FSF, January 2009

by Spilogale Authors

  Cheri stood, and the coat's hem touched the ground it was so large. She felt lost in it, but it was so very warm, so clean, and smelled faintly of some kind of cologne. “Thanks, mister. Thanks, but—"

  He motioned for her to sit down, she did so, and he sat on the seat next to her. “You were saying."

  "This is warm. So warm. Thanks. I was going to say I need something—you know, some stuff.” Cheri thought very hard about what she needed. “I don't know. The crawlies went away.” Her confusion transformed into weariness. “Tired,” she said. “Need some rest. That's what I need. I need a new life, but first some rest. Man, am I tired."

  "Pull your legs up so the coat covers your feet."

  "You sure?"

  "Of course. Get your feet warm and if you feel like taking a little nap, I'll stand guard."

  Cheri looked long and hard into the man's face. “I'm not a fool, mister. If you want me to do something for you, just ask."

  "I want you to take care of yourself. That's all I ever want."

  Her eyes welled with tears at his answer because, although it had to be crap, it sounded genuine. She bent over, removed her heels, held them tightly in her hand, and pulled her aching cold feet up on the seat next to her beneath the coat. She realized she was leaning against his left arm. He lifted it and put it around her shoulders. “Mister, really, I mean if you want to reach in and cop a feel or something that's okay—” she yawned. “Really that's okay."

  "Thank you, Cheri.” He patted her arm with his left hand. “I'll be too busy watching over my fortune."

  She felt herself falling asleep, wondering how much money the old guy thought he had and how this man knew her name.

  There was a moment during the night when voices half-awakened her. Cop voice.

  "Good evening, sir.” Cops say that to people who look like they got money. The rest they tell, “Move along, dirtbag. This ain't no hotel."

  "Good evening, sir."

  "Good evening, officer,” replied the man in a quiet voice.

  "Is everything all right?"

  "My daughter has had a remarkably tiring day. She thought she'd rest for a moment. I don't have the heart to wake her."

  "You from out of town?” asked the cop.

  "Mamaroneck now, but I grew up right on Central Park West."

  "Then you know late at night in a New York City park is not the safest place to be."

  "We're safe enough. You seem to have things well in hand, officer."

  The cop chuckled. “Good night, sir. Have a pleasant stay in the city."

  "Thank you, officer. Good night."

  Cheri opened her eyes and saw that she had the man's overcoat pulled up around her ears. The man had called her his daughter. It was a scam to get rid of the cop, but it felt good. For a little mini-fantasy, it felt good. Cheri snuggled in and fell asleep.

  * * * *

  When Cheri awakened daylight was coming through a window to her left, she was sitting in a chair before a desk, and there was a young woman on the other side of the desk. The desk accessory on the edge of her desk identified her as Kelly Brandt. She looked like a Kelly Brandt: blonde and blue, slim and perky. Kelly smiled brightly at her, pushed a stack of books and bound report forms at her, and said, “Good luck, Cheri."

  Kelly smiled at the next person sitting in a chair against a wall to Cheri's right and motioned for the woman to take Cheri's place. The newbie was wearing blue pajamas. Cheri saw that she was wearing blue pajamas as well. Kelly, on the other hand, was wearing a red turtleneck over gray slacks. Besides Kelly's name, her nametag said that this was a place called New Beginnings, which sounded suspiciously like a drug rehab.

  That edge of panic rose. “Doesn't this cost money?” Cheri asked.

  Kelly's eyebrows went up. “You bet it does. You're paid in full, though, provided you complete treatment."

  "Who?"

  "I'm sorry. The donor is anonymous."

  "What? How does that work?"

  "It's been going on ever since I've been here. A graduate from New Beginnings takes on the payment of two uninsured patients, provided they successfully complete treatment. Usually the new patients go on to fund two more and so on."

  "And you never find out who paid?"

  "No."

  "And if I don't finish treatment?"

  Kelly smiled. “The next piece of mail you get will be a bill for the time you spent here."

  "What if I walk out right now?” asked Cheri.

  "We'll refund your misery with interest, no charge."

