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“I know,” Dan said. “There is no gravity, life just sucks. Can I use your phone, Casey?”
“Be my guest.” Casey stood up. “Guess I’ll toddle on over to the train station and punch a few
tickets. You got an engineer’s cap that’ll fit me, Billy?”
“No.”
“Mine will,” Dan said.
9
For an organization that didn’t advertise its presence, sold no goods, and supported itself with
crumpled dollar bills thrown into passed baskets or baseball caps, Alcoholics Anonymous exerted a
quietly powerful influence that stretched far beyond the doors of the various rented halls and church
basements where it did its business. It wasn’t the old boys’ network, Dan thought, but the old drunks’
network.
He called John Dalton, and John called an internal medicine specialist named Greg Fellerton.
Fellerton wasn’t in the Program, but he owed Johnny D. a favor. Dan didn’t know why, and didn’t
care. All that mattered was that later that day, Billy Freeman was on the examining table in
Fellerton’s Lewiston office. Said office was a seventy-mile drive from Frazier, and Billy bitched the
whole way.
“Are you sure indigestion’s all that’s been bothering you?” Dan asked as they pulled into Fellerton’s
little parking area on Pine Street.
“Yuh,” Billy said. Then he reluctantly added, “It’s been a little worse lately, but nothin that keeps
me up at night.”
Liar, Dan thought, but let it pass. He’d gotten the contrary old sonofabitch here, and that was the
hard part.
Dan was sitting in the waiting room, leafing through a copy of OK! with Prince William and his
pretty but skinny new bride on the cover, when he heard a lusty cry of pain from down the hall. Ten
minutes later, Fellerton came out and sat down beside Dan. He looked at the cover of OK! and said,
“That guy may be heir to the British throne, but he’s still going to be as bald as a nine ball by the
time he’s forty.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Of course I’m right. In human affairs, the only real king is genetics. I’m sending your friend up to
Central Maine General for a CT scan. I’m pretty sure what it’ll show. If I’m right, I’ll schedule Mr.
Freeman to see a vascular surgeon for a little cut-and-splice early tomorrow morning.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
Billy was walking up the hall, buckling his belt. His tanned face was now sallow and wet with
sweat. “He says there’s a bulge in my aorta. Like a bubble on a car tire. Only car tires don’t yell when
you poke em.”
“An aneurysm,” Fellerton said. “Oh, there’s a chance it’s a tumor, but I don’t think so. In any case,
time’s of the essence. Damn thing’s the size of a Ping-Pong ball. It’s good you got him in for a looksee.
If it had burst without a hospital nearby . . .” Fellerton shook his head.
10
The CT scan confirmed Fellerton’s aneurysm diagnosis, and by six that evening, Billy was in a hospital
bed, where he looked considerably diminished. Dan sat beside him.
“I’d kill for a cigarette,” Billy said wistfully.