"To be loved and held!" Kevin keens, sobbing harder. His lachrymucus is now a thin silver string joining his nose and the fuzzy top of his bear"s head. The bear"s expression is seeming creepier to Hal by the second. Hal wonders what the etiquette is in NA about getting up and leaving right in the middle of somebody"s Infantile revelation of need. Meanwhile Kevin is saying that his Inner Infant inside him had always hoped that some day his Mom and Dad would be there for him, to hold him and love him. He says but right from the start they"d never been there for him, leaving him and his brother with Hispanic nannies while they devoted themselves to their jobs and various types of psychotherapy and support groups. This takes a while to say, given all the snuffles and wracked spasms. Then Kevin says but then by the time he was eight they were gone altogether, dead, smooshed by a dysfunctionally falling radio traffic helicopter on the Jamaica Way on the way to Couples Counselling.
At this Hal"s slumped head jerks up, his mouth oval with horror. He"s all of a sudden realized that this guy who"s seated at such an angle that Hal"s been able to see only the obliquest portion of his profile is in fact Kevin Bain, his brother Orin"s old E.T.A. doubles and chemical-mischief partner Marlon Bain"s older brother, Kevin Bain, of Dedham MA, who the last Hal had heard had gotten his M.B.A. at Wharton and cleaned up with a string of Simulated Reality arcades all up and down the South Sh.o.r.e, back during the pre-Subsidized-Time Simulated Reality craze, before InterLace viewers and digital cartridges let you do your own customized Simulating right at home and the novelty wore off. 335 335 The Kevin Bain whose childhood hobby was memorizing IRS capital-depreciation schedules and whose adult idea of a wild time The Kevin Bain whose childhood hobby was memorizing IRS capital-depreciation schedules and whose adult idea of a wild time 336 336 had been putting extra marshmallows in his nightly cocoa, and who wouldn"t have known a recreational drug if it walked up and poked him in the eye. Hal begins to scan for possible exits. The only door was the one he"d come in, which is in full view of most of the room. There are no windows at all. had been putting extra marshmallows in his nightly cocoa, and who wouldn"t have known a recreational drug if it walked up and poked him in the eye. Hal begins to scan for possible exits. The only door was the one he"d come in, which is in full view of most of the room. There are no windows at all.
Hal"s chilled by multiple realizations. This is no NA or anti-Substance Meeting. This is one of those men"s-issues-Men"s-Movement-type Meetings K. D. Coyle"s stepdad went to and Coyle liked to mimic and parody during drills, making his stick"s grip poke out between his legs and yelling "Nurture this! Honor getting in touch with this!"
Kevin Bain is wiping his nose with his poor teddy bear"s head and saying it didn"t look like his Inner Infant would ever get its wish. The gooey music"s cello sounds like some sort of cow mooing in distress, maybe at what it"s in the middle of.
Sure enough, the round man, whose hand"s left a print on his soft cheek, asks poor old Kevin Bain to honor and name his I.I."s wounded wish anyway, to say "Please, Mommy and Daddy, come love and hold me," out loud, several times, which Kevin Bain goes ahead and does, rocking a little in his chair, his voice now with an edge of good old adult mortified embarra.s.sment to it, along with the racking sobs. A couple of the other men in the room are wiping at their bright-white drug-free eyes with the arms of their teddy bears. Hal is painfully reminded of the rare Ziplocs of Humboldt County hydroponic marijuana that Pemulis occasionally scored via FedEx from his mercantile counterpart at the Rolling Hills Academy, the curved tawny buds so big and plump with high-Delta-9 resin the Ziplocs had looked like bags of little teddy-bear arms. The moist sounds right behind him turn out to be a mild-faced older man eating yogurt out of a plastic cup. Hal keeps rechecking the Meeting data in the little M.B.R.O. booklet the girl had given him. He notes that the booklet has broad chocolate thumbprints on several of the pages, and that two pages are stuck firmly together with what Hal fears is an ancient dried booger, and now that the booklet"s cover is dated January in the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland, i.e. nearly two years past, and that it"s not impossible that the blandly hostile toothless girl at The Ennet facility had kertw.a.n.ged him by giving him a dated and useless M.B.R.O. guide.
Kevin Bain keeps repeating "Please, Mommy and Daddy, come love me and hold me" in a kind of monotone of pathos. The gradually intensifying lisp in Please Please is apparently a performative invocation of the old Inner Infant. Tears and other fluids flow and roll. The warm round leader Harv"s own eyes are a moist gla.s.sy blue. The CD scanner"s cello is now into some sort of semi-jazzy pizzicato stuff that seems oxymoronic against the room"s mood. Hal keeps catching whiffs of a hot sick-sweet civety smell that signifies somebody nearby has some athlete"s-foot issues to confront, under his socks. Plus it"s mystifying that 32A has no windows, given all the smoky-brown fenestration Hal"d seen from outside the Q.R.S. cube. The man eating yogurt"s beard is one of those small rectangular ones that"s easy to keep clear of the cup"s rim. The back and side of Kevin Bain"s hair has separated into spiky sweat-soaked strands, from the room"s heat and the Infant"s emotions. is apparently a performative invocation of the old Inner Infant. Tears and other fluids flow and roll. The warm round leader Harv"s own eyes are a moist gla.s.sy blue. The CD scanner"s cello is now into some sort of semi-jazzy pizzicato stuff that seems oxymoronic against the room"s mood. Hal keeps catching whiffs of a hot sick-sweet civety smell that signifies somebody nearby has some athlete"s-foot issues to confront, under his socks. Plus it"s mystifying that 32A has no windows, given all the smoky-brown fenestration Hal"d seen from outside the Q.R.S. cube. The man eating yogurt"s beard is one of those small rectangular ones that"s easy to keep clear of the cup"s rim. The back and side of Kevin Bain"s hair has separated into spiky sweat-soaked strands, from the room"s heat and the Infant"s emotions.
All through his own infancy and toddlerhood, Hal had continually been held and dandled and told at high volume that he was loved, and he feels like he could have told K. Bain"s Inner Infant that getting held and told you were loved didn"t automatically seem like it rendered you emotionally whole or Substance-free. Hal finds he rather envies a man who feels he has something to explain his being f.u.c.ked up, parents to blame it on. Not even Pemulis blamed his late father Mr. Pemulis, who hadn"t exactly sounded like the Fred MacMurray of U.S. fathers. But then Pemulis didn"t consider himself f.u.c.ked up or unfree w/r/t Substances.
The blond and Buddhic cable-knit Harv, dandling his bear on his knee now, calmly asks Kevin Bain if it feels to his Inner Infant like Mommy and Daddy were ever going to appear cribside to meet his needs.
"No," Kevin says very quietly. "No, it doesn"t, Harv."
The leader is idly arranging his bear"s splayed arms in different positions, so it looks like the bear"s either waving or surrendering. "Do you suppose you would be able to ask someone in the group here tonight to love and hold you instead, Kevin?"
The back of Kevin Bain"s head doesn"t move. Hal"s whole digestive tract spasms at the prospect of watching two bearded adult males in sweaters and socks engage in surrogate Infant-hugging. He begins asking himself why he doesn"t just fake a hideous coughing fit and flee Q.R.S.-32A with his fist over his face.
