Ronny's Retreat

“You are so full of crap, Ronny”, said Mad Max, “You ain’t no different from the rest of us. Fact is, you’re muddle-minded, and full of shit about what coulda, woulda, shoulda been”. Mad Max stamped his feet, flicked his cigarette into Station Road gutter.  

“Couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t”, chimed in Squidward, “I could tell you a thing or two about the things that I didn’t do”. Squidward rocked his giant bulk back and forth on the park bench, always in motion, never eating in public; it was a mystery to the other tenants how he stayed so fat.  

“Leave Ronny alone”, said Dizzy, the old whore, who lived on the second floor. She’d always been good to Ronny, probably because he never sought her services. She was slapping her big arms around her ample girth, trying to stay warm, "Crazy is free, doesn't hurt anyone, does it?"

“Hurts my ear drums”, said Mad Max.

Napoleon, the irascible superintendent of the Coalition rooming house, emerged from the building pursued by a plume of vapor in the cold night air. “I don’t want to see any trash on the grass, or on the sidewalk”, he declared.  

No-Hope Jones doffed a non-existent hat, “Yessir”, which made Napoleon snort, whether with derision or satisfaction, it was difficult to say.  

“Ronny, you’re a goddam mess!” said Napoleon, “Are you still hitting the bottle? You know the Coalition policy, right? Zero tolerance”.

Ronny felt like a pinata at a child’s birthday party, and he needed a drink desperately, it being New Year’s Eve, and all that.

“I’m going inside”, said Old Elvis in a deep sonorous voice that everyone suspected was fake.

“We’re all going inside”, said Mad Max, pulling Squidward to his feet.

Ronny looked for the cigarette butt in the gutter, but it had burned all the way down to the filter.

+++

At the supermarket checkout, a man in a sharp blue suit slipped a dollar bill to the woman at the cash register, gesturing ever so discretely at the indigent little man next in line. Blue suit left, and the woman greeted Ronny with a fake smile. “I don’t need your charity” said Ronny irritably. He slapped down a bag of cookies and a carton of milk, but then he caught sight of the twenty-dollar bill in the associate’s hand. “Holy Jesus! Wait there!”, he scurried to the liquor aisle, and returned with a quart of Fireball Whisky in his shaking hand, “Ring it up, sister!”

+++

Store-brand chips and salsa, donated by the local Food Pantry, sat untouched on the parlor room table. The girls, Dizzy and JoJo, were sitting on the sofa watching New Year’s Eve programming on the TV, ignoring the incessant chatter of No-Hope Jones. Napoleon was talking to Old Elvis about the playoffs over near the window, and Mad Max was hiding out in the corner, brown-bagging a beer.

Ronny staggered into the pantry, “Whaddya got there, Max?” he slurred.

“Try hitting up someone else”, said Max with disgust.  

“Jeez. Just trying to be friendly, fella”, said Ronny, flashing his bad teeth.

“Try Elvis and Napoleon”, said Max, pointing toward the window.

Ronny announced himself with a burp, and old Elvis moved half a step backwards, beyond the range of Ronny’s foul breath, “Ron, you’re cramping my style,” said Elvis.

“We got any booze?”, said Ronny, eyeing the chips and salsa with green-gilled disdain. He was getting desperate for another hit, twitchy even. 

Napoleon appraised Ronny sternly. “Ronny, this is not a good look. You’re reeling around like a goddam drunk and stinking up the room with your Whisky-breath. You can’t even stand up straight, for Pete’s sake”.

Ronny hiccupped, “I’m fine! I just started on the celebrations a bit earlier than you, tha’s all”, slurring again, “I just need a December top-up”. 

“What you need is a Dry January”, said Elvis.

Napoleon took Ronny by the arm and steered him out of the parlor, down the corridor and abandoned him in his room, where Ronny sat on the wretched old bed, drained the last dregs of amber liquor from the whisky bottle, and a familiar oceanic feeling welled up inside of him then stranded him on a barren shore.

