Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (21 page)

 
          
 
Lewis used the end of his neckerchief to wipe
his eyes, and he said, "Is she okay?"

 
          
 
"She hasn't had a drink today,"
Marcia said, and she touched Lewis's shoulder. "That's all any of us can
ask for. The rest of it's out of our hands."

 
          
 
She had something else in her hand now.
"This is yours too, Lewis," she said, and she held it up for all to see.
"God knows you’ve earned it. And God will help you keep earning it."

 
          
 
It was a Banner medallion, a gold-plated coin
about the size of a fifty-cent piece. From this distance
Preston
couldn't see any of the details on the
medallion, but he had seen one in a Lucite block in the shrink's office. On one
side was the entire Serenity Prayer, on the other a horse rampant, with rider.
You were supposed to carry it with you always, in your pocket or on a chain
around your neck, were supposed to touch it whenever you had the urge to have a
drink or swallow a pill.
Preston
wondered whether he'd bother to carry his.

 
          
 
After this morning, he wondered if he'd ever
get one.

 
          
 
It was Lewis's turn to speak. He looked at the
medallion for a long moment, then clutched it in both hands. He sniffled
noisily, and when he looked up his eyes were full of tears.

 
          
 
“Faggot," he said, and what few ambient
room noises there were—rustles and coughs and wheezes and squirms—ceased as if
a plug had been pulled. "Fruit ... flit .. . fairy . . . sissy . . . homo
. . . queer . . . gay . . . poofter . . ." He looked from face to face around
the room, and though tears ran down his cheeks, he smiled. "Rummy . . .
lush . . . drunk . . . wino . . . alky . . . Aren't those nice words?" He
paused.

 
          
 
"Who are we, all of us? How do we define
ourselves? Are we what we do for a living? Are we what we believe? When I came
in here, I thought all I was was some combination of those two things: a faggot
wino, a rummy fruit, a gay lush. Not smart or kindly or thoughtful or
interesting. Other people may have thought of me as a creative designer who worked
twelve-hour days. Other people appreciated that I gave to every charity in the
state of Florida. Not me. All that mattered to me, all I could see when I
looked in the mirror was a drunk fairy. Period. But after four weeks with you
all, I know different." He looked at Marcia. "Especially you."
He held out one of his hands, and she took it. "You taught me that I am me!
I am a good person! And anybody who doesn't like it can go . . . can go . .
."He laughed as he spoke. "... piss up a tree."

 
          
 
He stood up and said to Marcia, "Thank
you for my life," and he wrapped her in his arms.

 
          
 
Some people were crying. Several others were
trying not to. Even Preston felt a burning behind his eyes.

 
          
 
They lined up then in single file, and one by
one they hugged Lewis. When Preston reached the front of the line, he opened
his arms and prepared for the awkward embrace, but Lewis stepped backward and
held out his hand instead.

 
          
 
"It's okay," Lewis said, smiling. He
took Preston's hand and shook it and leaned forward and whispered, "Don't
hate Marcia. All she's trying to do is force you to find the love. It's in
there. You just have to find it." He released Preston's hand and turned to
the next person in line.

 
          
 
Preston moved away, baffled that everyone
seemed to be able to see so clearly inside him, and yet when he looked, all he
saw was fog.

 
          
 
"Duke," Marcia called from the door
to her office, "you and Scott take Lewis to his ride."

 
          
 
While he waited for Duke and Lewis to collect
Lewis's bags, Preston went to the cigarette machine and counted out a dollar and
a half in change. He was considering a switch to a menthol brand when the door
to I the lavatory beside the machine opened and Priscilla emerged.

 
          
 
Two criminals who had been interrogated
separately, and now each was wondering what the other had said.

 
          
 
Priscilla's eyes shifted to the background
behind Preston, to see if they were being watched.

 
          
 
“Did they read you the riot act?" she
asked.

 
          
 
“I’ll say. I tried to explain, but she wasn't
interested."

 
          
 
Priscilla nodded. "Dan too."

 
          
 
“What did you tell him?"

 
          
 
"I told him to fuck off." She smiled
sweetly. *'Is that how you say it? I wasn't sure." She touched his arm and
walked away.

 
          
 
Duke and Preston each carried one of Lewis's
suitcases, and as they walked through the corridors of the main building they
flanked him, and he walked a step ahead, like a prime minister or a pooh-bah,
and he said good-bye to people he passed, shook hands and hugged and shed a
tear with Nurse Bridget. They stood by as he checked out and signed the release
forms for Larkin and was given back the things confiscated when he had arrived:
two books, a bottle of cologne and a prescription bottle of Seconal.

 
          
 
"I'm proud of you, Lewis," Larkin
said as he watched Lewis toss the sleeping pills into a wastebasket.

 
          
 
"Not half as proud as I am, Guy,"
Lewis said, shaking hands.

 
          
 
There was no car in the roundabout when they
got outside.