Harv"s now waggling the bear"s arms back and forth and making his voice high and cartoon-characterish and pretending to have his bear ask Kevin Bain"s bear if it would maybe point to the man in the group Kevin Bain would most like to have hold and nurture and love him in loco parentis in loco parentis. Hal"s spitting quietly down the side of his gla.s.s and brooding wretchedly at the fact that he"s driven fifty supperless clicks to listen to a globular man in plaid socks pretend his teddy bear"s speaking Latin when he looks up from the gla.s.s and is chilled to see that Kevin Bain has wiggled his Indian-style way around in his chair and is holding his bear way up by its underarms, just the way a father holds a toddler up for a public spect-op or parade, turning the throttled-looking bear this way and that, scanning the room - as Hal covers part of his face with a hand, pretending to scratch an eyebrow, praying not to be recognized - and finally manipulating the bear"s arm so the plump brown fuzzy fingerless hand of the bear"s pointing right in Hal"s direction. Hal doubles over in a coughing spasm only half-faked, running decision-trees on various ruses for flight.
Just like his younger brother Marlon Bain, Kevin Bain is a short thick person with a dark swart face. He looks sort of like an overdeveloped troll. And he has the same capacity for constant incredible sweating that always made Marlon Bain look to Hal, both on-court and off-, like a toad hunched moist and unblinking in humid shade. Except Kevin Bain"s little glittery Bain eyes are also red and swollen with public weeping, and he"s balding back from the temples in a way that gives him a widow"s peak like n.o.body"s business, and doesn"t seem to recognize a post-p.u.b.escent Hal, and is pointing his bear"s blunt hand Hal realizes finally after almost swallowing his plug of Kodiak not at Hal but at the mild-faced square-bearded older guy behind him, who"s holding a spoon of vividly pink yogurt in front of his bear"s open mouth, just touching its protruding tongue"s red corduroy, pretending to be feeding the bear. Hal very casually puts the NASA gla.s.s between his legs and gets both hands under his chair-seat and hops the chair bit by bit over and out of the lines of sight and transit between Kevin Bain and the yogurt man. Harv, up front, is making a complex hand-signal to the yogurt man not to speak or move from his back-row orange chair no matter what; and then, as Kevin Bain wriggles cross-legged back around to face front again, Harv smoothly turns the hand-signal into a motion like he"s smoothing his hair. The motion then becomes sincere and ruminative as the leader breathes deeply a couple of times. The music"s settled back into its original nodding narcosis.
"Kevin," Harv says, "since this is a group exercise in pa.s.sivity and Inner-Infant needs, and since you"ve selected Jim as the member of the group you need something from, we need you to ask Jim out loud to meet your needs. Ask him to come up and hold you and love you, since your parents aren"t ever coming. Not ever, Kevin."
Kevin Bain makes a mortified sound and reclamps a hand over his big swart face.
"Go for it, Kev," somebody over near the Bly poster calls out.
"We affirm and support you," says the guy by the filing cabinet.
Hal now starts scrolling through an alphabetical list of the faraway places he"d rather be right now. He"s not even up to Addis Ababa when Kevin Bain acquiesces and begins very softly and hesitantly asking the mild-faced Jim, who"s put aside his yogurt but not the bear, to please come up and love him and hold him. By the time Hal"s envisioned himself tumbling over American Falls at the Concavity"s southwest rim in a rusty old noxious-waste-displacement drum, Kevin Bain has asked Jim eleven progressively louder times to come nurture and hold him, to no avail. The older guy just sits there, clutching his yogurt-tongued bear, his expression somewhere between mild and blank.
Hal has never actually seen projectile-weeping before. Bain"s tears are actually exiting his eyes and projecting outward several cm. before starting to fall. His facial expression is the scrunched spread one of a small child"s total woe, his neck-cords standing out and face darkening so that it looks like some sort of huge catcher"s mitt. A bright cape of mucus hangs from his upper lip, and his lower lip seems to be having some kind of epileptic fit. Hal finds the tantrum"s expression on an adult face sort of compelling. At a certain point hysterical grief becomes facially indistinguishable from hysterical mirth, it appears. Hal imagines watching Bain weep on a white beach through binoculars from the balcony of a cool dim Aruban hotel room.
"He"s not coming! coming!" Kevin Bain finally keens to the leader.
Harv the leader nods, scratching an eyebrow, and confirms that that seems to be the case. He pretends to stroke his imperial in puzzlement and asks rhetorically what might be the problem, why mild-faced Jim isn"t automatically coming when called.
Kevin Bain"s just about vivisecting his poor bear out of mortified frustration. He seems deeply into his Infant persona now, and Hal rather hopes these guys have procedures for getting Bain at least back to sixteen before he has to try to drive home. At some point a timpani has gotten involved in the CD"s music, and a rather saucy cornet, and the music"s finally started moving a little, toward what"s either a climax or the end of the disk.
By now various men in the group have started crying out to Kevin Bain that his Inner Infant wasn"t getting its needs met, that sitting there pa.s.sively asking for nurture to get up and come to him wasn"t getting the needs met, that Kevin owed it to his Inner Infant to come up with some sort of active way to meet the Infant"s needs. Somebody shouted out "Honor that Infant!" Somebody else called "Meet those needs!" Hal is mentally strolling down the Appian Way in bright Eurosunlight, eating a cannoli, twirling his Dunlop racquets by the throats like six-shooters, enjoying the sunshine and cranial silence and a normal salivary flow.
Pretty soon the men"s supportive exhortations have distilled into everybody in the room except Harv, Jim and Hal chanting "Meet Those Needs! Meet Those Needs!" in the same male-crowd-exhortative meter as "Hold That Line!" or "Block That Kick!"
Kevin Bain wipes his nose on his sleeve and asks humongous Harv the leader what he"s supposed to do to get his Infant"s needs met if the person he"s chosen to meet those needs won"t come.
The leader has folded his hands over his belly and sat back, by this time, smiling, cross-legged, holding his tongue. His bear sits atop the protrusion of belly with its little blunt legs straight out, the way you"ll see a bear sitting on a shelf. It seems to Hal that the O2 in 32A is now getting used up at a ferocious clip. Not at all like the cool, sheep-scented breezes of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. The men in the room are still chanting "Meet Those Needs!" in 32A is now getting used up at a ferocious clip. Not at all like the cool, sheep-scented breezes of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. The men in the room are still chanting "Meet Those Needs!"
"What you"re saying is I need to actively go over to Jim myself and ask him to hold me," Kevin Bain says, grinding at his eyes with his knuckles.
The leader smiles blandly.
"Instead of you"re saying pa.s.sively trying to get Jim to come to me," says Kevin Bain, whose tears have largely stopped, and whose sweat has taken on the clammy shine of true fear-sweat.
