Chapter Twenty-Three
-- Spring, 1974
The Eagles – “Take it to the Limit”
After that fateful Thanksgiving dinner, everyone went their own way.
In danger of being expelled again, Nick got Cody to drive him into Newark to take the high school equivalency exam. He got the lowest grade possible without flunking and received his diploma in the mail six to eight weeks later.
Janet took Magnus and Jean up on their offer to tour Europe. She joined the jet set flitting around international hotspots, drinking and carousing. She gondola’d in Positano. She explored the Amalfi Coast and Monaco on the Riviera. She wore harem pants for the first time.
When her grandparents dropped her off in Paris, she took to smoking and sunbathing topless on the roof of their pied-a-terre. She got so high on mushrooms she thought the wake of the planes in the blue sky were the wake of the boats on the water.
In the afternoons, she would write on a rusty typewriter she found. She put down on paper as many stories about her friends as she could remember.
When he heard she was in town, Glen Tonche drove his hog up from the south of France and played her “Forever Young” on his guitar, telling her he wrote it himself. She would be back in the states before she ever learned the truth.
When Spring break ended, Janet officially decided to leave school. If she was going to give acting a try, she figured she might as well start as soon as possible.
With Janet out of the picture, Lynn moved directly into her old room. Down came the Jim Morrison poster, up went the Carpenters and the Monkees.
Janet didn’t care. She moved out to Magnus and Jean’s condo in Santa Monica and started auditioning and taking acting classes. Her grandparents were never there, so she had the place to herself, decorating it the way she liked it. She hung her shawls up over the windows and lamps, turned an old Chianti bottle into a candle holder. She got a Siamese cat and played with it while listening to Carole King. There was no maid, but if she took just a little Dexedrine, she could clean the whole place in a couple hours, clenching her jaw the entire time.
As for Bill, he had a job in the city; something a friend of his father put together for him. It was dry, soul-crushing work, but it paid. Not a lot, but some. He just wished he could find something interesting in it. Even if it was only selling safety to people. Prudential Insurance was a company he would stay at for more than thirty years, until they let him go with nothing but a shitty watch that turned his skin green. He was an Actuarial Associate, the exact wrong person to access risk, but somehow he made it work.
It wasn’t all bad. He had a familiar face on his floor; John Birch worked in Client Relations, which meant wining and dining at up to three lunches a day. Bill wasn’t the outstanding employee of his peer group, but he did have his fans, his boss being a major one, and he was flagged as a man on the rise, someone to look out for.
He found a group of young turks, of similar age and title, that started spending time together. After a hard day’s work, they would head to drinks at Llewellyn’s down on the corner. They were in their early twenties and didn’t have wives to rush home to, so they could tie one on every night of the week and still arrive fresh to work the next morning.
But Bill had no such luck. Where his co-workers seemed to know how and when to stop, Bill couldn’t tell when enough was enough. He’d wake up back in his apartment - still half in and half out of yesterday’s clothes – eyes bloodshot, temples screaming. His alarm would read 6:43 a.m. or some other ungodly, early time and instead of hitting the snooze button, instead of rolling over in bed, he fought every impulse he had in him and rose for the day and showered.
Nine to twelve was a wash, he got nothing done, no work of any kind. All he could focus on was finding the right ratio of bicarb and black coffee that wouldn’t tear his stomach up and send him running for the bathroom.
The last thing he wanted to do was take a business lunch, but J.B. called him early on in the day to tell him he’d be needing his assistance closing some Texans who were in from out of town representing a regional construction company. Bill didn’t particularly want to see people but going to one of J.B.’s client lunches meant he could start drinking at noon. And if history was any indication, these meetings could stretch through to quitting time.
He arrived at P.J. Clarke’s a few minutes early and found J.B. by the maître d’ stand waiting to be seated. “Where the clients?” Bill asked.
J.B. motioned. “They’re in the bathroom, as they put it, ‘draining the snake.’ I tell ya, Bill – I don’t think I can keep up with them. They never stop... they eat and drink more than any person I’ve ever met in my life. It never ends with these guys! I have to play golf with them later. And you know how I hate golf!”
“Oh, poor you.” Bill mumbled, rubbing his head.
The maître d’ returned from supervising a table flip and led J.B. and Bill to their booth. J.B. took the aisle so he could see the clients when they emerged.
Bill looked his friend over. J.B. was in a three-piece suit that had recently been pressed. “You know, I never saw you doing this kind of work.”
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“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I never figured Mr. “Students for a Democratic Society” would fall so low as to take a job working for the man.”
J.B. was quiet for a few moments before speaking. “I just got tired of trying to do the right thing. When Watergate happened, I let myself feel the smallest glimmer of hope that there was some... corrective force... in the universe. And then Ford pardoned him. I realized there’s no use in fighting.”
As the beefy Texans came out of the bathroom, they signaled to J.B. they were heading to the bar. He gave them a thumbs-up, saying to Bill, “they’re big fellas, huh?”
“Coupla good ol’ boys.”
“I’ll bet you each of them orders a T-bone.”
That afternoon with the clients turned into a several week binge. The mornings became harder and harder for Bill to make it through. Invariably, one of the turks would stop by his desk and bring up something inane from the night before and smile at him with their dumb fucking grin. As time went by, Bill came to terrible conclusions about the people he worked with; how everyone was an idiot, and only out for themselves. He’d alienate his coworkers by saying things like “working hard doesn’t matter, your life was figured out long before you were born and there’s nothing to do but stop struggling.”
