Authors: Michelle Huneven
“I can’t believe what juveniles I’m sitting with.” Lewis shook his head. “What do you guys care about her
underwear
? Sometimes the level of discourse in this place makes me want to weep.”
“Jeez, Lewis,” Lee said. “You brought it up.”
E
ARLY
in the afternoons, once he had his fill of Gene’s mechanical fumblings and nonstop Raiders commentary, Lewis scrubbed down, walked to the office, and sat down in front of the computer. He didn’t have his notes, or access to a research library, or any real desire to work on his incompletes—he’d mentioned the paper for the conference only to spark Red’s interest—but Red had given him another assignment. Lewis was supposed to define a power greater than himself, and come up with his own definition of sanity.
The purpose of this, Red had explained to Lewis’s mortification, wasn’t to fill up some brochure, but simply to explicate the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, in this case Step 2: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” While Lewis had no yen to be brainwashed in AA dogma, after so many critical essays in graduate school he found it amusing, even gratifying, to write about himself for a change.
As an atheist, I have had no conception of a god or higher power. In my earliest childhood, however, I inexplicably thought of God as wrinkly green hills. Then my father drew diagrams of atoms and the solar system. I saw that the solar system closely resembled an atom; clearly then, the solar system was an atom in something unimaginably vast. For some reason, I located the sun and its orbiting planets in the thigh of a giant clown, a clown that looked exactly like a stuffed toy I owned: soft red velour body and a maniacally grinning hard plastic face.
Sanity he defined as “not letting people or stuff bug me. Having equanimity, concentration, clarity. Minimal self-deceit of mind and
body. Good instincts. Feeling comfortable being alive.
Wanting
to be alive.”
“A
LL RIGHT
,” Red said when Lewis read him this writing. “Now, using your own definitions, can you believe that a power greater than yourself can
restore
you to sanity?”
“Aha! A trick!” said Lewis. Could the worship of wrinkled green hills encourage flexibility of mind and body? Would the knowledge that he was imbedded in some giant, antic thigh give him equanimity, clarity, and ease in his daily life?
“H
OW MUCH
time do you have now, Lewis?”
They were in Red’s old truck, en route to the Blue House for dinner on a starry, moonless night. There had been rumors of a freak late frost, and men were lighting smudge pots in the groves.
Lewis hesitated. Every time he answered this question, something was denied him. “Twenty-four days.”
“Great! And what are your plans after you leave?”
Hang in coffeeshops, read books, get laid. “Go home. Find a job.”
“And where’s home, again?”
“I’ll stay with my philosophy prof in Westwood.”
“In the garage?”
Lewis shrugged. The cold slab, he had to admit, had limited appeal.
“Would you consider staying on here? I could offer you a full-time job, with benefits.”
Very flattering. A small triumph, even. He, Lewis, had charmed Mr. Detachment, had been singled out, chosen. Nice to know he could still pull it off. Still, the answer was definitely no. Stay in this depressing backwater joint stocked with sad, boring men? No way. “I already told my prof I’m coming back.”
“You don’t have to decide this very moment,” said Red. “Think about it, and let me know.”
S
TAN, THE
gentle, gray-eyed Round Rock shrink, conducted Lewis’s exit interview on a bright sun porch in the back of the mansion.
He read questions off a form and took notes as Lewis talked. “Did you work with a sponsor?”
“Nope. I don’t buy the whole sponsor-sponsee deal. It infantilizes grown men.”
“I see. And will you continue to attend AA meetings?”
Probably, thought Lewis, but why give Stan any satisfaction? “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Stan wrote intently. “Do you feel comfortable with your sobriety?”
“ ‘Comfortable’ isn’t a word I would use, no. I’m
interested
in sobriety. Does that count?”
“Absolutely. Interest is a very important motivator. Now, what did you like best about Round Rock?”
“The architecture. I mean, when will I have another opportunity to live in a place like this? And I always wanted to live on a citrus ranch. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and watched the last groves bulldozed for tract housing. Killed me.”
“There’s something to be said for geographic affinity, all right. And what didn’t you like about Round Rock?”