 
          
 
"Did you call a cab or what?" Duke
asked Lewis, squinting into the distance, which shimmered in the heat waves
rising off the road.

 
          
 
"What time is it?"

 
          
 
Preston looked at his watch. "Ten
fifty-eight."

 
          
 
"I told him eleven o'clock," Lewis
said. "He'll be here. Or else."

 
          
 
Duke said, "Or else what?"

 
          
 
"I'll make his life a misery."

 
          
 
Thirty seconds later a car appeared in the
pass, and a moment after that the rented Oldsmobile turned into the roundabout.
A young man got out of the car, warily eyeing Preston and Duke.

 
          
 
Young? On second look, Preston wasn't so sure.
He seemed young, obviously wanted to be young, but it was hard to tell. He was
sleek as a mink, tan, unblemished. His black hair—too black, impossibly
black-was slicked back like one of those models for Calvin Klein underwear. He
wore a gold Cartier watch on one wrist, a gold braided-wire bracelet on the
other, no shirt, just a cotton sweater and (they saw as he walked around behind
the car and popped the trunk) heavily pleated trousers and Italian loafers with
no socks.

 
          
 
"Kevin," Lewis said as he hefted his
suitcases and carried them to the car, "this is my friend Duke and my
friend Scott."

 
          
 
Preston said, "Hi." \par
           
 
Duke said, "How y'doin'?"

 
          
 
Kevin acknowledged them with a little nod. He
picked up one of the suitcases and put it in the trunk and said to Lewis,
"I hope you've had a good month. Mine has been vile."

 
          
 
"Poor you."

 
          
 
"Poor me is right." He put the
second suitcase in the trunk and closed it. “Joy quit. On a Friday, if you
please."

 
          
 
“That must've made it hard for you."

 
          
 
“You don't know.'' Kevin returned to the front
of the car and opened the door.

 
          
 
Lewis walked to Duke and, like a French
general bestowing a Legion d'honneur, kissed him on both cheeks and said, “I’ll
write you. You don't have to write back, but I'll write you." He smiled.
"Maybe I'll take you up on your offer."

 
          
 
Lewis didn't kiss Preston. He just said,
"May I ask a favor? Let me know how Cheryl is?"

 
          
 
"Sure," Preston said.

 
          
 
Lewis turned to the car and opened the
passenger's-side door. Kevin was still standing there.

 
          
 
"Be nice, Kevin," Lewis said. "Say
good-bye."

 
          
 
Kevin didn't say good-bye. He said to Lewis,
"You know you look terrible."

 
          
 
"No, I don't," Lewis said. "I
look wonderful. And don't you forget it." As he climbed into the car,
Lewis turned his head to Preston and Duke and gave them a wink.

 
          
 
They waited until the car turned out of the
roundabout and onto the road. They waved and saw Lewis wave back.

 
          
 
"Marriage made in heaven," Duke
said.

 
          
 
Preston had reached for the handle of the
front door to the clinic when they heard someone say, "Hey!"

 
          
 
They looked around. They even looked up,
overhead, as if the voice had come from the roof. No one.

 
          
 
"You heard it," said Duke.

 
          
 
"I heard it." Preston shrugged and
reached again for the door handle.

 
          
 
"Hey!" It was a dark voice, gruff,
accustomed to being obeyed. "You wanna make a hunnert bucks?"

 
          
 
There were enough words this time to give them
a directional fix. The side of the building. So they stepped back away from the
door and looked that way.

 
          
 
A hand was sticking around the comer, holding
a hundred-dollar bill.

 
          
 
"The hell are you?" Duke said. C
mere.

 
          
 
Duke looked at Preston. "There are two of
us."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but . . ." Preston addressed
the phantom voice. "Why don't you come out of there?"

 
          
 
"Think I am, gonna rape you?"

 
          
 
"No," Preston said. "That
wasn't—"

 
          
 
"C'mon!" The voice was urgent.
"Please."

 
          
 
There was something about the
delivery—hesitation, maybe—that said that "please" was a foreign
word, like Weltschmerz or mal de mer.

 
          
 
They walked to the comer of the building and,
like children playing hide-and-seek, paused and looked at each other before
they peeked.

 
          
 
A grotesquely fat man was wedged between the
building and the fringing hedge. He was of middling height and appeared to be
as wide as he was tall. He wore a sports jacket woven into gaudy checks, a
lemon shirt and a silk tie highlighted with multicolored circles, squares and
kidney-shaped things and secured with a knot the size of a cantaloupe. His
wide, flat feet were encased in enormous slip-ons now half-buried in the dirt
beneath the hedge. This was not a man who could tie his own shoes. He was bald,
save for a reef of beige fuzz that lapped over his ears and rimmed the back of
his shiny skull. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. Sweat seemed to squeeze from
every pore on his face, as if he were turning on a spit over a fire. He might
have been thirty-five. Or fifty.