“If you can’t tell the difference, then you’re too stupid for this business. And that’s exactly what this is, a fucking business. You can’t get any more blood from a stone. Thought you understood that.” Phil was silent for a moment. “Get your boys back to work. Tonight.”
“Soon as your pals see things my way. You tell them that I will see those extra zeroes in the budget, or everybody is going to be up to their eyeballs in rats. You tell them that, and you tell them that I’m serious as a fucking heart attack. I’m not kidding. You tell them—”
Lee stopped, just to make sure Phil understood, but Phil was gone.
CHAPTER 17
8:59 PM
April 18
Friday night in Tommy’s house. “Sox game or Svengoolie?”
“S’gooleeee!”
Tommy laughed. “It’s not too scary?” He knew the answer though; Svengoolie was never too scary. Occasionally he might show a classic from the thirties, but most of the time it was grade-D dreck from the fifties and sixties. Tonight it was Beginning of the End, in which Peter Graves squared off against giant grasshoppers that crawled over photos of buildings. Grace barely followed the plots anyway, and waited instead for the moments when crew members threw rubber chickens at Svengoolie. The jokes were so corny and so bad that Grace usually understood them, and she would gleefully zero in on one and ask Tommy the setup question all night, then endlessly repeat the punch line in a flurry of giggles.
Tommy loved being with her so much he didn’t even mind missing the game. “All right then. You go set up the tent, and I’ll get the popcorn.” Grace ran down the hall to the living room to arrange the couch cushions and a blanket so they could lie on the floor, safely ensconced in their “tent.”
In the easy chairs behind the “tent,” Tommy’s parents, Sidney and Francine, snored away.
Tommy hadn’t been able to afford the mortgage payments on their house, so he’d sold that. All of the profits had gone to Kimmy. Now he lived with his parents. It wasn’t so bad. They understood his predicament, and gave him as much time as he needed. He slept in his old room, and since he slept during the day, the constant, thrumming rush of the nearby Dan Ryan Expressway blocked out most of the noise. It was reassuring, like a mother’s heartbeat to a baby.
The divorce had settled into a dull ache that he could ignore most of the time, like a cavity in a back molar. It didn’t bother him much, unless he pushed on it. Things were easier if he just focused on what was right in front of him. He still got to be with Grace on the weekends.
Tommy was enough of a realist to know that this peace couldn’t last forever. Some other shoe would drop eventually. And when it did, life had taught him that it would most likely be in the form of a steel-toed boot, aimed squarely at his head.
Before the movie started, he asked, “How’s Uncle Lee?”
“Good,” Grace said through a mouthful of popcorn.
“Do you see him a lot?”
“Sometimes.”
Sometimes. That could mean anything. Sometimes trying to get an answer with some kind of useful information out of a four-year-old was like trying to track down an honest alderman. Every once in a while, though, they might surprise you.
“Mommy says we’re going to see a lot more of him, ’cause we’re moving downtown. Mommy says he might be my new daddy. You’ll still be my old daddy though.”
Tommy managed to get out, “Sure, honey. Sure.” He swallowed, and said carefully, “Always, okay? I’ll always be your daddy. No matter what.”
CHAPTER 18
6:03 AM
April 19
Martin knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. Since he’d gotten home last night, he hadn’t been able to sleep because of the itching and pain. He’d been in the bathroom for an hour, standing under warm water, but that made the itching moan in hunger. The heat had unfurled a wave of skeletal fingers that went tickling up across his back. He turned and cranked the handle to cold, hoping to stun the itch, to numb his skin, to shock his system. As the brilliantly cold water hit his skull, agony seethed inside his brainpan. He fell out of the tub and curled into a fetal position on a dirty towel dropped on the filthy tiles.
His wife had knocked on the door. “Hon, I could use you downstairs, like now.” Somewhere in the haze, he heard his oldest screaming about watching SpongeBob. The youngest cried nearby. Of course. The youngest couldn’t go five minutes without crying unless he was in his mother’s arms.
And his wife. She was always picking up the baby. Soothing it. Never teaching him a lesson. Never teaching him anything and saving him from everything. She’d rattled the door. “Martin! Martin! What the hell is wrong with you?”
Martin croaked, “Be there in a minute,” and didn’t know why. Maybe to make her go away.
She said, “You better not have been drinking again, buster. I’m coming back up in five minutes, and you better be out of there. If you’ve been drinking, so help me God . . .” Her voice trailed off as she stomped down the stairs.
Martin clasped his hands between his legs and squeezed as he rode out the waves of torment. Eventually he managed to rise to a kneeling position, then used the sink to prop himself up. He pawed through the medicine cabinet, spilling children’s cough syrup and tampons into the sink. He found nothing that might help.
Nothing stronger than Tylenol or Advil and the symptoms were getting worse.
The next thing he knew, he was waking up on the floor next to the bed, but all he really noticed for the briefest dreamlike moment was the way everything glowed in the early morning sunlight. He tried to raise his head.
The sunlight started to burn.
He blinked.
He felt, or rather sensed the presence of his wife above him, yelling at him, bouncing a baby boy wearing soiled diapers. His other son was wailing from his room down the hall. None of this really concerned him as much as the way the sunlight cut into the room.
He clutched the blanket on the bed, pulled himself to his feet, and tottered out of the bedroom, down the stairs and into the kitchen. All he knew at that moment was that he was very thirsty. He grabbed a glass and stuck it under the faucet. Water hit the bottom of the glass and for some reason, the image and sound revolted him. Martin gave a surprised urking sound as thin, yellowish bile jumped out of his mouth and into the sink. He backed away, still dry-heaving.
Pushing past his wife, he moved in a hunched shuffle down the hall.
She was on the phone with her sister. “I don’t know what to do, that’s what I’m telling you. No, no. He promised me. He promised. Yeah, no more drinking. That’s the problem. He’s acting, I don’t even know anymore.... He’s never been this hungover. What?” A quick pause, then, “No. No. No. He’s not like that. I told you. He’s not like that.”
Martin shut the basement door and locked it.
He found his Marlboros sealed in a sandwich baggie with a lighter hidden away in the ceiling tiles. Just one cigarette. He’d given up drinking for his wife and the boys, and really, just one cigarette wasn’t hurting anybody. He couldn’t think of anything else that might offer some kind of relief, no matter how slight, from the convulsions that were wracking his body.