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  She realizes her hand is gripping her hair. "What sort of place is this? It sounded so great on the internet, this man who talked to me spoke with such authority."

  "Addict authority. But don't feel bad. You were dealing with a pro."

  "So, you still want to go to Lazarus House? I got some names of a few more therapeutic communities. But now I feel like you ought to have a chance to go and check them out, have an interview there." She opens the folder.

  There's a pause, the sound of tapping. "Well, maybe you can fax Lindsey the stuff tomorrow morning. Definitely time for me to make a move out of here. Before I get myself in any more trouble. Got to go, got to do the ten-foot wall."

  Richard will be back April 3. Five days. What she needs is to have Mark tucked away safe. Then a few days to rebalance. Days of sun and the shadbushes to finally blossom. There's the sound of a motor and then Luke's bark. The UPS truck is just backing toward the house. By the time she gets to the truck, the UPS lady is reaching out a hand to give Luke a biscuit.

  "Oh, my son will be so glad to get this," she says.

  "Must be going into the guitar business," the woman says with a friendly smile. "Seems like I've delivered three or four of these here since I came on this route. This bruiser was just a puppy then. What's he weigh now?"

  "One hundred and three pounds—the last time we got him on the vet's scale," she says with pride. Luke, her progeny. The bass is here at last. This will give Mark a lift.

  There's a message on the machine. She presses hard on Play: "It's me. Be careful what you wish for. The Lazarus van is here to pick me up. I'm in a rush to get my shit together. Send the bass when it comes. No calls for two weeks. Bye, Luke. I love you, Mom."

  12 : Lazarus

  THEY DROP HIM off in front. "Last chance to make a run for it," the guy in the back tells him when he reaches in to get his stuff. Big grin. A lot of teeth missing.

  "Right," he says. Maybe the guy's name is Clifford. He's got to do better at remembering their names.

  Ricardo, the driver, his name's tattooed on his forearm, rolls down the window, calls back, "Better have a smoke. Last chance before they put you in the chair." The chair. What the fuck has he gotten himself into?

  "Trust the process, baby," the back-seat guy yells above the rumble of exhaust. Piece-of-shit van. "Stick and stay. Look at us."

  He hears them laughing as they pull out, make the turn down a steep driveway. Still, they've been okay. Gave him the deal during the two-hour ride from New Vistas. Both of them six months clean to his twenty-one days. Junkie boot camp. Going to tear you down; then build you back up. Mortification and absolution. You're going to want to leave; you're going to head for the door a hundred times, but just ask yourself this: Then what?

  When his legs move him along, the ground isn't quite where it's supposed to be. Something funny going on up there. Did he tongue the Zyprexa this morning? Yesterday? The day before that? He can't remember. His hand's shaking when he lights up. Can't go loony out here in the strange. The peeling sign on the iron gate says LAZARUS HOUSE. He does a quick once-over: gray stone, three stories, fire escapes, rusty gutters. Got the same gothic-horror feeling of Langston Psych, except there aren't any bars on the windows. Looking down at him from the portico roof, a pink plastic flamingo. It's a sign. A sign of what?

  He shifts his backpack, twists a knot in the pillowcase that holds his books, his dirty clothes. Likely he's going to be one of the few white boys here. One of the few not mandated. Jail or rehab. Going to be the real thing. None of your New Vistas Let's Pretend. Big double doors. Little sign in brass. TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. A Rozmer favorite. Through the glass he sees there's no one in the entry hall. He turns the knob. A blast of heat and the smell of wax. To the left there's a sign marked OFFICE. A poster by the office door says,

  ACT AS IF:

  YOU'RE MATURE.

  YOU'RE CONFIDENT.

  YOU FEEL GOOD.

  YOU ARE THE PERSON YOU ASPIRE TO BE.

  There's somebody sitting at a computer. Shaved head. A scar as thick as his thumb below the jawbone. He gives a quick glance for breasts. Hard to say. "Excuse me. My name's Mark Merrick. I just arrived."

  The person gives him a long look and then picks up the phone. He sees the name tag says Bonita M., December 23, 2001. Bonita. Bonita. Ricardo. And maybe Clifford.

