“The Monopoly Man,” said Cheri.
Rackshack nodded vigorously and pointed at her. “From the game. Got handlebars on his lip just like the dude in the Monopoly game.” He glanced around to make certain no one would overhear what he planned to say next. “Maybe I’m crazy, but I thought I saw him on the TV.”
“Jack Fallon,” said Cheri.
He stared at her. “Yeah.” He glanced down at the floor and back up at Cheri’s face. “That old dude’s been dead more’n three years.” He held up a hand, palm faced toward the ceiling. “So?”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” She placed her hand on his shoulder. “Rack—What’s your real name?”
“Luther.”
“Luther, I’m going to tell you how I wound up here. A lot of people look like a lot of people, and talking about ghosts might not be the swiftest way to get through your psych evaluation, but here it is.” And Cheri told Rackshack about her night in the park wrapped in the Monopoly Man’s overcoat and how she woke up in rehab.
When she finished, Rackshack rubbed the back of his neck, then let his hand fall to his lap. “What if it was Kimberli Fallon’s old man? What if it was a ghost?”
“Whoever it was, whatever it was, he saved my life. Yours, too, Luther, if you do the work here.”
He held up his hands, palms facing her. “You preachin’ to the choir, girl. I am a believer.” He lowered his hands. “I heard a kid named Ted talkin’ in the lounge about how he got here: Overcoat Park Express. We all crazy?”
She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know. I hope the Monopoly Man is real, though.”
Rackshack leaned back in his chair. “Monopoly Man, he say to me he watchin’ over his fortune. Later on, Cheri, he talkin’ to someone who woke me up. It was a woman. Anyways, he tell her I been through a tough day and I’m all wore out.” A pause. “He tell her I his son. His son.” A tear streaked down the left side of the man’s face. Embarrassed, he laughed at the tear and wiped it off his face with the heel of his hand. “He call me his son,” he whispered. “What’s it all mean?”
Cheri took the man’s left hand in both of hers. “I don’t know, Luther. I’m guessing if you need to know, it’ll come to you.” She leaned over, kissed his cheek, and said, “Good luck. Do what they tell you and keep off the grass.”
They both laughed and Cheri left for her appointment. When she was done she went down to Admissions to talk about arranging anonymous payment for her two patients. She thought about going to Bryant Park that night. Part of her wanted to believe Jack Fallon was there. If he was, though, she didn’t know what she could make of the information. She didn’t want him not to be there, though. She decided against pinching herself awake from this dream: she owed it too much.
After her graduation from college and internship Cheri applied for a counseling position at New Beginnings. She was accepted and was an assistant there for a year when her lead counselor retired and recommended her to fill the opening. Cheri Trace had been a full group counselor at New Beginnings for almost two years when Kimberli Fallon’s name found itself once again upon a police blotter. This time the actress’s antics affected a great many drug rehabilitation facilities. While high she had driven her BMW into the rear of a police car, narrowly missing a young woman and her three-year-old son. Her mug shot was the takeoff point for a thousand talk show jokes. The party girl was getting decidedly worn around the edges. Where the rehabs came in was because this time her latest high-priced attorney thought that voluntary rehab might look better in front of the court than more pictures of her bare butt on YouTube or evening news footage of her showboating at parties.
Feelers were sent out to a number of rehabs. Big staff meetings at all of them and just about every rehab administrator and group counselor in the business had thrown Kimberli out of rehab before she even made it through the door.
Too disruptive.
Media circus.
Couldn’t possibly take her recovery seriously.
How would the other patients be able to concentrate on their recoveries?
At New Beginnings it was about decided by the director, staff, and counselors to tell Kimberli’s attorney that she would have to go someplace else to find recovery when Cheri said, “I’ll take her.”
After a stunned silence, then much ado about Cheri’s relative lack of experience, aspersions regarding her possible motives, and the possible damage to her other patients, not to mention damage to the institution—
“And,” Cheri interrupted, “there are a few conditions that must be met and a few procedural changes to make.” And she told them her plan.
There was considerable debate. Cheri’s plan was fraught with possible liabilities, licensing issues, zoning violations—or as Dr. Manter, director of New Beginnings, put it, “For all we know, you’ll run afoul of Homeland Security.”
Still, the issue was what it always was: Getting the addict through the doors and clean long enough to be able to make that terrible choice. In addition, Kimberli Fallon had as much right to recovery as any pimp, crack whore, doctor, or football player. Cheri looked around the table at the faces of her fellow counselors, the staff and director of New Beginnings, recovering alcoholics and addicts every one. “After all,” she said, “none of us got to this table because of a perfect history of wise choices and good manners.”
The staff voted Cheri’s plan in unanimously. Dr. Manter later asked Cheri why she had been willing to take on such a risk as treating Kimberli Fallon when the safe course would have been to steer clear of America’s party girl.
Cheri would have liked to tell the director that she owed Kimberli’s father a big favor. Instead, she simply smiled.
When Kimberli Fallon showed at New Beginnings, it was the media circus everyone had feared. Cameras, vans, uplink dishes crowded the streets on two sides of the complex, and Kimberli, of course, arrived in a limo escorted by her attorney, Michael Braden, and her current rent-a-phallus, Manager Richard Evan Garvey. Kimberli was all blond, spectacular makeup, sheared beaver coat over hip-huggers, spiked gold sparkle heels, and maximum wiggle. The mouthpiece and the manager were turned away at the main entrance, as expected. Both then proceeded to deliver prepared statements to the media after a small spat over who would get to deliver his statement first.
As the different media blow-dries were sending their pieces off to satellites and around the globe, Kimberli was taken to a room in which she was unceremoniously shucked of everything but her underwear and issued New Beginnings blue pajamas and slippers. Her bags were searched and all cell phones, electronic devices, money, jewelry, over-the-counter drugs, herbal remedies, prescription drugs, and an ounce and a half of crystal meth were removed. The legal items were placed in a bin to be returned to her upon release. The illegal items were confiscated.
She was given a physical by a female physician and her screening was done by a female psychiatrist. Once all the testing was done, it was early afternoon. She was hustled down to the ambulance loading bay by three males who looked like street thugs, save for the New Beginnings nametags on their upper wear. She was loaded into the ambulance along with her bags and her three companions. The doors closed and the ambulance left the bay, no sirens, no Christmas lights. The slender blond guy with the sad blue eyes and nervous smile sitting next to her handed her a small package of cheese and crackers along with a Diet Coke. His nametag said his name was Ted Franks. “What’s this?” she demanded, holding out the fare.