Harv emerges as one of these people who can heft one eyebrow and not the other. "It would take real courage and love and commitment to your Inner Infant to take the risk and go actively over to somebody that might give you what your Infant needs," he says quietly. The CD player has at some point shifted into an all-cello instrumental of "I Don"t Know (How to Love Him)" from an old opera Lyle sometimes borrowed people"s players and listened to at night in the weight room. Lyle and Marlon Bain had been particularly tight, Hal recalls.
The trimeter of the men"s chant has reduced to a one-foot low-volume "Needs, Needs, Needs, Needs, Needs" as Kevin Bain slowly and hesitantly uncrosses his legs and rises from his orange chair, turning to face Hal and the motionless guy behind him, this Jim. Bain begins to move slowly toward them with the tortured steps of a mime miming walking against a tornadic gale. Hal"s picturing himself doing a lazy backstroke in the Azores, spouting gla.s.sy water up out of his mouth in a cytological plume. He"s leaning almost out of his chair, as far as possible out of Kevin Bain"s line of transit, studying the brown suspension in the bottom of his gla.s.s. His prayer not to be recognized by a regressive Kevin Bain is the first really desperate and sincere prayer Hal can remember offering since he"d stopped wearing pajamas with feet in them.
"Kevin?" Harv calls softly from the front of the room. "Is it you moving actively toward Jim, or should it be the Infant inside you, the one with the needs?"
"Needs, Needs, Needs," the bearded men are chanting, some rhythmically raising their manicured fists in the air.
Bain"s looking back and forth between Harv and Jim, chewing his finger indecisively.
"Is this how an Infant moves towards its needs, Kevin?" Harv says.
"Go for it, Kevin!" a full-bearded man calls out.
"Let the Infant out! out!"
"Let your Infant do the walking, Kev."
So Hal"s most vivid full-color memory of the non-anti-Substance Meeting he drove fifty oversalivated clicks to by mistake will become that of his older brother"s doubles partner"s older brother down on all fours on a Dacronyl rug, crawling, hampered because one arm was holding his bear to his chest, so he sort of dipped and rose as he crawled on three limbs toward Hal and the needs-meeter behind him, Bain"s knees leaving twin pale tracks in the carpet and his head up on a wobbly neck and looking up and past Hal, his face unspeakable.
The ceiling was breathing. It bulged and receded. It swelled and settled. The room was in St. Elizabeth"s Hospital"s Trauma Wing. Whenever he looked at it, the ceiling bulged and then deflated, shiny as a lung. When Don was a ma.s.sive toddler his mother had put them in a little beach house just back of the dunes off a public beach in Beverly. The place was affordable because it had a big ragged hole in the roof. Origin of hole unknown. Gately"s outsized crib had been in the beach house"s little living room, right under the hole. The guy that owned the little cottages off the dunes had stapled thick clear polyurethane sheeting across the room"s ceiling. It was an attempt to deal with the hole. The polyurethane bulged and settled in the North Sh.o.r.e wind and seemed like some monstrous vacuole inhaling and exhaling directly over little Gately, lying there, wide-eyed. The breathing polyurethane vacuole had seemed like it developed a character and personality as winter deepened and the winds grew worse. Gately, age like four, had regarded the vacuole as a living thing, and had named it Herman, and had been afraid of it. He couldn"t feel the right side of his upper body. He couldn"t move in any real sense of the word. The hospital room had that misty quality rooms in fevers have. Gately lay on his back. Ghostish figures materialized at the peripheries of his vision and hung around and then de-materialized. The ceiling bulged and receded. Gately"s own breath hurt his throat. His throat felt somehow raped. The blurred figure in the next bed sat up very still in bed in a sitting position and seemed to have a box on its head. Gately kept having a terrible repet.i.tious ethnocentric dream that he was robbing the house of an Oriental and had the guy tied to a chair and was trying to blindfold him with quality mailing twine from the drawer under the Oriental"s kitchen phone. The Oriental kept being able to see around the twine and kept looking steadily at Gately and blinking inscrutably. Plus the Oriental had no nose or mouth, just a smooth expanse of lower-facial skin, and wore a silk robe and scary sandals, and had no hair on its legs.
What Gately perceived as light-cycles and events all out of normal sequence was really Gately going in and out of consciousness. Gately did not perceive this. It seemed to him more like he kept coming up for air and then being pushed below the surface of something. Once when Gately came up for air he found that resident Tiny Ewell was seated in a chair right up next to the bed. Tiny"s little slim hand was on the bed"s crib-type railing, and his chin rested on the hand, so his face was right up close. The ceiling bulged and receded. The room"s only light was what spilled in from the nighttime hall. Nurses glided down the hall and past the door in subsonic footwear. A tall and slumped ghostish figure appeared to Gately"s left, off past the blurred seated square-head boy"s bed, slumped and fluttering, appearing to rest its tailbone on the sill of the dark window. The ceiling rounded on down and then settled back flat. Gately rolled his eyes up at Ewell. Ewell had shaved off his blunt white goatee. His hair was so completely clean and white it took a faint pink cast from the pink of his scalp below. Ewell had been discoursing to him for an unknown length of time. It was Gately"s first full night in St. Elizabeth"s Hospital"s Trauma Wing. He didn"t know what night of the week it was. His circadian rhythm was the least of the personal rhythms that had been scrambled. His right side felt encased in a kind of hot cement. Also a sick throb in what he a.s.sumed was a toe. He wondered dimly about going to the bathroom, if and when. Ewell was right in the middle of speaking. Gately couldn"t tell if Ewell was whispering. Nurses glided across the doorway"s light. Their sneakers were so noiseless the nurses seemed to be on wheels. A stolid shadow of somebody in a hat was cast obliquely across the hall"s tile floor just outside the room, as if a stolid figure were seated just outside the door, against the wall, in a hat.
"My wife"s personal term for soul is personality personality. As in "There"s something incorrigibly dark in your personality, Eldred Ewell, and Dewars brings it out." "
The hall floor was pretty definitely white tile, with a cloudy overwaxed shine in the bright fluorescence out there. Some kind of red or pink stripe ran down the center of the hall. Gately couldn"t tell if Tiny Ewell thought he was awake or unconscious or what.
