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For a short time in the mid-80s, before mandatory drug testing chased me out,
I held a sweet do-nothing job as a hospital janitorial worker. It was a low
paying position without a future, and that suited me fine. Five nights a week
I got to wear a zippered jumpsuit with my name on a strip of reflective tape;
and a pair of non-skid, rubber-soled, reinforced steel-toed boots. On the nights
I shot up or snorted I floated though the wide halls of St. Francis Hospital
like a superhero.
Because I was a nobody, just a small insignificant part of a grossly mismanaged
maintenance team -- one hundred and sixty strong, a virtual army of men and women,
most of them dedicated self-motivated workers -- I didn't really have to do much
maintaining. On occasion I moved a mop, touched a broom, or turned on a vacuum,
but I specialized in jotting my name on other people's completed work orders.
Some days, when the weather was particularly bad, I felt honored just to be indoors.
My normal procedure was walk around, ride the elevators, stroll the corridors, talk
to the nurses, hit on the nurses, fail miserably, meet up with my janitorial pals and
take extended breaks in the cafeteria. Sometimes I would hit the love lottery and me
and some nurse would get high and get lost in the bowels of the hospital which,
in those days, was very much like a subterranean world. There, one level beneath
the morgue, in that strange and unearthly place, I became intimate with two Angels of Mercy.
One of them, the tallest of the two, my very ex-best friend Heather called one afternoon
while the other one, my recently acquired second wife, Donna, was in the shower. I had been
expecting a visit from Heather or a phone call for days, since we had gotten back from Costa Rica.
So it was standard practice for me to pick up on the first ring and not say a word.
"Hello Donna. This is Heather Carlton. Please don't interrupt. I'm going to tell you a couple
of things about your new husband," Heather said. "Number one..."
Heather usually had a voice like tissue paper; this day she sounded cold, determined, very drunk.
"Robby doesn't love you! Understand? Just so you know. Okay?"
I let my legs fold under me like a broken director's chair. I had a sudden feverish flash of
Heather pressing against me with her hands swirling in my hair. I sunk straight to the floor,
my hand over the mouth piece. I listened to Heather say "Robby loves me! Understand? Me! Just me!"
I wondered what she had taken, if she was crashing, coming down too fast and too hard, or
climbing, going up dizzy and slow. Whatever it was, I wanted some. I wanted whatever she was doing.
She said "Me. Just me!" six or seven times. That was pretty pathetic. I kept thinking, "She's high
and I'm not. God damn it." She sobbed for just over a minute. I pinched my nose nearly the
whole time, trying to think of something to say. I felt circumstances demanded something
intelligent, something brilliant, yet sobering. I didn't know how to talk to people in 1986.
"I'll tell you something else you don't know..." Heather said into my ear.
"Something nobody knows about Robby but me."
As much as I wanted to hear, I required a cigarette quite out of proportion to any occasion urge.
I had half a pack hidden in a suitcase. So I left the phone dangling.
After several stale puffs, I crawled back beneath the phone. The receiver was making a
horrible noise. I said, "Heather, honey?"
She said "Fuck," and clicked off.
I had goose bumps. I had chills. I kept puffing the stale smoke. The nicotine helped my brain,
but the back of my neck was tingling like I was pushing out thorns. I stayed on the floor with
the phone on my shoulder; I heard the shower water stop. I needed another cigarette.
"Why is the phone that way," Donna said a minute later.
I glanced over. Her robe was loosely tied. She had a stolen hotel towel fixed like a turban.
She was twenty-seven years old -- same as me, same as Heather. Except Donna outshined us all;
she could pass for nineteen or twenty. It was her skin, the freckles, the long red hair.
She was the prettiest girl I'd ever kissed. And the sweetest smelling. She didn't smoke.
She hardly drank. She could handle a needle better than any of us, but she had never once
pricked into her own vein.
"Leave the phone alone," I said. Then I said, "Please."
I'd moved myself and my cigarettes to the crack of an open window. We were eight stories up.
The windows wouldn't tilt out more than half an inch. The rent was more than we could afford.
