Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [29]
“I guess he doesn’t like to have to worry about what he’s going to wear,” James said.
“I guess he doesn’t like having to remember to worry.” I zipped the garment bag closed and stuffed it back into the trunk. “Come on, Crabtree,” I said, “I know you’re holding.” I pulled on the handles of the canvas grip, and it weighed so little that when it came free it nearly flew out of my hand.
“Whose tuba is that, anyway?” said James.
“Miss Sloviak’s,” I said, plunging my hand into the grip, hoping, with an odd foretaste of horror, that it did not contain nothing at all. To my relief I discovered three pairs of boxer shorts, bundled into little balls, rolling around like marbles inside the bag. Wrapped up in one of these bundles I felt something hard, and my fingers curled around it. “Actually, no, it isn’t. I don’t know who it belongs to.”
“Can I ask you something about her?” said James.
“She’s a transvestite,” I said, pulling out what proved to be an airline bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “Hey. How do you like that?”
“I don’t like whiskey,” said James. “Oh. So. Is—is your friend Crabtree—is he—gay?”
“I don’t like whiskey, either,” I said, handing him the bottle. “Open that. Most of the time he is, James. Bear with me now. I’m going to make another dive down to the wreck.” I stuck my hand back into the grip and fished out another rolled-up pair of boxers. “Some of the time he isn’t. Oh, my goodness. What have we here?”
Inside the second roll of underwear there was a small prescription vial of pills.
“No label,” I said, examining the outside of the vial.
“What do you think they are?”
“Looks like my old friend Mr. Codeine. That’ll be good for my ankle,” I said, shaking out a pair of thick white pills into my palm, each of them marked with a tiny numeral 3. “Have one.”
“No thanks,” he said. “I’m fine without them.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “That’s why you were standing out there in the Gaskells’ backyard trying to decide whether or not to kill yourself. Right, buddy?”
He didn’t say anything. A gust of wind blew a handful of rain from the trees and it splashed against our faces. The bell over in the Mellon Campanile rang out the quarter hour, and I thought of Emily, whose father, Irving Warshaw, had been a young metallurgist assigned to the casting of the steel bell back in the late forties. An experimental and later discredited method had been employed in the bell’s manufacture, leaving it to toll in a voice that was off-key and faintly mournful and that usually reminded me of old Irv, to whom I had been a constant source of disappointment.
“I’m sorry I said what I said, James.” I took the bottle from him and unscrewed the lid. I tossed one of the codeine pills into my mouth like an M & M, and downed it with a swallow of Jack Daniel’s. The whiskey tasted like bear steaks and river mud and the flesh of an oak tree. I had another swallow because it tasted so good. “I haven’t had any of this stuff in four years,” I said.
“Give me,” said James, biting his lip in anger and trepidation and a childish desire to force himself into being a man. I handed him the pill and the dark little bottle. I knew it was irresponsible of me but that was as far as my thinking on the subject went. I told myself that he could hardly feel worse than he already did, and I suppose that I told myself that I didn’t really care. He took a long, careless pull from the bottle, and half a second later spat out the whole mouthful.
“Take it easy,” I said. I peeled the soggy pill from the lapel of my jacket and returned it to him. “Here, Why don’t you try that again?”
This time he was more successful. He frowned.
“It tastes like cordovan shoe polish,” he said, reaching for the bottle again. “Another sip.”
“There isn’t any more,” I said, giving the bottle a demonstrative shake. “These things don’t hold a whole lot.”
“Look inside the other ball of underpants.”
“Good thinking.” In the remaining pair of boxers was another little bottle of bourbon. “Hello,” I said. “We’re going to have to confiscate this, too, I’m afraid.”
James smiled. “I’m afraid so,” he said.