At these low moments, he thought back on the fight he had with his family last Thanksgiving. He felt he was running out of time. He supposed he had two, maybe three more incidents like that before his family finally gave up on him for good. Before he had no one and his drinking forced him to live on the streets...
In the doghouse...
When the Texans that J.B. had closed returned to New York to finalize their paperwork, they requested Bill tag-along. He had called in sick that day, as he had been out drinking the night before until five in the morning. But the Texans had thoroughly enjoyed their last visit and insisted that everything they had done previously be repeated.
However, by 8:30 p.m., Bill had still not arrived. Stealing away from the group, J.B. called him from P.J. Clarke’s. The phone rang at Bill’s apartment for nearly thirty seconds before he answered, groggily. “Hello?”
“Where the fuck are you?!” J.B. seethed into the payphone.
Bill groped for his alarm clock in the dark. Seeing the time, he cursed and said he’d be there as soon as he could. He hung up and reached for the water on his bedside table. Taking a deep sip, he spit it out when he realized it was his piss from the night before. Bill retched onto the floor until he had nothing left in him.
Thirty minutes later, he arrived in yesterday’s clothes, sweating heavily. J.B. saw him come in and left the table to lambast him away from the clients.
“Did I or did I not confirm this with your secretary several times yesterday?”
“I know, I know...” Bill said shaking his head. He refused to meet J.B.’s eyeline.
J.B. looked like he wanted to continue chewing Bill out, but instead just sighed. “I needed you here. They’re... having cold feet. And for some reason they like you. So please, just don’t be yourself tonight.”
Bill fought the rising tide of vomit in the back of his throat. “I understand.”
J.B. led the way back to the table. When the Texans saw Bill, they cheered. “Billy boy!”
Bill forced a smile onto his face. “How we doing, fellas?”
J.B. took a quick poll. “I’m gonna get us another round – Bill you want?”
Bill thought about the churning witch’s cauldron in his stomach, but finally nodded yes to J.B.’s offer. He settled in as the Texans slid over to make room for him.
Before he headed to the bar, J.B. threw out a talking point. “You know, Bill does a hell of a Patty Hearst impression.”
“Oh, they don’t wanna hear that...” Bill blushed, trying to keep his beer down.
“The hell we don’t!” Timmons wailed, slapping the table.
Bill reluctantly cleared his throat. He crossed his arms, pouting, and put on a big, grumpy frown, crying: “I don’t wanna go home!”
You would have thought an atomic bomb had gone off. The Texans roared, gripping their sides to keep from exploding. The noise drew looks from all corners of the restaurant. As the boys slowly recovered, J.B. smiled appreciatively at Bill.
Later, as they tucked the blacked-out Texans into a pair of cabs, J.B. thanked him. “I don’t know how you pulled it off, but god bless you.”
They waved as the cabs pulled away. When they were out of sight, J.B. turned to face Bill. “I was wrong about you. You’re a pro...” J.B. looked around to make sure the coast was clear, that no co-workers were around. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Management doesn’t know or doesn’t care what we do for the company. I’m twenty percent of all the new business for this branch. I’m sick of the prehistoric way they do business. I wanna leave. I wanna start my own firm. And if tonight is any indication, I want you to come with me.”
Bill was very aware of the vodka emanating out of his pores. He said he’d think about it.
The next day on his way out of work, he saw the man for the first time: a soot-covered wino digging in the trash by the front door of his building. His pants were the color of someone who shit himself whenever he pleased. As the days went by, he had a habit of finding Bill in the largest of crowds and smiling at him. Even if Bill left work at an unnatural hour, the wino would spot him. Bill gradually began to think of this man as his “ghost of Christmas future,” an omen of what he could become. This wild animal that society had forgotten about, had abandoned, soon found his way into Bill’s dreams.
Eventually, he could put J.B. off no longer. His friend needed an answer. Bill found that the decision had already been made for him. If this was a glimpse into his future, then how could he leave the meager job he did have for some pipe dream that might not even come to fruition? When he finally told J.B. no, J.B. had looked at him with something resembling pity.
Bill settled into middle-management, his skills not extending far enough to see him advance. He never saw the wino again, even found himself looking for the man in a strange, car-wreck, can’t-look-away kind of curiosity.
When he read in a Times article several months later that J.B.’s company was already valued in the millions, something in him snapped. A doctor called it “olfactory insanity.” No matter how much cologne he put on, no matter how hard he scrubbed in the shower each morning, Bill couldn’t help but notice that everything smelled just a little bit like shit. His boss in the staff meeting, the secretaries in the typing pool, even the women he hit on at last call, they all had the faintest whiff of manure. He never imagined that the decaying, sewer smell of New York could get any worse. But he was wrong.
He wondered more than once if he was losing his mind. He had heard that brain trauma could mess with the nose. The drinking couldn’t have helped, but it was the only thing that sped the process up, that got him from work into blissful sleep, so that he could wake up the next day and do it again. Somewhere in the back of his head he knew that if he could do that again and again and again that one day there would no more tomorrows and that all would be sleep and he wouldn’t have to smell how bad the world was getting.