by David Ellis
When I get back to the living room, Jason is in a T-shirt and shorts, his laptop open on the floor. His eyes meet mine. “Not good,” he says.
“What? Another e-mail?”
He nods, pushes the laptop toward me. I sit down on the floor and read what’s on the screen. It’s a new e-mail from Alexa, sent an hour ago:
Tuesday, July 30, 9:01 AM
Subj: I REALLY wasn’t kidding
From: “Alexa M. Himmel”
To: “Jason Kolarich”
Hi, there. Hope you’re well. I’m really concerned about the attached letter getting out. Maybe we can put our heads together and figure out how to prevent it. But if you keep ignoring me then I guess there’s nothing i can do. . . . . .
< BAD.Letter.pdf >
“There’s an attachment,” I say, my stomach swimming now.
“There sure is,” he says.
BAD Letter, I think. BAD, in all caps. A special meaning to a lawyer. The document pops up on the screen:
To: The Board of Attorney Discipline
Subject: Jason Kolarich, Attorney ID # 14719251
I am writing to report an attorney named Jason Kolarich, currently practicing at the law firm of Tasker and Kolarich. Jason has become addicted to a painkiller called oxycodone. It has hampered his ability to practice law, I fear to the detriment of his clients. He has lost a good deal of weight, and his behavior has become erratic. I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if the drugs have stopped him from defending his clients properly. I don’t know if there are rules governing this, but I thought the state’s board that regulates lawyers should know about this.
More than anything, I think a client, before they hire a lawyer, should know if that lawyer is a drug addict.
I am afraid to sign this letter, but I hope you will look into it.
I look at Jason, who is staring passively at the ceiling.
“Isn’t she a peach?” I say.
“She’s hurting,” he says. “She’s hurting so much.”
I close up the laptop. “Do you think she’d do it? Send it?”
Jason gets up, stretches his arms. “Everything she said in that letter is true, Shauna. I hope I didn’t let any clients down. I don’t think I did. God as my witness, I don’t think I did. But I can’t know for sure. I’ll never know for sure.”
“Jason, this isn’t the time for self-reflection. This is the time for self-preservation.”
He scratches his hand and looks out the window. “I need to talk to her,” he says. “I need to go see her.”
“That’s what she wants,” I say. “Just call her.”
“No, I need to see her.” He shakes his head. “This has to be face-to-face.”
86.
Jason
12:15 P.M.
I ring Alexa’s doorbell and take a couple of steps back. A flutter of nerves passes through me, but my whole body is so screwed up right now, it’s hard to tell what’s causing which problem inside me. My skin is tingling, my abdominal muscles are churning, a dull ringing has taken up nearly permanent residence between my ears.
I hear footsteps approaching the front door and steel myself. The curtain over the small side window moves, and then the lock on the door clicks.
“Hi,” she says. She is wearing a long football jersey and torn jeans, no shoes or socks. Her hair is matted and messy. Her eyes are red and puffy but, it seems, hopeful.
Hopeful, that is, until her eyes move to the suitcases next to me.
“I brought your things,” I say.
“I don’t want them. Keep them.”
“Alexa, c’mon.”
She leaves the door open and walks into her living room. I’d rather have this conversation on the front porch, but this will do. I carry in the suitcases and set them down by the door.
“Do you . . . want something?” She sits on her leg on the couch.
“I’m fine.” I sit next to her. It’s an old, beat-up leather couch. “I just want to talk to you for a few minutes. Is that okay?”
Her eyes narrow. “Now you want to talk.”
“You got my attention, yes,” I say. “I got your e-mail and that letter. If you feel like you want to send that, go ahead and send it. I won’t deny what you wrote. Maybe I deserve to be reprimanded. I’m sure I do, actually—”
“Forget about the letter,” she says, her expression switching in a finger-snap. “You know I could never hurt you.” She touches my arm. Somehow it would feel cruel to recoil, to move my arm away, to deny her that small gesture.
My phone rings, giving me an excuse to reach into my pocket, thereby breaking free of her and altering my body position. “Just need to make sure it isn’t Joel,” I say, by way of apology. Actually, I know it’s not Lightner calling because we programmed the Dragnet theme as a ringtone for his calls, but Alexa doesn’t know that. I look at the face of the phone and don’t recognize the number, then set it down on the couch between us.
The other ringing, the one taking place inside my head, grows shriller. My temples begin to throb. Skin on fire, bitterness on my tongue, a stomach ready to rock-and-roll at any time.
“Alexa,” I say, “our favorite serial killer called again last night. He said he’s going to kill again, and the next one is going to be his ‘favorite.’ I’m really concerned he might go after someone I care about.”
She scoffs and makes a face. “Well, that rules out me, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t. Listen, please—please get out of town. Drive somewhere. Fly somewhere. Please.”
“I’m not going anywhere. What’s he going to do to me that you haven’t already?”
“Oh, c’mon, Alexa. You’ll get past this. You know you will. Sometime soon, you’re going to look back and realize that . . . this is for the best.”
“How can you say that?” She leans toward me, her hand moving toward my face.