  Cheri's head was numb. That bone weariness was still with her, although the crawlies seemed to have gone. What had happened to the Monopoly Man, though? Where was the man in the expensive suit who had wrapped her in his wonderful overcoat and called her his daughter?

  "Where am I?"

  "This is New Beginnings Rehabilitation Center. We're in Brooklyn."

  "How'd I get here?"

  Kelly held her hands up and out to her sides. “Sorry. I just don't know. Your form lists you as self-admitted. Are you going to give it a try?"

  Cheri looked around the office, sighed, and shook her head. “Can you tell me where I'm supposed to go now?"

  Kelly told her. Fourth floor for final room assignment, then screening, orientation, physicals, lectures, group therapy, and always the promise of a new life if she could risk letting go of the old one. AA meetings, NA meetings, talks in the lounge with other patients, one-on-ones with counselors, physicians, and psychiatrists. Writing, reading, more writing and more reading.

  Nearing the end of her stay three weeks later, Cheri had an interview at a halfway house where, after rehab, she'd live, look for a job, go to meetings, attend aftercare sessions, and become whatever it was she had the desire, the talent, and the determination to become.

  What to become? So many possible beginnings. There were some paths that were closed because of her record. Tough to get bonded as an au pair when you've done time for possession and solicitation. Many were open, though. She saw the men and women around her working at the rehabilitation center, throwing out those slender lifelines, on a good month pulling thirty percent out of the nightmare. She didn't know if she could develop the strength for that kind of work. So easy to hitch your wagon to a falling star.

  On her last night in New Beginnings, after packing, she was with a few other patients watching the news on the television in her wing's lounge when she saw a couple of familiar faces. One face was so familiar that everyone on Earth who had ever come within fifty feet of a television set or newspaper knew it: Kimberli Fallon, beautiful bad girl heiress to her father's shipping fortune, pop star, actress, divorcée, and in trouble once again. Another drunk driving bust, but this time she'd been holding flake and had beaned a New Jersey State Trooper with her cell phone. Unless her attorney could pull yet another legal rabbit out of his pricey fedora, Kimberli would be spending at least part of the near future behind bars.

  A tiny bit of Cheri delighted in this spoiled rich kid finally getting some reality dirt under her well-manicured fingernails. Then Betty, one of Cheri's groupmates, said, “Maybe this time she'll get some help."

  "Help?” said Bob scornfully. “She can afford to buy her own chain of drug rehabs."

  Betty nodded. “Which means she can also afford to keep help so far away it can never get to her."

  Cheri felt guilty about her tiny moment of glee at Kimberli Fallon's predicament. If the beautiful heiress was an addict and had the money to keep help away long enough, she was in bigger trouble than almost anyone in New Beginnings. She might have been spoiled, but that wasn't what was going to kill her. Kimberli was taxi dancing with addiction and could afford to buy up all the tickets.

  And how the news pundits seemed to delight in the rich girl maybe having to be locked up and do without makeup for a couple of weeks. The jokes: drunk Kimberli, fried Kimberli, party-'til-you-drop Kimberli. What fun. They didn't realize what they were laughing about, though: the victim o
f a fatal disease, unless she could get the help she could pay to avoid.

  Cheri got up to get a cup of tea in the floor kitchen when she heard the voice-over mention Kimberli's father, Jack Fallon. Cheri paused and glanced back at the screen. Jack Fallon's father had lost everything in twenty-nine and never got ahead another cent. Then his son Jack was born in nineteen-thirty. Twenty years later he signed on as a merchant seaman and half a century later he was a billionaire. Jack Fallon had died of a stroke two years earlier, leaving his fortune to his only child, Kimberli. His picture came up and Cheri grabbed the back of a chair as she felt her knees sag.

  Big white mustache, pinstripes, that smile, those fierce blue eyes—in her mind's eye she could still see him sitting on that loveseat in Bryant Park in October. Jack Fallon: He was the Monopoly Man. He had wrapped her in his overcoat two years after he had died.

  She slowly shook her head at her own thoughts. “I got to talk with someone."

