Life Unbothered Page 10

  Visions of Cameron’s body wrapped around mine filled the time on the short ride home from the golf course. I was bummed that the two of us weren’t on our way to getting naked. The distress made me yearn for a woman to wash away the impending mental troubles I knew would engulf me if I went home and sat idle.

  In complete desperation, I almost went to a local Asian fusion restaurant where a girl I knew worked, but there was that lava lamp sensation, my head warping and skewing the perception of my surroundings. The usual trigger systems ensued—heart pounding, breath gulping, lungs clamping. There was no way I was going to make the ten-mile drive to the restaurant on the small chance I could find her, or even be with her. Instead of a diverted drive, I kept the car guided in home’s direction. My body was telling me it was time to return to my self-imposed incarceration and loneliness.

  13. The Slumber Party

  My shoes clacked on the tile in the front entryway of my empty house as I approached the door to meet Wink, or Dr. Travel as he insisted over the phone. As the door opened, I realized why his mother named him Wink. He bore a stunning resemblance to Wink Martindale of old game show fame. He had the same jutting full-tooth smile and slick hair as the emcee. Wink, to my surprise, was punctual.

  “I’m Dr. Travel,” he said, smiling with both rows of teeth. “You ready to go?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready. How exactly does this work?” I asked.

  Wink entered the house and placed his old leather tote on the tile floor. “It’s real simple. I have a mixture of medication—pharmaceutical and natural—that you’ll take. By the time we leave Phoenix city limits, you’ll be completely out for at least a few hours. You shouldn’t experience any agoraphobia while on the medication.” He smiled again and directed his attention to the front door. “Hey is that your BMW out there?”

  “Yes. It’s what you are driving to Los Angeles.”

  “Cool. Those chrome rims are smokin.”

  Looking at Wink, ‘cool’ and ‘smokin’ were not words I would have expected to come out of his mouth. He was about forty years old, short, and dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and baggy walking shorts. His white socks covered his legs below the knees. Strip joint dweeb was the look that came to mind.

  “I’m kind of nervous about taking some pills, what are they?”

  Wink smiled, again, and opened his leather bag. “That’s a professional secret.”

  “Well, I guess if you’re a doctor, you know what you are doing.”

  He lifted his finger as if to make a point and pulled out a tiny clear bag of pills. “Well… I’m not actually a doctor, the law permits me to say I’m a counselor.” He tapped the small bag of pills against his palm. “But I do have killer access to some drugs.”

  ‘Killer’ was another word I didn’t expect in his vocabulary.

  I was already petrified about the drive before I actually met Dr. Travel in person. His demeanor didn’t help ease the apprehension. I worried about where I would end up after I awakened from the drive. I imagined Wink dumping my drugged body at some run-down motel near the Mexican border and taking off with my car.

  “I’m already on Xanax, so I don’t know what else you need to give me.”

  Dr. Travel flashed his teeth. “Xanax will intermingle real well with these other drugs. That’s perfect—it’ll give you an extra kick. You ready?”

  “I guess so,” I mumbled.

  I had no options left to get me back to California, except via the normal way of getting in the car myself and driving. It was pathetic that I had to surrender myself to a guy who calls himself Dr. Travel, but I was too mentally fatigued to argue. So I yielded to him. Wink handed me the bag of pills.

  “Take all eight pills. Don’t worry about what they are, but I certify that all medicine I prescribe is totally legal and pharmaceutical. Just pop them in your mouth.”

  I walked over to the kitchen sink and lowered my head to the faucet. I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this, but I swallowed all eight in one gulp.

  Wink smiled once more as the pills tumbled down my esophagus. “Okay, so let me go over the billing, but first, you got my plane ticket?” he asked.

  I walked to my packed duffle bag and fetched the pre-assigned boarding pass along with a printout of the route. “Yeah. You’re arriving back here this evening. Here’s the map also.”

  “Perfect. Okay, the trip is three hundred dollars an hour. I’m not responsible for any traffic delays, accidents, or any problems, physical or mental, that might occur during our time together or afterward. You are responsible for any gas, food, and other supplies we may need. The medication you just took, that’s on me. No charge.” He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his bag. “Sign at the bottom and the fun starts. Any questions?”

  I was wondering why he waited to go over the contractual details until after I had taken the pills. “No questions,” is all I could say as I scribbled someone’s signature on the paper.

  “Great. I just need five hundred up front and we’ll be on our way.”

  Then I realized why he waited to talk business until after I took the pills. I opened my wallet and handed him five bills.

  As Wink maneuvered my car through the Phoenix traffic in silence, I gradually floated away from reality, my brain wrapped in paralyzed incontinence. My neck gave way as my head melted against the curvature of the side window, my body blobbed into the fine hand-stitched leather seat. There was no impending desert or isolated land. I would not be watching the exits on the interstate for a place to turn around. There would be no panic attacks. By the time we entered the city of Glendale just west of Phoenix, the last thing I saw was a big warping Taco Bell sign, and then I think I saw God eating a Burrito Supreme. My eyes closed and I was in the full and competent care of Dr. Travel.