"It was in the fall term of third grade as a child that I found myself fallen in with the bad element. They were a group of tough blue-collar Irish lads bussed in from the East Watertown projects. Runny noses, home-cut hair, frayed cuffs, quick with their fists, sports-mad, fond of sneaker-hockey on asphalt," Ewell said, "and yet, strangely, I, unable to do even one pull-up in the President"s Physical Fitness Test, quickly became the leader of the pack we all fell into. The blue-collar lads all seemed to admire me for attributes that were not clear. We formed a sort of club. Our uniform was a gray skallycap. Our clubhouse was the dugout of a Little League diamond that had fallen into disuse. Our club was called the Money-Stealers" Club. At my suggestion we went with a descriptive name as opposed to euphemistic. The name was mine. The Irish lads acquiesced. They viewed me as the brains of the operation. I held them in a kind of thrall. This was due in large part to my capacity for rhetoric. Even the toughest and most brutish Irish lad respects a gilded tongue. Our club was formed for the express purpose of undertaking a bunko operation. We went around to people"s homes after school, ringing the doorbell and soliciting donations for Project Hope Youth Hockey. There was no such organization. Our donation-receptacle was a Chock Full O" Nuts can with PROJECT HOPE YOUTH HOCKEY written on a strip of masking tape wrapped around the can. The lad who made the receptacle had spelled PROJECT PROJECT with a with a G G in the first draft. I ridiculed him for the error, and the whole club pointed at him and laughed. Brutally." Ewell kept staring at the crude blue jailhouse square and canted cross on Gately"s forearms. "Our only visible credentials were kneepads and sticks we"d purloined from the P.E. stockroom. By my order, all were held carefully to conceal the in the first draft. I ridiculed him for the error, and the whole club pointed at him and laughed. Brutally." Ewell kept staring at the crude blue jailhouse square and canted cross on Gately"s forearms. "Our only visible credentials were kneepads and sticks we"d purloined from the P.E. stockroom. By my order, all were held carefully to conceal the PPTY W. WTTN ELEM SCH PPTY W. WTTN ELEM SCH emblazoned down the side of every stick. One lad had a goalie mask on under his skallycap, the rest kneepads and carefully held sticks. The kneepads were turned inside-out for the same reason. I couldn"t even skate, and my mother absolutely forbade rough play on asphalt. I wore a necktie and combed my hair carefully after each solicitation. I was the spokesperson. The mouthpiece, the bad lads called me. They were Irish Catholics all. Watertown from east to west is Catholic, Armenian, and Mixed. The Eastside boys all but genuflected to my gift for bulls.h.i.t. I was exceptionally smooth with adults. I rang doorbells and the lads arrayed themselves behind me on the porch. I spoke of disadvantaged youth and team spirit and fresh air and the meaning of compet.i.tion and alternatives to the after-school streets" bad element. I spoke of mothers in support-hose and war-injured older brothers with elaborate prostheses cheering disadvantaged lads on to victory against far better-equipped teams. I discovered that I had a gift for it, the emotional appeal of adult rhetoric. It was the first time I felt personal power. I was unrehea.r.s.ed and creative and moving. Hard-case homeowners who came to the door in sleeveless Ts holding tallboys of beer with stubble and expressions of minimal charity were often weeping openly by the time we left their porch. I was called a fine lad and a good kid and a credit to me Mum and Da. My hair was tousled so often I had to carry a mirror and comb. The coffee can became hard to carry back to the dugout, where we hid it behind a cinderblock bench-support. We"d netted over a hundred dollars by Halloween. This was a serious amount in those days." emblazoned down the side of every stick. One lad had a goalie mask on under his skallycap, the rest kneepads and carefully held sticks. The kneepads were turned inside-out for the same reason. I couldn"t even skate, and my mother absolutely forbade rough play on asphalt. I wore a necktie and combed my hair carefully after each solicitation. I was the spokesperson. The mouthpiece, the bad lads called me. They were Irish Catholics all. Watertown from east to west is Catholic, Armenian, and Mixed. The Eastside boys all but genuflected to my gift for bulls.h.i.t. I was exceptionally smooth with adults. I rang doorbells and the lads arrayed themselves behind me on the porch. I spoke of disadvantaged youth and team spirit and fresh air and the meaning of compet.i.tion and alternatives to the after-school streets" bad element. I spoke of mothers in support-hose and war-injured older brothers with elaborate prostheses cheering disadvantaged lads on to victory against far better-equipped teams. I discovered that I had a gift for it, the emotional appeal of adult rhetoric. It was the first time I felt personal power. I was unrehea.r.s.ed and creative and moving. Hard-case homeowners who came to the door in sleeveless Ts holding tallboys of beer with stubble and expressions of minimal charity were often weeping openly by the time we left their porch. I was called a fine lad and a good kid and a credit to me Mum and Da. My hair was tousled so often I had to carry a mirror and comb. The coffee can became hard to carry back to the dugout, where we hid it behind a cinderblock bench-support. We"d netted over a hundred dollars by Halloween. This was a serious amount in those days."
Tiny Ewell and the ceiling kept receding and then looming in, bulging roundly. Figures Gately didn"t know from Adam kept popping in and out of fluttery view in different corners of the room. The s.p.a.ce between his bed and the other bed seemed to distend and then contract with a slow sort of boinging motion. Gately"s eyes kept rolling up in his head, his upper lip mustached with sweat. "And I was revelling in the fraud of it, the discovery of the gift," Ewell was saying. "I was flushed with adrenaline. I had tasted power, the verbal manipulation of human hearts. The lads called me the gilded blarneyman. Soon the first-order fraud wasn"t enough. I began secretly filching receipts from the club"s Chock Full O" Nuts can. Embezzling. I persuaded the lads it was too risky to keep the can in the open-air dugout and took personal charge of the can. I kept the can in my bedroom and persuaded my mother that it contained Christmas-connected gifts and must under no circ.u.mstances be inspected. To my underlings in the club I claimed to be rolling the coins and depositing them in a high-interest savings account I"d opened for us in the name Franklin W. Dixon. In fact I was buying myself Pez and Milky Ways and Mad Mad magazines and a Creeple Peeple-brand Deluxe Oven-and-Mold Set with six different colors of goo. This was in the early 1970s. At first I was discreet. Grandiose but discreet. At first the embezzlement was controlled. But the power had roused something dark in my personality, and the adrenaline drove it forward. Self-will run riot. Soon the club"s coffee can was empty by each weekend"s end. Each week"s haul went toward some uncontrolled Sat.u.r.day binge of puerile consumption. I doctored up flamboyant bank statements to show the club, in the dugout. I got more loquacious and imperious with them. None of the lads thought to question me, or the purple Magic Marker the bank statements were done in. I was not dealing with intellectual t.i.tans here, I knew. They were nothing but malice and muscle, the worst of the school"s bad element. And I ruled them. Thrall. They trusted me completely, and the rhetorical gift. In retrospect they probably could not conceive of any sane third-grader with gla.s.ses and a necktie trying to defraud them, given the inevitably brutal consequences. Any magazines and a Creeple Peeple-brand Deluxe Oven-and-Mold Set with six different colors of goo. This was in the early 1970s. At first I was discreet. Grandiose but discreet. At first the embezzlement was controlled. But the power had roused something dark in my personality, and the adrenaline drove it forward. Self-will run riot. Soon the club"s coffee can was empty by each weekend"s end. Each week"s haul went toward some uncontrolled Sat.u.r.day binge of puerile consumption. I doctored up flamboyant bank statements to show the club, in the dugout. I got more loquacious and imperious with them. None of the lads thought to question me, or the purple Magic Marker the bank statements were done in. I was not dealing with intellectual t.i.tans here, I knew. They were nothing but malice and muscle, the worst of the school"s bad element. And I ruled them. Thrall. They trusted me completely, and the rhetorical gift. In retrospect they probably could not conceive of any sane third-grader with gla.s.ses and a necktie trying to defraud them, given the inevitably brutal consequences. Any sane sane third-grader. But I was no longer a sane third-grader. I lived only to feed the dark thing in my personality, which told me any consequences could be forestalled by my gift and grand personal aura. third-grader. But I was no longer a sane third-grader. I lived only to feed the dark thing in my personality, which told me any consequences could be forestalled by my gift and grand personal aura.