  "This is Bonita in the office. Would you let Sydney know Mark M. is here … You want me to make the announcement?" She eases the phone back in place with two hands like it's breakable. "You're going to be in Sydney's group. He'll be down in a few minutes." She doesn't do anything friendly with her face. She turns on a small mike and taps to see if it's live. "Attention, Family." She waits a few beats. "Would you please assemble for a welcoming party for Mark, our new Brother. Thank you."

  Welcoming party. Brother. Family. Sydney. Bonita. Ricardo. Maybe Clifford. My name is Mark M. He'd like to sit down, but he doesn't want to ask this woman if that's okay. He fingers the edge of the pack of Camels in his sweatshirt pocket, sucks in. At least three hours before they'll let him smoke. He sees he's left wet marks where he gripped the counter. He brushes his hands against the sides of his pants.

  The lobe of Sydney's left ear is missing. He pulls his eyes away, but Sydney looks right into him. Sydney's got the glint, the burn of been-there. Not going to scam Sydney.

  "First the Family's going to give you the traditional welcome. Then you'll have some time to think it over: how you got here, if this is the place for you. Sit yourself down in the reflection chair in an empty room—just you and you. We call it the Initiation Monad. See how that goes. Then we'll set you up with a Big Brother to help orient you, keep you up on the rules. Going to take it easy on you the first few days. Ricardo and Clifford ran it by you, right?"

  Sydney's voice, a fuzz of echoes: what's going to happen first, what's going to happen next. Can't talk to anyone outside the house for two weeks. No letters. Not even Rozmer. Going to be given a job like dishwashing first, then can work his way up: Ramrod, Expediter, Coordinator … He nods like he actually follows. His feet take him along.

  "Going to meet your Sisters and Brothers," Sydney tells him.

  The stairs are marble, winding, worn down in the middle. Up, up, up. Twenty-eight steps. Got to remember that number. There's the heat of getting closer. Breath-heat. And then the hall's alive: they're lined up on both sides. Someone grabs his hand. "Welcome home, Mark." Smiling faces. Mouths: dark holes with teeth gone. "Welcome home, Mark." He nods, tries to raise the corners of his lips. Their palms dry, callused; his hands clammy. "Going to run your story by us soon, Mark?" One side of a woman's face, a blue-red birthmark. They pass him along: men, women, down the full length of the hall, people reaching out to grip his hand, then they pull him the other way. He makes his fish-fingers grip back. "You're home now, Brother." A lot of sad eyes. Got to be more than a hundred. Maybe ten or twelve other white boys. Clifford and Ricardo blur by. "Home, Brother." His head has a telephone inside and it's ringing, ringing. Don't freak on me now, buddy. Not here. Not now. The last man, a giant, reaches down and pats his cheek, a jiggling sign on his chest says I AM A BABY. PLEASE HELP ME GROW UP.

  Rooniebingdelooniebingbalooniebing. The hall's empty; the chair's hard. Behind one of these doors, buttons banging in a dryer. All the doors closed, but breathing's coming through some of them. Twenty-eight bings. Aaron. Twenty-eight. Aaron's trying to tell him something. The sound stops. Only distant voices now. His armpits, his groin, his ass, everything itches. His thermal underwear's still damp and creeping. Not a junkie-itch. He's been clean for twenty-one days. Twenty-eight minus seven. He sneaks a look down the hall out the sides of his eyes. No one's watching. Unless there's a little hole in the door across from the chair. He rolls his pupils up to look through his lashes. That way he doesn't have to move his head. He can't find the hole in the door. He wiggles his rear, his back against the chair to scratch what he can. He's not to move, not to lift his
eyes. Monad? If he can't get through it, he's out the door. Just you and you. Three hours. No way to know how much time has passed. He needs a cigarette. He needs to piss. Piss. Piss.

  Now listen to me. Listen to me. You're going to come apart and run down the wall if you don't listen to me. Close your eyes. No one is watching through the door. Do the breathing. Take the air in the left nostril, down, down. Let it out the right. In right … down, down. Now—put yourself someplace safe and do what they tell you for now. Don't let them find out.

  "Nicotine time," a voice says. He feels a hand on his shoulder. "You don't look so good, man." He pulls his lids apart, blinks to focus. He's seen this face somewhere before. "Okay, Little Brother." The hand touches his shoulder again. The face laughing. "You made it through the first big one." He can barely hear the words through the hum.