  * * * *

  There was a floor counselor, a young woman named Shana, and they talked in Cheri's room. Cheri told Shana about that night, the beating she took, the crawlies, the Monopoly Man, her waking up in rehab with no knowledge of how she had gotten there, and that the Monopoly Man was a dead ringer for Jack Fallon, except that it couldn't be because Jack Fallon had been dead for two years.

  Explanations explain everything. Jack Fallon and his daughter Kimberli had been in the news for the past ten years, ever since the girl had turned fifteen and had been first taken into custody for vandalizing the yacht club to which her father belonged. No charges, of course, but plenty of copy and airplay. In her confused drugged state and in her desperate reach for help, Cheri simply became confused by a little salvation fantasy. She had met an imaginary Crusader Rabbit on her way to get help.

  It was all in Cheri's head.

  Maybe, thought Cheri as Shana left her room. Maybe.

  * * * *

  After Cheri graduated from the halfway house and was beginning her college education in preparation to become a treatment counselor, on a return visit to New Beginnings she met someone. She was passing through the main patient lounge on the fourth floor on her way to meet with her old group counselor when she heard a familiar voice call out, “Yo, Cheri? Is that you?"

  She turned and saw Rackshack getting up from a couch where he'd been talking to half a dozen very clean looking persons. He was still tall, dark, and wearing a Mets cap. She nodded dumbly, not knowing for certain if she should shake hands, embrace him, or run like hell. He walked over to her and stopped, his mouth wide with smiles, and looked down at her. “Girl, you clean. How long?"

  "Eight—” Her throat was very dry. “Eighteen months. How are you doing, Rack?"

  "Good,” he said as he nodded. “Real good. You doin’ all those meetings, workin’ those steps?"

  "That's my medicine. Are you visiting someone here?"

  He laughed. “No, girl. I earn my way into this hotel."

  She raised an eyebrow. “I thought Rackshack never did drugs. Drugging was for losers."

  "Got that right.” He smiled sheepishly as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Fooled you as well as me. Got a minute?"

  "Sure.” She nodded and they sat in a couch away from the other patients. They made a special kind of small talk: she apologized for stealing all that cocaine and running out on him. He expressed relief at the information because he didn't remember Cheri ever moving in with him, stealing the drugs, or moving out. All this time he thought he had used it all himself and had become immune to overdoses, a theory that had blown up in his face about three weeks ago.

  "I was dead. Out in Bryant Park under my old tree. I saw angels, swear to God, and they was laughing at me. So sick I wished I'd never been born. Then this old dude he picks me up off the ground like I was a little child. He sits me down in this seat. I don't know what I said, what he said, or anything, unnerstand?"

  Cheri nodded.

  "I remember the rattles so bad I thought my eyeballs were poppin’ out my head. This old dude, real expensive threads, he puts his overcoat on me.” Rack snapped his fingers. “Just like that I stop shakin'. Never been so warm or at peace in my whole life. Got to be at least a foot taller than that old dude, but I near got lost in his overcoat. Can't figure that. Anyway, sat me down, covered up my feet. I think I fell asleep.” He looked around and held out his hands. “Woke up in this place. You ever see a picture—"

  "The Monopoly Man,” said Cheri.

  Rackshack nodded vigorously and pointed at her. “From the game. Got handlebars on his lip just like the dude in the Monopoly game.” He glanced around to make certain no one would overhear what he planned to say next. “Maybe I'm crazy, but I thought I saw him on the TV."

  "Jack Fallon,” said Cheri.

  He stared at her. “Yeah.” He glanced down at the floor and back up at Cheri's face. “That old dude's been dead more'n three years.” He held up a hand, palm faced toward the ceiling. “So?"

  "I don't know what to tell you.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Rack—What's your real name?"

  "Luther."

  "Luther, I'm going to tell you how I wound up here. A lot of people look like a lot of people, and talking about ghosts might not be the swiftest way to get through your psych evaluation, but here it is.” And Cheri told Rackshack about her night in the park wrapped in the Monopoly Man's overcoat and how she woke up in rehab.

