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“But... but... “ Eli was flabbergasted. Words escaped him.

  “Take care, Eli,” Gerald said a moment later, then he turned, walked away and disappeared once again.

  The death of his parents struck Eli with a kind of numbness. It was the first time anyone in his life had died, and he had no practice in dealing with it. He did not ache inside or shed any tears. He felt... nothing. Wondering if there was something wrong with him, he turned to Pamela for reassurance. But when he tried to discuss with her his parents’ death and how he felt—or rather did not feel—about it, she became uncomfortable. She listened for awhile, but offered no real support or consolation, then became distracted and tried to change the subject.

  Eli had never seen Pamela cry or get angry or feel low. She seemed to have one steady, pleasant mood that never fluctuated, and he’d always found that to be one of her most comforting attributes. But now it seemed... odd. When he tried to discuss his lack of emotion about his parents’ death, she frowned—an expression uncharacteristic of her—and became uncomfortable, squirmy. Eli finally gave up, but it continued to bother him. She didn’t want to discuss painful emotions or anything troubling. She didn’t cry at sad movies, hadn’t been at all moved when her pet cat was run over by a car. But when given a pricey gift, she became positively giddy. Only months into the marriage, Eli began to question the emotional depth of the woman he’d married.

  He tried to discuss it with Roger. He and Roger had grown up just two houses apart and had developed the kind of brotherly relationship Eli had never found with Gerald. At the time of Eli’s parents’ death, though, Roger was deeply preoccupied with the fact that he had suddenly become extremely wealthy.

  Roger’s widower father had died a year earlier. His father’s family owned land in Oklahoma that had been leased to a big oil company for drilling back in the early 1950s. When it was learned that the company had been underpaying royalties on oil and gas from wells on several properties they leased, a class action suit was filed. By the time the money from the settlement came through, Roger’s father was in the final stages of his battle with cancer, and when he died, Roger became the beneficiary of his father’s share of the settlement, which amounted to over sixty million dollars.

  Eli always had been able to discuss anything and everything with Roger, but the timing was wrong. Roger was dizzy from his sudden windfall and was busy adjusting his life accordingly. He did not dismiss Eli; they talked about it, but not in any depth. Eli’s concern about his own emotional numbness remained mostly unexpressed and continued to gnaw at him.

  He began to have trouble sleeping. As weeks turned into months, the problem grew worse. He spent most of his nights in the living room watching television and most of his days dragging himself heavily through work, trying to stay alert. He began to drink at night, hoping it would help him sleep. While it brought on a state of unconsciousness, it was restless sleep that left him hung over the next day, making work difficult. When Andy asked him what was wrong, Eli said he was just having trouble sleeping, nothing more. Andy accepted that and probed no further. And Eli continued to drink.

  A pattern developed. He would begin to drink as soon as he got home from work and would continue until he finally went to bed. The next day, he would struggle to get up and go to work and would force himself to get through the day, until he could go home and start drinking again. As time passed, he found he had to drink more to get to sleep at night. After awhile, he stopped monitoring the amount he drank. His sleep became more and more restless, until he was hardly sleeping at all.

  At about the time he began to realize he needed to drink during the day just to get through the day, Eli started to get the vague sense that he was beginning to shut down inside.

  3.

  He made his way to the rear booth where Chloe was talking to Kevin. The two men shook hands and exchanged greetings, then Eli slid into the booth across from Chloe. He hoped Kevin would be gone when their orders—and Chloe’s ring—arrived.

  “Eight months, huh?” Kevin said.

  Eli smiled. “Eight whole months. And people said it wouldn’t last.”

  Kevin smiled. “I’m glad you’re both happy. Chloe sounds better on the air when she’s happy.” He turned to Chloe and winked, then gestured to a table near the front. “I’ve got a couple of friends waiting for me over there. Good to see you, Eli. And Chloe, I’ll see you in the morning, right?”

  “Bright and early.”

  “Yeah, don’t remind me.” He waved as he walked away.

