86'd: A Novel - By Dan Fante Page 0,41

the Twelve Steps. Right.

Eventually, when old Phil was done, the cheering went on for a full half a minute.

Then Vince and a couple of his Harley henchmen presented Phil with a twenty-year cake.

More adoration. More applause.

Finally, when Vince announced it was time for sharing, hands went up around the room.

One by one people they came to the podium to deliver the Good News and congratulate Phil S. Saved marriages and walking on water and commuted sentences and transplanted livers, and not one juicer among ’em. Whackos and drunks and doper pillheads all cured of a hopeless malady of mind and body.

Finally, the meeting was winding down. Almost over. I’d had more than enough. I felt like I hadn’t had a drink in a hundred years and my brain was tuned to internal scream. Jimmy wouldn’t let me alone—hissing in my head—mocking me.

My shirt was wet and I felt my brain becoming unglued.

Vince was back at the podium. There were plenty of hands still raised in the room but he pointed down at the front row. At me.

Standing there facing a horde of the anointed, on the podium, sucking in air, I had come to hate Vince and the great Phil S. and Jeannie with her stringy fucking pink hair. It occurred to me that I had arrived at a place in my life where I was willing to commit murder—to do anything—but be where I stood.

“How long are you sober?” someone near me yelled.

I was unable to make my lips move. I could not speak.

Then Vince was beside me at the podium. “Take your time,” he whispered. “You’re doing fine. Just say whatever comes to your mind.”

Near me on the podium was a half-full plastic bottle of Sparkletts. Phil’s leftover speaker’s water. I didn’t care. I took a sip anyway.

“My name is Bruno Dante,” I said, shaking a little, clearing my throat. “And to tell you the truth I have never heard so much bullshit in all my life.”

On my way out, after I got the meeting secretary’s signature on the attendance sheet given to me by David Koffman, Vince spotted me as he stood by the door shaking hands.

“How ya doin’?” he whispered.

“I’m here. I made it through the worst part,” I said.

He handed me a printed card with his phone number printed on it in bold Century italic. “Take this,” he insisted.

I slipped the card in my pocket.

“Hey, look, Bruno, don’t worry what people think.”

“I don’t,” I said, now annoyed. “I don’t give a fuck what people think.”

“Use the number. It’s my cell. Use it twenty-four seven. Anytime you need to talk.”

Outside, up the street in my Pontiac, I lit a smoke and took a deep hit. Jimmy began sneering. You really are a limp-dicked mental gimp. You belong in that room, bigshot—you and the rest of those tit-sucking Jesus whiners. Nice going.

But when I began to calm down I realized that old Phil S. had said a few things in his drunkalog that had stuck. Number one: He said that “AA is for the people who want it, not for the people who need it.” I concluded that the statement was accurate. Judging from the assembly of zealous outpatient whackjobs gathered in the room that night, the want-it tag made a lot of sense.

Number two: “Wear the AA program like a loose garment.” His meaning there, I decided, was to not to be too hard on yourself. To just do the best you can. A reasonable bit of advice.

And Number three: “Fake it ’til you make it.”

Number three fit me to a tee. Faking it would be no problem. Faking it would be a breeze for me.

eighteen

A week later David Koffman was gone and I was back as a full-time chauffeur and part-time manager, still going to an AA meeting four times a week and waiting in line afterward like a weak suck to get my paper signed.

Cal Berwick, one of the regular drivers, had been filling in for me on the all-day, It Creeps movie job. I finally took over for him at Stedman’s request. When I knocked on Ronny’s door at five thirty a.m. on my first day back, the guy’s grin was ear to ear. “Bruno! My lad! And just where the fuck have you been?”

“Long story, Mr. Stedman. But I’ll tell you this and drop it: It involved a crazy woman.”

“Say no more. Been there—done that,” he sneered. “Hey, I like your guy Cal. He’s a decent lad. Don’t get me wrong, though.