Clean and Sober

By Edward Loomis and Frank Goad

The hero of the novel, CLEAN AND SOBER, is a representative figure in his southern California world (Santa Barbara), an artist and a teacher, i.e., his teaching supports his art. He is very much a citizen of his time and place, a middle-class white male struggling to keep his head above water in a competitive world (he has found that there is always a competition, whether it be allowed or avowed or underground and cutthroat). He enjoys many advantages--but his life is not an easy one which nonetheless he vastly enjoys. He is a happy man, doing what he wants to do. He is not conflicted about what he does or should do. He likes the place and the weather and even some of the people, and he enjoys doing his work--his art; but alas, he is at last unable to do this as his life succumbs to the burden of addiction and denial. The story is about how from the beginning of the story to the end, the comic is shading over into the tragic mode, and back, flashingly back and forth, as the fundamental direness of the situation asserts itself. But of course it is the direness that produces the story, and produces the happy outcome, and the ultimate product, the idea of such an outcome; and it is the direness that gives the dramatic kick to this thing. The story rushes along, and the hero with it, helter-skelter. He and his friends are put to the test, and it is a terrible testing, some find out how terrible. There is in this story a net gain for the hero--he is better and stronger after than before, and the story itself explains how that might be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 18, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462832200

Edward Loomis

"FRANK GOAD is a retired beach volleyball player, an artist manqué, a barely published writer, a marginal but occasionally successful progenitor of performance art, a very early and accidental dj, a runner-turned-jogger-turned-walker, and an occasional lightweight lifter. He lives in rented digs in Santa Barbara with his diffficult girlfriend and her lazy, sullen, lordly son, and gleans a living by making graphic designs on his computer. His pets have died." "EDWARD LOOMIS is a writer and audio artist, and a collaborator on the Goadian audio projects. His best known work is THE CHARCOAL HORSE, a novel, "A Kansas Girl," a story, and ADVICE TO THE LOVELORN, an audio tape. In recent years he has been working on a non-fiction book on Spain, and translating the poems of Rubén Darío and the brothers Machado."

Book preview

CLEAN AND SOBER

A novel

Frank Goad

and

Edward Loomis

Copyright © 2000 by Frank Goad and Edward Loomis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

TO THE MEMORY OF EDGAR BOWERS.

All’s well that ends well.

—Shakespeare

CHAPTER 1

Jeremy Bucklew and his ex-wife Jackie are regarding the Pacific Ocean a thousand feet below and five miles away. The Santa Barbara Coast faces south, and so they see only a trace of sunset, a magenta smear behind the purple channel islands. Lights are coming on in town and at the harbor; the softball field at East Beach glows with white light, and they can hear the freeway, perhaps even the surf, and closer, around the house, crickets.

It is a nice house of rectangular white plaster surfaces, set into a ridge where two canyons intersect on their way to the ocean. The house fits neatly its site of sandstone, chaparral and oak, amid panoramic views. It is all by itself on its lonesome ridge.

At six feet, Jeremy is only two inches taller than Jackie. His brown, barely receding hair is brushed back above a prominent, very lightly lined forehead. His eyes are an unremarkable blue, rather shallowly set beneath coarse blond eyebrows. He is handsome in a whitebread way, with an unprepossessing physique, neither lean nor fat. He is a 43-year-old painter, and a Lecturer in Art at the University’s School of Experimental Studies. He says,

Well, how do you like your new house?

She looks at him carefully—for this is his house. He designed it and built it with sweat and scheming; but now as part of the divorce settlement it has become her house, while he gets to keep his paintings, which, he is sure, soon will be selling at very fine prices; this meeting is an attempt to celebrate the end of a difficult and painful process, and they are trying to be cheerful about it. The symbol of the meeting lies on the coffee table beside the silver ice bucket—the house key.

They are drinking champagne from large old-fashioned wide-mouthed hollow-stemmed glasses.

You know I love this house, she says. But you don’t have to be so polite. I know it bothers you to lose it.

And so it does, he says, finishing his champagne and raising his glass to her. But I am gallant, and we are having a final drink together. He refills his glass, and says,

All right, final drinks, but who’s counting any more, right? He drains his glass.

Right, she says, with a nice smile, though it is clear that she has been counting. They touch glasses: evidently a thorny subject has been approached and avoided.

