Honest Addict, Chapter Six

6

He had lied to Violet when he told her that he didn’t know where he was going. The destination – at least for the foreseeable future – was certain. But he didn’t want anybody else to catch wind of it. He didn’t even want rumors circulating as to his whereabouts. The idea was to fall off the face of the earth.

It was easy to get out of the Bay Area quickly at that hour: north on 101, connect with Highway 37 through Vallejo, over to Interstate 80 and northeast from then onwards. It didn’t hurt that he was driving his relatively old but fully and lovingly restored Jaguar XJS. The only events that slowed his progress were the numerous pit stops which were required to stay high and alert. Not taking into account these interludes, he had everything in front of him he needed: highway, space and time. Despite the confounding effects of the drug and the inky blackness of the night that enveloped him, his head felt clear and his intentions certain.

Soon he was in the farm country that surrounds the towns of Vacaville and Dixon. And then, in a flash, the city of Sacramento made its appearance, seeming a great, luminous metropolis in the middle of so much empty space. But it was gone in only a moment: a reminder to Peter of its provincial nature.

Then he began climbing the Sierra Nevada foothills. Something about the increase in elevation made his escape more palpable. His thoughts wandered as the hypnosis of the curving road added to his already altered state.

It struck him as a realization – though this fact really should have come as no surprise at all – that everybody he knew was addicted in one way or another. The story of Stephen and Juliet recurred in his mind, and he realized that Violet’s final comments on the subject were predominant. Other addicts needed people like Stephen and Juliet. They were the kind that all the other compulsives loved to point at and say: at least I’m not as bad as them! They’re really fucked up. But the comfort that their example provided was illusory at best. Because their folly, Peter knew as certainly as he knew that he was still alive, was the same as that contained in the heart of every addict everywhere, the identical glitch he carried around in his own heart and soul at this very moment.

Inside, every addict feels the same, desires the same and pursues the same. It is easiest to spot in the drug users, alcoholics and problem gamblers, of course, because they have the habits that stand out in society; they bear the scarlet letters that are easiest to identify and disparage. But what of the avaricious, the accumulators and creators of wealth – like his former coworkers at the firm? Were they not also obvious addicts, he wondered? Or the politicos, the power mongers, who stop at nothing to achieve status and influence. What of them? Or the average American consumer, who defines their very existence, their intrinsic value as a human being, based on the most meaningless trifles, on molded Chinese plasticity? Is the insanity of the average American any different or more purposeful than that of the most abject crack-head? Does it matter in the moral equation that some otherwise equal behaviors are rewarded or at least tolerated by society and others are punished or considered taboo? Peter thought perhaps not.

As he drove along the curving roads, he spotted the historic lighted civic dome that has become the symbol of the town of Auburn. It too was gone from his vision almost instantaneously, but it had a lasting effect on his train of thought, which was bouncing from one idea to another almost incessantly.

It must have been a good time in America, he thought, those early days when our country was still expanding, when the west was not yet won, when God was still very alive, when mere survival had been the primary motivator. Back then there were basically three great vices: booze, illicit sex and gambling. And these were considered potentially terrible problems, more than enough to take the average man down. Pool was the trouble in old time River City. Today the citizens of that little town would be slamming heroin. Something somewhere had failed in the human spirit and the American identity. Now that everything was at the click of a button, we had very little left to strive for, and too much free time on our hands.

Were we in the same stage of societal development as the end of ancient Roman civilization? It certainly seemed an apt analogy. Delusions of an expanding empire, cultural degradation, gratuitous excess and a dearth of good leadership at the highest levels were in evidence both then and now. Or were we on the precipice of a distopian nightmare: an Orwellian world of absolute tyranny and the disintegration of individual humanity? It was tempting to believe these comparisons, to see the course of history as some kind of cyclical predestination. Despite all the supporting evidence of the endless repetition of human failure, Peter did not want to want to believe this. He wanted to believe in something more, something better. But if it didn’t start with him, then where? And this was the biggest problem of all.

