Morrison losing the physical compulsion to smoke little by little, but never quite losing the psychological craving, or the need to have something in his mouth--cough drops, Life Savers, a toothpick. Poor substitutes, all of them.
And finally, Morrison hung up in a colossal traffic jam in the Midtown Tunnel. Darkness. Horns blaring. Air stinking. Traffic hopelessly snarled. And suddenly, thumbing open the glove compartment and seeing the half-open pack of cigarettes in there. He looked at them for a moment, then snatched one and lit it with the dashboard lighter. If anything happens, it's Cindy's fault, he told himself defiantly. I told her to get rid of all the damn cigarettes.
The first drag made him cough smoke out furiously. The second made his eyes water. The third made him feel lightheaded and swoony. It tastes awful, he thought.
And on the heels of that: My God, what am I doing?
Horns blatted impatiently behind him. Ahead, the traffic had begun to move again. He stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, opened both front windows, opened the vents, and then fanned the air helplessly like a kid who has just flushed his first butt down the john.
He joined the traffic flow jerkily and drove home.
"Cindy?" he called. "I'm home." No answer.
"Cindy? Where are you, hon?"
The phone rang, and he pounced on it. "Hello? Cindy?"
"Hello, Mr. Morrison," Donatti said. He sounded pleasantly brisk and businesslike. "It seems we have a small business matter to attend to. Would five o'clock be convenient?"
"Have you got my wife?"
"Yes, indeed." Donatti chuckled indulgently.
"Look, let her go," Morrison babbled. "It won't happen again. It was a slip, just a slip, that's all. I only had three drags and for God's sake it didn't even taste good!"
"That's a shame. I'll count on you for five then, shall I?" "Please," Morrison said, close to tears. "Please--"
He was speaking to a dead line.
At 5 P.M. the reception room was empty except for the secretary, who gave him a twinkly smile that ignored Morrison's pallor and disheveled appearance. "Mr. Donatti?" she said into the intercom. "Mr. Morrison to see you." She nodded to Morrison. "Go right in."
Donatti was waiting outside the unmarked room with a man who was wearing a SMILE sweatshirt and carrying a .38. He was built like an ape.
"Listen," Morrison said to Donatti. "We can work something out, can't we? I'll pay you. I'll--" "Shaddap," the man in the SMILE sweatshirt said.
"It's good to see you," Donatti said. "Sorry it has to be under such adverse circumstances. Will you come with me? We'll make this as brief as possible. I can assure you your wife won't be hurt . . . this time."
Morrison tensed himself to leap at Donatti.
"Come, come," Donatti said, looking annoyed. "If you do that, Junk here is going to pistol-whip you and your wife is still going to get it. Now where's the percentage in that?"
"I hope you rot in hell," he told Donatti.
Donatti sighed. "If I had a nickel for every time someone expressed a similar sentiment, I could retire. Let it be a lesson to you, Mr. Morrison. When a romantic tries to do a good thing and fails, they give him a medal. When a pragmatist succeeds, they wish him in hell. Shall we go?"
Junk motioned with the pistol.
Morrison preceded them into the room. He felt numb. The small green curtain had been pulled. Junk prodded him with the gun. This is what being a witness at the gas chamber must have been like, he thought.
He looked in. Cindy was there, looking around bewilderedly. "Cindy!" Morrison called miserably. "Cindy, they--"
"She can't hear or see you," Donatti said. "One-way glass. Well, let's get it over with. It really was a very small slip. I believe thirty seconds should be enough. Junk?"
Junk pressed the button with one hand and kept the pistol jammed firmly into Morrison's back with the other. It was the longest thirty seconds of his life.
When it was over, Donatti put a hand on Morrison's shoulder and said, "Are you going to throw up?"
"No," Morrison said weakly. His forehead was against the glass. His legs were jelly. "I don't think so." He turned around and saw that Junk was gone.
"Come with me," Donatti said. "Where?" Morrison asked apathetically.
"I think you have a few things to explain, don't you?" "How can I face her? How can I tell her that I . . . I . . ." "I think you're going to be surprised," Donatti said.
The room was empty except for a sofa. Cindy was on it, sobbing helplessly. "Cindy?" he said gently.
She looked up, her eyes magnified by tears. "Dick?" she whispered. "Dick? Oh . . . Oh God . . ." He held her tightly. "Two men," she said against his chest. "In the house and at first I thought they were burglars and then I thought they were going to rape me and then they took me someplace with a blindfold over my eyes and . . . and . . . oh it was h-horrible--"
"Shhh," he said. "Shhh."
"But why?" she asked, looking up at him. "Why would they--" "Because of me," he said. "I have to tell you a story, Cindy--"
When he had finished he was silent a moment and then said, "I suppose you hate me. I wouldn't blame you."
He was looking at the floor, and she took his face in both hands and turned it to hers. "No," she said. "I don't hate you." He looked at her in mute surprise.
