The Driver (15 page)

“You alright?” Eva asked him.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Looks like you’re a thousand miles away.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got some stuff on my mind.”

“A problem shared is a problem halved.”

“I know.”

The regulars started to arrive twenty minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start. Milton went behind the table and made their coffees. The room was quickly busy. Eva was waylaid by a young actor who obviously had a thing for her. She rolled her eyes and, as he nudged her towards the room for the start of the meeting, she paused by the table.

“You want to get dinner again?”

“I’m not sure I’ll be the best company tonight.”

“I’ll take the risk”.

She looked straight at him and winked.

“Okay,” he smiled. “That’d be great.”

The room emptied out as it got closer to the top of the hour and Milton quickly poured himself a coffee.

Smulders hijacked him as he was about to go inside.

“About time you opened that mouth of yours in a meeting, John.”

“Do I get to say no?”

Smulders looked at him with an intense sincerity. “Man, you need me to remind you? You need me to explain? You’re sick. And the cure for your sickness, the best cure I ever found, is to get involved and participate.” He enunciated that last word carefully, each syllable pronounced slowly, and then pressed a pamphlet into his hands. The title on the pamphlet was THE TWELVE PROMISES. “Here they are, Smith. Read them out when I tell you and think on them when you do. Alright?”

“Fine.”

Milton sat down as Smulders brought the gavel down and opened proceedings. He had recruited a speaker from another meeting that he attended, a middle-aged woman with worry-lines carved in deep grooves around her eyes and prematurely grey hair. She started to speak, her share focussed on the relationship with her ex-husband and how he had knocked her around. It was worthy, and she was a powerful speaker, but Milton found his thoughts turning back to the interview and the police. They had already wasted too much time and now they threatened to waste even more. It was three months already. Milton did not know if Madison was still alive but if she was, and if she was in danger, the longer they wasted with him made it less likely that they would be able to help her.

The speaker came to the end of her share, wiping away the tears that had fallen down her cheeks. Smulders thanked her, there was warm applause, and then the arms went up as men and women who had found similarities between the speaker’s story and their own––that was what they were enjoined to look for, not differences––lined up to share their own feelings. Milton listened for ten minutes but couldn’t help zoning out again.

Richie Grimes put his hand up. He had come into the room late and Milton hadn’t noticed him. He looked now and saw, with shock, that the man’s face was badly bruised. His right eye was swollen and almost completely shut, a bruise that ran from black to deep purple all the way around it. There was a cut on his forehead that had been sutured shut and another beneath his chin. Milton watched as he lowered his arm again; he moved gingerly, pain flickering on his face. Broken ribs.

“My name is Richie, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi Richie,” they all said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look at the fucking state of me, right? It’s like what I was sharing about last time, you know, the trouble I’m in? I guess maybe I was hoping it was all bluster, that it’d go away, but I always knew that was just wishful thinking. So I was coming home from work last night and––boom––that was it, I got jumped from behind by these two goons with baseball bats. Broken nose, two broken ribs. I got a week to pay back all the money that I owe or they’re coming back. I’d tell the police but there’s nothing they can do––what are they gonna do, put a man on me twenty-four hours? Nah,” he shook his head, “that ain’t gonna happen. If I can’t find the money, I’m gonna get more of the same and now, with the ribs and everything, I’m not sure I can even work properly. I gotta tell you, I’m closer to a drink today than I have been for months. I’ve been to two other meetings today already. Kinda feel like I’m hanging on by my fingertips.”

The others nodded their understanding and agreement. The woman next to him rested her hand on his shoulder and others used his story to bounce off for similar experiences of their own. If Richie was looking for advice, he didn’t get any––that was ‘grandiose,’ and not what you came to A.A. to find––but he got sympathy and empathy and examples that he could use as a bulwark against the temptation of getting drunk. Milton listened to the simple tales that were told, his head down and his hands clasped tightly on his lap.

