Part 13 (2/2)
Eddes orders the BLT, and Ruth-Ann says, ”Good choice, dear.” I get the three-egg omelet with whole wheat toast, and Ruth-Ann notes dryly that there are other kinds of food besides eggs.
”So,” I say. ”We've ordered.”
”One more minute. Let's talk about you. Who's your favorite singer?”
”Bob Dylan.”
”Favorite book?”
I take a sip of coffee. ”Right now I'm reading Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
”Yeah,” says Eddes. ”But what's your favorite?”
”The Watchmen. It's a graphic novel, from the eighties.”
”I know what it is.”
”Why did Peter Zell call you every night at exactly ten p.m.?”
”To make sure his watch was working.”
”Ms. Eddes.”
”He was a morphine addict.”
”What?”
I'm staring at the side of her face, she's turned to look out the window, and I'm flabbergasted. It's like she just said that Peter Zell was an Indian chief or a general in the Soviet army.
”A morphine addict?”
”Yeah. I think morphine. Some kind of opiate, for sure. But not now-not anymore-I mean, obviously, he's dead now-but I mean-” She pauses, her fluency has deserted her, and she shakes her head, slows down. ”For a period, last year, he was addicted to something, and then he quit.”
She keeps talking, and I keep listening, writing down every word she says, even as some hungry part of my mind flies off into a corner, huddles with this new information-a morphine addict, some kind of opiate, for a period-and begins to chew on it, taste its marrow, decide how it might be digested. Decide if it's true.
”Zell was not inclined to outsize living, as you may have discovered,” says Eddes. ”No booze. No dope. No cigarettes, even. Nothing.”
”Right.”
Peter played Dungeons & Dragons. Peter alphabetized his breakfast cereal. He arranged actuarial data into tables, a.n.a.lyzed it.
”And then, last summer, with everything, I guess he felt like making a change.” She smiles grimly. ”A new lifestyle choice. He's telling me all this later, by the way. I wasn't privy to his decision-making process when he started.”
I write down last summer and lifestyle choice. Questions are bubbling up on my lips, but I force myself to stay silent, sit still, let her keep talking, now that at last she's begun.
”So, you know, apparently this dalliance in illicit substances, it didn't go that well for him. Or, it went really well at first, and then really poorly. As it happens, you know?”
I nod like I do know, but everything I know is from law-enforcement training materials and cop movies. Personally, I'm like Peter: a beer now and again, maybe. No pot, no smokes, no booze. My whole life. The skinny policeman-to-be at sixteen waiting in the restaurant with a paperback copy of Ender's Game, his friends in the parking lot pulling hits off a purple ceramic head-shop bong and then sliding, giggling, back into the booth-this very booth. Not sure why. Just never been all that interested.
Our food comes, and Eddes pauses to deconstruct her sandwich, making three small piles on her plate: vegetables over here, bread over there, bacon at the farthest edge of the plate. Inside I'm quivering, thinking about these new pieces of the puzzle that are falling from the sky, trying to grasp them and slide each falling brick into the place where it fits, like in that old video game.
The asteroid. The s...o...b..x.
Morphine.
J. T. Toussaint.
12.375. Twelve point three seven five what?
Pay attention, Henry, I tell myself. Listen. Follow where it goes. ”Sometime in October, Peter stopped using.” Eddes is talking with her big eyes shut, her head tilted back.
”Why?”
”I don't know.”
”Okay.”
”But he was suffering.”
”Withdrawing.”
”Yeah. And trying to cover it up. And failing.”
I'm writing, trying to piece together the timeline on all this. Old Gompers, his voice soaked in gin and stentorian malaise, explaining how Peter had flipped out at work, screamed at the girl. The asteroid costume. Halloween night.
Eddes keeps talking. ”Kicking morphine is not easy, is nearly impossible, in fact. So I volunteered to help the guy out. Told him he had to go home for a little bit, and I would help him.”
”Okay ...”
A week? Gompers had said. Two weeks? I thought he was gone, but then he turned up again, no explanation, and he's been the same as ever.
”All I did was, I checked in with him on my way to work each day. Lunch, sometimes. Make sure he had everything he needed, bring him a fresh blanket, soup, whatever. He didn't have any family. No friends.”
By the week before Thanksgiving, she says, Peter was up and around, shaky on his feet but ready to go back to work, to insurance data.
”And the phone calls every night?”
”Well, nighttime's the hard part, and he was alone. Each night he would call me to check in. So I knew he was okay, and so he knew there was someone waiting to hear his voice.”
”Every night?”
”I used to have a dog,” she says. ”That was a lot more burdensome.”
I'm thinking this over, wis.h.i.+ng it rang entirely true.
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