"It was worth it," she said. "God bless these people. They've let you out of prison." "Do you mean that?"
"Yes," she said, and kissed him. "Can we go home now? I feel much better. Ever so much."
The phone rang one evening a week later, and when Morrison recognized Donatti's voice, he said, "Your boys have got it wrong. I haven't even been near a cigarette."
"We know that. We have a final matter to talk over. Can you stop by tomorrow afternoon?" "Is it--"
"No, nothing serious. Bookkeeping really. By the way, congratulations on your promotion." "How did you know about that?"
"We're keeping tabs," Donatti said noncommittally, and hung up.
When they entered the small room, Donatti said, "Don't look so nervous. No one's going to bite you. Step over here, please." Morrison saw an ordinary bathroom scale. "Listen, I've gained a little weight, but--"
"Yes, seventy-three percent of our clients do. Step up, please." Morrison did, and tipped the scales at one seventy-four.
"Okay, fine. You can step off. How tall are you, Mr. Morrison?" "Five-eleven."
"Okay, let's see." He pulled a small card laminated in plastic from his breast pocket."Well, that's not too bad. I'm going to write you a prescrip for some highly illegal diet pills. Use them sparingly and according to directions. And I'm going to set your maximum weight at. . . let's see . . ." He consulted the card again. "One eighty-two, how does that sound? And since this is December first, I'll expect you the first of every month for a weigh-in. No problem if you can't make it, as long as you call in advance."
"And what happens if I go over one-eighty-two?"
Donatti smiled. "We'll send someone out to your house to cut off your wife's little finger," he said. "You can leave through this door, Mr. Morrison. Have a nice day."
Eight months later:
Morrison runs into the crony from the Larkin Studios at Dempsey's bar. Morrison is down to what Cindy proudly calls his fighting weight: one sixty-seven. He works out three times a week and looks as fit as whipcord. The crony from Larkin, by comparison, looks like something the cat dragged in.
Crony: Lord, how'd you ever stop? I'm locked into this damn habit tighter than Tillie. The crony stubs his cigarette out with real revulsion and drains his scotch.
Morrison looks at him speculatively and then takes a small white business card out of his wallet. He puts it on the bar between them. You know, he says, these guys changed my life.
Twelve months later:
Morrison receives a bill in the mail. The bill says:
QUITTERS, INC.
237 East 46th Street New York, N.Y. 10017
1 Treatment
$2500.00<
br />
Counselor (Victor
Donatti)
Electricity
$2500.00
$ .50
TOTAL (Please pay this amount
$5000.50
Those sons of bitches! he explodes. They charged me for the electricity they used to . . . to . . . Just pay it. she says, and kisses him.
Twenty months later:
Quite by accident, Morrison and his wife meet the Jimmy McCanns at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Introductions are made all around. Jimmy looks as good, if not better than he did on that day in the airport terminal so long ago. Morrison has never met his wife. She is pretty in the radiant way plain girls sometimes have when they are very, very happy.
She offers her hand and Morrison shakes it. There is something odd about her grip, and halfway through the second act, he realizes what it was. The little finger on her right hand is missing.
I KNOW WHAT YOU NEED
"I know what you need."
Elizabeth looked up from her sociology text, startled, and saw a rather nondescript young man in a green fatigue jacket. For a moment she thought he looked familiar, as if she had known him before; the feeling was close to deja vu. Then it was gone. He was about her height, skinny, and . . . twitchy. That was the word. He wasn't moving, but he seemed to be twitching inside his skin, just out of sight. His hair was black and unkempt. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses that magnified his dark brown eyes, and the lenses looked dirty. No, she was quite sure she had never seen him before.
"You know," she said, "I doubt that."
"You need a strawberry double-dip cone. Right?"
She blinked at him, frankly startled. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had been thinking about breaking for an ice cream. She was studying for finals in one of the third-floor carrels of the Student Union, and there was still a woefully long way to go.
"Right?" he persisted, and smiled. It transformed his face from something over-intense and nearly ugly into something else that was oddly appealing. The word "cute" occurred to her, and that wasn't a good word to afflict a boy with, but this one was when he smiled. She smiled back before she could road block it behind her lips. This she didn't need, to have to waste time brushing off some weirdo who had decided to pick the worst time of the year to try to make an impression. She still had sixteen chapters of Introduction to Sociology to wade through.
"No thanks," she said.
"Come on, if you hit them any harder you'll give yourself a headache. You've been at it two hours without a break." "How would you know that?"
"I've been watching you," he said promptly, but this time his gamin grin was lost on her. She already had a headache. "Well, you can stop," she said, more sharply than she had intended. "I don't like people staring at me."
"I'm sorry." She felt a little sorry for him, the way she sometimes felt sorry for stray dogs. He seemed to float in the green fatigue jacket and . . . yes, he had on mismatched socks. One black, one brown. She felt herself getting ready to smile again and held it back.
"I've got these finals," she said gently. "Sure," he said. "Okay."