How can I say that? Because we both knew I was drugged up, and getting worse, and making more and more excuses as time wore on. The oddest part is that whenever Alexa invoked the excuse of my bad knee, whenever she had a pill at the ready for me when I awoke at night, I viewed her as an ally, the only one who understood me.
The addiction was my fault. But she feasted on my weakness. If I was the captain of my personal Titanic, she was my first mate, whispering sweet nothings, telling me what a good job I was doing steering the wheel, and don’t worry about those glaciers. I can’t forget that. If I do, I’ll lose everything.
But now is not the time to get into all of that. This moment calls for a defter touch.
“I have to focus on ‘James Drinker’ or whatever his name is,” I say. “He has to be my singular focus.”
She watches me with those wide deer eyes, wounded, fighting tears again.
“You’re doing this because of this man?” she says. “Or because of the drugs?”
She recalls, of course, that I mentioned the addiction when I broke up with her. And now I’m talking about a serial killer.
“It’s both things,” I say. “But this man—he’s dangerous. And he’s not done. I need to catch him, and I need you to be far away so you’re out of harm’s way.”
She grabs my forearm. “Just give me one more chance. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’ll be whoever you want me to be. Please, just one. What can it hurt?”
I gently peel her fingers off my arm and pull away, get to my feet. “I’m afraid it’s over, Alexa. That’s not going to change. So please accept that.”
“I don’t. I don’t accept that.”
I start for the door.
“I gave you everything!” she cries. “I gave you every part of me. I opened myself up to you in every way because I trusted you.”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry how this turned out,” I say. “You deserve better. But it’s over and it’s not going to change. You need to understand that.”
She breaks eye contact, tears flowing freely, her
jaw steeled.
I reach the door and open it.
“Shauna turned you, didn’t she?” she says. “She’s been trying to break us up all along. She’s staying with you right now, isn’t she? She’s being super-helpful about your ‘recovery,’ I’ll bet. Yeah, I’ll bet she is.”
“This has nothing to do with Shauna,” I say.
“That’s bullshit.” She laughs with bitterness.
“Good-bye, Alexa. Please take care of yourself.”
Her eyes are suddenly ablaze with fury, her mouth tangled, her hands balled in fists. My stomach clenches up, stealing my breath. I turn away so she can’t see me.
“This is not over,” she says. “You think this is over?”
I catch my breath, squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s over, Alexa.”
“One phone call to the police hotline,” she says. “That’s all it would take.”
I pause, gritting my teeth, my abdominal muscles twisting into knots, my stomach in upheaval, black spots dancing before my eyes. I need to get home. I have to get home.
“Yup, that’s all it would take,” I say before I pull open the door and leave.
87.
Jason
1:20 P.M.
I stagger through my door and collapse onto the cold tile of my town house foyer. My stomach unleashes its contents, but there aren’t any contents, only bitter, sticky liquid in my mouth. I put my face down on the tile and try to catch my breath. The floor spins and jukes beneath me.
Something they don’t tell you: The first days of withdrawal are not the hardest. It’s the time after those first few days, when your mind and body are settling in on a new reality—that the fun candy isn’t coming in like it used to—that the mind and body decide to tell you what they think of that decision.
Shauna comes rushing down the stairs. She came with me this morning to my house to help pack Alexa’s clothes and toiletries, and we decided to stay at my place for the rest of the day. A change of scenery, mix things up, keep me out of a funk—amateur psychology, but we’re doing the best we can.
“Take this,” she says, handing me a pill. I’m past seven hours now. I did a shit job of planning this thing. “Don’t chew it, Jason, no matter how much you want to.”
I do what she says. I swallow it and wash it down with water she gives me. It will work the way it’s supposed to—slowly releasing pain suppression, albeit over a short time window—instead of the way I typically took it, crushing it between my teeth to get the entire impact all at once. Every time I’ve taken one of these over the last several days with Shauna’s oversight, I’ve had to fight the instinct to bite down, to release all of the glorious love instantaneously. This process would probably be easier if I had the kind of OxyContin that is typically marketed these days, time-release pills that are crush-proof so addicts can’t do exactly what I used to do and go for the instant home run. But someone would have to prescribe that for me, and nobody will, certainly not Dr. Evans, whom I haven’t seen in a month. So I’m left with the ones I purchased from Billy Braden, the crushable boys.
Shauna helps me up the stairs, which isn’t easy given our size differential, but somehow I make it to the couch in my living room. I curl up on my side in the fetal position while she examines me. I am shivering and sweating. My head is screaming, the high-pitched whine that televisions make when they’re doing a test: This is a test, this is a test of the emergency broadcast system, this is only a test, BRRRRRRRRRRRR—
“This is too hard for us alone,” she says. “I was beginning to think we could do this. You were doing so well. But Jason, this is—”
“I’m not . . . not checking into a . . . not yet . . . not yet . . .”
She buries her face between my neck and shoulder. “Keep fighting, Jase,” she whispers. “Will you keep fighting?”
“I’ll keep . . . fighting,” I say, as I lurch forward again, more dry-heaving. “Shit, Shauna,” I say between halting breaths, “how did I . . . ever let this . . . happen?”