“Don’t get me started. No. It’s a cool place. But I didn’t like being coerced into coming here. And it would’ve been a lot easier if I could’ve run to town for parts. And I didn’t like having a roommate, not one who snored. And there was too much meat at every meal. Who
is
Ernie Tola, anyway? He’s not a very good cook, like sub-short order. And that fakey beard. I told you, don’t get me started. And I hated visitors’ day—all those strangers milling around looking at you like you’re a zoo exhibit.”
“Did you have any visitors?”
“No.”
“Did you invite anyone to visit you?”
“My mother.”
“She didn’t come?”
“No, but she sent a note and some money.”
“You must’ve been disappointed.”
“Par for the course.” The note had said, “It’s good you’re getting help. Here’s some mad money. Love, Mom.” A folded ten-dollar bill.
“Was there anything else you disliked?”
“No. But I just thought of something else I liked. I did this writing for Red. Stuff about my drinking and my childhood. My
history of this and that. My idea of sanity, higher powers, that kind of stuff.”
“Red had you write that?”
“It wasn’t any big deal.”
“Red hasn’t sponsored anyone new in years.”
“This wasn’t sponsoring. He was just trying to show me some things.”
“Ahh.” Furious jotting. “All right, then.” Stan reached into a side drawer, brought out a packet, handed it to Lewis. “Keep in touch,” he said. “Let us know where you are and how you’re doing.”
Lewis hoped that the packet contained money, but found only an AA meeting directory, brochures for several halfway houses, and a list of community health clinics where psychological counseling was offered at little or no cost.
L
EWIS
did feel guilty, as if he were letting Red down by not taking the job. He decided, as retribution, to give the office a good going-over. File some stuff and toss the junk. Lose those brown roses on the mantel.
He hauled a vintage Hoover out of the storeroom and was merrily bashing into baseboards when Billie Fitzgerald walked through the door. She was dressed, as before, in mud-splattered coveralls, barn coat, rubber boots. Off went the vacuum, in a dramatic de-crescendo.
“I knocked but you didn’t hear,” said Billie. “I’m meeting Red.” She plunked down in an overstuffed green chair. She sat like a man, knees splayed open, coat bunched around her shoulders. Her hair was twisted into a loose knot. “Hey”—she pointed a gloved finger at Lewis—“you’re guy in the truck, right? Who wouldn’t say jack?”
Lewis shot her a surly look.
She laughed. “Red said you’re a scholar. You know, I always think about going back to college. Just to catch up on all those books that supposedly shape our lives but nobody ever reads.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
Pulling off one glove with her teeth, Billie let it drop from her mouth into her lap. “Well, there’s the Bible. You ever read it?”
“Parts,” said Lewis.
“Well, this whole wrecked civilization is based on a book most
people have only read parts of.” Her eyebrows were glossy, superbly arched, like flexible brown feathers.
“The Bible’s a good one,” said Lewis. “What else?”
Billie unbuttoned her jacket. Beneath the jacket, her coveralls were open far enough to reveal a few inches of a brown plaid shirt. Layer upon layer: Lewis gleaned no sense of her breasts, waist, thighs.
“Red says I’m a total and complete Machiavellian, but I can’t even remember what he wrote.”
“
The Prince.
And you don’t need to read it to be Machiavellian.”
“Evidently not.” She began worrying her other glove off with her teeth, finger by finger, which somehow seemed either profoundly lazy or obscene. When the glove came free, Billie leaned forward and dropped it into her lap, a mother cat depositing a kitten. “How ’bout Freud? He gave us the unconscious, right? And the Oedipal complex? And polymorphous perversion?”
Was she flirting? Or was he crazy?
“Can you name a single one of Freud’s books?” she asked.
“
Totem and Taboo,
” he said. “
The Future of an Illusion. The Ego and the Id.”
“So you
are
a scholar.”
“I didn’t say I’ve read them.”
Billie grinned and whacked her gloves into her palm. She looked like a little girl who set fires just to watch adults panic.
“Okay,” said Lewis. “What else haven’t we read?”
“I never read a word of Emerson, but I heard he’d greet his friends by saying something like ‘What has come clearer to you since we last met?’ That’s been my number-one conversational ploy for years now.”
“I like it,” said Lewis. “Makes you realize conversation was so much more an art in the nineteenth century.”
An eyebrow flexed. “Well, then, what has come clearer to you since we last met?”
Lewis thought of several answers, each more personal—and therefore unutterable—than the last. “Oh, my
brain
,” he said vaguely. “And what has come clearer to you?”