  * * * *

  “How do you feel?” Dr. Stanley Crouch asked, twisting the left tip of his bushy mustache with his fingers.

  “I feel fine,” I answered.

  The truth was I still had a hangover from Dr. Travel’s drug stash the day before. I had to give Wink credit though, he did get me to Los Angeles with no panic episodes. I awakened from his drug concoction as we merged onto the 105 freeway in the heart of L.A. We even had time before his flight to stop by one of the many strip joints in proximity to the airport. After spending a groggy hour with him around naked girls, I formed a clearer picture of what Wink was experiencing when I first spoke with him on the phone.

  “So, anything new?” Dr. Crouch asked.

  “I decided to take a job in San Pedro, so I moved back here yesterday. I’m starting next week.”

  “You moved back to the area?”

  “Yeah. I decided to come back here and work for my friend.”

  “How did you return to Los Angeles?” Dr. Crouch prodded. “Did you fly?”

  “No, I drove. I had to get my car here.”

  “No problems driving alone from Phoenix?”

  “Nothing I can remember.” I stammered a bit. “I had a guy from Arizona drive out with me.”

  “So you had someone with you,” Dr. Crouch stated, scribbling on this notepad. “Did it help having someone with you?”

  “It seemed to make a little difference.”

  Dr. Crouch sat in his leather chair and looked at me for a few seconds. I tried to stare him down, but my eyes darted to the floor.

  “Wade, if I told you to drive up to San Francisco right now and spend the night at a hotel and drive back here tomorrow, would you do it? And,” Dr. Crouch added, “I would pay for the trip. Would you do it?”

  “Well, I have to start my new job soon—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Let’s say you didn’t have to be at your job for a week—you were totally free of commitments. Would you take the drive by yourself?”

  “I don’t know if I would feel comfortable driving all the way
up to San Francisco.”

  “How about if I paid you one million dollars to fly down to San Diego tonight. Would you take the flight?”

  “Is that a million dollars net or taxable?” I asked.

  Dr. Crouch dropped his shoulders a couple of inches. “A million dollars cash, non-taxable. Would you fly?”

  “Well… I’d try to.”

  “You’d try? Try? For a million dollars, I’d hop on that plane in an instant. And a few years ago, so would you. There would be no trying, it would just be done. Why do you think you’d have to try when that is an easy, short flight?”

  “Because I would be afraid of having a panic attack on the plane,” I conceded.

  “Exactly,” Dr. Crouch agreed, leaning forward in his chair. “You see how much you’re avoiding. I know you don’t want to admit it, but do you really want to live your life this way?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Crouch swiveled his chair around to retrieve two sheets of paper and a prescription pad from his old maple desk.

  “I want to use a different class of drugs on you. They’re called MAO inhibitors, or MAOIs. They’re not widely prescribed anymore, but I’d like to see if they help.”

  “MAOIs, I’ve read about them. Those are for psychotics or something, aren’t they?”

  Dr. Crouch darted a look at me. “No, you’re not a psychopath or anything of the sort. MAO inhibitors are known to help with depression and anxiety disorders. The particular drug I’m prescribing is called Nardil, it’s been around for decades. There are some diet restrictions with this drug, so make sure you follow the guidelines.” He handed me two sheets of instructions and I scanned the short list. “Do you have any problem with the diet restrictions?”

  “No, I doubt it. I can eat like a dog, the same thing day after day.”

  “Good. Make sure you don’t eat anything on that list, it’s very important.”

  “What happens if I do?”

  “Those foods have a high tyramine content which can cause very dangerous reactions such as sudden high blood pressure or stroke while on Nardil. That’s one of the reasons why it’s not prescribed much anymore.”

  “I really don’t want to go on another drug. Isn’t there anything else I can try besides medication?”

  Dr. Crouch leaned over and put his elbows on his knees. “Do you know what mulch is?”

  “You mean that wood stuff you put on the ground?”

  “Exactly. It could be cedar, eucalyptus, cypress, pine or even synthetic.”

  “Okay, but what does this have to do with getting me better?”

  “It’s the symbolism of it,” Dr. Crouch said as his eyes became softer in intensity. “Mulch can cover up imperfections in the ground. It can smooth out dips, can cover old dirt and leaves, it is a way of making the imperfect ground underneath look better. I want you to do an exercise where you feel like your body is, in essence, mulched. All the imperfections are gone on the outside and it will slowly transform you inside. It’s a simple implement I use to help people defray their thoughts from external embarrassment. It helps keep your feelings in the present.”

  I looked around his office for a moment to reprocess the information. “Sounds a bit earthy to me.”

  “Just try it, Wade. You need the medication though. If the Nardil helps, we’ll gradually reduce the Xanax dosage later.”

  “That would be okay with me. I worry about that stuff being addictive.”

  “Well, make sure you stay on the Xanax for now. I also want you to take one fifteen milligram pill of Nardil three times a day—morning, afternoon and evening,” Dr. Crouch instructed.

  “Another medication and some gardening advice,” I whispered with skepticism as I exited his Beverly Hills office.

  14. Employment

  After an abridged search for living arrangements, I decided to rent an apartment at Capital Bluff, a condo-style complex on Capital Avenue in San Pedro. Capital Avenue was a four lane street that sloped its way down a hill eventually ending up at Gaffey Street, considered the old main road in the aged harbor town.

