What's Left of Us: by Richard Farrell

Author:Richard Farrell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp
Published: 2009-06-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Day Two: Afternoon

Levine doesn’t skip a beat. I’m ten minutes early for our daily meeting. But he’s ready. The window is open. A cool warm breeze pushes against the side of my face. Dr. Levine is smoking. Something new. No clues that he’s a smoker. No ashtray on his desk. And most times I can smell smoke on people’s clothes. The sides of his neck—from his ears to the tip of his shirt—are pink—flush.

“Do you masturbate every day, Richard?”

Shit. How does he know? Maybe I should lie.

“Wow, Doc, where did that come from?”

He seems to pause for more than just a deep suck of fresh white smoke. I hear a leaf blower from outside. An older man with an orange vest gets Levine’s attention. The man is pushing leaves that winter has packed in the tree line. I focus on Levine. Smoke, lighter now, not as white, filters out his nose.

“Addicts are addicted to pleasure,” he says. “Take a look at this.”

He shows me a diagram of the brain from a text in the bookcase behind him. Points out a section in the brain that is affected by both heroin and sex, and explains how it turns green in a Cat scan. He tells me again why the detox puts saltpeter in coffee so we don’t get horny during our stay. I’m not sure but I guess Mrs. Kay has something to do with it. Levine says no and goes on about how the lack of a sex drive helps addicts focus on important things like how they got into detox in the first place. But saltpeter doesn’t work for everybody, especially for people like Crazy Mary and me. I tell him I know all about that stuff, how the army put saltpeter in my dad’s drink when he fought in Korea. Must be the same principle, the army wants to make sure their soldiers concentrate on staying alive. Levine lights another cigarette off the one that’s already going. He wants to ask me about what happened under the stairwell this morning—I can sense it. But I’m not going to tell him and a cloud of silent, nervous tension invades the room.

“Okay, getting back to your masturbation question. What do you mean, Doc? Is the question do I masturbate once a day? Or are you asking do I masturbate daily? Because there are two completely different answers.” I’m playing now, so no response from Levine is necessary.

“You see, many years ago, when I was a young boy, back in the woods at Camp Alexander.” I stop abruptly and think twice about continuing.

The guy’s not falling for it; I’m certain Levine knows I’m mimicking his whole line of questioning. And it doesn’t seem to get him upset, almost as if he’s expecting it. I guess if you deal with junkies all day you realize there is no such animal named truth.

“Forget it,” I say. “The answer to both of your questions is yes.”

My answer doesn’t make much sense to him. He’s trying to figure out what I mean by both.

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