"But then of course eventually Christmas hove into view." Gately tries to stop Ewell and say "hove?" and finds to his horror that he can"t make any sounds come out. "The meaty Catholic Eastside bad-element lads now wanted to tap their nonexistent Franklin W. Dixon account to buy support-hose and sleeveless Ts for their swarthy blue-collar families. I held them off as long as I could with pedantic blather on interest penalties and fiscal years. Irish Catholic Christmas is no laughing matter, though, and for the first time their swarthy eyes began to narrow at me. Things at school grew increasingly tense. One afternoon, the largest and swarthiest of them a.s.sumed control of the can in an ugly dugout coup. It was a blow from which my authority never recovered. I began to feel a gnawing fear: my denial broke: I realized I"d gradually embezzled far more than I could ever make good. At home, I began talking up the merits of private-school curricula at the dinner table. The can"s weekly take fell off sharply as holiday expenses drained homeowners of change and patience. This bear-market in giving was attributed by some of the club"s swarthier lads to my deficiencies. The whole club began muttering in the dugout. I began to learn that one could perspire heavily even in a bitterly cold open-air dugout. Then, on the first day of Advent, the lad now in charge of the can produced childish-looking figures and announced the whole club wanted their share of the accrued booty in the Dixon account. I bought time with vague allusions to co-signatures and a misplaced pa.s.sbook. I arrived home with chattering teeth and bloodless lips and was forced by my mother to swallow fish-oil. I was consumed with puerile fear. I felt small and weak and evil and consumed by dread of my embezzlement"s exposure. Not to mention the brutal consequences. I claimed intestinal distress and stayed home from school. The telephone began ringing in the middle of the night. I could hear my father saying "h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? " I did not sleep. My personality"s dark part had grown leathery wings and a beak and turned on me. There were still several days until Christmas vacation. I"d lie in bed panicked during school hours amid piles of ill-gotten " I did not sleep. My personality"s dark part had grown leathery wings and a beak and turned on me. There were still several days until Christmas vacation. I"d lie in bed panicked during school hours amid piles of ill-gotten Mad Mad magazines and Creeple Peeple figures and listen to the lonely handheld bells of the Salvation Army Santas on the street below and think of synonyms for magazines and Creeple Peeple figures and listen to the lonely handheld bells of the Salvation Army Santas on the street below and think of synonyms for dread dread and and doom doom. I began to know shame, and to know it as grandiosity"s aide-de-camp. My unspecific digestive illness wore on, and teachers sent cards and concerned notes. On some days the door-buzzer would buzz after school hours and my mother would come upstairs and say "How sweet, sweet, Eldred," that there were swarthy and cuff-frayed but clearly good-hearted boys in gray skallycaps on the stoop asking after me and declaring that they were Eldred," that there were swarthy and cuff-frayed but clearly good-hearted boys in gray skallycaps on the stoop asking after me and declaring that they were keenly keenly awaiting my return to school. I began to gnaw on the bathroom"s soap in the morning to make a convincing case for staying home. My mother was alarmed at the ma.s.ses of bubbles I vomited and threatened to consult a specialist. I felt myself moving closer and closer to some cliff-edge at which everything would come out. I longed to be able to lean into my mother"s arms and weep and confess all. I could not. For the shame. Three or four of the Money-Stealers" Club"s harder cases took up afternoon positions by the nativity scene in the churchyard across from our house and stared stonily up at my bedroom window, pounding their fists in their palms. I began to understand what a Belfast Protestant must feel. But even more prospectively dreadful than pummellings from Irish Catholics was the prospect of my parents" finding out my personality had a dark thing that had driven me to grandiose wickedness and left me there." awaiting my return to school. I began to gnaw on the bathroom"s soap in the morning to make a convincing case for staying home. My mother was alarmed at the ma.s.ses of bubbles I vomited and threatened to consult a specialist. I felt myself moving closer and closer to some cliff-edge at which everything would come out. I longed to be able to lean into my mother"s arms and weep and confess all. I could not. For the shame. Three or four of the Money-Stealers" Club"s harder cases took up afternoon positions by the nativity scene in the churchyard across from our house and stared stonily up at my bedroom window, pounding their fists in their palms. I began to understand what a Belfast Protestant must feel. But even more prospectively dreadful than pummellings from Irish Catholics was the prospect of my parents" finding out my personality had a dark thing that had driven me to grandiose wickedness and left me there."
Gately has no idea how Ewell feels about him making no responses, whether Ewell doesn"t like it or even notices it or what. He can breathe OK, but something in his raped throat won"t let whatever"s supposed to vibrate to speak vibrate.
"Finally, on the day before my gastroenterologist appointment, when my mother was down the street at a speculum party, I crept downstairs from my sick bed and stole over a hundred dollars from a s...o...b..x marked I.B.E.W. LOCAL 517 PETTY SLUSH in the back of my father"s den"s closet. I"d never dreamed of resorting to the s...o...b..x before. Stealing from my own parents. To remit funds I"d stolen from dull-witted boys with whom I"d stolen them from adults I"d lied to. My feelings of fear and despicability only increased. I now felt ill for real. I lived and moved in the shadow of something dark that hovered just overhead. I vomited without aid of emetic, now, but secretly, so I could return to school; I couldn"t face the prospect of a whole Christmas vacation of swarthy sentries pounding their palms outside the house. I converted my father"s union"s bills to small change and paid off the Money-Stealers" Club and got pummelled anyway. Apparently on general bad-element principles. I discovered the latent rage in followers, the fate of the leader who falls from the mob"s esteem. I was pummelled and given a savage wedgie and hung from a hook in my school locker, where I remained for several hours, swollen and mortified. And going home was worse; home was no refuge. For home was the scene of the third-order crime. Of theft cubed. I couldn"t sleep. I tossed and turned. There were night terrors. I was unable to eat, no matter how long after supper I had to stay at the table. The more worried about me my parents became, the greater my shame. I felt a shame and personal despicability no third-grader should have to feel. The holidays were not jolly. I looked back over the autumn and failed to recognize anyone named Eldred K. Ewell Jr. It no longer seemed a question of insanity or dark parts of me. I had stolen from neighbors, slum-children, and family, and bought myself sweets and toys. Under any tenable definition of bad, bad, I was bad. I resolved to toe the virtuous line from then on. The shame and horror was too awful: I had to remake myself. I resolved to do whatever was required to see myself as good, remade. I never knowingly committed another felony. The whole shameful interval of the Money-Stealers" Club was moved to mental storage and buried there. Don, I"d forgotten it ever happened. Until the other night. Don, the other night, after the fracas and your display of reluctant I was bad. I resolved to toe the virtuous line from then on. The shame and horror was too awful: I had to remake myself. I resolved to do whatever was required to see myself as good, remade. I never knowingly committed another felony. The whole shameful interval of the Money-Stealers" Club was moved to mental storage and buried there. Don, I"d forgotten it ever happened. Until the other night. Don, the other night, after the fracas and your display of reluctant se offendendo, se offendendo,337 after your injury and the whole aftermath... Don, I dreamed the whole mad repressed third-grade interval of grandiose perfidy all over again. Vividly and completely. When I awoke, I was somehow minus my goatee and my hair was center-parted in a fashion I haven"t favored for forty years. The bed was soaked, and there was a gnawed-looking cake of McDade"s special anti-acne soap in my hand." after your injury and the whole aftermath... Don, I dreamed the whole mad repressed third-grade interval of grandiose perfidy all over again. Vividly and completely. When I awoke, I was somehow minus my goatee and my hair was center-parted in a fashion I haven"t favored for forty years. The bed was soaked, and there was a gnawed-looking cake of McDade"s special anti-acne soap in my hand."