“That you talk, for one.” She laughed, then grew pensive. “I guess it’s that my son gets more beautiful every day.”
The son. Lewis had forgotten about the son. Some other man’s
kid. Lewis had had his problems with other men’s kids. “Uh, how old is he?” He forced interest into his voice.
“Little Bill? Almost sixteen.” Billie’s face softened. “He’s as tall as I am. Physically, he’s a man—his voice has dropped—but it hasn’t hit him yet. He still loves and trusts women. He hasn’t gone all embarrassed or ironic on me. He’s the sweetest human being I know.”
“I was sixteen once. And my mother sure didn’t like me very much.” Lewis forced a stupid little laugh. “She still doesn’t.”
“But she’s your mother,” said Billie. “She’s crazy for you, I’m sure.”
Lewis thought of his mother’s scaling hands, her thin, querulous voice, the pull of her incessant melancholy. “No, not really.”
Billie glanced behind her, as if wondering how long she’d have to wait here.
“There must be more books we haven’t read,” said Lewis.
“No doubt.” She sounded bored.
There was a thumping on the porch. “I know,” Lewis said. “
Faust.
Have you read
Faust
?”
But Billie had turned to greet Red Ray. Pink in the face, he apologized for being late and tossed the mail onto the desk. Billie caught his hand. “You’re freezing!” she said. “And what, my friend, has come clearer to you since we last met?”
Red gently and firmly withdrew his hand and stuck it in the pocket of his brown leather jacket. “Only the futility of saving money so long as I do business with you.”
Billie turned to Lewis. “He hates it when I tell him he has to spend money. But I’m always right.”
“If I spent money every time you said to, I’d be on the street selling pencils.”
Lewis, stung that his
Faust
question had been ignored, picked up the mail and started sorting it.
Red said, “The PVC’s in my truck.”
Billie said, “I’ve got couplings.”
When Lewis glanced up, the door was closing behind them.
“Hey!” Billie swung halfway back inside with a high-voltage smile. “To answer your question—
no.
I never read
Faust.
But I fucked a Goethe scholar once. Does that count?” The door flew shut.
Sure, thought Lewis. Sexual relations are a very important motivator.
When Red returned at dusk, the office was in pristine condition. No unfiled paper, not a speck of dust. A fire blazed in the hearth. Lewis was on the couch reading the Reader’s Digest condensed version of
Pride and Prejudice
he’d found in the storeroom.
Red lowered himself into a chair. “Hey,” he said. “Looks terrific in here!”
“Thanks, Redsy.” Lewis put down his book and gave his scalp a long, vigorous scratch. “Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll take the stupid job. But only for six months, and then it’s back to school.”
A
FTER
five hours of overtime, everything in Libby’s office had begun to shiver. Papers in her out basket fluttered. The computer screen vibrated. Down the hall, an AA meeting was producing intermittent bursts of laughter and clapping. It was nine-thirty. She’d missed dinner and band practice, not that she minded missing the practice. Al Keene’s girlfriend was in town, anyway. Not that Libby was jealous; if anything, she felt strangely protective of this woman. Libby knew what it was like to learn your man has been sleeping with someone else, though she would spare the girlfriend any grim revelations. Libby had no aspirations to be Al’s official other. The girlfriend could have his Kmart western wear, cheap cologne, and trashy pillow talk. The only thing Libby liked about Al Keene was his generic willingness; he fell into bed with an impersonal enthusiasm she found undemanding, rollicking, a balm to her loneliness.
When a column of numbers on her screen began to wriggle and defect, Libby called it a night. She left just as the AA meeting was dispersing. Thirsty, she joined a short line at the drinking fountain. A guy behind her said, “If you’d rather have coffee, there’s some in the kitchenette.”
She did not feel entitled to the group’s refreshment. “Oh, I’m not …” Well, how
do
you say, politely, “I’m not an alcoholic”? “I … uh … work here.”
“Not a drunk, huh?” He hooted. “That’s okay. You can still have a cup of coffee and a cookie. Come on.” He touched her arm. His curly black hair needed a cut, his beard a trim. His name, he said, was Lewis. After a fourteen-hour work day, Libby couldn’t resist such overt friendliness. She followed him through the meeting hall, where men were stacking folding chairs, and into a small kitchen area.