  “I’m telling you,” Eli said, “he has a crush on you. Big time.”

  “Oh, stop it. I’ve known Kevin for ages. He would’ve said something by now.”

  “Not necessarily. His whole face lights up when he looks at you, and he—”

  ”I know, I know, you’ve said all this before.” She was smiling, but there was a slight edge of annoyance to her tone. “And I say you’re wrong.”

  “Okay. If you say so. Did Kelly take our orders while I was gone?”

  “Yes. Should be out here soon.”

  Eli felt a tingle of anticipation and lowered his head to look at the tabletop just in case it showed in his face.

  “What?” Chloe said, frowning slightly.

  He lifted his head and looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Huh?”

  “What’s wrong? You looked funny for a second.”

  “Oh, I always look funny.”

  Her left eye narrowed suspiciously. “You’ve been acting weird tonight. What are you up to?”

  “Up to? Me?”

  She sighed. “Okay, now it’s my turn to hit the restroom.”

  He turned to watch her walk away, admiring the gloss of her long hair, the swing of her small ass as she moved. He hoped Kelly did not arrive with the ring while Chloe was away....

  4.

  Eli’s vague sense that he was shutting down inside became no clearer, but it did not go away. His doctor noticed the change in him during a routine physical examination a month after Gerald’s death. Eli had been seeing Dr. Everett Reasoner for a dozen years. During that time, they’d developed a friendship. Everett was a silent partner in a small, exclusive restaurant that had an account with Market Art and they occasionally saw each other socially.

  After examining him, Everett sat on his wheeled stool. He was a big man, tall and broad, barrel-chested, with a thick head of dark blond hair. He wore a lot of plaid shirts, and they made him look like a lumberjack.

  “Sure you’re feeling okay, Eli?” he asked.

  Seated on the edge of the exam table, Eli wasn’t sure how to respond and said nothing.

  “Sleeping well?”

  “Uh, not... well, no.”

  “How’s your sex life?”

  Eli thought about it a moment, then shrugged and rolled his eyes.

  Everett’s frown deepened. “You’re quiet. We usually do a lot of talking when you’re here.”

  Another moment passed as Eli considered a response, then: “Sorry.”

  “Drinking any more than usual?”

  “Not much,” he lied.

  “Having any suicidal thoughts?”

  He flinched a little. “Suicidal? Uh... no.” There was uncertainty in his voice because, for a moment, he wasn’t sure such thoughts hadn’t crept in and out of his mind when he wasn’t paying attention, like burglars in the night.

  Everett sighed as he stood. “You’ve been through a lot, Eli. Most people have a hard enough time losing one parent. You’ve lost both parents at the same time under tragic circumstances. I’m concerned. You’re not yourself.”

  “Oh?” Eli smiled humorlessly. “Who am I?”

  “Someone who’s going to see a psychiatrist. I’m referring you to Dr. Erica Myerson. She may feel an antidepressant is needed. I don’t prescribe them anymore myself. I stopped a few years ago. But I’ll defer to her judgment, but only if it’s on a short-term basis. I won’t have you on an antidepressant for an extended length of time, not as long as you’re
my patient. She’s very good. I want you to see her as often as she thinks necessary. Do you understand?”

  Eli looked down at his knees, unaware that he was frowning. Am I the kind of person who needs a psychiatrist? he thought. Therapy? And maybe even antidepressants? He lifted his head and looked at Everett. “I don’t mean to tell you your job, Everett, but... I really don’t think that’s necessary.”

  Everett cocked his head to one side. “Really? You don’t? I’m guessing you know better than I that it is necessary. Not sleeping, drinking too much—I know you said you’re not, but frankly, I don’t believe you. I can tell by looking at you that you’ve been drinking too much, and in spite of the breath mint you ate recently, I can smell a hint of alcohol on your breath right now. You’ve emotionally flatlined, haven’t you? Lost interest in things? Been feeling numb? Dead inside?”