Gately starts to short-term recall that he was offered I.V.-Demerol for the pain of his gunshot wound immediately on admission to the E.R. and has been offered Demerol twice by shift-Drs. who haven"t bothered to read the HISTORY OF NARCOTICS DEPENDENCY NO SCHEDULE C-IV + MEDIC. that Gately"d made Pat Montesian swear she"d make them put in italics on his file or chart or whatever, first thing. Last night"s emergency surgery was remedial, not extractive, because the big pistol"s ordnance had apparently fragmented on impacting and pa.s.sed through the meters of muscle that surrounded Gately"s Humorous ball and Scalpula socket, pa.s.sing through and missing bone but doing great and various damage to soft tissues. The E.R."s Trauma Specialist had prescribed Toradol-IM 338 338 but had warned that the pain after the surgery"s general anesthetic wore off was going to be unlike anything Gately had ever imagined. The next thing Gately knew he was upstairs in a Trauma Wing room that trembled with sunlight and a different Dr. was speculating to either Pat M. or Calvin T. that the invasive foreign body had been treated with something unclean, beforehand, possibly, because Gately"s developed a ma.s.sive infection, and they"re monitoring him for something he heard as but had warned that the pain after the surgery"s general anesthetic wore off was going to be unlike anything Gately had ever imagined. The next thing Gately knew he was upstairs in a Trauma Wing room that trembled with sunlight and a different Dr. was speculating to either Pat M. or Calvin T. that the invasive foreign body had been treated with something unclean, beforehand, possibly, because Gately"s developed a ma.s.sive infection, and they"re monitoring him for something he heard as Noxzema Noxzema but is really toxemia. Gately also wanted to protest that his body was 100% American, but he seemed temporarily unable to vocalize aloud. Later it was nighttime and Ewell was there, intoning. It was totally unclear what Ewell wanted from Gately or why he was choosing this particular time to share. Gately"s right shoulder was almost the same size as his head, and he had to roll his eyes up and over like a cow to see Ewell"s hand on the railing and his face floating above it. but is really toxemia. Gately also wanted to protest that his body was 100% American, but he seemed temporarily unable to vocalize aloud. Later it was nighttime and Ewell was there, intoning. It was totally unclear what Ewell wanted from Gately or why he was choosing this particular time to share. Gately"s right shoulder was almost the same size as his head, and he had to roll his eyes up and over like a cow to see Ewell"s hand on the railing and his face floating above it.
"And how will I administer the Ninth Step when it comes time to make amends? How can I start to make reparations? Even if I could remember the homes of the citizens we defrauded, how many could still be there, living? The club lads have doubtless scattered into various low-rent districts and dead-end careers. My father lost the I.B.E.W. 339 339 account under the Weld administration and has been dead since 1993. And the revelations would kill my mother. My mother is very frail. She uses a walker, and arthritis has twisted her head nearly all the way around on her neck. My wife jealously protects my mother from all unpleasant facts regarding me. She says someone has to do it. My mother believes right this minute I"m at a nine-month Banque-de-Geneve-sponsored tax-law symposium in the Alsace. She keeps sending me knitted skiwear that doesn"t fit, from the rest home. account under the Weld administration and has been dead since 1993. And the revelations would kill my mother. My mother is very frail. She uses a walker, and arthritis has twisted her head nearly all the way around on her neck. My wife jealously protects my mother from all unpleasant facts regarding me. She says someone has to do it. My mother believes right this minute I"m at a nine-month Banque-de-Geneve-sponsored tax-law symposium in the Alsace. She keeps sending me knitted skiwear that doesn"t fit, from the rest home.
"Don, this buried interval and the impost I"ve carried ever since may have informed my whole life. Why I was drawn to tax law, helping wealthy suburbanites two-step around their fair share. My marriage to a woman who looks at me as if I were a dark stain at the back of her child"s trousers. My whole descent into somewhat-heavier-than-normal drinking may have been some instinctive attempt to bury third-grade feelings of despicability, submerge them in an amber sea.
"I don"t know what to do," Ewell said.
Gately was on enough Toradol-IM to make his ears ring, plus a saline drip with Doryx. 340 340 "I don"t want to remember despicabilities I can do nothing about. If this is a sample of the "More Will Be Revealed," I hereby lodge a complaint. Some things seem better left submerged. No?"
And everything on his right side was on fire. The pain was getting to be emergency-type pain, like scream-and-yank-your-charred-hand-off-the-stove-type pain. Parts of him kept sending up emergency flares to other parts of him, and he could neither move nor call out.
"I"m scared," from what seemed somewhere overhead and rising, was the last thing Gately heard Ewell whisper as the ceiling bulged down toward them. Gately wanted to tell Tiny Ewell that he could totally f.u.c.king I.D. with Ewell"s feelings, and that if he, Tiny, could just hang in and tote that bale and put one little well-shined shoe in front of the other everything would end up all right, that the G.o.d of Ewell"s Understanding would find some way for Ewell to make things right, and then he could let the despicable feelings go instead of keeping them down with Dewars, but Gately couldn"t connect the impulse to speak with actual speech, still. He settled for trying to reach his left hand across and pat Ewell"s hand on the railing. But his own breadth was too far to reach across. And then the white ceiling came all the way down and made everything white.
