"This is going to sound contrived," Paul Vizzini began as he bit at the heel of his chalky 35-year-old palm. "Like a tall tale, or an urban legend, what my nephews call F.O.A.F. stories, it means friend of a friend. But upon my mother's grave it is the truth."
"Go, on Mr. Vizzini, I doubt it can be that fantastical," Dr. Elizabeth Engels implored from behind him in the darkened nook of the office. Her voice was omnipotent in the dimly lit room that overlooked Park Avenue.
"Anything you say within these four walls is kept between you, me, and the bust of Emile Durkheim over the door." She always made it a point to mention the pallid bust that sat on the scalloped concave shelf that hung out over the sliding double doors. Ever since she was a little girl she had been fascinated with the tales of Robert Louis Stevenson, H. P. Lovecraft, and her perennial favorite, Poe. Her favorite was his mythic poem The Raven. In all of the lithographs and oil prints of the narrator's chamber the bust of Pallas was placed on a similar concave shelf above the interior doorway. She had no lust for Pallas though, but Durkheim was an entirely different matter. He had been the subject of her thesis, as well as a confusing erotic dream that she first had during a nap in Psych. 0102. In fact, it was that wet dream that helped her decide on a major, if not simply to find out what the dream had meant.
"Doctor Engels, ok if you say so, any how I'll only be here the one time, just to get this weight off of my chest," Paul sputtered as he tried to get comfortable on the couch. "A friend of mine, Tony Sticotti, has this problem, and it's going to kill him. I saw what happened to him and I think it messed me up pretty bad. I haven't slept a full night in three weeks and the sight of food makes me vomit, it looks like it is crawling with bugs."
'Drugs or AIDS,' Dr. Engels thought. She had a strong feeling that Tony Sticotti was laid out on the mahogany leather chaise in front of her, but she dared not mention until she had a better grasp of this patient.
"Well, Tony and I liked to have…fun," Paul began as he scratched the back of his neck. "Tony was wilder then me though, I stuck to pot and booze, and now I don't even use that junk. Tony went all out though in his drug use, but he stayed away from heroine or anything else that you shoot up. Snorting and smoking were more his game. He had fallen in love with coke, but like I said that wasn't my scene no matter how much he pushed it on me. I prefer my drugs to be grown in NYC, thank you very much. We have confidentiality right; you're not going to go turn me into the cops because I used to smoke a little reefer."
"No, that is not what my job is." Dr. Engels assured him as she drew a picture of a flower on her pad. "So, Tony is an addict. That doesn't sound so bad. You can get him help at any one of the local hospitals, Bellevue has great drug treatment program." She offered the most logical advice, and if Tony was Paul's pseudonym then it was the best advice.
"It isn't the coke that messed him up." Paul said as he sat upright with a start. "Well, it was, but not how you're thinking."
"Start at the beginning Mr. Vizzini," Dr. Engels instructed. "Because I can't sensibly understand the end unless I know the beginning."
"Please, call me Paul," he said with a smile.
'He looks tired,' she thought to ask but instead replied "And you can call me Liz."
"Me and Tony grew up together in the Alphabets. You know Avenues A, B, and C. We were a couple of bad asses from the start, breaking bottles on the sidewalk outside our building and letting the air outta people's tires. Then we got older, our balls got bigger, and what we did got rougher."
Liz noticed that he a blush bloomed up out of his collar but he didn't stop talking.
"Well, we were breaking homo's arms and stealing the cars we used to flatten the tires on, penny ante stuff until we met Hiram O'Malley, a big Mc-Jew, and what he brought to the mix was a wicked ticket to Heaven. Home grown Columbia Gold that he and his mom grew in the back of their flower shop over on Ludlow Street. We met him at Hamilton Fish where we were looking for some action, busting some heads or scoring some tail. Let me tell you the stuff the O'Malleys grew was better than any pussy I've ever had."
Now it was Liz's turn to blush, her face burned red with embarrassment. No matter how old she got that word still made her blush. But she kept her composure. She also began to think that perhaps Tony was real and that Paul really did have a friend in need.
"He said, 'It'll make your skin crawl.' Man did it ever, Tony and me were flying and it felt like our bodies were too big for our skins or something. O'Malley and us we became fast friends and got baked every chance we could, but then when our habit got to be a bit too much O'Malley put us out on the streets to sell for him, and things got better. Better for us and for our families. We had nice space heaters in the winter and always a nice cut of pot roast for Sunday supper, plus we had little things like nice shoes. But the best perk of all was we started going to the Yankees games on and off, sitting in the good seats. Life was good."