  "I remember at the end of three hours, I was ready for the rubber room." The voice happy about something. It's Ricardo. Says so right there on his arm. "Arise," and Ricardo gives him a little boost up. "You know, Laz, like Lazarus. Coming out of the Monad's like coming back to alive." He does rise. "You okay?" Ricardo says. "Come on. Smoking room's just at the end of the hall there." He holds up a plastic sack. "Brought you a soda and something to eat. Everybody's at Evening Meeting right now."

  "Got to take a piss," he says.

  "Right through that door," Ricardo tells him. "I'll wait here."

  His hands are shaking so bad, it's hard to unzip. Feels like he's going to keep going forever. He rinses out his mouth. Then ducks to the faucet to drink and drink. There's a person looking at him from the mirror: a white boy with purple under his eyes and gray sticking out by his ears. Some crazed sicko. "Be careful," the person tells him with a twisty smile. He's relieved to see the guy's got all his teeth.

  The smoking room's full of beat-up plastic chairs pushed back against the walls. Public-funding decor. The windows are dark. Daytime when he got here; nighttime now. He manages to get a Camel out, but he can't find his lighter. He gets the cigarette to his lips, but it's still jumping around.

  "Here." Ricardo reaches over and gives him a light. Ricardo N., October 3, 2001. "You'll get your own matches once you've been here ninety days."

  Ninety days. He walks back and forth and smokes. Breathes. Settle down, settle down.

  "Some heavy-duty shit, right?" Ricardo says.

  He doesn't say anything, just keeps moving. Floor still not quite where he expects it to be. Ricardo sits. He pushes a chair out for him on the other side. One table leg shorter than the others, so when you touch it, it wobbles. That table knows.

  Ricardo pulls a can from the bag. "Mountain Dew and a ham sandwich." He can't drink Mountain Dew. All Aaron was living on by then. "Eat. While you eat, I'll fill you in."

  He nods and pulls the wrapper from the bread. Wonder Bread. Brown mustard and limpy lettuce. Not going to be your New Vistas cuisine, but he's got to eat. The bread sticks in his throat; no way he can drink the Mountain Dew.

  "Okay," Ricardo says, then he rests his arms on the table. Red petals, blood drops drifting down through his name. "Good news is I'm going to be your Big Brother." Same ho-ho in his voice, then his hand comes across the table. The hand. For a second he reflexes back. A handshake. Ricardo's reaching out to shake his hand. He wipes his palm on his shirt and returns the grip. "So. You lucked out there, Bro." Ricardo laughs. "Going to get the benefit of my experience." Ricardo's got two rows of white teeth and all his fingers. "I've been here six months," Ricardo tells him. "Couple more good months, I'll be going out into a Lazarus apartment."

  Ricardo stops. Looks at him to see if he wants to say something. "Well, the thing is, you just got to do what you're told. You know—fake it. You're good at that, right? But it's going to get easier."

  He nods. This Ricardo may be okay. Get the static down, subdue the trembles, maybe he could roll into a groove. There are posters with quotes all around the room. Some have suns rising in the corner or trees bursting into bloom. Words. These places are all big on wise sayings. They're not of the Just Say No school of persuasion.

  "From here." Ricardo swivels his head a little to pull Mark's attention back to the topic at hand. "From here, I'm going to take you up to your dorm. Your stuff's up there in your locker. Locker with a lock. You'll get another smoke break right before bed. Three other guys in your room. All of them got some time in. They'll be up after Evening Meeting. Give you a chance to settle in. You're supposed to read the orientation manual. Lights out at eleven."

  Ricardo pauses again. Mark gives Ricardo another nod. "Lot of rules here. Piss you off at first. But just try to go with it. Later, get some time in, it won't seem like such bullshit." Ricardo's voice is slow and steady. "You do anything out of line, somebody might give you a Pull-Up. You know, point out what you're doing wrong. You just say, Thank you, and go on about your business." Ricardo stops and checks him out. "How you doing?"

  He clears his throat, opens his mouth. "I'm coming around," he says. The red glow around Ricardo's head is fading to pink.

  "Besides my guidance"—Ricardo grins—"your Caseload meetings with Sydney mornings ought to be your best help. He may seem hard-ass at first, but he knows what's going on. You let him, Sydney will spot-check you when he's sees you sabotaging yourself."