He seemed to sort of sleep. He fever-dreamed of dark writhing storm clouds writhing darkly and screaming on down the beach at Beverly MA, the winds increasing over his head until Herman the polyurethane vacuole burst from the force, leaving a ragged inhaling maw that tugged at Gately"s XXL Dr. Dentons. A blue stuffed brontosaurus was sucked upward out of the crib and disappeared into the maw, spinning. His mother was getting the s.h.i.t beaten out of her by a man with a shepherd"s crook in the kitchen and couldn"t hear Gately"s frantic cries for help. He broke through the crib"s bars with his head and went to the front door and ran outside. The black clouds up the beach lowered and roiled, funnelling sand, and as Gately watched he saw a tornado"s snout emerge from the clouds and slowly lower. It looked as if the clouds were either giving birth or taking a s.h.i.t. Gately ran across the beach to the water to escape the tornado. He ran through the crazed breakers to deep warm water and submerged himself and stayed under until he ran out of breath. It was now no longer clear if he was little Bimmy or the grown man Don. He kept coming up briefly for a great sucking breath and then going back under where it was warm and still. The tornado stayed in one place on the beach, bulging and receding, screaming like a jet, its opening a breathing maw, lightning coming off the funnel-cloud like hair. He could hear the tiny tattered sounds of his mother calling his name. The tornado was right by the beach house and the whole house trembled. His mother came out the front door, wild-haired and holding a b.l.o.o.d.y Ginsu knife, calling his name. Gately tried to call for her to come into the deep water with him, but even he couldn"t hear his calls against the scream of the storm. She dropped the knife and held her head as the funnel pointed its pointy maw her way. The beach house exploded and his mother flew through the air toward the funnel"s intake, arms and legs threshing, as if swimming in wind. She vanished into the maw and was pulled spinning up into the tornado"s vortex. Shingles and boards followed her. No sign of the shepherd"s crook of the man who"d hurt her. Gately"s right lung burned horribly. He saw his mother for the last time when lightning lit up the funnel"s cone. She was whirling around and around like something in a drain, rising, seeming to swim, bluely backlit. The burst of lightning was the white of the sunlit room when he came up for air and opened his eyes. His mother"s tiny rotating imago faded against the ceiling. What seemed like heavy breathing was him trying to scream. The skinny bed"s sheets were soaked and he needed a p.i.s.s something bad. It was daytime and his right side was in no way numb, and he was immediately nostalgic for the warm-cement feeling of when it was numb. Tiny Ewell was gone. His every pulse was an a.s.sault on his right side. He didn"t think he could stand it for even another second. He didn"t know what would happen, but he didn"t think he could stand it.
Later somebody who was either Joelle van D. or a St. E"s nurse in a U.H.I.D. veil was running a cold washcloth over his face. His face was so big it took some time to cover it all. It seemed too tender a touch on the cloth for a nurse, but then Gately heard the clink of I.V. bottles being changed or R.N.ishly messed with somewhere overhead behind him. He was unable to ask about changing the sheets or going to the bathroom. Some time after the veiled lady left, he just gave up and let the p.i.s.s go, and instead of feeling wet heat he heard the rising metallic sound of something filling up somewhere near the bed. He couldn"t move to lift the covers and see what he was hooked up to. The blinds were up, and the room was so bright-white in the sunlight everything looked bleached and boiled. The guy with either the square head or the box on his head had been taken off someplace, his bed unmade and one crib-railing down. There were no ghostish figures or figures in mist. The hallway was no brighter than the room, and Gately couldn"t see any shadows of anybody in a hat. He didn"t even know if last night had been real. The pain kept making his lids flutter. He hadn"t cried over pain since he was four. His last thought before letting his lids stay shut against the brutal white of the room was that he"d maybe been castrated, which was how he"d always heard the term catheterized catheterized. He could smell rubbing alcohol and a kind of vitamin stink, and himself.
At some point a probably real Pat Montesian came in and got her hair in his eye when she kissed his cheek and told him if he could just hang in and concentrate on getting well everything would be fine, that everything at the House was back to normal, more or less, and essentially fine, that she was so sorry he"d had to handle a situation like that alone, without support or counsel, and that she realized full well Lenz and the Canadian thugs hadn"t given him enough time to call anybody, that he"d done the very best he could with what he"d had to work with and had nothing to feel horrid about, to let it go, that the violence hadn"t been relapse-type thrill-seeking violence but simply doing the best he could at that moment and trying to stand up for himself and for a resident of the House. Pat Montesian was dressed as usual entirely in black, but formally, as in for taking somebody to court, and her formalwear looked like a Mexican widow"s. She really had said the words thug thug and and horrid horrid. She said not to worry, the House was a community and it took care of its own. She kept asking if he was sleepy. Her hair"s red was a different and less radiant red than the red of Joelle van D."s hair. The left side of her face was very kind. Gately had very little understanding of what she was talking about. He was kind of surprised the Finest hadn"t come calling already. Pat didn"t know about the remorseless A.D.A. or the suffocated Nuck: Gately"d tried hard to share openly about the wreckage of his past, but some issues still seemed suicidal to share about. Pat said that Gately was showing tremendous humility and willingness sticking to his resolution about nothing stronger than non-narcotic painkillers, but that she hoped he"d remember that he wasn"t in charge of anything except putting himself in his Higher Power"s hands and following the dictates of his heart. That codeine or maybe Percoset 341 341 or maybe even Demerol wouldn"t be a relapse unless his heart of hearts that knew his motives thought it would be. Her red hair was down and looked uncombed and mashed in on the side; she looked frazzled. Gately wanted very much to ask Pat about the legal fallout of the other night"s thug-fracas. He realized she kept asking if he was sleepy because his attempts to speak looked like yawns. His inability to still speak was like speechlessness in bad dreams, airless and h.e.l.lish, horrid. or maybe even Demerol wouldn"t be a relapse unless his heart of hearts that knew his motives thought it would be. Her red hair was down and looked uncombed and mashed in on the side; she looked frazzled. Gately wanted very much to ask Pat about the legal fallout of the other night"s thug-fracas. He realized she kept asking if he was sleepy because his attempts to speak looked like yawns. His inability to still speak was like speechlessness in bad dreams, airless and h.e.l.lish, horrid.
What made the whole interface with Pat M. possibly unreal was that right at the end for no reason Pat M. burst into tears, and for no reason Gately got so embarra.s.sed he pretended to pa.s.s out, and slept again, and probably dreamed.
Almost certainly dreamed and unreal was the interval when Gately came up with a start and saw Mrs. Lopate, the objay dart from the Shed that they come and install next to the Ennet House viewer some days, sitting there in a gunmetal wheelchair, face contorted, head c.o.c.ked, hair stringy, looking not at him but more like seemingly at whatever array of I.V. bottles and signifying monitors hung above and behind his big crib, so not speaking or even looking at him but still in some sense being there with with him, somehow. Even though there was no way she could have really been there, it was the first time Gately realized that the catatonic Mrs. L. had been the same lady he"d seen touching the tree in #5"s front lawn late at night, some nights, when he"d first come on Staff. That they were the same person. And that this realization was real even though the lady"s presence in the room was not, the complexities of which made his eyes roll up in his head again as he pa.s.sed back out again. him, somehow. Even though there was no way she could have really been there, it was the first time Gately realized that the catatonic Mrs. L. had been the same lady he"d seen touching the tree in #5"s front lawn late at night, some nights, when he"d first come on Staff. That they were the same person. And that this realization was real even though the lady"s presence in the room was not, the complexities of which made his eyes roll up in his head again as he pa.s.sed back out again.
Then at some later point Joelle van Dyne was sitting in a chair just outside the railing of the bed, veiled, wearing sweatpants and a sweater that was starting to unravel, in a pink-bordered veil, not saying anything, probably looking at him, probably thinking he was unconscious with his eyes open, or delirious with Noxzema. The whole right side of himself hurt so bad each breath was like a hard decision. He wanted to cry like a small child. The girl"s silence and the blankness of her veil frightened him after a while, and he wished he could ask her to come back later.
n.o.body"d offered him anything to eat, but he wasn"t hungry. There were I.V. tubes going into the backs of both hands and the crook of his left elbow. Other tubing exited him lower down. He didn"t want to know. He kept trying to ask his heart if just codeine would be a relapse, according to the heart, but his heart was declining to comment.
