The Monster finally selected the Range Rover, a manly choice for a hardware store trip. The Mercedes would be kept in reserve for the early evening journey to Starbucks.
Or it would have been, except two minutes after Dwayne embarked on his suburban safari, a tow truck rolled up behind the Mercedes. Two burly guys wearing identical sweat-stained black tank tops over ragged Levi's emerged from the truck, one of them consulting a clipboard.
They looked like, walked like, and quacked like visitors from Planet Repo. I watched through my living room window (have to get some window treatments) as they seemed to verify information from the clipboard with the Monster's license plates and address. Apparently convinced the Mercedes was a rightful resident of Planet Repo, they quickly hooked it up and were towing it down Maple Street when the Range Rover pulled into the driveway.
Dwayne leaped out just in time to scream at the Mercedes' rapidly disappearing bumper.
"COCKSUCKERS! GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SHIT!"
Had my grandpa George been there, he might have remarked that "profanity is the crutch of a crippled vocabulary."
All raging army fatigues now, the Monster started jumping up and down on the sidewalk, directing a barrage of profanities so foul that my remaining notion of propriety prohibits me from listing them all here. Veins like ugly purple ropes suddenly popped out on the Monster's linebacker sturdy neck, pulsing and palpitating with the implied promise of payback for Planet Repo.
When the jumping and cursing failed to fetch back his beloved Mercedes, the Monster started beating first his fists and then, rage fading to sadness, his head against the Range Rover's windshield, tears streaming down his cheeks. It was a transformation so extreme and curiously poignant that it was like watching someone working his way through the "stages of mourning" at a lightning pace, moving from rage and denial to grief and acceptance in seconds.
The Monster must have really loved that Mercedes.
Dwayne finally extracted an Ace hardware sack from the Range Rover, crossed the street without looking first (only in California are people so trusting), and calmly strolled down my walkway.
I opened the front door. "Problem?" I asked.
Hassleman managed a weak grin, the affable mask firmly back in place. "No problem," he said, handing me a bag of lightbulbs. "I'll straighten it out tomorrow— hell, I paid eighty grand in cash for that car." On the journey to get my M.B.A. I suffered through a few financial management and accounting classes and I didn't recall ever hearing that cash had the downside risk of bouncing. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
I took out my wallet to pay for the lightbulbs, but Dwayne waved it off.
"Consider it a housewarming gift." He grinned, eyes still moist with Mercedes grief.
"Thank you. Listen, I have a lot of stuff to put away—"
"No problem, guy, I got a few things to take care of myself, a little business, but why don't you drop by later, say seven or so, and I'll barbecue us a couple of steaks in the backyard. I noticed your fridge is empty."
What was he doing looking in my refrigerator— we didn't put any food away. I had been planning to pick up some spicy-hot Mongolian beef and wonton soup (paying extra for the crispy noodles), but my back and neck were singing in pain after wrestling with boxes all day. The prospect of driving into downtown Danville (six whole blocks) exhausted me. The alternate plan of a delivered pizza (extra topping for the newly divorced) depressed me.
"That would be great, Dwayne. Listen, I appreciate your help today and thanks again for the lightbulbs."
"Hey, what are neighbors for?" he said brightly, all the rage of a few moments before nowhere in evidence.
Front door closing, Hassleman's jungle boots bouncing over the cobblestones, then making a diagonal cut at the curb to cross the street and reach his driveway. He stops by the Range Rover, considers.
Then backs the Rover into his garage.
Thwunk! Metal garage door meets the concrete below.
Somewhere in a never-imagined future a steel door is sliding open from a concrete wall. Two steel sleeping trays in an empty cell, a rusted metal toilet, graffitied cinder block.
Just waiting for me.
* * *
During the course of my first day in the house on Maple Street I unconsciously reenacted the housekeeping rituals of the Newly Divorced Guy. The furniture guys pulled up in a truck and delivered my brand-new black leather La-Z-Boy recliner. They placed it in the living room in front of my thirty-five-inch TV without my even having to tell them that was precisely where I wanted it.
I hadn't luxuriated in the comfort of a huge recliner since my bachelor days, fifteen years before. The wife considered recliners to be male barbarisms whose true subversive purpose was to destroy the tasteful communal decor of the family room. She preferred sectional sofa arrangements, not just for the aesthetics but to facilitate family bonding.
Recliners were the last refuge of the solitary scoundrel.
The cable guy arrived to ensure that I had twenty-four-hour access to old Rocky and Rambo movies, to Arnold and Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, reruns of Bonanza (give me dark, brooding Adam over punk-ass Little Joe any day), The Twilight Zone, The Prisoner, and my all-time favorite, Leave It to Beaver, featuring network TV's first true sociopathic character (also a favorite), Eddie Haskell.
Could my childhood affinity for Eddie— that rascal!— account for my unthinking acceptance of the Monster's barbecue invitation?
