The Clarinet Polka (59 page)

*   *   *

The next remotely coherent thought I had, Connie was telling me that she was going to move back into the house with her husband and kids for the Christmas holidays. She wanted me to get lost for a couple weeks. She opened up her purse and peeled out something on the order of two hundred bucks and handed it to me. “What the hell's this?” I said.

“I know you don't have much money. Buy your family some Christmas presents.” You see, I'd led her to believe that all those times when I was in the Floss Hotel I was going back home and staying with my parents and working for Vick Dobranski.

I go, “Honey, I can't take this.” It was the most she'd ever offered me at one clip, and believe it or not, I was ashamed.

“Sure you can. We've been over this a million times.” Her standard line was that there was a trust fund in Baltimore and it paid her once a month. To get paid, all she was required to do was remain alive, and I was one of the main reasons she was still remaining alive.

So I took her money and moved into the Floss, and I thought, hmmm, maybe I could go home for
Wigilia
. Yeah, that'd be real nice. I could tell them I drove back from Nashville for it. That'd makes sense. It's only a day's drive. Of course I'd have to show up reasonably sober or Old Bullet Head would bounce my ass out the door, but I'd have a
reason
to stay reasonably sober, wouldn't I? If I tried real hard, I could do it. Sure I could.

I drank like a fish till the day before Christmas. My theory was I should get it out of my system. And then I had only—well, maybe only three or four shots before I went out to do my Christmas shopping. I had to stay reasonably sober, didn't I? So I drove over to the St. Stevens Mall and wandered around the stores for a while, not ready to part with any of my hard-earned cash yet, just planning what I was going to buy, and you know, comparing prices. And eventually it hit me that I wasn't going to make it through with only that pissy little bit of booze in me.

There's a nice tavern just off the highway, and I go sailing in there and have a boilermaker just so I can feel good enough to finish my shopping and get my sorry ass down to South Raysburg in time for dinner. Well, that first boilermaker tastes so good, I have another one, and then, guess what? The mall's closed, and I'm in the tavern dead drunk, and it occurs to me that there's no way I'm going home that night so I might as well have a few more drinks to console myself, because I'd really wanted to go home with some nice Christmas presents for everybody. It's just a damn good thing I hadn't told anybody I was coming.

The next I know it's sometime around midnight and the bartender's tapping me on the shoulder because I've passed out cold on the bar. “Merry Christmas, buddy,” he says, “get the fuck out of here.”

Making it from the bar to my car was a major effort, and as soon as I started to drive, I noted the fact that I had become one of those highway menaces you hear so much about. Concentrating real hard, I got into St. Stevens, and I got to Connie's, and that was the end of my road. Her Mustang was parked out front, and I thought, shit, she didn't go anywhere, but I walked around to the back, and her apartment was dark. I tried the one window I thought she might have left open, but it was locked, and then I thought about the air conditioner. It was me who'd put it in, right?

I pushed the window up, and I fiddled around until I got the wing nuts on the plastic sliders loose, and I gave the unit a push, and it made this enormous crash hitting the floor. Then I boosted myself up and through the window. I felt real bad missing Christmas Eve with my family, but, you know, there's a consolation to everything. Connie bought her gin by the case.

I kept meaning to clean Connie's place up—I'd been planning to do a real good job of it—and get the hell out of there and back to the Floss, but somehow I never managed to do it. And January rolls around, and I'm laying there on the couch watching something or other on the tube, and I hear a car out front, and then I hear the door unlock, and there's Connie with two suitcases. She takes one look at me and she just stops dead.

She looked like a million bucks. She'd had her hair cut again and even got her nails painted. Wearing a nifty little brown suit, shoes that matched, the whole bit. Even her purse matched. Looking at her, you'd think there was nothing the least bit wrong with her. But yours truly wasn't looking like a million bucks. It'd been awhile since I'd had a shave or a shower, and I wasn't totally loaded. Not quite yet I wasn't.

Well, her apartment just reeked of cigarette smoke, and she looked around at all the ashtrays piled up with butts and the beer bottles and the gin bottles and the pizza cartons and the fried-chicken cartons and the various other interesting items I'd been meaning to pick up, and she started screaming. I mean, she couldn't even get any words out, just opened her mouth and this horrible howl starts pouring out of her.

