Best Friends (32 page)

Married, of course. Two kids and a third on the way. Wife fifteen years younger, so she was five years younger than me. She was finicky and neurotic, one of those vegetarians who have to balance their proteins. Midway through each session, he'd start feeling terrible. At the end, he'd sit on the edge of the bed and stroke my arm and talk, trying to tear himself away. Why in the world did he find me irresistible? I puzzled over it all the time. If I'd asked, I'm sure he would have told me, but I didn't want to ask.

“I hate to see you suffering over your friend,” he said. “You're too loyal, you know that?”

It was one of those strange periods of time when the future seemed impossibly unclear. In Akron, Cliff came over most Tuesdays and Thursdays, the evenings he was free. In California, Sally was taking her groceries and supplies to Ben at Helga's house on the hill. I imagined her getting arrested, whom she'd call, probably first another lawyer or her father. Cliff was as concerned as I was, taking in my agony, my sighs, my sudden looking away—as if I were putting on a show. As if he were suffering vicariously, the suffering diluted by distance to no more than a pleasant twang.

“Heroin?” Cliff said. “I thought that was more of a street drug. TB'ers can be heroin addicts.”

As if we were in a holding pattern, circling in the air. It is not a lie to say events unfold, because they do.

At work, I was extremely efficient. I did good things. I did a complete history and physical on each patient I saw for the first time, including those who had been followed at the clinic for years. My rheumatologist predecessor had been getting lax, and even an illiterate drug addict can spot a lazy doctor. After I took over, the no-show rate at HIV clinic dropped from 55 to 7 percent. By the time I left, about the only patients missing appointments were dead.

 

 

 

THE PHONE RANG LATE one night. May 1987. I knew when I heard Sid's voice that this was the moment I'd been waiting for, that things were going to change.

“Clare? Sid. How are you?”

“Fine.” My tone was uncertain. Clearly there was something he wanted. “You?”

“I'm a wreck, to tell you God's honest truth. You're probably wondering why I called.”

A man who got to the point. “Yes . . .”

“I'm worried about my daughter.”

“Sally?” What a stupid question.

“Listen, I know you don't like me, I know you think I'm below you, but I thought you'd agree to talk to me for the good of Sally.”

Below you. I'd been prepared to forgive him, even like him, until the obvious hostility of those words. “Okay,” I said, haughtily. If he wanted to be below me, fine.

He seemed to be thrown for a second by my cool answer, or maybe by my agreeing so readily to talk with him. “You're not on a portable phone, are you?”

The paranoia! “No.”

Sid cleared his throat. “It's not her directly, it's what she's doing for her brother. You know he's had this drug problem, he's been in and out of rehab, he . . .” Sid stopped. “You know all that.”

“Sure.”

“And he's not cured. You know that, right?”

“Sally told me he's using heroin.”

A pause. “Okay. You know that. And you know Sally controls his day-today income, she's the executrix, she holds the purse strings. And normally, she has good judgment, I mean she's a lawyer, she's savvy, but now—”

“Is he requiring more and more heroin?”

“Requiring it, yeah, I guess that's what they do, addicts, they require it.”

“So Sally's giving him more and more money, is that it? You're worried she'll exhaust the fund?” I was pleased with myself for thinking of this, for showing Sid my financial acumen.

“No. She's using more of the fund, no question, but that's not my problem. My problem is she's, she's—”

I felt a surge of impatience. “Is it the needles? I knew she was getting him needles.”

“She's buying heroin, Clare. For Ben. She buys it for him herself.”

Now it was my turn to be shocked. I tried to imagine Sally buying drugs, pulling up to a street corner in her sedate clothes and white Volvo. “Sally? She buys drugs?”

“Almost every other day.”

“You're kidding. She told me she gave Ben the money to buy it.
She
buys it? Where?”

“A place in the Valley, she told me. She drives out and gets it and takes it to Ben. Like I said, almost every other day. She has a thousand rationalizations, you wouldn't believe. And this is Sally! You know Sally.” Sid started to sound teary. “She's my good child, Clare. She's my little girl. She's always been the light of my life.”