+++

It was morning and Dizzy was framed by a halo of New Year’s sunlight. “Napoleon has a message Ronny” she shouted from the far end of the hallway, “says it’s from Brad Pitt”. She laughed raucously and stomped away as if it was the funniest thing ever. The hangover was like a heavy damp blanket that weighed Ronny down. His head throbbed, his mouth tasted like the inside of a toilet bowl, the light was pressing into the back of his skull.  

Napoleon handed Ronny a piece of paper with the name “Mercedes” scrawled on it, and a phone number, “She said that Brad Pitt was interested in something called The End Game”.

“You’re shitting me”, said Ronny.

“Swear to God, that’s the message, word for word”, said Napoleon, crossing himself ostentatiously.

“I need to use your landline”, said Ronny, holding the piece of paper in trembling hands like it was the golden ticket. “It’s important, I swear”.  

“Mercedes speaking”, it was a woman with a European accent.

“Ronny, it’s Ronny Fowles here”.

“Mr. Fowles! We’re so glad we found you”, said Mercedes excitedly, “we’ve been trying to track you down for weeks. Your wife gave us your number but told us you were at a writer’s retreat. We’d nearly given up on you”. 

Ronny was momentarily confounded, but then he recalled that a trans fiend called Colleen, the only person Ronny knew with a steady job and a mobile phone, had offered to send out his script. Apparently, Colleen had improvised.

“Yeah, I’m still at the retreat”, said Ronny cautiously, “have you read the script?” he asked. He didn’t want to sound too desperate, but his entire pathetic life was balanced on a pinhead.

“We loved it!”, said Mercedes, “Mister Pitt read it, and just couldn’t put it down. He thinks The End Game is an important story that needs to get out there, be part of the dialog. He’s even discussed it with the NFL commissioner… We want an option if it’s not too late, please?” She sounded even more desperate than Ronny.

Ronny choked up, unable to talk. Napoleon took the handset from Ronny, “Who the fuck is this?” he growled.

There was a pause. “Is this Mr. Fowles’ agent?”, Mercedes sounded taken aback, but undaunted.

“Yeah, this is his agent”, said Napoleon, waving at Ronny to chill. Napoleon jotted something on a scrap of paper, “You got that straight, Ma’am”. He hung up the phone and handed Ronny the piece of paper with the word contemporize written on it, “She says you need to make some revisions, make it more topical. It needs to be contemporized”. 

+++

News spread quickly through the Coalition grapevine, a jolt of hope for the deadbeats as they faced the new year. The tenants convened at the bench, sharing smokes, and strategizing. No-Hope Jones was puffed up and proud, like Ronny was his only son, and Dizzy was so excited that she loaned Ronny a Benny, which made Ronny all weepy. Even Mad Max stepped in, offering the use of an old computer.

Officer Burns, pulled up in Cruiser 002, rolled down the window, “Denise, these gentlemen treating you right?”, smirks and chortles at the sound of Dizzy’s real name.

“Officer Burns, it’s Ronny, he got a call from Brad Pitt”, said Dizzy in her gravelly voice; she was nearly jumping out of her skin.  

“You’re messing with me, right?”, Officer Burns could sense a buzz of excitement among the Station Road ne’er-do-wells.  

No-Hope Jones chimed in, “it’s for real, Officer, Sir. You remember when Ronny was hanging out at the library, scribbling away, and getting into trouble?” Officer Burns remembered the librarian’s complaints only too well. “It turns out, it weren’t no scribbling” said No-Hope, hooking his thumb at Ronny, “turns out our Mr. Fowles here is a genuine, God-given genius”. 

“Gee, Ron, that’s just great” said Officer Burns, shifting alternatively between awe and skepticism as he processed this news and the sorry sight of Ron Fowles, who looked pale and sickly, and badly in need of a grooming.

“Yeah, a cool fifty thousand for the option to make his gay-boy movie”, said Napoleon triumphantly, punching the cold air.

“But first he’s gotta contemporate”, said Ho-Hope.

Ronny felt like he was shrinking into a husk. His brain was fogging up, he needed a drink. The Benny was burning a hole in his pocket.

+++

Big John Curtis found Ronny lying dead-drunk in the warm vestibule of Myrtle’s Bar and Grill, just before opening time. 

“Ronny’s got frequent flyer miles with us” explained the paramedic to BJ.

