Patrick Picciarelli

Ray Yale jumped out of bed screaming. He was naked. As the blood rushed from his head he staggered and crashed, face first, into a dresser, cutting his forehead. He crumbled to the floor. For an instant he didn’t know where he was. His heart pounded fiercely. When he realized he was at home, in his bedroom, and not about to kiss an eyeless ghost, his heart slowed. The welcome relief didn’t last very long. Pain enveloped him from head to toe. He had a hangover of monumental proportions.

Yale got to his knees, gently touching his throbbing forehead. He was bleeding, but less than he expected from such a sharp blow to the head. Seeing his underwear on the floor next to the bed, he bent down as fast as his pounding head would allow, scooped them up and applied them to his wound. He ran his free hand through his hair.

Yale managed to get up, hunched over like a detective searching for a clue, and dived for the bed. He looked at the clock. Seven-fifteen. He guessed it was morning even though the drapes were pulled and the room was dark. He had to reconstruct the previous night. Ever since he’d begun to drink in earnest, recalling reality had become a hobby.

Images came to him in jerky, spasmodic, stop-action frames. Mike Sheehan, Scotch, lots of Scotch, the one for the road which had become quite a few. He remembered leaving Skylights. He shouldn’t feel this bad, he hadn’t had all that much. A drinker’s dread came over him. Had he gone straight home or stopped somewhere along the way? He couldn’t remember. Yale looked to his clothes to offer a clue.

His slacks, jacket, shoes and shirt were strewn on the floor in a trail that led from his bed and out the bedroom door. Looking at the clothes, he imagined that a living being had lain down and melted out of them. It reminded him of the Wicked Witch of the North (or was it the West?) in The Wizard of Oz.

He searched his jacket and pants, but came up with nothing to indicate that he had visited another bar. He must have, though, because his money was out of its clip and the bills were bunched into balls. He remembered tipping the bartender with a ten-spot on the way out from a neatly arranged stack of money secured by the money clip.

He remembered something Mickey Mantle said as he checked himself into rehab: if he knew he was going to live this long he would have taken better care of himself. The Mick was very profound.

Yale had an overwhelming desire to spend the rest of the day in bed watching old movies and reintroducing his body to solid nourishment, but was obligated to track down Charlie Wright to see if anything could be done on the Carpenter case. He knew he couldn’t function in his present condition and he tried to jump-start his body by taking an unusually long and cold shower. The water hammered him like bullets.

Ray Yale scored his hangovers on a scale of one to ten, one being mild and ten being when he was near death. Prior to entering his shower he fixed his hangover at eight on the Johnnie Walker Red Scale. When he emerged from the numbing blast of cold water he was hovering at a 5.5, which was certainly better, but a long way from being able to hold a coherent conversation. He knew what he needed was a good snort from his private stash.

He donned a white terry-cloth robe and padded to the rear of his house where a second bedroom doubled as an office. Digging through the back of his ‘A’ through ‘G’ file drawer he found the cardboard box he was looking for.

He carried the box to his paper-strewn desk (an orderly desk is a sign of a diseased mind someone had once told him). He lowered his window shade, opened the cardboard box and buried his nose in its contents, inhaling deeply.

Crayons. A genuine three-tiered box of Crayolas, never used, their blunted points perfectly dressed right and covered down like impeccable little toy soldiers.

The recollections came fast and hit hard. He was instantly transported to his youth when his biggest responsibility was getting home on time for his father’s pasta and gravy. No Italian family ever called it “sauce.” Recollections came in a series of brief vignettes: Rockaway beach on a summer weekday afternoon, Christmas holidays at his aunt’s house in New Jersey (the first relative to escape the congestion of Manhattan), his first day of school. He was transported back to the family restaurant where he helped his chef dad prepare the night’s special. His job required him to sit on a stool with a giant ladle and stay out of his father’s way. He remembered the walk from the restaurant to the subway bound for Ebbets Field holding his father’s hand as he skipped clumsily to keep up with New York’s number one Dodger fan. Pez, Captain Video, Duncan Yo-Yo’s, and Slinkies flooded through his bruised brain at lightning speed.

Burnt Sienna and its cohorts brought him down to a four on the hangover graph. A breakfast of scrambled egg whites, skim milk, and throat-closing dry toast had a fractional positive effect, but at least he was doing something right for his body. The price of pushing fifty, he thought. It was at least good for some psychological improvement in his condition. Getting dressed in decent clothes would help, too.

Yale called Nick Abrutti’s office to see if he was available. He was informed by a secretary that Mr. Abrutti could see him at 11:30. Yale smiled, thinking that now it took an appointment to see Nick. A few years ago, when he’d started out, Nick Abrutti could be found camped out on attorneys’ doorsteps, hawking business.

Yale chose his wardrobe carefully. He had strayed away from style shortly after his wife died, but he knew that looking good made him feel better. It was worth the extra effort to bring himself up one rung on the ladder of depression. Today he selected a dark green double breasted suit, white shirt, paisley tie, Gucci belt, and highly polished Ferrigamo shoes.

Looking good and feeling like shit was how he was conducting his life of late, but he knew that an ounce of image was worth a pound of performance. If you looked the part people didn’t scrutinize you very closely. He examined himself in a full-length mirror before leaving. He looked good on the outside and felt like hell on the inside.

Yale went down the sloping driveway to the garage and walked around the perimeter of the Jag to check for damage, a ritual after each blackout. Not a scratch, he observed, but wondered how many accidents he had caused as he careened home on automatic pilot. His coordination was a bit off and he drove extra carefully the short distance to Nick Abrutti’s office.