"Bottled or tap?"
So many questions. He looks around at the businessmen having meetings, the d-girls chatting up screenwriters, the movie star and his entourage. The rocket fuel is sending him on a loopy ride. He is getting drunk. The mixed nuts are gone, and he doesn't want to ask for more. He puts down ten dollars, picks up his glass, and heads for the dining room.
The bartender runs after him. "Sir, the drink is sixteen dollars."
"Really?" He is embarrassed, annoyed — whoever heard of a drink costing sixteen dollars? He takes out a five and a few ones and slaps them into the man's hand. "Let's call it even."
"Party of one?" the dining-room hostess asks.
"That's an old joke if there ever was one."
"Just one?" the hostess asks again.
He nods.
"This way," she says, leading him into the empty dining room.
Someone hands him a menu, someone else pours him a glass of water, another puts a dinner roll on his bread plate and some butter beside it. He immediately eats the roll. He hasn't been eating bread — it's not part of his program. The roll is warm, yeasty sourdough. He eats it with cold butter — he closes his eyes — good. It cleans his palate, clears the salt, the sting of the alcohol. He eats the roll, and the bread man comes around again and offers him another, which he eats.
And then — as though he's just woken up — he looks around the room, realizes that he's in a restaurant by himself. He can't do it. He's got to get out.
"My cell is by the pool," he tells no one in particular and hurries out of the dining room. Richard gives the car jockey his ticket and hopes the car comes before they discover he's stolen the dinner rolls. Stolen the dinner rolls? Not only did he eat the ones they put on his plate, but on his way out he passed the unattended basket and couldn't help dipping his hand in and, in a broad grip, grabbing a few like they were tennis balls. He's got a pocketful of warm dinner rolls.
A little drunk, he drives until something called the Bodhi Tree catches his eye — he assumes it's the same bookstore that the trainer and the nutritionist talk about. Inside, tall reedy men with unusual hairstyles — too much, too little, all of it in the wrong places — and women with almost no hair, women who look like men, peek out from behind the stacks, giving him furtive glances like they're trying to make contact. There are books on everything from the margins to the middle — UFOs, philosophy, cookbooks, fifty volumes on miracles. A huge stack of "the book that Elvis loved most next to the Bible" is piled up by the register. From the title it sounds as though the book is relevant — somehow about him — The Impersonal Life. Richard picks up a copy; his stomach is growling. The martini is wearing off. He makes a plan — pay for the book and walk down the block to the grocery store, buy some food, go home, eat, read, and call it a night.
Outside, a blind woman is bent over, picking up dog shit. She's patting the ground, trying to find it. "To the right," someone says.
"Thanks."
He takes a turn and — boom — is hit by a car. Someone pulling out of a parking lot accelerates into him, and he goes down like a sandbagged punching clown. The woman who hit him leans out of her car and yells, "What, are you crazy?"
People gather. "Is anything broken?" someone asks.
He's struggling to get up.
"Don't move him," someone says.
"He's moving himself."
"Let's call the police," someone says.
"Oh, great, thanks a lot," the woman who hit him says, getting out of her car.
"Do you want the number of my chiropractor? She's really great, she can release anything." A girl scribbles a number on a piece of paper and gives it to him.
"Oh, please, I hardly tapped him."
"Show some compassion," one of the tall guys from the Bodhi Tree says.
"What were you doing? How would you expect me to see you, just one little man, one line of a person walking?"
"I was going to the grocery store."
"Why didn't you just drive, like a normal person?"
"You ran me down," he says.
"You ruined my day," she says.
"Well, lucky for you, it's already late."
She is on her cell phone calling a friend. She turns away from the crowd. "Oh, hi, I had an accident. I was pulling out and I hit some guy. No, not his car, his person, I struck his person. He's really giving me a hard time. I hate men — if I'd run over a woman, you can bet she'd be apologizing to me." She interrupts herself to ask him, "Do I have to wait until the police come? Because I have things to do."
A man from the gas station across the street comes with a big bag of ice and puts it on his leg at the point of impact. He winces. The gas-station man uses a roll of gray duct tape to bind the ice to his leg. "I was a medic," he says, "in the Reserves."
"What do I owe you?" Richard asks the man.
"You don't owe me anything."
He forces himself to stand; the crowd applauds as he crawls to his feet. "Thank you. Thank you very much."
IN THE GROCERY STORE, overcome by hunger, he starts eating in the aisles. He peels a banana and pushes his cart forward with one hand. The banana will protect him, it will keep him from fainting, and the cart acts like a walker, he can lean on it. He needs food. At the end of a row, he grabs a bag of sunflower seeds, tears it open with his teeth, and throws a handful into his mouth. He's still got the martini in him and the dinner rolls, but he needs some protein. He stares at the BBQ chickens going around on the rotisserie. He tosses more seeds into his mouth. He's trying to skip over the fact that he just got hit by a car, but every step he takes hurts more. His shoulder hurts, his head hurts, his leg hurts; he's in pain, real pain. He finds the "Care of the Self" aisle, picks up a bottle of baby aspirin, puts a few in his mouth; they sit on his tongue like buttons, sensors, strangely perfumed dinner mints — puffing up as they dissolve. He tosses a bottle of Flintstones with extra C into the cart for good measure. He cruises the aisles, a somnambulist in a strange dream landscape. Where did all this stuff come from? Who thought it up? Is there a reason we need graham crackers in assorted shapes, flavors, and colors? Twenty-two varieties of orange juice?
There is a crying woman in the produce section, distracting him from his reverie. He sees her between the lettuce and tomatoes. He watches, wondering if it is just a problem with the onions, an allergy of sorts, or if she is really weeping. She blots her eyes and sniffles as she's putting cucumbers and peppers into her cart. He intersects her at the carrots.
"Are you OK?"
"Don't talk to me," she says, not even looking at him.
"Sorry, I just noticed you crying between the lettuce and tomatoes."
"You're a freak," she says, still not looking up.
"No, I'm not," he says, surprised.
"What are you, like the Mr. Whipple of Ralph's, spying on people — 'Don't squeeze the Charmin'?" She looks him up and down and goes back to feeling the tomatoes. "And you're leaking. You're a freak. The sight of a crying woman made you wet your pants."
"What are you talking about?"
She points at his pants.
There's a huge wet spot on his thigh. "I was hit by a car," he says, "And that's an ice pack, my ice pack is sweating."
"Maybe you need to go to the emergency room," she says, looking at him more closely.
"I was just there yesterday, it seems too soon to go back," he says. A wave sweeps over him, nausea, fatigue, the pain. "I'm really not feeling well," he says. "I need to sit down. Do you want to get a cup of coffee? They have tables and chairs over there." He points across the store.
"That's appealing," she says. "A drippy freak, who got hit by a car and doesn't feel good, wants me to have coffee. Sure, why not, what do I care — chop me into a thousand pieces. Clearly, I'm not doing so well myself."