Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Pace had been devastated by the accident, but it hadn’t thrown him the way Mike’s death had. He’d managed to face his life then; he was making a muck of it now. Compared with the strength Kathy was showing in the face of the loss of her brother, he was making an ass of himself.

Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe I’m tearing myself apart because I know I’m the one who pulled Mike into this.

He pushed the thought aside and let himself into his apartment.

Kathy arrived a few minutes later, carrying a sack of groceries. She set them on the kitchen counter. When she turned around, he was standing in front of her.

“Hi,” he said.

She smiled a little. “Hi, yourself.”

“You doing okay?”

“As well as can be expected,” she said, dropping her eyes to the floor. “It comes back at me at the strangest times, and I start to cry for no reason.”

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. “Nobody cries for no reason,” he said. “I think you have a pretty good reason.”

“So do you. Did I tell you how sorry I am about Mike?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I remember you talked about him so often. I wish I’d had a chance to meet him.”

“So do I,” he said, and then laughed. “On the other hand, he probably would have swept you off your feet and taken you away from me.”

“I thought you let me go.”

He nodded seriously. “I did, once,” he acknowledged. “If I ever have the chance to make the decision again, it won’t be the same.”

Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, their bodies pressed tightly. Their kiss started gently, sensually, and built quickly to passionate urgency. Their tongues embraced. He held her head in his hands and caressed her hair. She put her hands on his buttocks and drew him to her.

He pulled away and looked down at her face. “Do you want me to carry you to bed?”

She laughed. “No,” she said. “That would only slow us down.”

They made love twice in an hour—something he hadn’t done since college—moving quickly the first time, luxuriously the second. It was never more right than it was this evening. For the hour they lay together, neither Mike McGill nor the Washington Chronicle entered Pace’s mind.

Later, after she had showered and started a light dinner, after he had allowed himself to remember the last twenty-four hours, she asked how he was. He began talking to her. It came slowly.

She neither pushed him for details nor volunteered advice. She offered to mix him a drink, which he declined, so she settled into the couch, content to listen.

Although he hadn’t intended to, Pace told her everything, in excruciating detail, about the afternoon and the evening of Mike’s death, of the visit to Ken Sachs, the showdown with Avery, his concerns that he was losing control. He said he’d consumed a gallon of alcohol in a week and yet, with the exception of the night before, he’d been able to function on a satisfactory level.

“I don’t make sense to myself anymore, Kath,” he said. “At a time in my life when I should be settled and happy and secure, I seem bent on self-destruction. And I’m not only taking myself, I’m taking the people around me I love and respect.”

He talked for nearly two hours. During his monologue, they picked at dinner, neither much in the mood to eat. They cleaned up the kitchen and moved back to the living room. When he finished, he shrugged.

“From now on, you’ll know better than to ask,” he said.

“I’m glad I asked,” she said. “You’re a mess.”

“Thanks for noticing.”

She snuggled up in the corner of the sofa, tucking her feet under her as she often did when discussions grew serious.

“You’ve told me two striking things,” she said. “First, you feel some responsibility for Mike’s death and aren’t bearing that very well. Second, you’re worried about your drinking, and some people you work with are beginning to worry, too. Is that about it?”

“How come it took me two hours to say that?”

“That’s what editors are for,” she replied. “Mike’s death isn’t your responsibility. No matter how much you feel you pushed him, there’s no way he wouldn’t have followed up on the note and the phone call, even if you didn’t exist. Unless he was less than the man you’ve described, he wouldn’t shrink from controversy. He wasn’t following the trail to get a story for you. He was following it to get to the bottom of… the accident.” Kathy’s voice cracked at the reference to the ConPac crash. “He was doing for his profession exactly what you’re doing for yours. The fact that you were working along parallel lines doesn’t mean you were responsible for him, any more than he was responsible for you.”

Pace nodded. “My head knows, Kath. It’s my heart I can’t convince.”

“Your heart will catch up,” she replied. “Your head only has to comprehend what happened. That’s easy. Your heart has to mend. That takes longer. Take it from me. I know.”

He moved over next to her on the sofa and put his arm around her shoulders. “I know you know,” he said. “I don’t feel very good about bringing my problems to you, considering what you’ve been going through.”

“It occurs to me we’re going through almost the same thing,” she said. “Maybe shared pain is halved.”

“Or doubled,” he suggested.

“No,” she protested, “not doubled. It’s always easier when there’s someone to talk to who understands.”

He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the forehead, and then abruptly, he stood. “Which brings us to the subject of my new-found alcoholism,” he said.

“If you have a problem, you’ve recognized it,” she said. “I’m no psychologist, but I’ve always heard that recognizing and acknowledging a problem are the first steps toward resolving it.”

“It can’t be that easy, or everyone with a drinking problem could solve it. I don’t know if I have a real problem, or if it’s an excess of the moment.”

“Even if it’s a problem of the moment, it needs resolution,” she said. “From what you told me, it almost cost you your job today.”

He nodded. “I was well out of control last night. Even if I was right about Ken Sachs, I should have handled it differently.”

“Your symptoms don’t strike me as classic alcoholism,” Kathy said.

“Why not?”

“This conversation has been tough on you. I’ve watched you struggle with it. There’s no question some things would have been easier to say with a drink in your hand. But earlier, when I offered to fix you something, you turned it down.”

“So I’m not an alcoholic. All that means is I don’t have any excuse for what I did.”

“That’s right. And that’s the hardest thing to accept—responsibility for your own actions. You only get into trouble when those actions turn self-destructive.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“You said you and Mike got drunk together on the night of Mark Antravanian’s death, but that wasn’t a destructive kind of drunk, except maybe to your heads and stomachs. It sounds like last night you were destructively drunk.”

“Why the difference, do you think?”

“I think Mike’s presence in your life was the difference the first time. His absence was the difference last night.” She shifted to a more comfortable position on the sofa. “Look, the high point in your career was winning the Pulitzer, right?” He nodded. “Of course. And who was it who helped guide you through the investigation of the Chicago accident? Mike. Who was it who suggested the series that won the prize? Mike. Who was always there when you needed consultation on other investigations? Mike. And who was there for you this time, helping you expose what could be the biggest and most diabolical cover-up imaginable? Mike again. Then last night, all of a sudden and totally unexpected, Mike was gone. Not unavailable. Gone. Forever. That would be tough for anybody to handle.”