“How do you know she's doing this, Sid?” I thought of the listening device in Ben's old room. “Did she tell you this herself?”

Sid snorted. “She can't keep a secret from me. I saw her drive right by here, right down Mulholland, like she was on a mission. She never passes this place by, not lately, she'll always stop in. So I called up. Sally, I'm here by myself now, I said, don't I matter to you anymore? Oh, Daddy, she says. She was taking some supplies to Ben. What do you mean, supplies? I said. Like toothpaste? Dish soap? And she got rattled, I knew something was up. I pressed her. And she told me everything.” Sid moaned. “How do you think I feel, my good child ruining her life for her no-good brother?”

“Her life's not ruined, Sid. It's chaotic, sure, it's unusual, but it's not ruined. I mean, if she got caught, it might be ruined—”

“Of course it would be ruined!” Sid was almost hysterical. “And if she gets caught, that's the best of it! What's keeping someone from killing her for the drugs she's carrying? You don't know what kind of neighborhoods she goes in! What's keeping someone from finding out who she is and blackmailing her? She wanted to be a judge, remember? She had a big future! She used to dream about being on the Supreme Court.”

“She doesn't want to be a judge anymore. She told me.” I made an effort to think practically. “Can't you get Ben back in rehab?”

“I tried, I took him down to a place in Redondo Beach two weeks ago, and the next morning he escaped, and right after that I saw Sally driving past headed to that Brunhilde's house where he stays. A rehab place can't lock him up, you know. He's over twenty-one. He's got to agree to be treated. Sally says the drugs give him joy in his life. Is that crazy? So what about joy in my life? She was always the joy in my life, until she got mad—you know all about that—but lately we've been happy. I hate to say it, but her mother's death made us closer.”

“Could you get a drug counselor to talk with her?”

“If I get a counselor to talk with her, they're going to know about her, and I don't want anyone to know about her. She's a lawyer, for crying out loud. She has her career to protect.”

I agreed that was a point.

“Why don't you come out here, Clare? That's why I called you. Why don't you come out and talk some sense into her?”

 

 

 

I'M A BASIC DOCTOR. I'm not a brilliant researcher, I'm a normal everyday doc for people with a given disease. I ask them simple questions. Are you coughing? Are you wearing your condoms regularly? Do you have any anal discharge? There is nothing glamorous in my job. Maybe it was more glamorous early on, when I started at University, when the blood test for HIV had just been approved, when inhaled pentamidine to prevent pneumocystis pneumonia had just come out, when there was only one drug—AZT—to treat the virus. The general public, then, found AIDS more frightening; people were shocked that a person like me (who looked normal! who had a baby daughter!) should want to work with people with the disease. When Sally introduced me to her clients, they looked at me with something approaching awe. I'm not what you think, I'd tell them in my mind. I'm not a saint, I'm not brilliant, I'm not a hero at all.

 

 

 

“IS THIS TRUE, SALLY? Are you really buying—”

“Excuse me, Clare, but are you on a portable phone?”

“Your father asked me that too.”

“You're sure you're not on a portable phone?”

“No, I said I wasn't. Don't be paranoid. Sally, your dad said you were—”

“Now you're listening to
him
? Did he call
you
? Clare, things are complicated, I'll explain them more when I see you.”

“But I'm worried about you, Sally, I—”

“I'll explain things when I see you.” And she hung up.

 

 

 

HERE'S WHERE SHE GOT the heroin: from a Chinese takeout in Encino. They sold normal Chinese food to normal people, but to special customers like Sally they tucked wax-paper packets encased in foil into the cartons of food. Ordering the drugs went by a sort of code. There were even different grades of heroin, the highest being “Happy Family.” Heroin quantity was measured in bags; Ben used five a day. The nephew in the family that ran the restaurant, the chemist, had been a high school friend of Helga's older sister.

Initially, I wasn't going to go. I was a mother now, I had responsibilities, and going meant the risk of arrest, embarrassment, physical harm. But Sally said it was all very slickly done. I didn't have to go, of course, but if I wanted, she'd be happy to have me. I might find it interesting.

