Chapter 10
At a hair before 10 P.M., Jesse Edwin left her hospital bedside to attend a local AA meeting in Westwood, leaving Shank in his stead, the older man lounging in a chair in the corner of the room, remaining on watch presumably to guard her against unwanted oversized intruders who specifically matched the description of one Hirschfeld." There's something different about my son," Rickie said. "He's so...so glowing! He has an air of assurance that was never there before."
"He's showing a lot of guts and hustle," Shank, Jesse Edwin's AA sponsor, agreed. "He's walking on the bright side of the moon right now."
Rickie was finding Jesse Edwin's sponsor--a somewhat grizzled yet still handsome in a lanky sort of way Irishman--easy to talk to. The man sported a day's growth of white beard and his appearance was waning from tired to exhausted, an effect magnified by his coarse, whiskey voice, doubtless from his past years in the barroom when whiskey, women, and cigarettes ruled his life. The only feature on his lean sharp face which didn't seem to belong were his lips, which perched below his elfin nose with a meaty sensuality. She could not fathom the reason why he, a perfect stranger, turned out to help in her crisis and stayed gamely on the way he had. Of course, supposedly, he was there to serve as an emotional bulwark to her son. Did the man never sleep? Apparently not. Nor did he eat. He seemed to survive solely on Starbucks coffee. Even now, Shank, on his own initiative, furnished them both with a couple of top quality coffees, brought in fresh from the outside world, heavy with cream and sugar, still steaming in large paper cups.
"Jesse Edwin thinks I'm an alcoholic," she said, sipping gratefully the excellent brew. "Do you share his views?"
"Nobody can call you an alky except yourself," he replied. "You may be, or you may not be. To tell you the truth, I'm not completely sure there is any such thing as an alcoholic. Some say it's a physical disease, and some say it's psychological, or spiritual. I'm not sure myself, but I do know the program works for me. One day at a time, of course."
"I find it odd you would doubt there's such a thing as an alcoholic."
"A lot of people believe there is. Perhaps it's a mystery, and whenever we encounter life's mysteries, we have a tendency to stick a label on it to make it more comfortable."
"Shank, if you don't mind my asking, how long have you been sober?"
"Going on eleven years."
For some reason, this amount of time seemed a huge number to her, as big, perhaps, as the sum of the universe itself--a googol--which could not be comprehended.
"Eleven years? Without a single drink?"
Shank smiled. "It's hard to imagine, isn't it? I've practically forgotten what the stuff tastes like."
"You also forgot to answer my question. I asked you if you thought I was an alcoholic and you sidestepped it. I only wanted your opinion."
"You don't look like an alcoholic. Of course, there's a lot of silk-sheet drunks in this town in particular who look great right up to the end. You do appear to have many of the problems a typical alky has, meaning of course, your problem with your husband. I'm not sure I can give you my opinion. Especially since we've only barely met. I really don't know enough about you."
"You know more than you're letting on. I know for a fact Jesse Edwin must talk about me to you when he's doing his confessions, or whatever it is you people make him do."
"We don't call it a confession," Shank said. "Nobody makes us do anything. What you refer to as confessing, we call a Fourth Step. A moral inventory. A fearless self-searching for moral defects which need to be corrected. You're right. Because I heard Jesse Edwin's initial Fourth Step, I may know more about you than you'd like me to, but it hasn't hurt my opinion of you in any way."
"Tell me something he told you."
"Sorry. Can't."
"I drink mostly on weekends when my husband's with me," she said. "I don't think I'm an alcoholic. For example, I don't take a morning drink, or do a fifth of vodka a day."
"Perhaps it's time you started."
"What?"
"Just kidding. It's not how much you drink. Or when. It's more a question of why you drink, and how you feel about yourself. So I can't answer your question for you. Since you'd like my opinion, if I had to guess, I'd say it's more likely you're what we call a co-alcoholic."
"Co-alcoholic?"
"A person who lives with an alcoholic and enables them to continue their drinking. Most serious Alkies have co-alcoholics living with them so they don't have to face up to the consequences of their actions. We call people like you "anchors". Your emotional support helps slow your alky husband down on his slide to the bottom. If you left him, he'd drink more and hit the bottom sooner."
"You think I'm anchoring my husband, as you put it, from sinking all the way to the bottom?"
"I’m guessing. Maybe you're a plain old garden variety alky. You don’t look like a typical alky to me. You're much too beautiful a woman. You could be a movie star. You look like a red-haired Audrey Hepburn. You've got a star's charisma. You might be what we like to call a silk-sheet drunk. You're in great physical shape. Jesse Edwin's told me how proud he is of your running ability. That means of course, you've got a nice set of wheels, which of course I find of interest, being a single man."
"Shank!"
