David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

“And, while I think the Scientologist part is tenuous,” said James, “the rest is not totally implausible, I suppose.”

Leo appreciated James’s assessment.

“I mean, that drummer who came and left last week? He was also a sound engineer, and he said he was pretty sure these rooms were bugged.”

Sunday evening. After dinner. Most of the men were sitting in deep brown and blue couches in the sunken part of the lounge, watching When Harry Met Sally on VHS. Leo kept half an eye on the screen while he ate a succession of mini-yogurts from the fridge in the break room, which was just the raised part of the lounge.

Actually, all the men were watching When Harry Met Sally, but about half were pretending not to. They were loudly shuffling their Step work assignments or conspicuously journaling. A steady rhythm of smokers nipped out into the cool summer night beyond the patio. A man wearing a football jersey was trying to make microwave popcorn, but he seemed unable to program the microwave for anything more than one second. It went whir hum ding and the man would harrumph and fuss with the buttons and then the microwave would go whir hum ding again.

“Hell, Larry,” said one man from the lounge, “it’s not cold fucking fusion.”

“There’s a popcorn button on the one I got at home,” complained Larry.

Leo wanted another little yogurt, but he was embarrassed by the small fray of empties in front of him. He looked into the darkling of the sunken lounge to see if James was in there. The movie watchers had formed a horseshoe of couches and easy chairs about the TV. Stragglers — men who had started off in the pretending-not-to-watch camp but had succumbed — sat in an outer ring of springy conference chairs. A few men, the younger ones, were nested in throw pillows on the floor. It looked like a slumber party zapped by an aging gun.

Leo couldn’t see James in the circle, so he walked to the patio door to see if he was at the smoking station. But the dim room only stared back at him in the glass of the patio door. A moving ember glowed like a distant buoy. The wide green world whispered to Leo. You will be okay, it said, come let me hold you in my arms .

Leo stepped outside. Down beyond a slope of benighted lawn was scrub tangle of brush and beyond that a train track. Beyond the train track was the white-lit loading bay of a commercial warehouse. Leo could just hear the buzz of those distant lights. He walked to the slate edge of the patio. It was not James smoking out there. There was no hunch in that man; he had one hand in his pocket, trying to look cool.

“You’re not watching the pitcher about Harry and Sally?”

It was a voice from behind him, one he had not heard before. Leo turned and saw an old man in a plastic patio chair. It was the man who had come to Quivering Pines after Leo and who had been in the intake single all weekend. Leo had glimpsed him through the sometimes-open door of his room, sitting upright on the edge of the bed the way old men do preparatory to standing, his cane propped beside him, his hands settled on the mattress. Leo had also seen him waiting outside the nurse’s office. He moved like a construction site, with a walker and a cane — he hung the cane on the walker and used it for short trips away from the walker. He also wore a sort of brace that went from his hip to his chest. It looked like a plastic ceiling fan had flung itself out of orbit and embraced him.

“I guess I was. It’s pretty silly.”

“I’m Al,” said the man.

“I’m Leo,” said Leo.

“What you in for?” said Al.

“Started going crazy; smoked and drank a lot to keep it at bay. But that may have made it worse. I can’t decide.”

“I done that, sometimes. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six.”

Al exhaled whistily to express how ridiculous it was for someone to be that young.

“How about you?” Leo asked. “How’d you get here?”

“Interstate,” said Al. Then he chuckled once and said, “Goddang kids. Showed up outta nowhere.” Al was wearing his brace and holding his cane, lightly spinning it with hands that were nimbler than the rest of him. He was without his walker. “Had an interventionist with them.” He said the word slowly. “Name of Leanne.”

The engine sound from a small plane came at them in the night. The smoker who was not James stubbed out his cigarette with purpose, hacked, and strode back to the patio and through the sliding doors, which made a sort of sucky spaceship sound when they were opened and closed.

“It’s nice here though, anyway,” said Leo. He wanted to appear to Al to be broadminded. He sat down in a patio chair.

“Yup. It’s nice. But I gotta put in my brussels sprouts; shed needs a coat a’ paint,” said Al. “And I need a drink, so I’ll be on my way here soon.”

“You like drinking, huh?” said Leo.

“No one likes drinking.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I see people who do.”

“They’re not doing it right,” said Al. He wore a checked shirt and a cardigan sweater, the straps and plastic of the ceiling-fan brace visible between the two layers. He had on a faded trucker’s cap, the kind with the plastic-mesh back. The brim threw Al’s face in the shadow of a shadow, but when the TV light from inside sparked brightly, Leo could see that Al’s face was not cloudy, like the faces of some of the older men here.

“So how you gettin’ outta here?” Leo was unconsciously flattening his speech and slowing it, trying to sound more like Al, who spoke in Desert Prairie Interstate West.

“It’s not a locked facility,” said Al. “ Leo means ‘lion,’ right?”

“Yeah.” Most people assumed Leo was short for Leonard. He liked saying, No, just Leo, like lion . His mother was a Leo — had been a Leo.

“Well, look, Lion, I’m a mouse, okay? And I’m gonna chew you outta this net right here.”

Remember this. Remember exactly this, thought Leo. But now he was doing that thing he did when a waitress recited the specials — he was trying too hard to pay attention, so he was paying attention to paying attention, not to what was going on.

“You do exactly what they say, okay?”

“I’m trying to reserve judgment, actually.”

“What? Shush. Just do what they say. They’re right, but for the wrong reasons. There ain’t no promised land like they say there is here, but if you keep drinking like I did, there is a hell.”

“So why’re you leaving?”

“You know how old I am?”

Never answer this question. “Nope.”

“I’m sixty-six.”

He looked twenty years older. “That’s not too old. You should stay.”

“Naw, they ain’t got anything for me here. A Higher Power? They think I ain’t thought a’ that? Hell, I didn’t drink the whole time Ronald Reagan ran the place.”

“Maybe you can make Ronald Reagan your Higher Power,” Leo suggested.

Al laughed at that a little. “I just might,” he said. “I just might.”

“It’s been nice, though,” said Leo, “these last few days, not being drunk once. I guess I tend to forget that I’ve been drinking for some time.” Why on earth did he care whether or not Al stayed at Quivering Pines?

“Boy, I spilled more than you drunk,” said Al. “Just stop now. Forever. It never gets back to easy, it just keeps getting worse. Everything will get worse. Let me save you thirty mother-scrubbing years here. You use alcohol to clean wounds and get chewing gum out of woodwork. It is not for internal use. You drink it, you are inviting pain and dulling the only blade you brung to this fight. You will waste your days and sully your name, and your family will live in dread of you. You got that?”