  Eli said nothing, but his frown grew deeper and his eyes narrowed.

  “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, Eli, it just means you’re depressed. The mind can get sick just like the body. And more often than not, when the mind gets sick, the body follow. You’re sick, that’s all. It’s not surprising under the circumstances. It needs to be treated before it gets worse. So that’s what we’re going to do.”

  The earliest Dr. Myerson could see him was in five weeks. “She’s taken on the patients of a colleague who’s ill and she’s backed up at the moment,” Everett said. “I’d like you to see her because she’s damned good. But if you think you need to see someone sooner—and you really need to be honest with me about this, Eli—then tell me, and I’ll send you to someone else right away.” Eli said he could wait five weeks if it meant seeing a therapist Everett admired and trusted.

  During those five weeks, Eli continued to drink and Pamela grew more distant. When Eli asked her what was wrong, she smiled brightly and said everything was fine. But he knew that was not true. She was quiet, remote, even cold. Something was bothering her, but she wouldn’t discuss it.

  Dr. Erica Myerson was a soft-spoken woman in her early sixties, a sharp, stylish dresser with short silver hair and a pleasant smile. She recognized Eli’s nervousness immediately and tried to put him at ease. She asked him general questions about himself, his life. It sounded like small talk at first, but Eli could not shake the feeling that every word he said would be scrutinized, analyzed, read into like tea leaves. Halfway through the first session, Eli realized he was talking about personal things he normally kept to himself. She had him talking before he knew it. He told her how numb he still felt about the deaths of his family and reluctantly admitted he’d been drinking too much. He said nothing at all about the cocaine.

  “Here’s what I’d like to do,” Dr. Myerson said at the end of the session. “I think it’s pretty clear that you’re suffering from depression. I’m not sure how long this has been going on. It can sneak up on you. By the time you notice it, it’s been with you for some time. According to Dr. Reasoner’s notes, you’ve also been drinking heavily, which is common with depression. I want you to try a mild antidepressant, and I’d like you to come twice a week for awhile. You also need to decide how you want to address your alcohol consumption. I don’t know how severe it is, but it needs to be dealt with before it grows worse. We can do it here or, if you think it’s warranted, you can enter a program.”

  She gave him a prescription for Zoloft and he filled it at a pharmacy near his house. But he reacted badly to the medication. His difficulty sleeping became worse, he became nervous, irritable, even hostile. He reported this to Dr. Myerson and she switched him to another antidepressant. When he reacted badly to that one, she prescribed another. The third did nothing at all. During their sessions, when she asked how he was handling his drinking, he simply said he was working on getting it under control.

  Over the next several months, everything unraveled. Eli became less efficient at work, and that inefficiency decayed into dysfunction. Andy noticed and frequently commented on it, asking Eli what was wrong, if there were problems at home, if he needed time off. Eli always said he would be okay, he was just working out some problems. He began missing days, finding himself unable to leave the house. As the quality of Eli’s work declined and he became more unreliable, his relationship with Andy became bitter and hostile.

  What remained of his relationship with Pamela crumbled. She spent more time away from the house in the evenings, talked to him less and less. He later realized why she’d become so cold toward him. She knew something was wrong but did not want to know what, because that would involve a discussion about his feelings, and Pamela avoided anything that dealt with messy emotions. She’d married a very stable man, and when he began having emotional problems, Pamela sensed them even before they became visible. As they grew worse, she pulled farther and farther away. Eventually, she moved into the guest room and stopped sleeping with him.

  Eli’s luck with antidepressants did not change—he reacted badly or hardly at all to each one Dr. Myerson tried. In spite of any progress he made in therapy—progress in understanding why he felt so shut off from his own emotions—he didn’t feel any different. His numbness steadily grew worse and so did the shrieking emptiness he felt inside. So did his drinking.