Jackie is 37, a legal secretary who is serious about exercise. She is pared down, nervous in repose, and very fit with well-defined muscles. Her sharp Lebanese-Italian beauty is distinct, obvious.

Her smile lingers; and now he presumes on it by saying,

We could still— and he wiggles his pale eyebrows winsomely.

Jesus, Jeremy. You are such a pathetic—

What?

Horny toad, she says. Pathetic horny toad. She giggles.

And servant to your beauty, he says, catching her free hand and kissing it, as evidently something has been resolved, for they seem to relax a little.

As he returns to the champagne bottle, he notices on the ceiling a glow of headlights from the long drive that winds up to the house. Expecting someone? he asks as he fills his glass.

She starts toward the front door, saying, Sort of.

She turns on the porch light and opens the door as a dark new-looking Toyota Camry pulls up to the house.

Oh, what the hell— Jeremy says as the driver gets out, a tall, good-looking man about Jeremy’s age, this datum leading to Jeremy’s conclusion that Jackie, having gotten this car as part of the divorce settlement, has loaned it to a boyfriend.

Quickly Jeremy drains his glass, sets it down, and heads for the door. So much for urbanity, he says thickly, as he goes past his ex-wife without looking at her.

To the boyfriend, he says, Hey, pal,— who nods and smiles;

and then Jeremy is past the Camry and stepping up into the cab of his ‘65 GMC pickup—slipping under the wheel and starting the motor—which coughs and quits; he tries again, fails again; and then he succeeds, and backs up with a hard rush of wheels on gravel, shifts gears and takes off recklessly up the little grade that leads to the long descent. The lights move across the dark hillside, illuminating the bunchy chaparral, then go over the hill and down the other side, as Jackie and her boyfriend stand in the doorway, watching and listening.

They are very quiet—and in the silence there comes to them a sound of tires sliding on gravel, then a sound of branches being crushed, then a rough sound of metal battering against rock—hard, definitive, final. It is followed by a last faint sound of the truck motor—which abruptly stops. A new kind of silence shouts at them.

They stand motionless, and Jackie murmurs,

Christ, not again. Please not again.

The man looks at her—he is behaving very carefully.

Oh, shit , she says.

Don’t we have to go look? he says. It sounds like something has happened.

Something has happened, all right, she says. She is shaking her head. It’s his favorite place to do that—put his truck in the chaparral. Think it hasn’t happened before? He knows what he’s doing.

I think we’d better go see what’s happened, the man says quietly. And maybe we’d better hurry, okay?

She is shaking her head as they walk rapidly up the steep, smooth road pale grey in the evening darkness.

CHAPTER 2

Millicent is glad she isn’t driving because the uniformed attendant is flirting with Corinne as she pays for parking. Millicent is free to look at the imposing arena, a circular blue and grey building that looms over the residential district and the huge parking lot. The attendant winks at Corinne as he puts the parking ticket under the windshield wiper, says, Have a good time, honey, and Corinne says, Yeah, yeah, as she takes off following the hand-signals of another parking attendant.

Corinne briskly parks, and checks to see that the doors are locked in her well-kept four-year-old 280Z. They have arrived—now they cross the boulevard, protected by uniformed crossing guards, and walk through a Preferred Parking area drawing admiring glances from several groups around them, and especially from four men just emerging from a long white Cadillac limousine. Just a smile, Corinne says, and we’re into the Forum Club. Keep walking, Millicent says, sotto voce, teeth clenched. It is clear why they draw attention, these two attractive young African-American women would draw attention anywhere. They are dressed carefully—and provocatively—for this sporting event, a regular-season game between the Lakers and the Bulls.

Now Corinne smiles in the direction of the first man out of the limousine, who steps forward and says,

Uh, I wonder if you and your friend might— Sorry, honey, Corinne says. I thought you were Jack. Not likely, the man says, fingering back his full head of hair—and they both laugh.

Just an episode—and Millicent and Corinne continue up the curving ramp to the turnstile. Millicent is laughing now, says,

Corinne, either you behave or I’ll embarrass you.