The meeting drew towards a close and Smulders looked over to him and nodded. It was time. Milton took the pamphlet that his fingers had been fretting with all meeting and cleared his throat.

“‘If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.’” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “‘We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. The feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises?’”

The group chimed back at him “We think not.”

“‘They are being fulfilled among us––sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialise if we work for them.’”

Peace.

Serenity.

We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

We will not regret?

Milton doubted that could ever possibly come to pass. Not for him. His transgressions were different to those of the others. He hadn’t soiled himself in the office, slapped his wife, crashed his car. He had killed nearly one hundred and fifty men and women. He knew that he would always regret the past, every day for as long as he lived, and what was the point in even trying to shut the door on it? The room behind his door was stuffed full of bodies, stacked all the way up to the ceiling, one hundred and fifty corpses and gallons of blood, and the door wouldn’t begin to close.

They said the Lord’s Prayer and filed out. Milton put away the coffee and biscuits and started to clean up. The usual group of people were gathering in the lobby to go for their meal together and Eva was with them, smoking a cigarette and waiting for him to finish up. Milton was turning the tea urn upside down in the sink when the door to the bathroom opened and Richie Grimes hobbled out.

Milton turned to Eva and mouthed that he would be five minutes. She nodded and went outside.

“You alright?” Milton asked Grimes.

“Yeah, man.”

Milton held up the plate that had held the biscuits; it was covered with crumbs and one solitary cookie. “Want it? Last one.”

“Sure.” He reached across and took it. “Thanks. It’s John, right?”

“Right.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard you share.”

“I’m more of a listener,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been ten rounds with Tyson.”

“But it was good to get it off your chest?”

“Sure. Getting rid of the problem’s another matter. I ain’t barely got a cent to my name. How am I gonna manage to find five large?”

“There’ll be a way.”

“I wish I shared your confidence. The only way I can think is to get another loan, but that’s just putting it off.” He gave him an underwhelming smile. “Time to run. See you next week?”

The man looked like a prisoner being led out to the gallows. Milton couldn’t let him go like that.

“This guy you owe the money to––who is he?”

“What good’s it gonna do, telling you that?”

“Try me. What’s his name?”

“Martinez.”

“Works down in the Mission District?”

“That’s right. You know him?”

Milton shrugged. “Heard the name.”

“I should never have gotten involved with him.”

“If it were me, Richie, I’d make sure I stayed in my place apart from when I was at work or at meetings. I wouldn’t put myself somewhere where I could get jumped again.”

“How am I gonna get the cash if I hide out at home?”

“Like I say,” Milton said, “there’ll be a way. That’s what they tell us, right––we put our faith in a power greater than ourselves.”

“I’ve been praying for six months, John. If there’s a power, it ain’t been listening.”

“Keep praying.”

20

ARLEN CRAWFORD WAS NERVOUS. The first debate was two weeks to the day before the primary. It was held in a converted hat factory that had been turned into a new media hub with start-ups suckling the teats of the angel investor who owned the building, offering space in exchange for a little equity. There was a large auditorium that had only recently been done out, still smelling of fresh plaster and polyethylene. There was a live audience; card-carrying local party members packed into the cramped seating like sardines in a tin. There was a row at the front––fitted with much more comfortable seating––that was reserved for the heavy-hitters from Washington who had made the trip west to see the candidates in action for the first time. Crawford looked down from the back of the room and onto the temporary stage, bathed in the glare of the harsh television lights. Each candidate had a lectern with a name card placed along the top. Governor Robinson’s was in the centre; that had been the prize following an hour’s horse-trading with the other candidates. The prime position would be fought over for the remaining two debates. Other bargaining chips included the speaking order, whether or not there would be opening and closing remarks, and a host of other ephemera that might have appeared trivial to the unenlightened observer. Crawford did not see them that way at all: to the politicos who were guiding the campaigns of the candidates, they were almost worth dying for. You lose the little battles and you better get ready to lose the war.