  Unhappy at home and starved for affection, Eli sought out a prostitute one weekend. It was his first time, but not his last. One night, he awoke in a hotel room as a prostitute was dressing and preparing to leave. He had no memory of how he’d gotten there and could not remember having sex with the hooker. He could not even remember laying eyes on the woman prior to waking in the bed.

  Although they hadn’t seen much of each other at the time, Roger noticed Eli’s decline and tried to reach out to him. Eli rebuffed him each time until Roger, feeling helpless, backed off.

  After not going to work for more than a week, Eli played his answering machine message to hear Andy say that he was fed up. He wanted to buy Eli’s half of the business before Eli’s drunkenness did irreparable damage to it.

  Everything fell apart in one Tuesday. Pamela had stopped talking to him altogether and spent little time at home anymore. In search of companionship, Eli went to the Hen House a bar he’d patronized before where he knew prostitutes frequently hung out. On that particular night, he was already quite drunk when he entered the bar. The woman he approached was an undercover police officer. Eli was arrested and thrown in jail. He called Pamela and she came to the police station and bailed him out. Then on the sidewalk out front, she told him she was leaving and he would hear from her attorney.

  Eli was required by law to enter a 12-step program to deal with his addictions. He attended the meetings but did not participate and never felt a part of the group, even when others reached out to include him. He did not attend regularly, though, and the meetings had no affect at all.

  After the arrest, Everett began to monitor him more closely and Dr. Myerson continued to counsel him as he fought to stop drinking, a process more torturous and painful than he had imagined, but necessary. Roger closed the distance that had grown between them and took it upon himself to help Eli through the initial withdrawals and intense cravings. Roger insisted that Eli stay at his house. As helpful as that was, it did nothing to ease the spinning cycle of depression and anxiety that had moved Eli to reach for booze in the first place. His first relapse came quickly and was followed by others. Roger came to the rescue each time. Eli realized that Roger was all he had—everyone else in his life had either died or left. He became so frustrated that he stopped attending the meetings. He had all but accepted defeat when Dr. Myerson prescribed another antidepressant.

  Paaxone was a new drug that had been on the market for only a few months and reportedly was having great success in doing things other antidepressants were unable to do. Since it hit the market, Paaxone commercials had been running frequently on TV. It seemed every commercial break on any channel included at least one of the ads that showed a happy family having a barbecue at a park near a river with brightly-colored hot ai
r balloons hovering in the sky and pleasant, soothing music on the soundtrack.

  At the same time he began taking Paaxone, Eli began attending regular AA meetings. He went to a different group this time, attending meetings daily—sometimes twice daily—in the basement of a large Catholic church. There, he met Chloe.

  Eli was surprised when the drug seemed to work. The fog in his mind cleared just enough for him to realize that he had destroyed his life. That clarity cut through the depression and his anxiety retreated.

  After Chloe entered his life, things slowly but steadily began to get better.

  5.

  As they waited for their order, Chloe discussed her job at KNWS. It was one of the few talk radio stations in the country that still had a balanced mix of local hosts and syndicated shows. The programming on most stations was entirely syndicated, but KNWS had a handful of local talent, veteran radio personalities who had become celebrities in Santa Vermelha. Chloe had been the News Director for five of the eleven years she’d worked at KNWS. She loved her job and got along with her coworkers—with one exception.

  Russ Campbell hosted the afternoon talk show on KNWS and had for as long as Chloe had been there. He’d become something of an institution in Santa Vermelha. Along with his popular right-wing radio show, he made occasional appearances on local TV and wrote a column for the Journal. Chloe and Russ did not get along and never had. She often came home from work with tales of Russ’s latest offenses. The previous week, Russ had annoyed everyone at the station by boycotting a Bruce Springsteen concert.

  “He went on the air Thursday,” Chloe said, leaning forward with her arms folded on the table, “and told his listeners not to go to the Springsteen concert coming up because Springsteen had played for President Obama’s inauguration, and anyone who went to the concert was a supporter of socialism. Can you believe that? I swear, if ‘asshole’ was a political party, they’d be running him for president in the next election.”