She looked after him for a moment pensively. Then she lowered her gaze to her book, but an afterimage of the encounter remained: strawberry double-dip.
When she got back to the dorm it was 11:15 P.M. and Alice was stretched out on her bed, listening to Neil Diamond and reading The Story of O.
"I didn't know they assigned that in Eh-17," Elizabeth said.
Alice sat up. "Broadening my horizons, darling. Spreading my intellectual wings. Raising my . . . Liz?"
"Hmmm?"
"Did you hear what I said?" "No, sorry, I--"
"You look like somebody conked you one, kid." "I met a guy tonight. Sort of a funny guy, at that."
"Oh? He must be something if he can separate the great Rogan from her beloved texts."
"His name is Edward Jackson Hamner, Junior, no less. Short. Skinny. Looks like he washed his hair last around Washington's birthday. Oh, and mismatched socks. One black, one brown."
"I thought you were more the fraternity type."
"It's nothing like that, Alice. I was studying at the Union on the third floor--the Think Tank--and he invited me down to the Grinder for an ice-cream cone. I told him no and he sort of slunk off. But once he started me thinking about ice cream, I couldn't stop. I'd just decided to give up and take a break and there he was, holding a big, drippy strawberry double-dip in each hand."
"I tremble to hear the denouement."
Elizabeth snorted. "Well, I couldn't really say no. So he sat down, and it turns out he had sociology with Professor Branner last year."
"Will wonders never cease, lawd a mercy. Goshen to Christmas--"
"Listen, this is really amazing. You know the way I've been sweating that course?" "Yes. You talk about it in your sleep, practically."
"I've got a seventy-eight average. I've got to have an eighty to keep my scholarship, and that means I need at least an eighty-four on the final. Well, this Ed Hamner says Branner uses almost the same final every year. And Ed's eidetic."
"You mean he's got a whatzit . . . photographic memory?"
"Yes. Look at this." She opened her sociology book and took out three sheets of notebook paper covered with writing. Alice took them. "This looks like multiple-choice stuff."
"It is. Ed says it's Branner's last year's final word for word."
Alice said flatly, "I don't believe it." "But it covers all the material!"
"Still don't believe it." She handed the sheets back. "Just because this spook--" "He isn't a spook. Don't call him that."
"Okay. This little guy hasn't got you bamboozled into just memorizing this and not studying at all, has he?" "Of course not," she said uneasily.
"And even if this is like the exam, do you think it's exactly ethical?"
Anger surprised her and ran away with her tongue before she could hold it. "That's great for you, sure. Dean's List every semester and your folks paying your way. You aren't . . . Hey, I'm sorry. There was no call for that."
Alice shrugged and opened 0 again, her face carefully neutral. "No, you're right. Not my business. But why don't you study the book, too . . . just to be safe?"
"Of course I will."
But mostly she studied the exam notes provided by Edward Jackson Hamner, Jr.
When she came out of the lecture hall after the exam he was sitting in the lobby, floating in his green army fatigue coat. He smiled tentatively at her and stood up. "How'd it go?"
Impulsively, she kissed his cheek. She could not remember such a blessed feeling of relief. "I think I aced it." "Really? That's great. Like a burger?"
"Love one," she said absently. Her mind was still on the exam. It was the one Ed had given her, almost word for word, and she had sailed through.
Over hamburgers, she asked him how his own finals were going.
"Don't have any. I'm in Honors, and you don't take them unless you want to. I was doing okay, so I didn't." "Then why are you still here?"
"I had to see how you did, didn't I?"
"Ed, you didn't. That's sweet, but--" The naked look in his eyes troubled her. She had seen it before. She was a pretty girl. "Yes," he said softly. "Yes, I did."
"Ed, I'm grateful. I think you saved my scholarship. I really do. But I have a boyfriend, you know." "Serious?" he asked, with a poor attempt to speak lightly.
"Very," she said, matching his tone. "Almost engaged." "Does he know he's lucky? Does he know how lucky?" "I'm lucky, too," she said, thinking of Tony Lombard. "Beth," he said suddenly.
"What?" she asked, startled. "Nobody calls you that, do they?" "Why . . . no. No, they don't." "Not even this guy?"
"No--" Tony called her Liz. Sometimes Lizzie, which was even worse. He leaned forward. "But Beth is what you like best, isn't it?"
She laughed to cover her confusion. "Whatever in the world--"
"Never mind." He grinned his gamin grin. "I'll call you Beth. That's better. Now eat your hamb
urger."
Then her junior year was over, and she was saying goodbye to Alice. They were a little stiff together, and Elizabeth was sorry. She supposed it was her own fault; she had crowed a little loudly about her sociology final when grades were posted. She had scored a ninety-seven--highest in the division.
Well, she told herself as she waited at the airport for her flight to be called, it wasn't any more unethical than the cramming she had been resigned to in that third-floor carrel. Cramming wasn't real studying at all; just rote memorization that faded away to nothing as soon as the exam was over.