by Ric Klass
Excuse Me
For Living
A Novel By
RIC KLASS
Arcade Publishing • New York
Copyright © 2012 by Ric Klass
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61145-780-3
Printed in the United States of America
This novel is dedicated to my late brother Jim
who inspired me since my childhood with his
love of the written word.
I would like to thank the members of the Sound Shore Writers Group for their helpful comments on the novel during the writing, including: Maureen Amaturo, Alan Beechey, Kim Berns, Bonnie Council, Ed Keller, and Suki Van Dijk. In particular, Kent Oswald made a great contribution with his keen observations and ongoing support. I would also like to thank my editor Jeannie Reed for her excellent suggestions.
Not Blue Waters
flow beneath the men.
“Let the fuck go of me,” Daniel says, tugging at his sport coat.
“Can’t do that, sonny boy.”
“I’m not your boy, and you can and will let go, Goddamn it.”
Daniel gazes up at the gray clouds blanketing the evening rush hour traffic next to him. The color matches his own dull-colored eyes and pallor. He then peers down into the strangely inviting muddy Hudson River and takes a deep breath of the sweet and foul sewer gas wafting from the wastewater holding tanks not far downstream. Dan ceases to struggle. He smiles at the obese NYC cop practically strangling him with one beefy hand and clutching him around the waist with his other tree limb of an arm. The changeling Giaconda beam now startles this New York’s Finest and he lets go for a second. That’s all Daniel needs. Even in his inebriated state, he’s still experienced with the grin-and-leap maneuver. He jumps off the ledge, but his jacket tangles on the Martha Washington Bridge (the lower level, beneath George), giving Officer Franklin another chance to snatch this stupid young bastard – temporarily at least – from the yawning mysteries of eternity. Franklin rips the coat, pulls it over Daniel’s head, and drags him back from the just-dying to the just-looking side of the M-W barrier.
“Watch what you’re doing, for Christ’s sake! This is a real Armani. My father will sue your ass.”
“I don’t care if Mary, Mother of God, weaved it herself. You’re not killing yourself on my beat. And tell your daddy he shoulda done a better job of teachin’ you some respeck.”
One last thought occurs to Daniel, and it’s not all that helpful. He tries the happy-flashing-teeth gambit again and takes a telegraphed swing at the man in blue. Like his last, not one of his best ideas.
Tranquilized
and dizzy from various concoctions including two white lines, nearly a lid of Mary Jane, and a very solid right jab to his jaw, but not deadhead unconscious either, the wan, emaciated 6’1” twenty-four-year-old in $250 jeans gamely pleads in own defense.
A hurt puppydog guise while rubbing his sore jaw, “I was simply taking a leisurely stroll to visit my poetry professor in Hoboken, your honor, when this very large policeman accosts me from nowhere, applies a no-doubt steroids-induced thrashing, and conjures what’s probably a $150 tailoring repair job on my Bill Blass jacket.”
“He claimed it was Armani,” pipes up Officer Franklin.
“Screw the couture,” interjects Judge Leominster Karmel.
“Koo who?” inquires the cop.
“Bless you, Officer Franklin,” wises off Daniel, tottering somewhat. “And overall, I might say, Judge Camel. . . .”
“Karmel.” The judge’s jaw tightens. He isn’t in a mood today for more shenanigans from the familiar druggie in front of him.
“Yes, Caramel. This large gentlemen and supposed protector of the court proved himself to be, in effect, extremely inhospitable to say the least. Broken appointments with distinguished poets, terrorized upstanding citizens, and brutalized fabric creations are nothing to joke about. Nevertheless, in the spirit of the Christmas season I’m willing to drop all charges against him if you’ll just kindly. . . . ”
“Remove the handcuffs? And May 16th is not typically thought of as a winter religious holiday. You’re getting to be quite a regular here, Daniel Topler. It’s unusual to see even young drug addicts like you here three times in a month.”
Karmel’s laser gaze burns a tiny – yet visible to the defendant’s mind-expanded vision – hole through the left eyeball and out the back of Daniel’s noggin. He slowly turns his head to see if there’s also damage to the wall behind him. Seeing that the picture of New York’s first governor apparently remains ship-shape eases his natural concern for government property. In fact, he never before realized he had concern for any property whatsoever and feels uplifted by this new realization of public-spiritedness. Dandy, as he’s called by his prep school friends, plainly sees, i.e., with his right un-nuked eye, it’s not going well. The small, drab, white fluorescent-lit courtroom stinking of the sweat of the accused seems familiar somehow. “Yellow walls do nothing for the décor. Why are the lights so dim?” he muses to himself aloud.
“Mr. Topler, are you feeling OK?”
Despite Karmel’s irritation at seeing this punk again in his courtroom, a troubling thought seeps in. He’s just a kid, and his father’s got a hell of a powerful law firm. They can make trouble if this clown gets ill under my supervision.
The last of a trinity of misconceptions and poor execution floods Dan-Dandy-Daniel’s addled brain. He gets as far as one finger on the handle of soon-to-retire and ex-Green Beret Franklin’s 45-caliber pistol when it’s. . . .
