Удушье (Choke)

The fog is gone, Mr. Jones, and the shape just in front of you is Marilyn Monroe in a tight satin dress. Golden and smiling, her eyes half closed, her head tilts back. She stands in a field of tiny flowers and lifts her arms, and as you step closer her dress slips to the ground.

To the stupid little boy, the Mommy used to say this wasn't sex. These weren't real women as much as they were symbols. Projections. Sex symbols.

The power of suggestion.

To Mr. Jones, the Mommy would say, 'Have at her.'

She'd say, 'She's all yours.'

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.