Peter knew he had given up on most of the good things he had once believed in. This did not necessarily mean that he was a bad person, but it certainly made him feel like an incomplete one. Time and time again he had seen how the best impulses are met by greed and opportunism. People who offered up unconditional love, decency and real humanity were generally taken advantage of by those who possessed more cunning. And so at some point in the not so distant past, he had detached himself from his better impulses. He had gotten “real.” He accepted that all life – including, if not especially human – was Darwinian competition.

And so he had learned to accept a job – but more really than just a job, an identity – where he contributed nothing of value to society, where he too stalked and hunted the easy prey. All he had done with his life for the past seven years was create more artificiality in an already artificial world. And what was worse was that he had done so in a manner that he knew in his heart was manipulative and inherently dishonest. There was only one goal at Dunlop, Doskocil and Weir: keep the client’s money in the firm’s possession; and, if at all possible, get the client to put more money at the company’s disposal. If this meant lying about the state of the market, so be it. There was only one truth at the firm and it could be measured in dollars and cents. All other facts, opinions and data were subservient to that truth.

Peter remembered a private lecture he had once received from Gerry Weir. The stock market, he said, was a zero sum game. Money changed hands, stocks rose or fell on speculation, companies were built and destroyed. Where there was a winner there naturally also had to be a loser in equal proportion: this was the essential nature of the game. In the end, whether you were a winner or a loser in the world of asset management depended on your image. The basic strategies for playing the market varied only slightly from company to company. Of course, every so often, bad luck befell even competent firms. But bad luck aside, whether you lived or died was based on image control. So long as a firm projected the attitude of a winner, the money would follow. It was that simple. The only difficult part was hypnotizing yourself before you attempted to hypnotize others.

Peter later looked up the definition of a zero sum game and realized that Weir’s definition did not fit perfectly into the construct of the stock market. But his point had been made in any event.

The Jaguar twisted and turned through the hills. There was snow piled high on both sides of the road. Peter saw the Highway 20 exit to Nevada City and thought about a time a decade ago when he and a girlfriend had stayed in the town for a day and a half. In his memory it was an idyllic place and an incredible time. They had seen a fine version of The Glass Menagerie at a surprisingly professional local theatre. He remembered tears welling up in his eyes during several powerful moments in the play.

That was like a million years ago, he thought. He believed himself to be a completely different person now. But one thing remained the same – he was still addicted. In his heart if not his head, he had known it in the past as well. But he felt like a lesser person now, because piled atop his physical and psychological compulsions for alcohol, drugs and gambling there now existed a new layer of cynicism and greed that had not always been there, the product of too many years scratching his way to the top.

For a moment he thought that at least he had quit. That was a step in the right direction. But his insecurity would not even let him enjoy this morsel as he reminded himself that he had only left the job once he had more than enough money piled up in the bank.

It was becoming early morning and tiredness began to set in. At Truckee he pulled the car over in a Burger King parking lot and snorted more cocaine off a powder-caked compact disc case. At first it had no effect whatsoever, so he inhaled still more. After a while a cold, metallic energy reinvigorated him. He lit a cigarette and continued on his way.

What really bothered him was this: an aching feeling, a suspicion, an instinct, a whisper that he could have done something with his existence, still could do something that had meaning. He used to tell himself that he had ended up exactly where he had always wanted to be. But now he wasn’t so sure that was true. There had always been a yearning within him, one that had remained almost completely dormant for many years. That yearning appeared to be returning to him since Carol’s death. It remained to be seen whether this was only one of so many passing fancies or if the idea would take root and grow.

All of these thoughts were annihilated when finally, at 6:20 in the morning, he saw the familiar neon glow cutting through the still dark but gradually illuminating sky. As the Jaguar crested the hill he could see the lights of the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino blinking in the distance, the R on the first “Circus” malfunctioning, frozen in place while all the others blinked on and off in succession. And then, a second later, there she was in all her dilapidated glory, spread prostrate before his eyes: the dirty old whore, the bygone success, home of the lonely and transient, the biggest little city in the world – Reno, Nevada.

It looked good to him and he knew that he was home, at least temporarily.