  Ricardo leans back in his chair. Looks him up and down. "Got any questions?"

  "My wallet?" Spews right out. Fuck.

  Ricardo flinches, then he leans across the table and opens both hands, palms up. "You're thinking Go, right?" He doesn't answer, just wraps the plastic around the bread and squeezes it into a gray ball. Ricardo closes his hands. "Your wallet's locked up safe. You want to go, just speak to me or Sydney. Thirty-six hours' notice." He nods. "But don't forget to ask yourself, 'And then what?' You know the answer, right?"

  He doesn't say anything.

  Ricardo leans toward him again. The light around his head's yellow now. "Jail. Or the nut house. Or the morgue. Hey, maybe even all three."

  The room's the size of a big closet. Two metal bunks, a row of gray lockers. A window that only goes up a few inches. Heavy-duty glass that's not glass. Itchy gray army blankets like they used to have at basketball camp. Four hooks for towels. But everything clean-clean. There's a reading light fastened to each of the head rails and, hanging from the foot of each bed, a laundry bag. Lying on his bunk, he can touch the ceiling when he puts up his arm. A copy of the Lazarus House Orientation Manual rests on the pillow. It's chewed around the edges like somebody tried to eat it. The name on the inside cover: Henry Johnson, the cross-off lines pressed into the paper. Looks like Henry tried to cut off a big chunk of his family as well. Maybe what anonymity's really about.

  He reads the first sentence:

  At Lazarus House you will completely evaluate your life. In order to make this work you need to learn the therapeutic community way of doing things.

  The way of doing things. Hey, if his head would stop dividing into little cubes that keep rearranging themselves—cubes with numbers click, click, clicking—maybe he could eat the way of doing things right up. Maybe if he had his new bass, crawl in that and thrum himself quiet.

  William T. Carlton'S. Jesús V. Their names on the ends of their bunks. His name too. No clues on who they are beyond that. Nothing personal anywhere. If he reaches across the aisle, he can touch the other bunk, Jesús. Tomorrow morning, Jesús is going to be looking right in his face. Being on the top is not good—trapped up high. Nothing he can do about that for now. Signs everywhere here too. ONE DAY AT A TIME right by his pillow. LET GO & LET GOD down by his feet. His legs have stopped twitching, the hum's faded to low. Just do what they tell him to do and be careful. That's enough for now.

  Clinical Tools Used by the Family: One-to-Ones, Running Your Story, Pull-Ups, Learning Experiences, Haircuts.

  What day is it? He twists his shirt so he can read the name and arrival date on the tag on his chest: Mark M., March 26, 2002. Two less than twenty-eight. He's got two days
more.

  Here they come. His Brothers and Sisters. He swings down and goes to stand by the door. Jesús is first. January 2, 2002. Muscled arms and chest under a head meant for a smaller body. Weights. "Yo, Mark," Jesús says. "Going to share our humble. Three hours in the chair about do you?" Jesús motions toward the door. "Meet the other members of our suite: Carlton, our senior fellow."

  Carlton shakes his hand. He's maybe six-eight with a stoop and a thin pink scar that runs from the corner of his mouth to his eye. He does a mock dribble in the doorway. "Got a basketball team, the Lazureens. Play the other junkies and psychos vacationing in the nearby communities. You play?"

  "A little pickup."

  "When you're not picking up, right?" They all laugh. Another man slides into the space.

  "And here's your bunky—William." Jesús has crawled up onto his bed to make room, but he's still running things. "Look of him you're bound to be fearful that he may knife you right through the mattress. One scary dude, right?"

  And it's true. William's left eye bulges from its socket so far it looks like it might roll out. And the pupil wanders—looking everywhere all at once. Dreadlocks to his shoulders. William laughs. "Only going to knife you if you snore. Last guy in here, Henry, like sleeping in the cockpit of a B-52."

  "Yeah, wonder I didn't reach over and McMurphy him one night," Jesús says.

  Everybody but him has gotten onto their bunks. No way the four of them could ever be standing in the room simultaneously. Carlton is so tall he has to lean way into the aisle in order to sit down. When William stretches out, his belly humps up like he's about to deliver.

  "When's the next smoke?" he asks them.