  Capital Bluff was a gated apartment development with garaged parking and all the amenities expected in a pricey one-bedroom, eight hundred square-foot living space. My apartment fronted the often-busy Capital Avenue through an iron fence and a tall hedge of bushes planted for sound abatement.

  The next day I arrived at Haverco just before eight o’clock in the morning. Richard Haverport’s business was located at an obscure unnamed berth in the Los Angeles Harbor, or its flashier marketing name, Worldport L.A. Everyone just called it the Blue Berth due to a lone blue steel building on the facility. The company employed about forty union labor dockworkers under the veil of the ILWU, the longshoreman’s union. According to Richard in an earlier phone conversation, I was the new director of administration for the rapidly growing company that provided heavy industrial maintenance and steel fabrication for the marine industry.

  The Blue Berth was operated by the Harbor Department, the governmental authority of the Los Angeles Harbor. The Harbor Department owned two cranes at the berth used for container and cargo ship loading and unloading. To generate revenues, they leased the cranes to private carriers. Haverco also maintained the cranes to eliminate expensive downtime if the cranes failed in some way and delayed the loading or unloading process.

  A Korean company leased the two gantry cranes at the Blue Berth. Their main business was buying scrap metal for pennies on the dollar locally and loading it on huge ships to send back to Korea. After a trek across the Pacific, the company would recycle the metals to transform the scrap into useable commodities such as automobiles and plates of steel to sell around the world.

  The location was not a picturesque place. It was mostly a huge slab of concrete with some weeds poking out of large cracks in the pavement. Many locals considered the Los Angeles Harbor itself as a dirty, ugly area riddled with pollutants. While growing up on the hill above in Palos Verdes, I looked out over the Harbor every day and thought it a place of intrigue and beauty. The one hundred-twenty foot tall gantry cranes hovered high above the ground like huge praying insects, while container ships, giant moving islands of steel, lumbered their way in and out of the Harbor.

  I walked into the large steel building that housed Haverco, passing by a couple of service trucks in the shop area. A lone door on the back wall led to a wide hallway where the offices were located. As I went through the door of Richard’s office, he stood up and walked around his desk.

  “Welcome to Haverco,” Richard Haverport said, greeting me with a smile and hug.

  “Are we going to hug every morning?” I asked.

  “If you want to.”

  Richard walked behind his steel desk. Stacked piles of paper covered the desktop area around him. The office had the appearance of being decorated by a mechanic: neatly rolled blueprints leaned against the bare walls, large engineering and machinery parts books filled the bookshelves, the functional rubberized gray floor featured protruding bas-relief dots.

  He chewed on his pen while studying a sheet of paper in front of him.

  “Okay, Wade, I know we went over this a couple of days ago on the phone, but I need you to take care of most the administrative matters—hourly waged employee paychecks, worker’s comp, health insurance, benefits, pensions, and all that other stuff I don’t have time to do anymore.”

  Richard paused and I nodded to confirm my comprehension of the duties.

  “But, what I need first is an updated safety manual. OSHA requires it and I couldn’t show them an adequate current document on a visit they made last month. They gave me some time to get an updated manual put together. Think you can do that?”

  “Yeah, I actually did one before for my business. Most of it can be boilerplate with the names changed, but we’ll probably have to go into quite a bit more depth for safety procedur
es and injury reports since this is classified as dangerous work—at least from a liability standpoint.”

  “Good. Very good,” Richard responded. “Okay, I’ve made some room for you in the next office. A new computer is on the desk. The other desk is for my secretary, but she’s here only three days a week.”

  “No problem. I’ll get started on the safety manual now if you want me to.”

  “Go ahead, I need a good one in two weeks. If you need anything—software, supplies, whatever, let me know.”

  “What should I wear to work?”

  Richard looked in the direction of my creased and pressed Ashworth golf pants. “Uh, just wear jeans, and I’ll get you a dozen of our company polo shirts. They have our logo on them. You can wear that every day so you won’t have to worry about selecting outfits each morning.”

  “Okay, that’ll be easy.”

  As I headed for the door, Richard added, “Oh, and get yourself a pair of steel-toed boots. It’s better to wear those around here.”

  I walked into the office next door and looked for the new computer to determine which desk was mine. It was a small square office painted white, with desks at opposite ends of the room facing the side walls. The modest rectangular window on the far wall provided some natural relief from the bright fluorescents above. The desk to the right was clear of any papers, and sitting atop it were two new flat screen monitors. In front of the desk was a typical office chair free of rips or stains; it looked newly assembled. Settling down in the new chair, I noticed a fine layer of black dust on the desktop. I scanned over the work area and saw the thin layer of dust covering most everything in the office. The dust must have originated from the scrap metal being loaded on ships non-stop a thousand feet from the office. I didn’t know what I was breathing but accepted the particulates. I was just happy to be employed, a productive human in the grind of life.

  After the computer booted up, I scoured the Internet and found some free safety manual shareware. I deemed it safe to download the file after checking the reliability of the preloaded virus software.