I tipped the cable guy generously to hook up my VCR to my TV. Despite my M.B.A. in telecommunications management and my strategic "white papers" extolling technological "convergence," I could never manage to get the VCR to do anything more than play back rented movies. The F.W. had always handled the high-tech details of modern living. VCR hookup was her job. I was clueless.
The movers arrived with more stuff from my "old house" that the F.W. thought I could use. Two big beer-gutted guys from the furniture company arrived and installed a new king bed in the master bedroom, two twin beds for the girls in "their" bedroom. (I hoped they didn't mind sharing a bedroom.)
I tried to replicate the amenities of their bedrooms at home— a Nintendo, a color TV, a telephone, a computer, a CD player. A mature and amicable divorce should never interfere with the spoiling of the children. The F.W. and I agreed on that. Though not Jewish, the F.W. had the heart and soul of a Jewish mother.
The phone guy came out and activated dial tone, added a second line to ensure uninterrupted Internet access (no way I was going to pay for the phone company's overpriced DSL connection), and passed on rumors he'd heard from the union that the phone company was an acquisition target for an even bigger Baby Bell. Another generous tip and twenty minutes later the computer, monitor, scanner, printer, and modem were happily interfacing in my bedroom.
The sun was setting in a velvet haze over Mount Diablo when I was finally able to take a break. I slothed out for a minute in my new La-Z-Boy, adjusting the level until my head was about an inch off the floor (optimal relaxation position) and my feet somewhere in the heavens. A serene bachelor moment except the blood was rushing to my head and I couldn't breathe.
Also too quiet. Way too quiet. With the exception of the occasional business trip or "marketing retreat" to learn how to Be Here Now, I hadn't been separated from my wife or the girls in many years.
As part of the joint custody and visitation schedule, the girls would spend every weekend and one weeknight every other week with me. That was the formal agreement; in practice the F.W. and I would be as flexible as circumstances required. If her job took her away on a business trip during the week or she just needed a few days to herself, I would gladly have the girls, and she would do the same for me. We both read the books and articles about how to minimize the trauma to the children. We were determined to have a collaborative, consultative divorce. No bickering in front of the girls and absolutely no behind-the-back bad-rapping each other to the kids.
Five more days till Friday, thoug
h. I tried to adjust the recliner lever to return me to a more or less horizontal position. Hopeless— my center of gravity had sucked me into a potentially critical condition. I rolled up and to my left and quickly received a reminder about the unresilient qualities of a hardwood floor. Have to buy some throw rugs or something. Meanwhile my back was killing me.
I had been in a car accident almost a year ago, shortly after receiving my two-year A.A. chip and horrifying the group with my "chair." A teenager driving his parents' monster SUV rear-ended me while I was stopped for a red light. It took two operations for the neurosurgeons to make what repairs they could. The first one was called a "cervical discectomy with fusion." The fusion involved removing a chunk of my hipbone and fusing it to my neck. The surgery wasn't successful. The pain, numbness, and lack of mobility persisted.
No problem for Dr. Feldman, the neurosurgeon. A few months ago he brought me back to the hospital for a second operation on the rest of the disks in my neck— "a laminectomy." Don't ask me the technical difference in the operations. All I know is that the first one, the fusion, left me with scars on my throat and hip. The second adventure into pain awarded me with a thin scar on the back of my neck. I spent months off from work on full benefits, wearing one of those hard collars, going to physical therapy, and eating pain pills.
I finally gave up the hard-collar habit but kept the pain pill addiction.
The La-Z-Boy was killing my back.
I went to the bathroom, where I had just put my Vicodin prescription into the medicine cabinet. The instructions on the bottle said "take one tablet every four hours."
Maybe it was selective dyslexia (or more likely, my Inner Dope Fiend), but I interpreted the instructions as take four tablets every hour. Sometimes even that wasn't enough to block out the pain. After almost a year of taking painkillers, my tolerance for the pills had increased to frighteningly high levels. When I mentioned this to the neurosurgeon, he increased the prescription strength and cheerfully suggested a third "procedure." The proposed third surgery sounded like even less fun that the first two.
Something about inserting titanium rods into my spinal cord.
Using big metal bolts and screws.
I decided to take a rain check.
I went back to the recliner and tried to read the newspaper. Gave up after catching myself rereading a paragraph about the expanding hole in the ozone. Like I didn't have enough problems.
The muscles in my arm started jumping and convulsing in electrical twitches. More annoying than painful. The neurologist said it was a "normal" side effect of spinal surgery. Called it a "fasciculation." Like the big medical word made it acceptable. Normal. Normal or not, I went back to the medicine cabinet and swallowed an abnormal dose of Soma tablets.
I tried calling the girls to see if they wanted to spend the night with me. I was prepared to bribe them with pizza, soda, popcorn, candy, and the R-rated movie of their choice from Blockbuster.
Of course, I got the answering machine: "Hi! We're not in right now but if you leave a message we'll return your call as soon as we can." I hadn't been gone twenty-four hours and already my greeting had been deleted, my masculinely firm (but friendly) words relegated to the digital dustbin of divorce.