“It happens to the best of people,” she says, wiping my wet hair off my face, stroking my cheek. “It’s poison. It ruins people. But it didn’t ruin you, Jason. You stopped in time. You’re going to break free of this. You have to believe that.”
“This isn’t . . . this isn’t going to end well . . . you know that . . .”
“It is going to end well, Jason. You’re going to beat this.”
“No,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut, my hands clutching my stomach. “I mean Alexa . . . Something bad’s go—going to happen . . .”
88.
Shauna
4:30 P.M.
Jason begins to stir, making wake-up noises on the couch, where he’s been since he came home a few hours ago. Something really turned him sideways today. None of these days has been good, but these last few hours have been the worst by far. It’s unnerving, to put it gently, seeing him like this. He was taking this on bravely, using exercise and activity to keep his mind off things, even extending his withdrawal interval from six hours to seven. It was bad, sure. He threw up and cramped up and couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a picnic. But he had a game plan and he was sticking to it. He seemed to be succeeding. I was beginning to think I’d overplayed this whole recovery thing in my mind, that this was going to be easier than I thought.
I don’t think that anymore. The hour that Jason endured when he first stumbled into the house was his worst hour, twenty times over, constantly retching and seizing up, sweating profusely and trembling at the same time. I almost dialed 911 for an ambulance, but he wouldn’t let me, he said he was okay. After some amount of OxyContin infiltrated his system, he began to calm, but still not as much as I’d hoped. It wasn’t until he fell asleep an hour ago that I felt safe even leaving his side on the couch.
He sits up now, moaning. I’m behind him, by the breakfast bar in his kitchen, looking at my laptop online at detox clinics. “Hey, sunshine,” I say, coming over to him, sitting next to him on the couch. “Rough ride you had there.”
His hair is matted from sleep and sweat. “Yeah, it wasn’t too fun. I got too cute with the time intervals. I need—”
“You need to get professional help,” I interrupt. “You need to quit trying to self-administer your recovery. I don’t care about ‘James Drinker’ or Alexa or anybody else. That will all sort itself out. I only care about one thing right now, and that’s getting you clean. You need to go in now, Jason. Tomorrow. Let’s do it the right way.”
“Okay.”
“I know how much you—What? Did you say . . . okay?”
“Okay,” he says. “You’re right. If I don’t beat this, nothing else will matter. I’ll check in somewhere tomorrow.”
“Oh, Jason.” I put my face against his. It’s not like Jason to give in so easily on something like this. He must realize it now, too, the climb he’s facing, how hard this really is.
“This thing is kicking my ass,” he says. “I took way too much of this crap for way too long.”
A bit of color has returned to his face. Out of the woods, for the moment. Some awful moments, followed by some not-so-awful moments. That’s what this is going to be like, I realize, this roller-coaster recovery.
“You want to eat?” I ask. The only thing he’s been able to tolerate is peanut butter toast.
“No . . . not now.”
“You have to try.”
“Later. Don’t make me eat right now.”
At five o’clock, his highness finally dines on peanut butter toast and a bottle of water. At five-thirty, he throws up. At six o’clock, he does push-ups to failure (that’s how jocks talk about weight lifting, doing reps “to failure”), which in this case is seventeen push-ups, not bad by most people’s standards but low for Jason. At seven o’clock, it’s time for another pill—back to six-hour intervals—and he forces himself to swallow it; at first I think the pill must be hard to swallow, but then I realize that’s not it, that he’s really fighting the urge to chew it up and get
a surge of the good stuff all at once.
At eight o’clock, he’s feeling pretty good. He has good color. His eyes are clear. He has enough energy for thirty-five push-ups.
At a quarter past eight—actually 8:16, to be precise—his telephone rings, the landline, a portable phone collecting dust on a rechargeable cradle in the corner of the room.
“Hey, my cell phone,” he says, patting his pockets as he stands up. “Where’s my cell? Oh, shit—I left it at Alexa’s. I left my cell at Alexa’s.” He walks over to the portable phone and checks the caller ID. “Speak of the devil,” he says.
“Don’t answer it. Or answer it, if you want to,” I quickly add.
He lets out a long sigh and picks up the phone. “Hello? What? I can’t under—Okay, slow down . . . slow down, what? Where—where are you? Where are you?” Jason goes quiet for a long time.
“Jason, what’s going on?” I holler.
He puts a finger to his lips to shush me—right, he doesn’t want Alexa to know I’m here with him, and there I go shouting to him.
Jason turns his back to me, resting a hand on the top of his head as he listens. “What now? It’s hard to hear you—we’re talking over—go ahead. I said go—what? Say that—say that again.”
Jason’s posture goes ramrod straight.
“I’m coming over,” he says. “Sit tight. I’ll be right over.”
“What?” I say, when Jason punches out the phone.
He turns to me. “I have to go,” he says. “I—I have to go.”
89.
Jason
8:50 P.M.
I find a parking space on Wadsworth, a few houses down from Alexa’s bungalow, and race up the steps to her door. I knock on the door and it falls open.