The negotiations before the debate had been exhausting. Crawford had had little sleep and the evening had already taken on a surreal tinge that was accentuated by his fatigue. It was already a strange scene. The building wasn’t big enough to offer the candidates individual rooms before the debate and so a communal greenroom had been arranged, with each combatant ensconced in a corner with his or her spouse and seconds close at hand. Food had been laid on––platters of sandwiches––together with cans of soda and an urn of coffee. Robinson was the only candidate who looked totally at ease in the room, his monumental confidence sweeping out of him in great waves. He overwhelmed the room, or so it seemed. His backup team was as frantic as the others, making last minute calibrations to his opening statement and preparing a series of stock lines to fall back on should he need them. It was a little late for that, Crawford thought, but he understood the need to be busy with something if only as a distraction from the nerves.

Robinson moved among his rivals like a Mafia don, giving them his double-clasped handshake, clapping them on the shoulders, squeezing their biceps, all the while shining out his gleaming smile. He laughed at their jokes and made his own, the consummate professional. Crawford didn’t have that ease with people, and never had. It was an unctuousness that you had to possess if you were going to make it as a player on the national stage. That was fine. He was happy with his strengths and he recognised his weaknesses. That kind of self-awareness, in itself, was something that was rare to find and valuable to possess. Robinson had amazing talents but his instincts were off. Crawford’s instincts were feral, animal. He was a strategist, a street fighter, and you needed a whole different set of skills for that. Robinson was surface but Crawford was detail. He devoured every tiny bit of public life. He hovered above things like a hawk, aware of the smallest nuances yet always conscious of the whole. He could see how one small change might affect things now or eleven moves down the line. It wasn’t a calculation he was aware of making; it was something that he processed, understood on a fundamental level.

One of the local party big shots came into the room and announced that it was time. Robinson, who was talking to the Senator for New Mexico, wished everyone good luck and led the way to the door. Crawford waited at the back, absorbing the energy of the room and the confidence––or lack thereof––that he could see in other candidates. The retinues filtered into the auditorium. He hooked a doughnut from the refreshment table and followed them.

THE DEBATE COULDN’T have started any better. Robinson was totally in control, delivering his opening position with statesmanlike charm, so much so that Crawford found himself substituting the drab surroundings of the auditorium for what he imagined the General Assembly of the United Nations might look like with his boss before the lectern, or with the heavy blue drapes of the Oval Office closed behind him during an address to the nation. He was, Crawford thought with satisfaction, presidential. The first question was posed––something on healthcare reform––and Robinson stayed away from it, letting the rest tear strips out of one another. Crawford watched and could hardly believe their luck. It wasn't hard. They were murdering themselves. Scott Martin tried to explain his very elaborate health-care scheme and got so bollixed up that he threw up his hands and said, “Well, this thing makes a lot more sense on paper.”

“Next question,” the moderator said.

“Delores Orpenshaw.” A shrew in a green dress and white pearls. “The way folk around here see it, this country is broken. My question for the candidates is simple: how would they fix it?”

“Governor Robinson?”

Crawford felt the momentary chill of electricity: nerves. Robinson looked the questioner right in the eye. “How would I fix it? Well, Delores, there are some pretty fundamental things that we need to do right away. We need to reverse the flood of Third World immigration. The Mexicans, the Puerto Ricans––we need to stop the flow and we need to send back the ones who are here illegally. It’s only logical that the more a country gets a Third World population, the more it will suffer from Third World problems. We need to reverse globalisation to bring back real jobs to this great country. That will help bring back personal pride and that helps restore pride in the community. We need to expose the climate change lies. That’s the constant claim of the technocrats but not everyone agrees. As an army of global warming zealots marches on Washington, the truth is that their Orwellian consensus is based not on scientific agreement, but on bullying, censorship and fraudulent statistics. We need to restore discipline in our schools and respect for others. We need to rebuild a sense of national unity and pride. Only if we do those things can we start to take back this great nation from the political elite in our nation’s capitol.”