Page 54 of A Winter of Discontent for Henry Milch
“I know Opal.”
“Well, she’s friends with Carl, who’s friends… well, he has a thing for Denny.”
“Yes, I’m familiar.”
“Great. Denny is missing and Carl is freaking out, which means Opal is freaking out and she’s calling me to help find Denny. Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“Okay. Hmmm… You remember the anonymous part, right?”
“So he has been coming to meetings,” I guessed. I mean, there wouldn’t be anything to keep anonymous if he wasn’t, right? That was great. I had a least one thing to tell Opal.
Toddy seemed to be thinking the situation over. Then he asked, “How long has he been missing?”
“A couple of days.”
“There’s a chat room on AOL. M-4-M-P-N-P, you could check there. You might not get an honest answer, though. Youcould check Craigslist M4M, go back a few days and see if anyone was looking for PNP. You might find something there.”
I had no intention of doing these things myself, I would pass them onto Opal. She or Carl could snoop around online. I did a lot online, but finding tweakers on a bender was not a precedent I wanted to set.
“And, of course, Ronnie Scheck might have some idea.”
That was a little more challenging. Opal would definitely want me to go and talk to him. I might not mention that possibility.
“So, Henry, tell me how you got addicted to OxyContin.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you can’t solve a problem until you admit you have one. Tell me how your problem started?”
I didn’t want to answer that, it really wasn’t any of his business, but I found myself saying, “My stepfather pushed me down the stairs when I was fourteen. He told everyone I did it to myself. That I was trying to kill myself.”
“And that led to your taking Oxy?”
I nodded.
“Were you hurt badly?”
“I broke my wrist. My back was messed up for a while.”
“And you didn’t tell your doctor when it got better? You just kept getting prescriptions?”
I shrugged.
“So you’ve been an addict for nine, ten years?”
“No. I basically stopped right before college. And I was… sober, I guess, for most of the four years I was in college.”
“And afterwards?”
I shrugged. “I hadn’t forgotten what it was like. I kind of missed it. And by then I was going out to bars, and someone would buy me a drink. It wasn’t hard to ask if they knew where I could get some Oxy. You know, this is none of your business.”
He smiled knowingly. “Yes, I remember that. The idea that my addiction was no one’s business but my own. You get over that.”
That’s what he thought.
The next morning,I had the dream again. I hadn’t had it in years. Falling. That’s how it always started. The feeling of falling through space. It wasn’t pleasant; it wasn’t what an astronaut or a skydiver might feel. I knew I would land, and the landing wouldn’t be soft. Sometimes I would wake up just then... The fear of landing wrapped around me like a shawl.
Worse though were the mornings I didn’t wake up. The mornings I landed. Pain shot through me. A bone cracked. White light that wasn’t light flashing across my vision. When my eyes cleared, if they cleared—it was a dream after all—when they cleared, I could see I was at the bottom of a staircase. At the top of the stairs, my stepfather, Frank Fetterman, was staring down at me, smiling, sometimes giggling. Always pleased with himself. It was a dream, but it was also a memory.