After attending a phone company training session on Network Security, Redundancy, and Survivability, I advised the F.W. that one never leaves a taped greeting proclaiming "We are not in right now." Very reckless. Might as well say, "Please come rob us— now would be a good time." I recall pontificating at length about this. Her eventual desire for a divorce did not surprise me nearly as much as the fact that she was able to endure me for fifteen years. She had the patience, kindness, and love of a saint. It was impossible for me to resent her or not think kindly of her.
A couple of months ago (using the surgeries as an excuse) I started drinking again. I congratulated myself on the fact that I didn't drink every day and I always waited until after 5 P.M., the gentlemanly cocktail hour, unlike real alcoholics, who have no control and think nothing of drinking Thunderbird for breakfast. As promised, the wife filed for divorce.
It was too quiet. I clicked on the TV. A minute later clicked it off. Turned on the CD player, popped in a Neil Young. Too whiny and depressing. Neil was going through some sort of artistic stage or something.
I switched to radio, then put the TV back on with no sound. No improvement.
Finally I reached for my briefcase and extracted the half pint of Chivas I had purchased on the way home from work. I also congratulated myself on not buying a full pint or a fifth like a real alcoholic would have done. I knew I couldn't get drunk on just a half pint. I would also sip my drink slowly. Like a gentleman.
I was determined to control my drinking. Once again.
A.A. members like to say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I was insane.
* * *
At 7 P.M., after some lonely wallowing in delicious self-pity, I went down the street to partake of the Monster's barbecue.
Much has been written and sung of the things we do for love and friendship. Not as much about the mistakes we make trying to banish loneliness.
When Dwayne opened his front door, I was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of rot and mold and a mustiness so pungent I suspected wild animals were conducting dark orgies somewhere in the house. The only source of illumination was the eerie glow of a computer monitor on the living room coffee table.
"Excuse the mess," the Monster said. "My cleanup boy's been sick all week." (Cleanup boy? Where do I order one of those?)
The light from the monitor revealed a filthy beige carpet mercifully concealed by Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets, piles of dirty, stinking laundry, and Little Caesar's pizza boxes. There were unopened stacks of mail and Soldier of Fortune magazines nesting on top of other magazines with names like Suck!, Sperm Productions, and Bloody Fists. Through the doorless kitchen opening I could make out a three-foot-high pile of dishes congealing in what I deduced to be a sink.
"Come on— the backyard's this way." Dwayne urged me toward the sliding glass doors in the kitchen.
"You have mail," the computer announced in its upbeat female chirp.
I stopped to watch the pixels being rapidly downloaded— a blur of bytes which resolved itself into a monstrously engorged purple penis, followed quickly by a sexually ambiguous figure kneeling in a position I did not think was prayerful.
Hassleman grabbed my arm and pulled me out through the kitchen and into the backyard.
"Don't want those coals to die out. Don't know about you, Jimmy, but I like my steaks sizzling." Dwayne was extremely nervous ("I don't get much company") but also happily excited as he hand-tossed two huge steaks on a grill that looked like it had last been cleaned during the Eisenhower administration.
"Sizzling sounds good to me," I said, my appetite suddenly gone. I sat down on a wooden bench in front of a rotting picnic table. The backyard was small, with nothing living in it. No flowers, no plants, no grass— just gravel and cement and the rusted black barbecue.
I accepted a beer while Dwayne poked and prodded and flipped the meat, occasionally shaking his head sadly— he must have been mourning the loss of the Mercedes.
"That crazy Joey— what a sick fuck! Loves to send me that pornographic crap over the Net, kind of a joke."
"To each their own, Dwayne." I managed to produce this platitude from some deep reservoir my family could draw from at will.
Halfway through his sizzling steak, Dwayne leaped up as if he had just remembered he left a taxi outside, meter running.
"Got to drain the lizard," he said. "The beer goes right through me." I watched him pass the tower of dirty dishes, then briefly study the computer monitor before turning off the power. Twenty minutes later he returned from "the bathroom" in an ebullient mood. Popped the top off another Heineken by placing the bottle cap on the edge of the table and smacking down hard with the pal
m of his hand. Very macho.
I was underwhelmed.
"This is great! Just great, having company, just kicking back with the guys for some steak and brewskis." I didn't know there were other guys present. Dwayne must have "drained his lizard" from his pet white rock— he had suddenly developed a severe summer cold. He dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief.
An increasingly bloody handkerchief.
"These summer allergies are a bitch," he said.
"Yeah, must be El Niño blowing in some pollen from Bolivia," I replied— out of the side of my neck.
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing important. Listen, let me give you a hand with this stuff, then I have to get going— big day at work tomorrow. Thanks for everything, Dwayne. The steak was great." It wasn't the drug use by itself that concerned me. I wasn't that much of a hypocrite. I even had a nice Chivas-Vicodin-Soma glow going. I wasn't casting any stones.
You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish Page 33