Lights Out,
Then Fit To Be Tied.
The air smells delicious. If one were standing at the window, the vision of sparkling blue salt water waves gently licking the edges of freshly swept dunes of the East Hampton beaches in the spring sunshine would fill that someone’s heart with joy and tranquility. Unless that someone were Daniel Topler. And, in any event, he isn’t standing in that upscale and well-appointed room of walls washed with muted earth tones and carefully highlighted with soothing white linen cushions and soft blue taffeta chairs.
He is tied to the bed.
Paradise Found
Daniel Topler and not the other way around. In the courtroom the day before, Judge Karmel considered that the young coke-crazed joker had tried killing himself before. Put him out of harm’s way – including mine – for awhile, the soon-up-for reelection magistrate decided.
The good Judge Leo then gladly turned over all responsibility for the silver spoon-up-his-butt man-child to deserving shrinks. In light of Danny’s bravura repeat performance, Karmel needed no oral history to put the dazed young lunatic lying unconscious on the floor in front of him into
the custody of Live Free or Die, a somewhat inappropriately named health spa (rehab clinic) nowhere near New Hampshire but directly on a chichi Long Island shoreline with exclusive beach rights.
“Get someone to mop up his drool, Franklin,” signified the hearing’s amen, and let’s break for lunch concluded the disposition of the unwelcome case.
In fact, the lushly vegetated ten-acre paradise complete with mud (imported from Italy) baths, six tennis courts, heated indoor and Olympic-sized outdoor pools, individually monogrammed ultra-absorbent bath towels, bamboo-ed gazebo vitamin shake bar, free cranio-sacral therapy massages (an amenity not truly imagined as free by its partakers at the $12,000 per week establishment), four volleyball courts, shuffleboard (only one), bowling alley, super-sized surround-sound HDTV screening room complete with movie theater-like seats, mahogany green-felt-laden poker tables (gambling for money technically not permitted by the posted rules), and for every guest a souvenir two-thirds life-sized fleece “Nipper” (the original, late LFOD piebald St. Bernard mascot now stuffed and on display in the lobby) could well be thought of as a second home to various members of the Topler family.
Albert Topler, the patriarch of his clan, founded – along with his brother, Hyman – the Universal Recycling Empire. Al commands what has operated in toto as a cosmically profitable junkyard since WWII and provided jobs and income for every Topler nephew, niece, in-law, and distant relative for the past 50 years. He often visits LFOD when his mental constitution doesn’t require it. Offers by Albert to personally pay for installation of his favorite outdoor sport, horseshoes, had been rebuffed by the LFOD administration due to an unfortunate incident some years prior when a guest (inmate) threw a metal tray at his CA (chez ami – euphemism for personal warden), nearly de-nutting him. Airborne metal now carries a persona non grata status. Albert likes to walk the shore in early a.m., hoping to catch a glimpse of nearby Hollywood celebrity neighbors, so far without success. Furthermore, according to Mrs. Harriet Topler’s P.I., rumors that Albert has a “thing going on” with Ms. Bushkin, the zaftig activities director, have never been confirmed by an eyewitness.
The Left Eye Opens
and surveys the domain before the other eyelid dares to lift. A housefly buzzes on the nose, creating an intense desire to scratch the nostril. For some reason Dan-Dan, as his sister Coco calls him, can’t seem to get his arms free. His longish dirty-blonde hair partly covers his eyes, too. The lad panics, tentatively opens the right lid to gain full parallax vision and espies the probable perpetrator of his current dilemma.
“Dr. Frankenstein, I presume.”
Visiting psychiatrist, Dr. Jacob Q. Bernstein, clad in the white tunic of his profession, leans over Daniel and smiles.
“Bonhomie won’t disarm me. Forgive the rhyme and untie me, you quack.” Viewing now also the marine blue designer strait jacket encumbering him as well as the attractive red-and-purple tie-dye lanyards (LFOD uses nautical terms at the spa) tethering him to the antique Indonesian four-poster bed Daniel adds, “And make it snappy.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“Oh yes. I feel just like the moment the society page photographer shot me at my debutante ball. Dressed in a low-cut pink silk gown I was.”
“That made you feel good?”
“He shot me, you fool. Aren’t you listening? With a .45 just like Officer Franklin’s.”
“You’re a cross-dresser?”
“No, a cross prisoner. Can we cut the head-shrinking mumbo jumbo and just let me out of here? And, by the way, did you really buy the pink dress bullshit? I mean, really.”
“I’m Dr. Bernstein.”
“And I’m Felix the Cat. Meow. Did they even have real medical schools when you were a kid in Mesopotamia? The crap you guys are taught and dish out, too.”
No response. Just a kind demeanor.
“You must be deaf as well as ancient.” Convulsed anew, “Let me go or I’ll kick your two-thousand-year-old ass from here to kingdom come.”
More patience.
Exasperated and sweating, but concerned this moment for the older man, “I might say you don’t look that hot yourself, Dr. Béarnaise.” Even so, unable to be a mensch sans wiseacreosity.
“Bernstein.”