I could see the flat roofs and the skyline and the water. I was using a Coke can for an
ashtray but I kept missing; the wind was cleaning up for me.
"Is that a cigarette?" Donna said.
I looked at the burning tip. "My second in ten minutes."
"What's going on?" she said.
I looked at Donna. Her face looked pinkish and raw.
"I'm having a couple," I said. "It's helping me. I can't quit everything at once."
"I don't believe you're smoking in front of me. Did you forget about my asthma?"
I pulled a deep drag and held it.
"Robby, please put it out."
I blew smoke at the glass.
"In a minute," I said.
I touched my nose to the window. If one looked hard enough, and ruled out the spots
that drew the eye, it was really an ugly view.
"I'm going to change the phone number," I said.
"I thought you did change it."
"I thought I had too."
"Did that woman call again?"
"What woman," I said.
"That saleswoman, that used car lady."
"I canceled all that," I said.
Donna was a sharp nurse, a licensed dietician, and no dummy. Her eyes were green and alert.
The first time we made love she found the needle marks between my toes. We talked for hours,
talked and plotted. We made a simple, workable game plan. She became my nurse, my savior,
my future. I called her my new life, my new wife, my new drug. She was more than I deserved.
"So who called?"
She had moved closer to the phone but her eyes were on me. I sat down and picked up a book
that I'd been trying and mostly pretending to read for weeks. "No messages. Nobody you know."
She closed her eyes and spread a grin.
"Really?"
I pulled at the page marker -- the sales receipt from a gift shop in Costa Rica. The ink was too
light to read. I fed the square of paper to the crack in the window and watched it sail.
"Did you try to call someone?" Donna said. "Did you set up a buy?"
I closed the book on my thumb and pushed the cigarette into a candy dish.
"Look, I really don't know the problem," I said. "That phone does that,
it keeps falling off the hook."
Donna frowned. "Are you starting to hurt? Is that it?"
"I'm hurting a little," I said.
"Where?"
I tapped my head.
Donna smiled. "Where else?"
I said nothing.
"Your stomach?"
I shook my head.
"Your chest?"
I nodded, then touched the spot. Then I hugged myself to show her how deep it ran.
"I can feel when the wind moves the building," I said.
Donna reeled the phone in by the curly cord. She brought it up slow, letting it twirl
in front of her like a mouse she had killed or a fish she was proud of.
"Do you feel like you have a fever?"
I shrugged. "Not now I don't. But I think I did have one."
"When?"
"Before. Earlier. You were asleep."
"Do you have one now? Robby?"
I counted how many cigarettes were left in the pack. "I have to go to work," I said.
"Oh no," said Donna. "Uh huh," she said. She was already dialing. "You won't make
eight hours. I'm calling you out."
I sank down to the floor. I went faster than I thought and hit harder than I intended.
My head thumped the wall. "I love you with all the addiction in my heart," I said,
grinding my teeth.
"Busy," Donna said. She hung up then hit redial.
"You stay home too," I said. "Be my nurse."
She whipped her towel off. Her hair fell loose. "Big talker," she said, and dropped
her robe a little. She shimmied her shoulders, made cleavage. She wiggled forward,
stretching a smile that would make an angel hard. I touched my thumbs together
and framed her with my hands. She kept coming. Her face zoomed. I felt dizzy.
My hands were trembling. I couldn't have looked dumber.
That was in June 1986, day seventeen of my second marriage. It was a Thursday.
I was in a big hurry to get to work, get paid, get high. I was ninety-seven pounds
and always in a hurry.
We both called in sick. We both got reprimanded. All night we tried to make love and couldn't.
The Thursday part is a lie. I really don't remember if it was pay day. Give me a calendar
and a sharp pencil, and half a minute, I could figure it out, but it's not important.
What I remember is how hard it was being alive and straight, clean, sober, married
seventeen days to the wrong woman.
All that night our phone didn't ring. But in the morning it would. And Donna would answer.
And she would politely ask Heather what she wanted and then she would ask me. And for once
I would be honest. Then she would pass the phone to me, and that would be the end of it.
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