"Didn't you're family wonder where you got the money?" Liz asked as she tapped her pad.
"Told them I got a job working for Mrs. O'Malley delivering flowers to Manhattan and the tips were real good, and I guess it was true because Mrs. O'Malley was taking her cut. They bought it. I guess they had to. I'd never been in trouble before and those heaters were a welcome gift to my mom and pop in January. They might have known something was up, but I guess they didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. And maybe they didn't want to believe that I was doing nothing bad.
"Well, me, Tony, and O'Malley worked well together. Tony and me sold all over the five boroughs and Long Island, O'Malley supplied and did some enforcing when customers gave us trouble. We did well making money all throughout high school, and when the time came I went to college, NYU, and kept on selling to pay for my books and various extra curricular activities. Tony took on my old route making money, he wasn't the college type, and O'Malley took over the store and the business when his mom had her first stroke."
"I worked my way through school, selling and using, making my grades and keeping my scholarships by the thinnest of threads. I graduated magna cum laude with a MA in English literature and my parents were so proud, my dad actually told me that he loved me and that I made his heart fill up with pride. My father never told me or my five brothers anything like that all our lives, but he told me and it made me almost cry like a big fucking baby. I love my father; he died a few years back, I stop out to his plot in Poughkeepsie once a week. My mom is still alive and kicking I take care of her and now, I'm taking care of Tony at St. Mary's in Brooklyn. I pay his medical bills. It is pretty easy with what my job at NYU pays. I'm a literature professor, go figure, and still my grammar is horrendous. Plus I get money for the stuff I write for the Times. I've been teaching for a good many years and writing for the Times almost as long. I'm happy but since what happened with Tony I haven't had the strength to go into school or sit down at the computer."
"Well Tony and O'Malley had taken to selling harder stuff; coke and heroine around the time I was out of grad school. When I was tenured in '97 O'Malley and Tony were dealing the whole spectrum of party drugs; pot, coke, amphetamines, heroine, ecstasy, special-k, and a lovely bouquet of the latter four known as 'the Raver,' after the freak club kids from the suburbs who use that shit now-a-days like its going out of style. They also sit in my classroom with vacant eyes. Their number one seller, Tony always touted." Paul winced a bit and Dr. Engels noted it next to the flowers and circles she had been drawing. "I can't believe that I used to destroy young minds, I guess that is kind of why I'm a teacher, so I can fix what I'd done."
"Admirable," Liz said. "Mind if I smoke?"
"No," he said and then a grin graced his pock marked face. "My Monday-Wednesday-Friday class at 10:30 is readin' the short story Quitters Inc. by Stephen King, ever read it?"
"No," and she lit up her Newport menthol.
"God menthols, they put fiber glass in those you know?"
"Yeah, but no body ever bums them from me. I learned that trick in grad school."
"Well, the book is about a company run by the mob that tried to get people to quit smoking. They use al types of vicious tactics, like beatings, cutting off people's fingers, even kidnapping client's kids. In the end you do end up quitting, or else." He said not looking back at Liz as she puffed away. "It isn't Shelley or Joyce but it serves its purpose."
"Good thing it is only a story," and she exhaled a plumb of blue smoke with a grateful sigh. "Please go on."
"Well, Tony had moved on from the pot he was dishing and on to the ecstasy, amphetamines, and the special-k, because like I said he wasn't big on IV drugs. He felt that they were too personal, and with AIDS going around, he wanted to stay safe. But he went most heavily on the coke, because it wasn't a bestseller like it had been in the decadent '80s, and it was always available. It had been huge in the early to mid '80s; things were so good that I almost quit school in order to take up the trade. But Tony, poor Tony was snortin' as much as he could get. Picture that scene in "Scarface" when Pacino buries his face in the mound of coke on his desk that was my friend Tony. He was buying his own now, found a dealer straight out of Chile who set up camp in LA and according to Tony he had the best shit. Tony knew his coke so it had to be good stuff, pure as the driven snow.
"Well Tony got it fresh, not even processed; if the stuff were any closer to the source he would have been smoking leaves and roots. Well it was a rough grain, like rock salt, but he kept on using. Tried to push it on me, even used O'Malley's old sales pitch 'It'll make your skin crawl.' Fuck did it ever make Tony's skin crawl. He still uses, I sneak it into the hospital to help with the pain, and I know it is wrong but Tony needs it. After all he isn't going to get better" Paul said and then tears welled up in his eyes but he didn't sob or cry.