“Get him out of here, already”, said BJ, incuriously.

Ronny was momentarily conscious but delusional, “All you sweet girls, with all your sweet talk”.

“He’s got the DT’s” said the paramedic, “The duty doctor will probably put him on benzo and antipsychotics, maybe a saline drip too”.  

“Don’t really care, just get him out of here”, said BJ.

+++

“I just gotta make it through January”, said Ronny to the ER doctor.

Doctor Jain examined the rotting teeth at the back of Ronny’s mouth.

“I’ve only got one shot at the prize, Doctor, and this is it”, said Ronny.

“We’ll see if we can get those teeth seen to while you’re here, pro bono.”

“I’m supposed to be taking a flight to Los Angeles at the beginning of February”.

“For what?”

“Brad Pitt wants to meet with me”.

Doctor Jain scrawled something on a prescription sheet “Haldol, it should help moderate the…the hallucinations”.

+++

Ronny dreamed he was a crew member on a clipper ship on the high seas of the Pacific Ocean, straining at cable-laid rope beneath a rip-raw sky. Astern, sailors were skinning seals and throwing the crimson carcasses into the ocean, which boiled with a frenzy of sharks, while screaming gulls circled overhead. Ronny lost his footing, toppled overboard, dragged into the briny depths by the anchor rope that twisted around his wrist. 

He woke in a cold sweat; his room was spinning. He ran his dry tongue around the new landscape of his mouth, explored the healing wounds where previously he’d toyed with rotting teeth. The hospital wristband was tight on his wrist.

Dizzy was in his room, watching over him like a demonic nun, and she was steaming mad.

+++

Ronny wrote the word CONTEMPORIZE neatly, in block capitals, on a blank sheet of paper and stared at it, waiting for a thought of substance to enter his mind and lodge there, but instead it felt like his head was a tombola drum, with fleeting images of unrelated people, places, and things, tumbling randomly inside.  

The End Game script lay next to him, untouched.  

+++

No-Hope Jones was watching the third quarter of the Pats-Cowboys playoff game at Myrtles bar, when he spotted Ronny loitering, hunched up and sad-looking, outside in the street. He jumped from the bar stool, went outside, “Ronny, my man! Come inside and have a drink on me”. 

BJ stopped Ronny at the door. No-Hope protested but BJ was unmoved, “Don’t really give a crap about the Hollywood homo, he’s not coming in here”.

“That ain’t fair BJ, you know it”, said No-Hope, squaring up bravely, and unsteadily, against the giant.

BJ wouldn’t budge, “got no beef with you Nate, but he’s not coming inside.”

“Let’s go to The Three Crows instead”, said No-Hope to Ronny, but when he turned around, Ronny was gone.

Ronny headed in the direction of Station Road, but walked right past the rooming house, past the railway depot, and he just kept going along Route 70 toward the setting sun, toward Hollywood, he was adrift on a small boat in a meandering river.

Officer Burns drew up in front of him in the cruiser, got out and marched him to the side of the road, pushed him angrily into the back of the cruiser. “You could have been killed”, he said, looking at Ronny in the rear-view mirror, “You addicts are all the same, wandering around like zombies into the jailhouse, the hospital, or death”.

It was irrefutably true, thought Ronny, we drunks are more alike than we are different in our enslavement; we live in the same bleak place beyond shame and humiliation, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we forget, we are consumed by self-pity and fear. “I’m still sober, Officer Burns”, said Ronny truthfully, hopefully.

Officer Burns didn’t seem to hear him, or didn’t believe him, “you know, there’s a lot of people got your back, Ron. Some of them folks that remember you from high school, your cousins over on the island, the Coalition people… they all saw a spark in you, once”.

“I failed so many people, Officer Burns”.

+++

Ronny flicked through The End Game script. It was unrecognizable, the work of a different hand, of a different person, a better person. He stared at the paper pad, at the word CONTEMPORIZE, and waited, waited. He needed to go outside, he needed to get something.

Napoleon intercepted him in the hallway, “Mercedes wants to know how it’s going” he said, “I need to give her some kind of response”. He stepped close enough to check Ronny’s breath, to look him in the eyes.  