  When she finished, Rackshack rubbed the back of his neck, then let his hand fall to his lap. “What if it was Kimberli Fallon's old man? What if it was a ghost?"

  "Whoever it was, whatever it was, he saved my life. Yours, too, Luther, if you do the work here."

  He held up his hands, palms facing her. “You preachin’ to the choir, girl. I am a believer.” He lowered his hands. “I heard a kid named Ted talkin’ in the lounge about how he got here: Overcoat Park Express. We all crazy?"

  She looked down at her hands. “I don't know. I hope the Monopoly Man is real, though."

  Rackshack leaned back in his chair. “Monopoly Man, he say to me he watchin’ over his fortune. Later on, Cheri, he talkin’ to someone who woke me up. It was a woman. Anyways, he tell her I been through a tough day and I'm all wore out.” A pause. “He tell her I his son. His son.” A tear streaked down the left side of the man's face. Embarrassed, he laughed at the tear and wiped it off his face with the heel of his hand. “He call me his son,” he whispered. “What's it all mean?"

  Cheri took the man's left hand in both of hers. “I don't know, Luther. I'm guessing if you need to know, it'll come to you.” She leaned over, kissed his cheek, and said, “Good luck. Do what they tell you and keep off the grass."

  They both laughed and Cheri left for her appointment. When she was done she went down to Admissions to talk about arranging anonymous payment for her two patients. She thought about going to Bryant Park that night. Part of her wanted to believe Jack Fallon was there. If he was, though, she didn't know what she could make of the information. She didn't want him not to be there, though. She decided against pinching herself awake from this dream: she owed it too much.

  * * * *

  After her graduation from college and internship Cheri applied for a counseling position at New Beginnings. She was accepted and was an assistant there for a year when her lead counselor retired and recommended her to fill the opening. Cheri Trace had been a full group counselor at New Beginnings for almost two years when Kimberli Fallon's name found itself once again upon a police blotter. This time the actress's antics affected a great many drug rehabilitation facilities. While high she had driven her BMW into the rear of a police car, narrowly missing a young woman and her three-year-old son. Her mug shot was the takeoff point for a thousand talk show jokes. The party girl was getting decidedly worn around the edges. Where the rehabs came in was because this time her latest high-priced attorney thought that voluntary rehab might look better in front of the court than more pictures of her bare butt on YouTube or evening
news footage of her showboating at parties.

  Feelers were sent out to a number of rehabs. Big staff meetings at all of them and just about every rehab administrator and group counselor in the business had thrown Kimberli out of rehab before she even made it through the door.

  Too disruptive.

  Media circus.

  Couldn't possibly take her recovery seriously.

  How would the other patients be able to concentrate on their recoveries?

  At New Beginnings it was about decided by the director, staff, and counselors to tell Kimberli's attorney that she would have to go someplace else to find recovery when Cheri said, “I'll take her."

  After a stunned silence, then much ado about Cheri's relative lack of experience, aspersions regarding her possible motives, and the possible damage to her other patients, not to mention damage to the institution—

  "And,” Cheri interrupted, “there are a few conditions that must be met and a few procedural changes to make.” And she told them her plan.

  There was considerable debate. Cheri's plan was fraught with possible liabilities, licensing issues, zoning violations—or as Dr. Manter, director of New Beginnings, put it, “For all we know, you'll run afoul of Homeland Security."

  Still, the issue was what it always was: Getting the addict through the doors and clean long enough to be able to make that terrible choice. In addition, Kimberli Fallon had as much right to recovery as any pimp, crack whore, doctor, or football player. Cheri looked around the table at the faces of her fellow counselors, the staff and director of New Beginnings, recovering alcoholics and addicts every one. “After all,” she said, “none of us got to this table because of a perfect history of wise choices and good manners."

  The staff voted Cheri's plan in unanimously. Dr. Manter later asked Cheri why she had been willing to take on such a risk as treating Kimberli Fallon when the safe course would have been to steer clear of America's party girl.

  Cheri would have liked to tell the director that she owed Kimberli's father a big favor. Instead, she simply smiled.