At the turnstile their tickets are torn and they are directed to their seats, which are a gift from one of Millicent’s employers, Doctor Bill Bly, and so they are excellent seats. They are in the front row, but not quite in the absolute front row; they are behind the basket, behind the photographers, and behind the expensive floor chairs where sit Arsenio Hall and his bodyguards and a variety of carefully attired citizens of L.A. prosperity

Millicent notices a pair of youngish forty-year-old white males just to her right, and on the other side a wattled, balding business type who is staring at Corinne—and now Jack Nicholson enters with another man and takes his place on his A-list sideline seat. Millicent then looks up past the player’s entrance, hoping to catch a glimpse of Chick Hearn announcing the festivities—but this is momentarily impossible as the man on her right leans toward her, and says,

I hear Jordan’s hurt his hamstring.

Millicent looks at him and smiles, then turns to Corinne and says, He says Michael’s hamstrung—’ya heard that?

Now the Lakers Girls are on the floor, and the music drowns out all conversation except for the Jesus! of the fat man at Corinne’s side.

Millicent watches the gyrating women and compares herself to them, honestly and favorably. True, her breasts aren’t as large—but her breasts are large enough—at 30, she exhibits the firm musculature of a young athlete; her hips are trim, her limbs are sculptured—but this is not from Nautilus or aerobics. This is genetic—and it’s youth. She is in her prime. Her Panamanian mother and her father from Barbados have produced a vibrant, intelligent, healthy woman, who can shape and define her calves by merely walking up three flights of stairs daily, as she does at the hospital where she works—and now the Laker girls have finished their routine and the PA announces the opposing teams. It is time for the game to start.

The center tip is controlled by Chicago, but Magic steals, lumbers basketward, passes off without looking to Worthy on the left side, and the Lakers are two up.

Ah, gee, says the man at her side. Ya see that?

Millicent looks sideways at him, says, What? and he laughs. She notices that he is pouring something from a flask into his plastic cup of Coca Cola, and she is about to comment when his expression changes to alarm, and he says, Look out!

She sees, as in slow motion, his drink slip from his fingers and drop floorward. There. It is gone—out of sight; and the man is surging toward her, his face suddenly contorted, as she feels a sharp intake of breath. What tha—she mutters, now feeling the touch of the man’s body as he throws himself in front of her, his arms raised then coming down to cover his head—she can hear a quick wild note in the crowd-noise—she sees Corinne dodging away, raising her right arm, and she sees suddenly what is going on, as if in a movie the action is stilled and a single frame shouts its message. The game has suddenly interrupted their privacy—here comes James Worthy pursuing a loose ball—she sees the ball, can almost read the letters on it, and behind it the huge body of the great athlete seeming to poise itself in the air above them all. He is soaring over a photographer cowering toward the floor, high above a huddled figure in one of the expensive floor chairs—coming toward her: and the man at her side will be taking the charge, he seems gathered for the impact, ready for it, as Worthy seemingly withholds some of his momentum as he comes down, he gets his left leg under him, and seems to pull back—an astounding athletic feat—as his right knee feeling for balance strikes her protector somewhere around his head or shoulder and fells him as if he had been shot.

Worthy is coming erect now, with both feet under him, his plastic goggles gleaming, once again in charge of himself, as Millicent stares down at the man lying on his right side unconscious at her feet.

For a moment the scene holds in her attention: the athlete, the victim, and she herself now standing unhurt but shaken—there they all are together. As if to define the craziness of what has happened, she sees the victim’s flask lying on the floor not far from Worthy’s majestic shoes. The cup with his drink is not in sight—and now she is kneeling down in her professional role to see what can be done—initially, just to check the victim’s condition; she bends down, and can see that his eyes are closed—the face looks peaceful. He is out cold. She leans a little closer to see if there is a cut or bruise—and gets a whiff of his breath, richly alcoholic, but mild. He is not breathing hard. He is at rest.

So. She is a nurse. She is in her bubble of professional clarity. There is nothing to do just at the moment—and the paramedics will be here soon. She can keep him quiet if he wakes and tries to move—

And now she is aware of others around her reacting to what has happened. Worthy is bending over to have a look, and she turns her head to confront his quizzical, faintly amused expression; he is concerned—but of course he still belongs to the battle that will be fought on the court.

He’s okay? Worthy says, and Millicent, shaking her head, says, He’s unconscious—but maybe he isn’t hurt badly.