“Good progress”, said Ronny, “I’m near halfway done”.  

“That’s great Ronny”, said Napoleon, “You going out?”.

“Naah, just needed loosen up a bit”, Ronny shook his right hand limply, “writer’s cramp”.  

+++

Dizzy knocked on the door and found Ronny sitting at his desk. Ronny placed the script on top of the writing pad. “Ain’t snoopin”, she said, “just checking up on you”.

“You and the whole Station Road crew”, said Ronny, “are you taking turns?”.

“I dunno what you’re gabbing on about, just checking on my pretty boy”, she slicked his stick-out hair down, stood back and gawped, Brad Pitt’s gonna want to know who your stylist is”.  

He gave her a grin, and saw her wince slightly at the sight of his near-toothless mouth, 

“Elvis thinks it gives me character”.

“It does that too”, she said.

+++

Ronny visited the Food Pantry and bagged up handfuls of breakfast snacks, which drew the censorious eye of the matron, so he scooped up some useless root vegetables as he was leaving the church hall.

When he got back to Station Road, Napoleon was on him like a rash, “What you got in that bag, Ronny”, like he was a customs agent on the lookout for contraband.

“None of your business, Jimmy”, said Ronny.

“I gotta take a look in the bag”, said Napoleon.

“No, you don’t gotta”, said Ronny, hustling along the hallway.

“Two more days,” said Napoleon.  

Mad Max was watching all this from the stairwell. “No fuckin’ way the Golden Goose is gonna deliver the goods”.

+++

Ronny handed the manila envelope to Napoleon, witnessed by No-Hope, Elvis, Dizzy, and Mad Max, “It’s called Dry January”.

Napoleon weighed the envelope skeptically in his hand, “I don’t know ‘bout that. Mercy didn’t say nuthin about changing the name of the movie.”

“How’d we know it’s f’real anyway”, said Mad Max

Napoleon began to thumb at the edge of the envelope.

” Don’t you touch that” said Ronny, suddenly jumpy, “just fuckin post it for me, if you want your cut, Jimmy.”

“Jeez Ronny, lighten up a bit”, said Dizzy, “We’re all rootin’ for you”.

+++

The rooming house was edgy that week, expectations hung heavy in the air. Nobody really wanted to spook Ronny, who mostly hid in his room, or ventured out to town on mysterious missions. Mad Max saw Ronny making enquiries at the ticket office in the railway station. Elvis saw Ronny looking at the For Rent listings noticeboard at the Rec Center.

“He’s gonna check out and leave town before the shit hits the fan”, said Mad Max, sitting in the parlor room watching the Patriots crush the Jets.

“He’s gonna move across town, to get away from us”, said Elvis.

“No way you’re getting your money back, Dizzy”, said Mad Max.

+++

The phone rang in Napoleon’s office. Mad Max was hanging around, as usual. “Max, call Ronny will ya. Mercedes wants to talk directly to him”, said Napoleon.

“She pissed?”, asked Max.

“Just go get him will you”, Napoleon said irritably.

Dizzy was leaving for town, but stopped when she overheard the conversation. Elvis and No-Hope were lurking in the hallway near the parlor. The whole Railroad crew seemed to manifest out of thin air.

Ronny came out of his room, and followed Mad Max to Napoleon’s office, walking through the solemn gauntlet.

“It’s Mercy, she wants to talk to you first,” said Napoleon, trying to sound business-like, but it came across as petulance.

“Ronny here”, he held the phone to his ear and stared at his feet for what seemed like an age to his small deadbeat audience, then he suddenly flinched, flushed bright red, and handed the phone back to Napoleon.

“You still there Mercedes?” asked Napoleon, anxiously, putting the receiver to his ear. She was still there. The Railroad crew clustered close, straining for clues in Napoleon's expression. He scribbled something on the back of an envelope, and they squeezed past Ronny to take a look.  

Ronny stood apart, he felt good, the constant ache for alcohol had abated, just a bit, just enough for him to gather and skewer his thoughts, which he would commit with ink to the blank sheet of paper that lay next to an empty bottle sitting on the makeshift desk in his lonely room.