Hot Streak

CHAPTER 9

E gon was lying on his bed, his eyes half shut, looking at nothing. Three TV screens opposite the bed were tuned to different stations. Carey walked over to the elaborate communications system, pressed some switches, and the screens went dead.

“Goddammit, turn those on. I'm watching Dallas.” Egon's eyes remained unfocused for a moment, and then closed.

Carey approached the bed and said, “I'll turn it on in a minute. Hi, Egon. You're on the nod again, Sylvie says. Need some help?”

Egon's head turned in slow motion and his eyes filled with tears. “I'm scared, Carey. They bombed my car. You know that. They bombed my car. Sylvie won't give me anything. I'm out and she won't get me any more. I need a hit, Carey, now.” His skin was cold, moist, bluish; the hand he held out to Carey trembled.

Carey squatted down near the bed so that their eyes were level. Egon's pupils were contracted to pinpoints. “Egon, now listen to me. You've had too much already. You look like hell, like some damn ascetic monk. Have you eaten this week?”

“I haven't been hungry.” Egon's eyes closed.

Carey shook him hard, and his eyes slowly opened. “Listen to me, Egon. I've got five days before I have to fly back. Now I'm willing to hold your hand and talk to you and feed you spaghetti alle vongole-”

“With fresh raspberries for dessert,” Egon whispered.

“With fresh raspberries, you brat,” Carey said, grinning. “But you've got to take hold. You hear? I've only five days.”

Egon's eyes twitched slightly in his effort to smile. “I love you, Carey.”

“I love you, too, but don't get any ideas,” he bantered. “Now, do you think you can stand if I lift you up?”

“Sure, Carey.” But he was dead weight, although he pathetically tried to steady himself, sweat dripping from his tortured body. His slender form shuddered. “I need a hit. I can't make it,” he whispered, hanging in Carey's arms.

Carey felt his heart contract at the infinitely fragile ownership Egon had on his own life. His muscles taut with the effort, Carey lifted Egon into his arms and carried him over to a chair by the window. He lowered him into it, setting Egon's hands carefully on the chair arms for support. “I've got some chemicals,” he quietly remarked, bending close so Egon could see his face. “Just to take off the edge, but you have to promise to eat.”

Egon's voice was a thready whisper. “I'll eat, Carey. I promise.”

“Sit up, don't fall,” Carey cautioned, his smile kind and accepting. “I'll get a glass of water for these pills.”

After a touching attempt to swallow a few mouthfuls of food to please Carey, the drugs began to ease Egon out of his stupor. It reminded Carey of Vietnam, carrying a grown man, but the bed was large and white and clean when he brought Egon back from the chair, and there was a servant there to help him dress Egon in dry clothes. No mud, no blood, no stench of death. Ten minutes later Egon was sleeping, this time peacefully.

Resting in a sprawl on the sofa, Carey ate a sandwich and sipped on a beer the cook had sent up. He knew it wouldn't be long before Egon was wide awake and agitated. And that stage would peak anywhere from thirty-six to seventy-two hours. So he relaxed while he could. The city below twinkled with lights. The sea, awash with pleasure craft marked by their running lights, stretched darkly to the horizon where a thin outline of mauve defined its limits. The night air lifted the sheer curtains in a lazy pattern, bringing currents of warm, scented air into the room. Nice was a paradise for the senses. But Carey's thoughts were melancholy; it was such a waste. He wondered how long it would be before Egon grew up-or worse, didn't grow up but died from the heroin.

Egon also reminded him of Molly, and he didn't know why. With Sylvie it was obvious-the same height, the same slender shape, the same blond hair. But with Egon it was more elusive; maybe it was Egon's vulnerability, his uncertainty. Molly had spent the whole summer they were together traumatized over whether she could get out of the marriage that had been so long in the planning. It could have worked out. She could have canceled the wedding; they could have left town and moved anywhere.

But, he reminded himself, taking a long draft of the fine German beer, what good did it do playing “what if?” ten years later? Those kind of opium dreams didn't happen in real life. Never. And the sigh he exhaled was for his youthful impotence against respectable plans by respectable people more than ten years ago. He never had been able to understand why someone couldn't just cancel a wedding. But Molly had been afraid of causing a breach between her parents and Bart's. “They'd be crushed,” she'd said.

“It's your life, not theirs. Don't be some damn sacrifice,” he'd retorted.

“I've known Bart since grade school.”

“Jesus Christ,” he'd said in disgust.

“Our dads play golf together.”

“Are we talking marriage here, or a golf foursome?”

“Everyone in town's been invited.”

“I don't care if everyone in the universe has been invited. All I want to know is do you love him?”

She opened her mouth to answer, then shut it again.

“That's what I thought. Why don't you cancel the wedding?”

“Why should I?” Molly retorted in a sudden rush of anger, annoyed that Carey could harangue her but offer no commitment himself.

“Because you don't love him,” he said. In hindsight he recognized he was a fool for not tossing his heart at her feet, but at twenty-two he hadn't realized what a mistake he was making. He supposed it was his fault he'd let her slip out of his life. But in the next heartbeat he changed his mind. Hell no, he thought. It was her fault. She married someone else. He didn't go out to California until after she married. Damned if the reminders of Molly didn't surface at the oddest times, and he couldn't ignore the intangible sense of loss that always accompanied them. What was she doing this warm April night, he wondered…

But then Egon whimpered in his sleep, and Carey's mind came back to Nice.