Worthy’s face goes away, to be replaced by Corinne’s anxious features quite close expressing a major concern:

You all right, honey? Corinne says, paying no attention to the fallen one.

I’m fine, Millicent says. This guy isn’t so fine, though. Have they called the paramedics?

Order is returning, by degrees. The victim’s friend is kneeling at his side now, staring down in horror and astonishment—Millicent can see the fear in his eyes, to which she responds by saying, I think he’ll come to before long. He’s breathing okay.

The man stares at her.

I’m a nurse, Millicent says, briefly.

Things are getting started on the court once again, as the crowd’s attention goes to the game after being momentarily entertained by the spectacular accident, not really so very strange in this overheated atmosphere of championship athletics in which only the athletes are really important: the game continues, and Millicent sensing a ripple nearby sees a pair of white-uniformed men coming her way, with another behind them lugging a stretcher—and so she can return her attention to the victim, who, it must be admitted, had gotten hurt protecting her—his body had taken the shock that might have injured her very severely.

So she looks attentively at this man who had so promptly responded to an emergency—no hesitation, evidently. He had just hurled himself into the place of danger.

Humn, she murmurs, not seeing anything right away in that face to indicate the features of heroism. It seems an ordinary face—nice enough, perhaps—and he’s stirring now. With a groan, he turns over onto his back as she assists him, her hand under his head.

Take it easy, she says. We don’t want you to get up. Just take it easy. You’re going to be all right.

The eyes come open—blue, and clear—they seem to focus on her almost instantly; then the lids come down, and his voice is heard:

What happened? he says.

You got— she begins; then, Don’t worry about it. There was an accident—

Now the paramedics are at hand, inspecting the victim, taking his pulse—in general taking over, getting him ready to leave the scene on the stretcher they have brought along—and it is clear that they are skilled professionals and also that they are under instructions to remove this rather ugly scene from the attention of the great arena She finds herself standing by, merely watching—and just at the last, as they have raised the stretcher by a flexing-in-unison of well-conditioned bodies, she picks up the flask and extends it to the victim, who is looking upward with his clear blue eyes. Clearly he is wondering what has happened, having no idea what it was. He is conscious. He will have a headache, probably a concussion—not hurt badly, is her judgment; but then she thinks better of it. She takes in his friend now bending over the stretcher, and she catches his sleeve, gives him the flask.

Here, this belongs to your friend. You can give it to him when he’s feeling better.

The friend—startled and still shaken—looks at her dazedly, then accepts the flask.

Oh. Yeah, it’s his, all right. Do you—

And he turns his attention to his friend, now dreamily leaving the great sports arena long before he had expected to. He seems peaceful. His eyes look upward into the lights; and Milicent is shaking her head, gradually accepting this latest accident in her life, as Corinne is tugging at her sleeve.

Are you okay? Corinne says. Should we go upstairs and get you checked out?

No, Millicent says. Not necessary. He’s the one that took the beating. Kind of nice of him, wasn’t it?

And Corinne stares at her, not really understanding this sentiment. Really, are you okay? she says again.

CHAPTER 3

Jeremy wakes and sleeps, lingers in drowsiness and wonders, hesitates, begins to worry—and feels a headache under his left temple.

What had caused it? For the moment he has no idea. It is not normal for him to wake up like this. Normal is to wake up feeling good—unless he has a hangover, and that is not the case at this moment. There is no reason for him to have a hangover, somehow this is clear to him: and then he remembers. He has a headache because of that crazy episode at the Forum—

And he finds he does not wish to run through that event, does not want his memories of it. He is not able to recall what happened, only what Mitch had told him afterward—he had gotten in the way of Worthy’s knee, he had been trying to protect a female neighbor in the front row, what kind of story is that?

The pain under his temple is not a harsh driving pain. Rather it is a gentle reminder of the way things have been. Yes, he had suffered a bad headache the night before, was it? And what time is it now?

It must be late, he thinks—and he turns his head for a look at the little clock on the wall: 11:23, and that must be 11:23 in the morning, he thinks—and groans. He has things to do! His classes For weeks he has been running behind—what is he doing in bed at such an hour?

Abruptly he sits up and slides his legs over the side of the bed—to encounter a sudden dizziness tipping his world left and then