When else in my life, I thought, am I going to have an opportunity to go buy heroin? I thought of my new patients for whom picking up drugs was as normal as buying fast food. Why not, I thought. See what they go through.

And she had asked me.

I left Aury crawling around Sally's backyard with Sally's housekeeper, Teresa, trailing her. We closed Sally's front door. We took Sally's sober car, the white Volvo.

There was nothing exciting about Encino. The stop-and-go traffic, strip malls, fireplace shops and beauty parlors and grocery stores. If it weren't for the sunshine and the numerology parlors, we could have been in Ohio.

The Chinese takeout was in a strip mall with a dry cleaner on one side and a pet shop on the other. The takeout was fronted with windows covered with signs and posters; inside, a few ice-cream-parlor chairs were lined up against the wall, and an illuminated menu sign hung over the metal counter. The shocking thing was how ordinary the place looked, how it smelled of Chinese food. In the middle of the afternoon, we were the only customers. “You have friend,” the elderly Chinese woman behind the counter said to Sally. She smiled, but her voice was not friendly.

“My sister,” Sally said quickly, and I realized I was an object of suspicion. “Visiting from Ohio.”

We looked nothing alike, but I wasn't sure the woman would notice. She hesitated and peered at me a moment. “Your sister look at menu,” the woman said, whipping out a plastic-covered menu and pointing me toward one of the chairs. In this way, my gaze was diverted from the actual transaction, which Sally said involved slipping extra bills underneath the money for the food. The woman then disappeared into the kitchen, emerged with four small Chinese-food cartons, and put them in a white paper bag.

By then I was standing behind Sally. “You want number four?” the woman asked me. “Number four very good.”

“No, thank you.” I felt awkward and stiff, as if I were in a play. I tried to hand the menu back to the woman, but she nodded at me to lay it on the counter.

“She'll share with me,” Sally said. “Thank you, Libby, thank you very much.”

The Chinese woman gave a tight smile and dropped a hand under the counter as if reaching for something. Duck sauce, I thought, and I hesitated, thinking how hard Libby was trying to make this transaction look normal, but when I turned halfway back to take the sauce, she gave me a look so piercing I hurried out the door.

“Damn,” Sally said as we drove away. “She must have thought you were a policewoman. Did you notice? I think she was reaching for a gun. Damn, I really like her. I like their whole operation. I always feel safe when I go in there. I thought buying heroin would be sordid, but dealing with them has been”—she waved her hand, and for once, I thought her way with adjectives would fail her—“unremarkable.”

A gun! I felt a little weak. “You don't think she would have shot me?”

“Oh, heavens no. She'd never shoot. She was just making a point. They have a business to protect, and they're right here in the wilds of suburbia. They'd have to be fools to resort to violence. The woman behind the counter is an aunt, I believe. Damn. I hope they keep selling to me.”

When we crossed the ridge and descended into Beverly Hills, my mood lifted. We drove within a half mile of Sid's house on Mulholland, and somehow the proximity made me feel safe. No one could catch us now. “Here we are driving down Benedict Canyon with ten bags of heroin,” I said, and started giggling. Sally giggled too.

“Here we are turning onto Wilshire with ten bags of heroin stashed in cartons of Chinese food,” she said. “Here we are, a doctor and a lawyer, pillars of society, turning onto Wilshire with ten bags of heroin stashed in cartons of Chinese food. Wait a minute, I'm going to drive down here.” She turned down Cienega to Rodeo Drive, which was out of the way but hilarious. “Here we are driving down Rodeo Drive with ten bags of heroin. Robin Leach, where are you now?”

We became hysterical with laughter. “Beverly Hills's finest!” Sally said, picking up the Chinese food carton by its wire hanger and dangling it.

“Yum yum yum,” I said, “I love Chinese.” We stopped at a light next to a Ferrari. “Do you love Chinese?” I said to the driver through my open window. He looked at Sally and me hopefully, and we collapsed into fresh paroxysms of laughter as we sped off.