He saw himself in one of those Forensic Files, and his stomach soured. At least he could get medical care in prison. There was a guy he saw on CNN, 72 years old, doing time for killing someone who banged his wife. That was 20 years ago. Since being incarcerated, he’d had 3 strokes, 2 heart attacks, a bypass, a knee replacement, and cataract surgery, costing California taxpayers about a million and counting. Not too bad…though if he did tell Laxmi the “truth” (it didn’t really seem like the right word), she might play sympathetic while secretly fearing for her own life. The cops would make her wear a wire and tape future meetings. At least that way, if it was drawn out a little, maybe we’d still have the chance to fuck. He shook himself out of his lunacy, as if trying to awaken from a hebephrenic nightmare.
A nurse-type came and asked if they were family members.
They said they weren’t, and didn’t know if Maurie even had family (which the 2 suddenly thought odd: the fact that they didn’t know). Just before the woman went back in, Chess asked how their friend was doing. He hadn’t expected any sort of meaningful response but when she said “OK” his hopes soared — then crashed, realizing the answer was rote, a devious nicety, because, of course, nothing could be revealed, doctors were the only ones to do any revealing, especially not to “friends.” “OK” was vague enough that it could have meant, “Yes, as long as you’re going, a latte would be nice,” or “He is now able to sit up,” or “Your friend is dead.”
He flipped through an old People. An article said that Don Knotts was “upbeat and getting chemo.” Suddenly, Chess had a giddy, half-stoned moment of optimism — that Maurie was sitting up and talking, they’d given him one of those fast-acting clot-busters that downgraded strokes and maybe tomorrow morning or even tonight he’d be going back to LA — if such caprice turned out to be real, the dilemma of whether to fill his friend in on what Chess had done quickly followed. How would Maurie react upon hearing something like that? He might be so embarrassed, he’d say Just forget it. They would shake hands, Chester would drop all legal action, join the staff of FNF, and that would be that. Or maybe he’d be pissed, and countersue, only his suit against the scout would be far stronger than Herlihy v FNF because in Levin v Herlihy, a lawyer could prove malicious intent. No: he’d wait. They’d stay a few extra days at the Morongo until he was certain Maurie was plus perfecto. There was that woman at the spa to deal with; no way anyone in authority would even be interested in talking to her, but if someone did, the most she could divulge would be the “birthday” prank, the switcheroo. It was kid stuff. The cops would probably have a laugh. (In fact, the cops would have a laugh about the whole Viagra thing; just the type of shit they probably pulled on each other all the time.) The prank alone obviously had nothing to do with what happened, whatever it was that had happened, medically, which was, clearly, to outside eyes, a flukish mystery. Besides, the spa chick would keep her mouth shut because she wouldn’t want her bosses to know she took a bribe, even if it was all in good fun. Customer satisfaction. No, Chess had other problems…sitting in the ER, he began to pray, the way people are prone to, in extremis. Please G-d let the Jew live and prosper. Please G-d let none of this be happening. Please G-d let me awaken in my house, never having come to Morongo. I promise never to see Laxmi again nor have impure thoughts of—then he got the idea to cut a deal (with G-d) and give a large portion of his pending settlement over, in confidence of course, Maurie would have to agree to the caveat, to sign something to that effect, because the proposal might not be strictly legal, to fork a chunk over to his friend, if G-d would only please please please reverse the stroke. I’m talking 80 %.
…again, he wished it was all a dream. Escaping into a tiny bubble, Chess took a deep breath and pretended he didn’t even know Maurie Levin, that he was sitting there waiting to be seen for a cough or waiting for his Mom who’d had a little chest pain — Chess pain! — or to fill out an application to work as an orderly, sitting beside this pretty freckled flowerpower girl, another applicant, whose name he didn’t know but with whom he would fatefully wind up sharing a desert apartment when they both were hired. (Like that Palm Springs movie Three Women, with Sissy Spacek and the tall, far-out gangly girl who reminded him of Karen Knotts.) At this moment, he gratefully remembered the Xanax in his pocket—not ordered online, he would have to throw all that offshore shit away ASAP, not only from the fear it was tainted but because the batch could wind up being evidentiary—after getting a Diet Pepsi from the vending machine, he took a handful along with 5 Vicodin, he almost offered some Xanax to Laxmi but knew she didn’t go for that, she was more into weed, maybe they should do some in the parking lot, probably not a great idea, then a shudder went through him as he fantasized about giving her an offshore benzo or Oxy by mistake instead of the tried-and-true, name-brand antianxiety agent and her collapsing in a weird reaction of her own, suddenly splayed on a gurney right next to Maurie behind ER drapes — then he would surely confess, at least it would all be over, the police would come and he’d be taken away on charges of illegally providing prescription drugs, automatically refiled 72 hours later to reflect a double homicide. He saw a documentary on television about prisons being warehouses for the mentally ill. He knew — had always known — that jail would break him. He’d be one of those men who stop taking their antipsychotics and throw feces at the guards who then ramrod their way in, 8 cops in chemical suits and goggles, fitting him with a spit-guard and a soft helmet so he couldn’t head-butt, crushing him with a mattress and causing nerve damage with high-tech handcuffs and low-tech chokeholds. There was no lawyer on earth who would touch a case like that; Inferno time. After fishing him from his cell, they’d send him to a psychiatric hospital just like the guy in the doc, 3 months of segregation and relatively decent meals, 3 months of stabilizing meds before reassessment. The prison shrinks would sit and look at his file, like judges from American Idol, and say he was much improved, that now it was time for him to go back, back to the Big House, he was doing wonderfully, that’s actually the word a therapist used in the doc, and Chess remembered the prisoner, who was quite smart, saying, “Yes—‘wonderful’ in this environment,” meaning that he was doing well in the context of the regularity, the care, the rather humane isolation, but they wouldn’t listen to the simple logic of the man’s proclamation, his time was up, there were probably state guidelines for how long a prisoner could remain, they’d send Chess back to whatever original hellhole, maybe Twin Towers Correctional Facility for the cycle to begin again, until 4 or 5 months later he was flinging feces and they were breaking into the cell to smother him with half a ton of bodies wielding blood and shit-encrusted mattresses before shipping him to the psych ward again, more nerve damage, paranoia flowering so completely now that soon even the most powerful of psychotropic weedkillers they had to offer wouldn’t do the trick.