"Sorry. Back to my opinion of whether or not you are or aren't an alky. I'm thinking you don't fit the traditional description of the street drunk most people associate with full-blown alcoholism. I mean, you live--or used to live--in Beverly Hills. That's well above the poverty line. You're not in the gutter. You've got a lot of money, so by anybody's standards, you're a stunning success. Except, of course, for the problem we mentioned."
You're much too beautiful a woman. In spite of herself, Rickie was flattered. When was the last time anybody'd said that to her?" A further thought struck her, one which did not sit well. Is my son's sponsor hitting on me? What incredibly poor taste! Hitting on me, a battered woman, as I lay here in my hospital bed! Yet for some strange reason, something inside her was responding! I must be an alcoholic, she thought. I'm feeling something for this guy in a completely inappropriate way! God help me!
"You're not so bad-looking yourself," she found herself saying, and hating herself for saying it, her need at this time to fish for further compliments and approval somehow galling her. "Although it might be because they've got me all doped up. I have to tell you, I find it repelling to be hit upon while in a hospital bed. I find it disgusting, in fact. Somehow, I don't hate you for it. No, I have to admit you look well in your Lauren suit. I won't encourage you. I won't ask what it is you do for a living, or try to find out your sign."
"We're not hitting on each other," he said. "We’re bantering. I apologize. Perhaps it was my misguided attempt to try to lift your spirits. Or perhaps it's because I haven't dated in over a decade. I'm old and I live alone, so I often say or do things which are embarrassing. I'm a Pisces. As for what I do for a living? The truth is, I don't do all that much. At least not anymore. I'm what they used to call a business workout artist. That is to say, I worked freelance for troubled companies who needed advice as to how to creatively crunch their numbers in order to avoid bankruptcy or receivership. I don't do much of that anymore. Occasionally, if somebody I know in the program needs business advice, I do what I can. My real passion is speaking at regional AA meetings. My last engagement was in Seattle, where I shared my experience, strength and hope with a crowd of over five thousand screaming alkies."
Shank looked up at the ceiling and half-smiled to himself. "Man, I was good that night. There wasn't a dry eye in the house."
"Five thousand screaming alkies? I can't imagine such a thing. Your life sounds very complicated. I don't think you should call yourself old. Because if you're old, what does that make me?"
"I lied to you," he said. "That spiel about being a financial workout artist was a lot of gobbledygook. Something
tells me I need to keep things between you and me on the level. The truth? I used to steal money, lots of it. Not with a gun, but with crooked bookkeeping. I worked for people with heavy mob connections. Eventually, I bailed out, but not before I became well-to-do."
"You worked for the mob? Are you a for-real Mafiosi?"
"I never took the blood oath; I was content to remain a front man. The mob isn't really easy to get into. The book has been closed in L.A. for years. The organization employs a lot of clean people to work at the legitimate end of the money pipe. Especially in regards to the movie production companies, which were my specialty. Not that it matters. I'm actually retired from the business. My last gig was under the direct supervision of the Godfather himself. That was eleven years ago."
"Eleven years ago, you quit working for the mob and got clean and sober. Do you realize you just now admitted to me you're a criminal?"
"You can count on three things from a practicing alcoholic," he said. "We lie, cheat and steal. I'm recovering. I'm no longer out practicing. The only lying, cheating and stealing I do now are in the areas of emotional honesty, and my Sponsor helps me keep that to a minimum."
"You've got a sponsor?"
"I do. He's a mean old codger, too."
"How long's he been sober?"
"The way he tells it, he sobered up shortly after getting drunk with Adam and Eve the night they got kicked out of the Garden."
"Hershey's a player in the industry," she said. "Have you ever stolen anything from any of his production companies?"
"Everybody connected with the industry is well aware of Hirschfeld's position in it," Shank said. "He's a big-fry. The big fry's control their money with an iron hand Hitler would envy. That's why they've got so dang much of the stuff. That doesn't mean they don't lie, cheat and steal. Hirschfeld hangs out in the dark shadows cast by the evil wings of the Disney empire. I was never as corrupt as Hirschfeld, or his patron saint Michael Eisner--that guy steals kids' lunch money and uses it to finance child porno movies made by the Weinstein brothers. Me, I worked mostly behind the scenes through various legal firms, you know. Working with the kind of companies nobody's ever heard of. I got my start in the early '80's working with certain aspects of Johnny Carson's portfolio."
"Johnny Carson?"
"C'mon Rickie, don't act surprised. You know how it works. There's never been a talk show host yet who didn't owe his success to the mob."
"I don't think it's my son's fault he has a problem with booze," Rickie said. "Jesse Edwin's father was full-blooded Navajo. We met at a concert in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I was up there for the summer taking a class at Berkeley."
"Those were the days."
"Weren't they? He was ten years older than me. I thought it was totally cool to be hanging out with a full-blooded Navajo. His name was Bobby Q. Short for Qumayousie. He was very retro, like somebody out of the early 70's. He wore his hair in two braids. He even carried a very large knife on his belt. But when we discovered I was pregnant, Bobby showed his true colors and escaped the problem by hiding out on the reservation in Arizona."