“Yes, Bernstine.” Now changing tactics. Time for Mr. Good Guy. “Are you feeling OK? Why don’t you sit and we’ll chat awhile. I could use a little company. Would you mind first scratching my nose? Some fly, probably sent here by a right wing, neo-Nazi Luftwaffe, has been dive-bombing me.” Laughs at his own jest, hoping to win over the medical sentinel.
“Here?”
“A little to the right. Ahhhhhhh. You are a healer.”
In fact, feeling a little under the weather, the doctor sits on a blue taffeta chair and continues to wait for a hiatus in Daniel’s rodomontade.
Now on the verge of losing it one more time, “Oh, I get it. This is the Siddhartha ‘I can think, I can wait, I can fast’ routine. Entschuldigen Sie bitte! Herr Doktor. I’m a little slow just now. As the CSN&Y song goes, ‘I’m not feeling up to par’ and do you think I need to cut my hair cause I almost did just before I jumped off Martha, the bridge that is! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” Now hysterical.
Bernstein rises, goes to the door, opens it and calls, “Linda.”
Linda, a massive and entirely competent Irish hospital nurse, waddles in.
Dan, a veteran film buff, immediately makes a Kathy Bates-in-Misery connection. He rolls over on his left side and gives his still cellophane-wrapped gift Nipper propped upon the fashionable maroon-lacquered commode a final phony appeal. “Help! Please save me.”
Man’s best friend fails him, but a quickie Amytal and all is right with the world in deep and peaceful sleep.
An 8 AM Polite
Knock At the Door
followed by a not-so-polite barging in.
“Hurry for breakfast, Daniel, the volleyball tournament starts soon,” Elaine Bushkin, the resident LFOD recreational therapist – she likes to call herself – breathlessly announces.
Her strong Chanel scent violently grips him. “I’ll have whipped cream licked off your breasts.”
“I’m not on the menu, Danny,” minces the still attractive and appropriately curvy 45-year-old natural – maybe – redhead.
The in-bed patient pleasantly finds himself unshackled, thereby propelling him to sit up and launch into banter. “Why would you screw my old man when you could have a young stud like me, Elaine?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mr. Topler and I have a purely professional relationship.”
Making the rounds, unnoticed, Dr. Jacob Q. sticks his head in the room.
“And what exactly is that profession?” smirks the now aroused young man patting the silk-covered mattress, “Lie down here next to me and give me a demo.”
Bernstein surprises them both by his sudden emergence. “I see you’re quite at home here, Daniel.”
Not pleased at being served up as the curvaceous butt of his joke, the lady vanishes with an impudent toss of her rear but not without her own retort, “Now I understand what your father means when he says you have a head on your shoulders, Danny.”
“What day is this?” Daniel says.
“Saturday. 9 AM. You’ve had quite a nap,” Bernstein says to LFOD’s regular visitor.
Now that they’re alone, Bernstein sees Albert Topler’s minions have already plenished the room with staples from Dan’s Manhattan loft. He picks up a well-thumbed copy of Carl Rogers’ On Becoming a Person from a nearby chair.
“Have you read this?”
To the new adversary in a condescending tone, “Everyone who ever took Psychology 101 knows this humanistic seminal work where Rogers treats patients as though they’re intrinsically healthy. But, alas, there’s no time for pleasantries. Nice of you to drop in. What did you say your name was? Sorry, I’ve got to be going. Ta ta for now, but duty calls. When the president begs for one to serve one’s country, can o
ne refuse?”
From experience, Dandy knows to find his clothes in the walk-in closet and hurriedly scampers from the king-sized bed and starts dressing.
“It’s hush-hush, top-secret and on the q.t. Something about a scrofulous torso suddenly levitating from Kim Il Sung’s tomb. You know you just can’t trust those bastard Korean dictators to stay dead.” Almost dressed now. “Where are standards, anyhow? And by the way, did my father have my car brought around yet?”
Without malice, a simple question, “Shall I call Linda?”
Sobered, Daniel sits on the bed. “No, that won’t be necessary.”
“Can we talk?”
“Do I have a choice? Do you mind if I smoke, uh. . . . ”
“Dr. Bernstein. No, go ahead.”
“Can I mooch a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Neither do I. Never touch the stuff. I hear it’s bad for your health.”
Dandy warily eyes his foe searching for kinks in the wall. He’s highly trained for this sort of combat. Even with Dr. Bernstein’s long years of experience, he’s beginning to wear thin.
“Let me ask one more time. Can we talk?”
Dan warms up to the challenge. “Hey, sit down. Take a load off, doc. Sure, let’s be pals, but it depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Well, on just what kind of headshrinker you are. My own preference leans heavily towards the druggies.”
“Psychopharmacologists, you mean?”
“I love the green pills, but blue or yellow works for me if it works for you.”
“That isn’t my specialty, but I do prescribe psychotropic medication on occasion.”
“I love the vocabulary you headshrinkers use. Did you hear the one about the old lady who goes to a German shrink and says, ‘Doctor, I’m afraid I’m going to kill my husband. Oh, don’t vorry about zat, Madam, he replies. In von month you von’t be afraid to anymore.’”
Daniel cracks up at his gag and Bernstein joins him.