I figured I'd better do something fairly quick, so I jumped up and ran into the kitchen and grabbed a garbage bag and started stuffing things into it. And she's running along behind me, shrieking her head off, “Get out. Get out. Get out. Just get the fuck out,” and I'm going, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, let me just clean up a little here,” and she's going, “You fucking asshole, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” and it crosses my mind that if she suddenly laid eyes on some sharp object—like a carving knife for instance—I might not be remaining alive for much longer than another minute or two, so I take off out the door with my garbage bag—pretty much at a dead sprint—and I stuff the sucker into a garbage can and jump into my car and go tearing out of there.

I did feel bad about it, you know? I kept saying to myself, Jesus, Koprowski, you know what a cleanliness freak she is. How could you have done that to her?

*   *   *

I gave her a few days and then I called to see if it was okay to come back. As you can imagine, I was fairly sheepish about it. She sounded, I guess you could say, kind of grim, but she told me, yeah, I could come back. I turned up shaved and showered and not totally shitfaced. I brought her some flowers and told her how sorry I was. “Yeah,” she said, “of course you're sorry. You're always sorry.”

You know those nice gourmet dinners she liked to cook for her husband when I wasn't around? Well, they'd had themselves a real feast. Roast beef, carrots, potatoes, peas. A nice new jar of horseradish, the pink kind that's real hot. And I'm sitting there just enjoying the hell out of it—I didn't eat all that well when I was flopped at the Floss—and she's sitting on the other side of the table giving me the gimlet eye, and she says, “Jim, we've got to talk. You need help.”

I'm going, “Huh?”

She told me they'd hired a new young guy at the medical center and his specialty was Vietnam vets—like he was doing research on the topic—and a lot of Vietnam vets had addiction problems, and he was real good with that. “You're just like me,” she said. “You can't possibly get out of it on your own,” and she told me how much it was helping her to see that lady psychologist up in Pittsburgh. “I actually have hope again,” she said, and maybe this guy at the medical center could help me out too. “The VA would probably pay for it,” she said. “He has a waiting list a mile long, but I could get you jumped to the head of it. I could probably get you in there in a day or two if you wanted me to.”

“What? Your husband would get me in?”

“My husband has got nothing to do with it.”

Well, I was just furious, but I was choking down the food and trying to restrain myself, you know, till I could see which way the wind was blowing. Now like I told you, back in those days I was the king of denial, and it never crossed my mind to think, hmmm, it seems to me I've heard this song before. Hell, maybe I'll give it a shot. I'm not exactly a Vietnam vet, but I sure have an addiction problem. What have I got to lose? Oh, no, that would have been way too sensible for me. What I was thinking was, hey, what's going on here? Connie wants to get me off her hands. So I thanked her for her concern about my sorry state and told her I'd think about it.

*   *   *

Well, I did think about it, and all of a sudden I'm starting to get this funny picture. Like, hey, wait a minute, you know what's kind of odd? She spends a couple weeks living at home with her husband, and then as soon as she moves back into her own place, she invites him over for dinner. It's kind of obvious, right? They're getting back together. So of course she wants to get rid of me.

But I still couldn't quite make it all add up. Why was her car parked out front the whole time she was gone? And when she came back, did she look like somebody who's just spent a couple weeks with her husband and kids just six blocks away? With her two suitcases and her purse, and her hair and makeup all nice, in her expensive little brown suit and her high heels? Hell, no. That's what you look like when you've just flown into the Pittsburgh Airport and ridden the limousine down to the valley. Coming back from where? Baltimore?

Okay, so I'm basically one of these dumb-shit types who believes anything you want to tell me unless I've got some reason to think otherwise. All of a sudden, I've got some reason to think otherwise. So the next time she tells me to get lost for a few days, I don't just get dead drunk. No, I stay in fairly good shape, and I drift over to St. Stevens about nine o'clock at night.

