Robert Stone - Fun With Problems

"You damned drunk," the enraged man screamed. "What the hell are you calling me?"

Duffy's rage increased.

"I'm a-saying you a warlocky witch, motherfucker. Bad man wizard. I'm a-saying you bad food poison man. I'm a-saying they gonna send you back to the swamp to be drowned in shit."

Duffy managed to sidestep the fat man's expertly executed kick, intended to painfully disable him. Two waiters caught their boss and only with great difficulty held him back. The small waitress looked on in tears.

"You no-good bastard," the cook cried, indicating Staci. "You bastard, you made her cry!" Altogether beside himself, he paused for breath.

Duffy drew himself up to his full height, which was about five foot nine.

"That's because her time to weep has come," he said viciously. He pointed his finger in the cook's face. "Yes, M'sieu Escoffier." Duffy turned to look over his shoulder, feeling, incorrectly, that a wave of support was gathering behind him. "The time has come when we must all weep. Because, goddamn you, you filthy poisoned rat, whatever you've done in there to that poor young girl — a child half your age, you scum — there shall be no more of it, I promise you." Blind to the chaos around him, Duffy carried on upbraiding the chef as a security man, aided by volunteers from among the male customers, wrestled him toward the door. At this point, in custody, he broke down and wept himself. "Christ's blood! Crab? Don't make me laugh. The only crabs you people got is in your pubic hair!"

It was all he remembered of the evening. Next day, the Rind boys found their way back to the Petrel's Perch in hopes of seeing more of Duffy.

Of course he had missed the lecture. At Pahoochee State College — or University, as it had been lately designated — colleagues rallied round Hank Rind to console and embrace him. Secretly, though, ill-wishers chortled and claimed never to have had any regard for him or for Duffy or his work.

Enormity descended. He was awakened by a policeman — in his experience always a bad sign. An African proverb he had learned in the Peace Corps went something like, "The morning policeman shoots the mice to frighten the monkeys." The maddened policeman, morning's minion. Despite the early hour, a man who said he was the manager of the hotel appeared, another who claimed to be an assistant district attorney, and several of the hotel's security stooges. One of the stooges was charging Duffy with assault, the felony compounded by his brandishing of a ballpoint pen. Brought before the town justice, Duffy had no choice but to call his estranged wife for bail.

When his turn at the phone came, he called collect, in violation of the instructions on the sign over the phone. To his relief it was Otis herself who answered. Otis who must know that it was him she really loved. Otis, descendant of an insane signer of the Declaration of Independence. But when he recounted his story, she was bad Otis.

"I'm so sorry," Otis said weepily. A false voice, Duffy knew. "My purse was stolen in the supermarket. I've canceled all my credit cards. Each and every one."

"You gotta be shitting me," Duffy suggested.

"Alas not."

"Well, how about a check?"

"My checkbook is with it, Jim. I've stopped all payments."

Duffy swore so foully that even his fellow inmates at the county jail were dismayed.

"Honestly," said Otis, "I am sorry, darl. But I'm not sure I can cover what you need. Frankly, you've been in the drunk tank before. All things pass, big guy."

"This is no drunk tank," Duffy pleaded. It was, finally, a lie. "Do you know where I am?"

"Yes, I think so. How funny! Because I was just reading about the state prison there. The book is called Worse Than Slavery. "

Duffy paused to gain control of himself.

"Otis, sweetheart, I need your help badly."

"I know, my dear. My help isn't what it was."

"Please, baby." Duffy's fellow inmates, a generally semiviolent lot of drunks and panhandlers, laughed openly. It was impossible to converse discreetly. "What about your boy toy there? He's got bread."

"Bread? Aren't you quaint. Do you mean Prosser? Yes, he has 'bread,' I suppose. His latest novel is pretty successful for a literary book."

"Isn't that nice?" Duffy said. "So get three grand off him. I'm good for it."

"I'm surprised at your lack of — what shall I call it? — pride?"

"You tell that illiterate pinhead he better cough it up. Otherwise his ladylove's rightful spouse will — in the fullness of time — go up there and make him eat a hardcover copy of his successful literary book."

"He's not afraid of you, Jim."

"Really? Then he's made real progress in fear management. How's his ex, by the by? Still cochair of Lesbian Gardening?"

Otis tittered wickedly. Once, to hear Otis titter was to possess her.

"You may not be ashamed to ask for Prosser's help, Jim. To tell you the truth, I'm ashamed to ask on your behalf."

"Oh, bullshit, Otis. Stop fucking around! Is he there?"

"I'll ask him to call you, dear," she said delicately.

Duffy stopped to consider his options. It would not do to have her hang up. All at once it occurred to him that Otis, in her abysmal deviousness, was helping him out after a fashion. Only by knowing her as well as he did could he realize that she was distantly suggesting a strategy: that he lean on the husband himself, man to man, as it were. As to whether she had really lost her bag? Unknowable.

When the call came, it was Prosser phoning from his office. As if, Duffy thought, he felt he would be safer there.

"Hey, Prosser! Oho, man!"

The response was a charged silence.

"Hey, how's everything, Pross? How's the wife?"

Prosser did not ask which.

"Ah," he replied without much inflection. "How are you, Jim?"

"Prosser?"

More anxious silence. Good, thought Duffy.

"Prosser, I'm where the prisoners rest together. They hear not the voice of their oppressor."

"Really?" the novelist asked uneasily. "Where's that?"

"It is hell," Duffy said. "Your old friend is in hell." He was moved to pity at his own condition. "Honest, can you help me?"

"I don't know, Jim. How?"

"Listen, can I tell you something? May I presume? I know our relationship is awkward."

A sniff of distaste. "Yeah, sure."

"The thing is, Pross, I thought I had found Jesus Christ. He was my personal savior. Honestly! I know you'll scoff."

Prosser did not scoff. He seemed to be listening quietly.

"But the individual I mistook for Jesus Christ was not. He wasn't Jesus at all. Can you guess who he was? Can you, Prosser?"

"No," said Spearman. After a moment he asked, "Who?"

Duffy looked over his shoulder to see whether the duty deputy might be eavesdropping on his plaints. But the man was occupied with the color ads for phone sex in his copy of Penthouse.

"He was Satan!" Duffy cleared his throat for resonance. "Yes. The Prince of Darkness himself. Horrible," Duffy moaned spookily. "Satan," he whispered thickly. He tried not to overdo it. But Prosser had a craven's imagination.

"Jim, you ought to seek… You know."

"Seek! Seek! Their name is legion, Spearman. They are many!"

"You probably need help," Prosser said.

"Oh, shit, man," Duffy said. "I do."

"Medication." Prosser suggested.

"Poisoners!" Duffy told him in a breathy stage whisper. "Listen, Prosser, I'm beside myself with terror. Satanic voices are telling me I require closure."

"Closure?"

Duffy did what he could to make the word sound truly terminal.

"A dreadful closure, Prosser. They say if I can leave here today I can get into treatment." He looked around to make sure no one was watching too closely. "But if I can't, Satan says I must seek closure where the most wrong was done. He says I must" — Duffy inhaled to aspirate his words most portentously—"return to my long home. For closure."