You Got Nothing Coming

by Jimmy A. Lerner

  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 palm 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.

  I was just worried about the Monster making an unpleasant appearance. So far our conversation had adeptly avoided any mention of that night in Denny's— Dwayne's Fifth Step was the proverbial elephant in the living room that we chose not to notice.

  Dwayne waved a hand dismissively when I rose to leave.

  "These plates are nothing— hang out with me for a while." To demonstrate his housekeeping system, Dwayne grabbed both plates and silverware and tossed them on top of the reeking pile in the sink.

  I followed him into the kitchen, planning a quick getaway, when, for the second time that evening, I felt an iron grip on the back of my arm.

  "Look, Jimmy, don't go just yet. I haven't really made many new friends since Caroline filed for divorce and left with the kids."

  "Caroline?"

  "My wife. Well, my ex-wife. Come on, let me show you something."

  Dwayne led me into a small bedroom that smelled even more mephitic than the living room. Bed unmade, more piles of dirty, stinking clothes on the floor, plastic prescription bottles on the bureau, the floor, the nightstand, and on top of his dirty clothes. Pills were scattered all over.

  There was a stale cooked smell to the air. In the corner beside a pair of stiffened socks was a bloody piece of cotton. With the Vicodin and Chivas and Soma warmly embracing in my brain, I thought of one of the signs you see in every A.A. meeting: LIVE AND LET LIVE— the recovery version of "judge not, that ye be not judged."

  Dwayne had one of those skillfully customized closets with a dozen small shelves for— who knows? Hatboxes? Shoes?

  Handguns of every make and model shone darkly from the shelves. Swords and hunting knives were mounted on the closet walls.

  "You wanted to show me your weapons collection?"

  "No. Anyway, this is nothing— the good stuff is in the garage. Wanna see?"

  "No thanks, I'm fine. I saw enough armor and artillery in the army."

  This disclosure of my martial history seemed to ignite Dwayne into a frenzy. "The fucking army? Me too, man! What did you do?" Dwayne was vibrating with pleasant anticipation inside his army-surplus jungle boots.

  "As little as possible," I said modestly. "What was your MOS?"

  "My what?"

  "Your MOS." Everyone who has ever been in the army knows, even decades later, his MOS— Military Occupational Specialty.

  Dwayne searched the closet ceiling for the correct answer to the MOS trick question. "I was with the Rangers, you know, Special Forces." With the instinctual gesture of the pathological liar, Dwayne stared directly into my eyes. Earlier today his eyes had been bright green. Now they were brown. How many tinted contacts did he own?

  "Oh, so you were a 12 Zebra MOS," I suggested, inventing a nonexistent specialty.

  Dwayne didn't even blink. "Exactly— but a lot of our MOSs were classified." A nice touch to the lie, that cagey qualification.

  "I can understand that," I humored him. I knew the Monster was close— just one wrong remark away— and his right hand was just a few inches from his Closets 'R' Us armory.

  "Jimmy, this is so great! Your being a veteran, like me. And also divorced. But I wanted to show you my Caroline and the kids."

  Dwayne circled around the cesspool of his bed. Stood staring at the glass-framed photos that covered the wall. I stepped over a burned teaspoon and stood beside him.

  A beautiful young woman, dark hair spilling down to her waist, reclined in a chaise lounge under a massive umbrella on a beach. Three small children in bathing suits, two boys and a girl, played with pails and shovels nearby. There was another photo of the same woman, this time on horseback. Another of her behind the wheel of a red sports car.

  There was no sign of Dwayne in any of the pictures.

  Tread lightly here, Jimmy-boy. You already pulled his covers on his bogus MOS. "She's beautiful, Dwayne. And those are your kids? You must be real proud."

  "Thanks, Jimmy— I am. I just wish I had been able to get custody. I haven't seen the kids in a long time."

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "Well, it's been real tough." Dwayne seemed to brighten at the thought of how tough it had been for him. Must be that stoical Ranger training. "But I'm not going to lay my problems on you— you just got divorced. I know the beginning is the most painful part."

  "Well, I'm hoping it gets better. Look, Dwayne, I have to run. I have a marketing presentation to the Board of Directors at eight in the morning and I have to review my notes."

  "Sure, guy— hey, I didn't mean to hold you up. I know how it is. I used to be an office grind myself. The old nine-to-five."

  "What do you do now, Dwayne? I remember you were a sales consultant or in computers?"

  "I was. Right now I'm on disability again— the shoulder is permanently damaged— but I have my own network marketing business. Health care products. I have about seven hundred guys in my downline now. MLM is the wave of the future."

  "MLM?"

  "Multilevel marketing."

  "Is that anything like a pyramid scheme?"

  "Not one bit— that's a common misconception. MLM is the most powerful sales distribution channel ever developed to move products. You don't sell a product, you sell a business opportunity!"

  "That sounds great," I said, wading over and through the Suck! debris and dirty clothes in the living room. Get the door open. Must have fresh air. Behind me Dwayne called out, "Hey, Jimmy, want to do this again tomorrow night? I really enjoy your company. I think we have a lot in common."

  "Thanks, Dwayne, I'm busy tomorrow night," I called out from the safety of my stone walkway.

  "How about Wednesday night?" Dwayne yelled.

  "I'll call you if that works for me, Dwayne. Thanks again."

  "Night, buddy."

  "Good night, Dwayne."

  Of course, the Monster called me.

  * * *

  After escaping relatively intact from the Monster's putrescent parlor, I attacked the last of the boxes stacked in the living room. Beneath a pillow and some cans of tuna fish the F.W. had thoughtfully packed for me, I uncovered the ivory chess set. The F.W. had bought it for me on our tenth anniversary and I loved it. The chess set and the piano were the only two items I had wanted from the accumulated debris of a fifteen-year marriage.

  I decided against calling the girls— too late— made my bed, locking the sheets down tight with hospital corners the way my drill sergeant had taught me long ago. I took a Trazodone and a Restoril and was sleeping when the phone rang.

  "Jimmy? Hey, guy, hope I didn't wake you." I glanced at the lighted alarm clock on my nightstand— two in the morning.

  "Dwayne?"

  "Yeah, buddy, look… I'm just calling to see if you want to be my guest at the Yankee-A's game on Saturday. I got two box seat tickets behind home plate and I thought we could really have some fun." The Monster was clearly shifting pharmaceutical gears now— he was slurring.