I've pretty well memorized all the cars that park on her street, but there's one I've never seen before, and it's an unusual car for the Ohio Valley—a dark green Volvo, and not your old beater either, but a bright shiny job straight from the workshops of those efficient snowbound elves of Sweden. I'd figured her husband for a Corvette kind of guy, but it could be I was wrong. And Connie's Mustang is parked where it always is. And the lights are on in her apartment. So there she is having dinner with her husband. Maybe.

But if by some odd chance it's not her husband, then good old Dr. Bradshaw should be at home with his kiddies, right? Well, I'd looked up the address in the phone book, so I drifted over there and had a look. Guess what? The house is empty. For Sale sign in front of it with the name of a real estate agent. I suppose that makes sense, I'm thinking. After Connie moved out, he probably wanted a smaller place.

The next day after I scrape myself together, I'm not sure how much sense it makes. I call the real estate agent. Tell him I've just relocated from Phoenix with my wife and two kids and I'm looking around for a house. He's just delighted to hear from me. Yep, that house is perfect for a family. And it's a real bargain. Yes, yes, it's a sad situation. Real messy divorce, you know. They're desperate to sell. The wife's here; the husband took the kids and moved out of town. They've dropped their price several times now, and if I made them a serious offer, they'd probably come down again. “Why, good heavens,” I say—ol' innocent me—“and how long has that house been on the market anyway?” Since August, he says.

I look up Dr. David Bradshaw in the phone book and call the number. The girl answers, says, “Dr. Peterson's office.”

“I thought it was Dr. Bradshaw's office.”

“Dr. Peterson is taking Dr. Bradshaw's patients. Can I book an appointment for you?”

So I tell her that Dr. Bradshaw is the only physician in the Western Hemisphere—and I've tried many—who understands my bizarre medical condition, and I really need to see him. She says sorry, he's no longer at the St. Stevens Medical Center. Oh, I say, where is he? She isn't sure she can divulge that information. She has to check on it. Maybe if I called back— No, no, no, I really need to see the guy. I've been seeing him on a regular basis. She's getting really annoyed at me. “Why, I don't know what you're talking about. Dr. Bradshaw hasn't been here since August.”

That night I drive over to Connie's, and there's the green Volvo. Does the asshole have enough sense to lock his car? No, of course not. I slip into the passenger seat. The glove compartment's not locked either. The car's registered to Dr. Andrew R. Hamilton. Am I surprised? Well, not by much. Yeah, it's that good old Dr. Take-one-at-bedtime-Do-not-use-with-alcohol Hamilton—yeah, it's the great Dr. Seconol himself. I'm out of his car like a ghost and around to the back alley. Then I'm standing in the same big black shadow I was in when I watched them yank Connie out of there on a stretcher.

The kind of girl Connie was, it'd never in a million years occur to her to draw the drapes. And I'm just totally blown away, and what's getting to me is not what's going on in Connie's apartment—no, it's pretty much what I expected—but the kicker is the guy. I'd been expecting Dr. Andrew R. Hamilton to be some perfect stranger, but no. Remember all the way back in The Italian Renaissance when that rat-faced little son-of-a-bitch doctor with the mustache came in with the nurse and saw us in the Night Owl? And Connie about went nuts? Well, that's Dr. Andrew R. Hamilton. I'd been so goddamned dumb. I'd thought his name sounded familiar.

I was so mad I walked across the alley and into the backyard and almost right up to the windows. I didn't give a shit if they saw me or not, but I had enough sense to stop just out of the light. They were in the living room having themselves a drink, talking and waving their arms in the air and generally yucking it up, so I must have caught them right in the middle of happy hour.

The kitchen table was next to the window, and I had a good view of it. She had a bottle of white wine sitting there, and some long white candles, and so she probably had one of her nice gourmet dinners in the oven, and they were going to eat what they wanted of it, and whatever was left, well, that was for me when I turned up in a couple days. And Connie was wearing an apron. One of those old-fashioned frilly things. I couldn't believe it. Connie in an apron? But then I thought, well, she'd figured me for a leather-dress-and-no-underwear sort of guy, so maybe she'd figured Dr. Andrew R. Hamilton for an apron sort of guy. Takes all kinds, right?