Then at some point Ennet House alum and senior counselor Calvin Thrust came roaring in and pulled up a chair and straddled it backwards like a slow-tease stripper, slumping and draping his arms over the back of the chair, gesturing with an unlit rodney as he spoke. He told Gately that man he looked like s.h.i.t something heavy had fell on. But he told Gately he should get a gander of the other guys, the Nucks in Polynesian-wear. Thrust and the House Manager had got there before E.M.P.H.H. Security could drag the Finest away from issuing midnight street-side citations down on Comm. Ave., he told Gately. Lenz and Green and Alfonso Parias-Carbo had dragged/carried the pa.s.sed-out Gately inside and laid him on the black vinyl couch in Pat"s office, where Gately had come to and told them ixnay on the ambulanceay and to please wake him up in five more minutes, and then pa.s.sed out for serious real. Parias-Carbo seemed like he"d suffered a mild intestinal hernia from dragging/carrying Gately, but he was being a man about it and had refused codeine downstairs at the E.R. and was expressing grat.i.tude for the growth experience, and the thoraxic lump was receding nicely. Calvin Thrust"s breath smelled of smoke and old scrambled eggs. Gately had once seen a cheap bootleg cartridge of a young Calvin Thrust having s.e.x with a lady with only one arm on what looked like a crude homemade trapeze. The cartridge"s lighting and production values had been real low-quality, and Gately had been in and out of a Demerol-nod, but he was 98% sure it had been the young Calvin Thrust. Calvin Thrust said how right there over Gately"s unconscious form in the office Randy Lenz had begun womaning right off how of course he, Randy Lenz, was going to somehow get blamed for Gately and the Nucks getting f.u.c.ked up and why didn"t they just get it over with and give him the administrative Shoe right now without going through the sham motions of deliberating. Bruce Green had rammed Lenz up against Pat"s cabinets and shaken him like a margarita, but refused to rat out Lenz or say why irate Canadians might think a specimen as d.i.c.kless as Lenz might have demapped their friend. The matter was under investigation, but Thrust confessed to a certain admiration for Green"s refusal to eat cheese. Brucie G. had suffered a broken nose in the beef and now had a terrific set of twin shiners. Calvin Thrust said both he, Calvin Thrust, and the House Manager had immediately on arrival pegged Lenz as either c.o.ked up or "drined to the gills on some "drine, and Thrust said he summoned every Oreida of self-control sobriety"d blessed him with and had quietly taken Lenz out of the office into the special Disabled Bedroom next door and over the sound of Burt F. Smith coughing up little pieces of lung in his sleep he said he"d real controlledly given Lenz the choice of voluntarily resigning his Ennet residency on the spot or submitting to a spot-urine and a room-search and everything like that, plus to questioning by the Finest, who were pretty doubtless even now on route with the fleet of ambulances for the Nucks. Meanwhile, Thrust said - gesturing with the gasper and occasionally leaning forward to see whether Gately was still conscious and to tell him he looked like s.h.i.t, meanwhile - Gately had been lying there pa.s.sed out, wedged with two full filing cabinets to keep him from rolling off the couch he was wider than, and was bleeding in a very big way, and n.o.body knew how to, like, affix affix a turnipcut to a shoulder, and the good-bodied new girl with the cloth mask was bending over the arm of the couch applying pressure to towels on Gately"s bleeding, and her partly-open robe was yielding a view that even brought Alfonso P.-C. around from his herniated fetal posture on the floor, and Thrust and the House Manager were taking turns Asking for Help to intuitively know what they ought to do with Gately, because it was well known that he was on Probie against a real serious bit, and with all due trust and respect to Don it wasn"t clear at that point from the scattered damaged Canadian forms still in different p.r.o.ne positions out in the street who"d done what to who in defense of whatever or not, and the Finest tend to take a keen interest in huge guys who come into E.R."s with spectacular gunshot wounds, and but then when Pat M. pulled up in the Aventura laying rubber a couple minutes later she"d screamed rather unserenely at Thrust for not having already rikky-ticked Don Gately over to St. E."s on his own already. Thrust said he"d let go of Pat"s screaming like water off a duck, revealing that Pat M. had been under felony-weight domestic stress at home, he knew. He said and but so Gately was too heavy to carry unconscious for more than a few meters, even with the masked girl filling in for Parias-Carbo, and they"d just barely got Gately outside still in his wet bowling shirt and laid him briefly on the sidewalk and covered him with Pat"s black suede car-coat while Thrust maneuvered his beloved Corvette up as close to Gately as possible. The sounds of sirens on the way up Comm. Ave. mixed with the sounds of severely f.u.c.ked-up Canadians returning to whatever pa.s.sed with Nucks for consciousness and calling for what they called a turnipcut to a shoulder, and the good-bodied new girl with the cloth mask was bending over the arm of the couch applying pressure to towels on Gately"s bleeding, and her partly-open robe was yielding a view that even brought Alfonso P.-C. around from his herniated fetal posture on the floor, and Thrust and the House Manager were taking turns Asking for Help to intuitively know what they ought to do with Gately, because it was well known that he was on Probie against a real serious bit, and with all due trust and respect to Don it wasn"t clear at that point from the scattered damaged Canadian forms still in different p.r.o.ne positions out in the street who"d done what to who in defense of whatever or not, and the Finest tend to take a keen interest in huge guys who come into E.R."s with spectacular gunshot wounds, and but then when Pat M. pulled up in the Aventura laying rubber a couple minutes later she"d screamed rather unserenely at Thrust for not having already rikky-ticked Don Gately over to St. E."s on his own already. Thrust said he"d let go of Pat"s screaming like water off a duck, revealing that Pat M. had been under felony-weight domestic stress at home, he knew. He said and but so Gately was too heavy to carry unconscious for more than a few meters, even with the masked girl filling in for Parias-Carbo, and they"d just barely got Gately outside still in his wet bowling shirt and laid him briefly on the sidewalk and covered him with Pat"s black suede car-coat while Thrust maneuvered his beloved Corvette up as close to Gately as possible. The sounds of sirens on the way up Comm. Ave. mixed with the sounds of severely f.u.c.ked-up Canadians returning to whatever pa.s.sed with Nucks for consciousness and calling for what they called medecins, medecins, and with the crazed-squirrel sound of Lenz trying to start his rusted-out brown Duster, which had a bad solenoid. They"d heaved Gately"s dead weight in the "Vette and Pat M. drove interference like a madwoman in her turbocharged Aventura. Pat let the masked girl ride shotgun with her because the masked girl wouldn"t quit asking her to let her come too. The House Manager stayed behind to represent Ennet House to E.M.P.H.H. Security and the somewhat less bulls.h.i.ttable BPD-Finest. The sirens got steadily closer, which added to the confusion because senile and mobile-vegetable residents of both Unit #4 and the Shed had been drawn out on the frozen lawns by the freakas, and the mix of several kinds of sirens didn"t do them a bit of good, and they started flapping and shrieking and running around and adding to the medical confusion of the whole scene, which by the time him and Pat pulled out of there was a f.u.c.king millhouse