Choke

Chapter 21

THAT FIRST NIGHT, DENNY'S OUTSIDE THE FRONT DOOR holding something wrapped in a pink baby blanket. This is all through the peephole in my mom's door: Denny in his giant plaid coat, Denny cradling some baby to his chest, his nose bulging, his eyes bulging, everything bulging because of the peephole lens. Everything distorted. His hands clutching the bundle are white with the effort.

And Denny yells, "Open up, dude!"

And I open the door as far as the burglar chain will go. I go, "What you got there?"

And Denny tucks the blanket around his little bundle and says, "What's it look like?"

"It looks like a baby, dude," I say.

And Denny says, "Good." He hefts the pink bundle and says, "Let me in, dude, this is getting heavy."

Then I slip the chain. I step aside, and Denny charges in and over to one living-room corner, where he heaves the baby onto the plastic-covered sofa.

The pink blanket rolls and out rolls a rock, gray and granite-colored, scrubbed and smooth-looking. No baby, for real, just this boulder.

"Thanks for the baby idea," Denny says. "People see a young guy with a baby, and they're sweet to you," he says. "They see a guy carrying a big rock, and they get all tensed up. Especially if you want to bring it on the bus."

He tucks one edge of the pink blanket under his chin and starts folding it against his front and says, "Plus, with a baby you always get a seat. And if you forget your money they don't kick you off." Denny flops the folded blanket over his shoulder and says, "This your mom's house?"

The dining-room table is covered with today's birthday cards and checks, my thank- you letters, the big book of who and where. Beside that's my mom's old ten-key adding machine, the kind with a long slot-machine handle you pull along one side. Sitting back down, I start doing today's deposit slip and say, "Yeah, it's her house until the property tax people kick me out in a few months."

Denny says, "It's good you got a whole house, since my folks want all my rocks to move out with me."

"Dude," I say. "How many do you got?"

He's got a rock for every day he has sobriety, Denny says. It's what he does at night to stay occupied. Find rocks. Wash them.

Haul them home. It's how his recovery is going to be about doing something big and good instead of just not doing little bad shit.

"It's so I don't act out, dude," he says. "You have no idea how tough it is to find good rocks in a city. I mean, not like chunks of concrete or those plastic rocks people hide their extra keys inside."

The total for today's checks is seventy-five bucks. All from strangers who Heimlich Maneuvered me in some restaurant somewhere. This is nowhere near what I figure a stomach tube has got to cost.

To Denny, I say, "So how many days you got so far?"

"One hundred and twenty-seven rocks' worth," Denny says. He comes around the table next to me, looking at the birthday cards, looking at the checks, and says, "So where's your mom's famous diary?"

He picks up a birthday card.

"You can't read it," I say.

Denny says, "Sorry, dude," and starts to put the card down.

No, I tell him. The diary. It's written in some foreign language. That's why he can't read it. I can't read it. How my mom thinks is she probably wrote it that way so I'd never sneak through it when I was a kid. "Dude," I say, "I think it's Italian."

And Denny goes, "Italian?"

"Yeah," I go, "you know, like spaghetti?"

Still with his big plaid coat on, Denny says, "You eat yet?"

Not yet. I seal the deposit envelope.

Denny says, "You think they're going to banish me tomorrow?"

Yes, no, probably. Ursula saw him with the newspaper.

The deposit slip is ready for the bank tomorrow. All the thank-you letters, the underdog letters, are signed and stamped and ready to mail. I get my coat from the sofa. Next to it, Denny's rock is squashing the springs down.

"So what's with these rocks," I say.

Denny's opened the front door, and he's standing there while I turn off some lights. In the doorway, he says, "I don't know. But rocks are like, you know, land. It's like these rocks are a kit. It's land, but with some assembly required. You know, landowner-ship, but for right now it's indoors."

I say, "For sure."

We go out and I lock the door behind us. The night sky is all fuzzy with stars. All out of focus. There's no moon.

Outside on the sidewalk, Denny looks up at the mess and says, "What I think happened is when God wanted to make the earth out of chaos, the first thing he did was just get a lot of rocks together."

While we walk, his new obsessive compulsion has my eyes already scanning vacant lots and places for rocks we can pick up.

Walking down to the bus stop with me, still with the pink baby blanket folded over his shoulder, Denny says, "I only take the rocks nobody wants." He says, "I'll just get one rock every night. Then I figure I'll figure out the next part, you know— next."

It's such a creepy idea. Us taking home rocks. We're collecting land.

"You know that girl, Daiquiri?" Denny says. "The dancer with the cancery mole." He says, "You didn't sleep with her, did you? "We're shoplifting real property. Burgling terra firma.

And I say, "Why not?"

We're just an outlaw couple of land rustlers.

And Denny says, "Her real name is Beth."

The way Denny thinks, he's probably got plans to start his own planet.