88.

Shauna

4:30 P.M.

Jason begins to stir, making wake-up noises on the couch, where he’s been since he came home a few hours ago. Something really turned him sideways today. None of these days has been good, but these last few hours have been the worst by far. It’s unnerving, to put it gently, seeing him like this. He was taking this on bravely, using exercise and activity to keep his mind off things, even extending his withdrawal interval from six hours to seven. It was bad, sure. He threw up and cramped up and couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a picnic. But he had a game plan and he was sticking to it. He seemed to be succeeding. I was beginning to think I’d overplayed this whole recovery thing in my mind, that this was going to be easier than I thought.

I don’t think that anymore. The hour that Jason endured when he first stumbled into the house was his worst hour, twenty times over, constantly retching and seizing up, sweating profusely and trembling at the same time. I almost dialed 911 for an ambulance, but he wouldn’t let me, he said he was okay. After some amount of OxyContin infiltrated his system, he began to calm, but still not as much as I’d hoped. It wasn’t until he fell asleep an hour ago that I felt safe even leaving his side on the couch.

He sits up now, moaning. I’m behind him, by the breakfast bar in his kitchen, looking at my laptop online at detox clinics. “Hey, sunshine,” I say, coming over to him, sitting next to him on the couch. “Rough ride you had there.”

His hair is matted from sleep and sweat. “Yeah, it wasn’t too fun. I got too cute with the time intervals. I need—”

“You need to get professional help,” I interrupt. “You need to quit trying to self-administer your recovery. I don’t care about ‘James Drinker’ or Alexa or anybody else. That will all sort itself out. I only care about one thing right now, and that’s getting you clean. You need to go in now, Jason. Tomorrow. Let’s do it the right way.”

“Okay.”

“I know how much you—What? Did you say . . . okay?”

“Okay,” he says. “You’re right. If I don’t beat this, nothing else will matter. I’ll check in somewhere tomorrow.”

“Oh, Jason.” I put my face against his. It’s not like Jason to give in so easily on something like this. He must realize it now, too, the climb he’s facing, how hard this really is.

“This thing is kicking my ass,” he says. “I took way too much of this crap for way too long.”

A bit of color has returned to his face. Out of the woods, for the moment. Some awful moments, followed by some not-so-awful moments. That’s what this is going to be like, I realize, this roller-coaster recovery.

“You want to eat?” I ask. The only thing he’s been able to tolerate is peanut butter toast.

“No . . . not now.”

“You have to try.”

“Later. Don’t make me eat right now.”

At five o’clock, his highness finally dines on peanut butter toast and a bottle of water. At five-thirty, he throws up. At six o’clock, he does push-ups to failure (that’s how jocks talk about weight lifting, doing reps “to failure”), which in this case is seventeen push-ups, not bad by most people’s standards but low for Jason. At seven o’clock, it’s time for another pill—back to six-hour intervals—and he forces himself to swallow it; at first I think the pill must be hard to swallow, but then I realize that’s not it, that he’s really fighting the urge to chew it up and get a surge of the good stuff all at once.

At eight o’clock, he’s feeling pretty good. He has good color. His eyes are clear. He has enough energy for thirty-five push-ups.

At a quarter past eight—actually 8:16, to be precise—his telephone rings, the landline, a portable phone collecting dust on a rechargeable cradle in the corner of the room.

“Hey, my cell phone,” he says, patting his pockets as he stands up. “Where’s my cell? Oh, shit—I left it at Alexa’s. I left my cell at Alexa’s.” He walks over to the portable phone and checks the caller ID. “Speak of the devil,” he says.

“Don’t answer it. Or answer it, if you want to,” I quickly add.

He lets out a long sigh and picks up the phone. “Hello? What? I can’t under—Okay, slow down . . . slow down, what? Where—where are you? Where are you?” Jason goes quiet for a long time.

“Jason, what’s going on?” I holler.

He puts a finger to his lips to shush me—right, he doesn’t want Alexa to know I’m here with him, and there I go shouting to him.

Jason turns his back to me, resting a hand on the top of his head as he listens. “What now? It’s hard to hear you—we’re talking over—go ahead. I said go—what? Say that—say that again.”

Jason’s posture goes ramrod straight.

“I’m coming over,” he says. “Sit tight. I’ll be right over.”

“What?” I say, when Jason punches out the phone.

He turns to me. “I have to go,” he says. “I—I have to go.”

89.

Jason

8:50 P.M.

I find a parking space on Wadsworth, a few houses down from Alexa’s bungalow, and race up the steps to her door. I knock on the door and it falls open.

I step in. “Alexa? Alexa.”

She is sitting in her living room, the lights off, the curtains pulled, the room dark, save for the illumination from the television, an old movie, Doctor Zhivago, I think, with the sound on mute.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Am I . . . okay. Huh,” she hiccups without humor. She is motionless, the dancing light from the TV playing shadows across her body, her face.

Something makes me stay where I am, halfway between the front door and the living room where Alexa is sitting, her back to the wall, facing me. The flickering light is messing with my vision, playing with her facial features, masking them, exaggerating them.

“Did you hurt yourself, Alexa?”

She doesn’t answer at first. The smell of food—pizza? pizza—wafts past me. She doesn’t even like piz—

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” she says. “You never did.”

“Tell me.” I raise my hands. “Tell me what’s going on. I couldn’t even understand you on the phone. I thought you said that you were going to kill yourself.”

She makes a noise in her mouth, like a giggle, something fleeting.

“No, Jason, that’s not what I said.”

She raises her hand, holding something, showing it to me in the dark.

“You left your iPhone here,” she says slowly, as if she’s saying something of paramount significance. “There’s a voice mail you should hear from this afternoon.”

She lowers her hand and plays with my phone. A moment later, blaring out from the speakerphone is Joel Lightner’s voice:

“Get ready to be happy, sport. I found him. I found our fucking guy! We were looking for cons recently released from a state penitentiary. This guy came out of a federal facility in January. You got him to confess to a gun charge, like, eight years ago, but you handed him over to the feds and they prosecuted him. We were looking in the wrong damn place! His name is Marshall Rivers. He’s got a history of violence against women and, since he got out, he’s been working at a dry cleaner’s two doors down from Higgins Auto Body! He probably saw James Drinker every day! Anyway, Marshall Rivers, does that ring—”