"That's too bad," Shank said.
"I found out later that Bobby had mental problems from Vietnam. He was one of the last people out of there in the 70's. A friend of his told me Bobby Q. liked to run through the mountains with no shirt on, killing Viet Cong with his knife. They called him the Montagnard Monster. He adopted Montagnard ways, even to the point of having their priests sacrifice small animals and drip the blood on his chest. He terrified the Viet Cong. They thought he was protected by an evil spirit."
"Ah," Shank said. "The days of wine and boat tail bullets. I myself came of age in a field of elephant grass in a little corner of Hades known as the Ashau Valley. Me and sixteen other guys walked into that grass and I was the only one to walk back out. If I were to put my finger exactly on it, I'd say that's where my problem with booze began. By the time I returned from the Big Asian Vacation, I was only able to function if I held a flask of scotch in one hand and a sawed off shotgun in the other, and a green hornet in my mouth. In the jungle, I used the hornets to keep me awake for a week at a time, and the scotch to mellow me out."
"It's horrible what happened over there."
"Exactly. The Vietnam war affected everybody," Shank said. "In your case, Bobby was too whacked out to assume any responsibility, and you missed out on a chance to marry the father of your son and were forced to raise your son alone. But I think you did a pretty good job."
"My son was my life. That's why I never married until I met Hershey. I know it sounds odd, but I never wanted anyone but his own natural father to raise him. After Jesse Edwin grew up and went out on his own, I was lonely, and when I met Hershey, I caved in and quit the single life. Shank, do you think Jesse Edwin could have inherited the tendency to abuse alcohol from his father?"
"Do you mean, is it a genetic predisposition? Does your son fit the stereotype of the drunken Native American? I don't think so. I don't think it's a racial thing. I think it's a mystery why some people can drink normally and some can't. The problem is, nobody knows when they take that first drink which path they'll be going down. Unfortunately, sooner or later, everybody tries alcohol. It's like playing Russian roulette. Some of us make it, some of us don't. By the way, where did you and Hirschfeld first meet?"
"You'll never believe it," she said. "We met at the intersection of Sunset and Doheny. Hershey was on his way back to The Dell after a grueling day trying to launch a new production company. He'd been drinking and was driving too fast. He ran a red light and demolished my brand new Toyota with his much heavier Rolls Corniche. I was leaving work when he nailed me. The front of my car was nearly torn from the frame. We both got off without a scratch. An angel must have been guarding us"
Outside her window, the storm clouds cleared, leaving in their wake a clean, cold, jeweled carpet of city lights spreading far to the south. Rickie shook off the memory of the day she and Hirschfeld met in order to better contemplate the man before her. Shank appeared completely at ease in the hospital room, so much so, it seemed as though she and he had been talking in this fashion for most of her life. She was almost alarmed at the comfort level she felt with him, realizing, in truth, she knew nothing about the man, except for his resume of being a self-admitted thief with mob connections. On the plus side, he was currently involved in some important way with keeping her son sober, and was here now obviously as a result of his dedication to that cause.
"So tell me," Rickie said. "Why is Jesse Edwin so sparkling? What have you done with my son?"
"He's been working hard on his Twelve Steps," Shank replied. "He just made good on his earlier commitment to himself to attend 90 meetings in 90 days."
"You didn't really answer my question."
Shank laughed, his puckish face in itself a form of anti-depressant for Rickie's doleful mood. "Your son is glowing because he's worked his Steps and had a spiritual awakening."
"Stop playing games. I don't know stairs from steps. What do you mean, he's had a spiritual awakening?"
Shank took a long slurp of his coffee and locked his gaze on hers. "It's really very simple. Jesse Edwin found God."
This statement was a bit too much for her to ponder. Idly, she recalled her visit with the Blessed Virgin and the purple cloud. "I had a spiritual awakening after I passed out in the hotel room. I learned the secret of life, but now I can't remember what it was."
"It'll come back to you when you need it most."
"Shank, you've been here for what seems like days. Do you never sleep?"
"Rarely," he said, smiling. "But I never take my boots off."
"Never?"
"Only for special occasions."
"By the way, Shank. I meant what I said earlier. In my opinion, you're not really all that old." I'm starting to like you, Rickie thought. I hate to admit it, but I really am.
&nbs
p; The door to her room whooshed opened and Hirschfeld barged in, his hair wild, his suit rumpled, his formidable bulk sucking all the psychic space out of the air. The smell of booze, stale sweat and too much cologne poured off him, cloying the atmosphere. Rickie felt like somebody reached inside her and switched the light off. Her anger for her husband began to foam around the edges of her soul at the same time her fright meter went straight off the dial.
"Let's get you up and get your things together," Hirschfeld said. "I'm taking you back to The Dell."