand inside his jacket.
"Not here, Dillon." She pulled his hand out of his jacket and glanced Preston's way. "It isn't fair ... to them.”
"Bui Bunny, I need one. I need a drink."
So do I, Dillon. So do I
XV
GUY Larkin had retreated to his bunker. His door was closed, and when Preston knocked all Larkin said (snapped, really) was "Come!"
Larkin had even removed his "Have a Great Day" button. His voice said he resented the interruption. "What is it?"
A man sat across the desk from Larkin, wearing an outfit with more parts than a Mercedes (all it lacked was spats), making notes on a yellow pad. An expensive briefcase was open on the floor by his feet. This was a lawyer, had to be, a gladiator summoned to do battle with Mr. Preble of Preble, Plunkett and Twyne.
Rummies Page 20