"You're a good friend," Liz said as she lit up another cigarette. "You think with your heart that's rare. You accept that vulnerability can be as much strength as weakness."
"Tony called me one day while I was at my office and begged to see me," Paul began. "He was in great pain, and when I saw him I couldn't see why. He had a few pimples on his back, what Tony called 'backne,' and a bunch on his chest and thighs. He used to bitch, 'For fuck's sake I'm thirty-four-years-old, and I'm getting zits!'
"So, I took him to my dermatologist, Harry Rosenblath, and all Harry said was that they were some kind of insect bites, probably ants or fleas, maybe wasps. So he gave him a topical and a lollypop and off we went. I accepted that, I bought Tony dinner at Lamonica's, and then I dropped him off at his place in Brooklyn. I didn't see him much there after, we e-mailed, but then that even stopped. Then in the middle of the night I got this frantic call from Tony's place, it was some stripper he was shacking up with, and she was screaming into the phone. Apparently I was the only number in Tony's speed dial. Why she didn't call 911 is beyond me, I guess it was because there were at least six pounds of coke strewn around the apartment. But whatever the reason I went like a bat outta hell over to Tony's place.
"When I got there what I saw is something that is burned into my brain. It was like something out of a horror movie. Tony was lying on his stomach, naked, and unconscious. On his back and on his thighs there were little white worms squealing and mewling bursting out of Tony's swollen red bug bites. Then I noticed that his skin was moving in waves, rippling like in that David Bowie song 'Changes.' They changed their size but they never left his body. Then I puked right there on Tony's Oriental rug. I felt real bad about that, but I couldn't help myself."
"I'm sure he will forgive you, you probably saved his life" she said calmly. 'Is this for real?' She kept thinking. 'It was ok up till now, but this is absurd.'
"Liz, it was like maggots were coming out of skin and then once they got out of him into the cold it was like they wanted back in where it was warm and safe. Most of them were half in and half out of the sores, flopping around like the clown in a jack-in-the-box. There were others that were crawling around on him and on the floor. All I could think to do was pour water on to him. So I ran to the kitchen filled a big stew pot with water and went back and dumped it on him. The liberated worms washed away but the others retreated back into their holes. I knew that I had to get him to the hospital.' So, I picked him up in my arms, the worms falling off on to the rug or crawling up my shirtsleeve. I carried him out to my car, plopped him in the seat, and then we went to St. Mary's. I left the stripper back at Tony's place. He was admitted and then I waited in the lobby reading Highlights and nibbling on Cheese and Wheat crackers from the vending machine in order to keep my stomach settled. Neither helped too much.
"Well, the doctor at St. Mary's said that the nodules on Tony's back were egg clusters. But that was all he knew. So I went to one of my lunch tablemates at the college, an entomologist named Phil Pulaski, and he said that the pustules were from growing larva of a yet unidentified species of wasp. It is most closely related to the chrysis coerulans. Whatever this bug is it is a wicked bastard; it lays its eggs in the nests of solitary wasps or other bugs. Then the baby wasps kill the host larva and then eat them from the inside out. I guess Tony was their caterpillar."
"But Tony's not a caterpillar, and even so how did this wasp get from the Pacific to Brooklyn?" Liz asked.
"It had to have come in one of the coke shipments, nestled in the packing crate or something. Like you said about the spider eggs in bubble gum, he couldn't have eaten them or because his stomach acid would have killed them. So they had to have flown out in the crate asleep in the soft nest of packing filler. It wakes up and needed to lay its eggs in the first warm thing it could find, Tony. The larva grew all inside of him and they still are. The doctors have to have him suspended on pulleys because of his bruises and the eggs all over him. He is all swollen up like someone allergic to a bee's sting. The docs did x-rays, an MRI and a CAT scan to see if there were any internal problems. It was disgusting what they found."
"What was it?" Liz asked perched forward on the edge of her chair. 'If his story weren't true this man was a brilliant story teller,' she thought. "What did they find?"
"His muscles were eaten through, riddled with holes like what a termite does to a good length of oak, and what was still there was swollen with infection. I just saw him this m-m-morn, this morn-" He paused, he tried to fight the urge to cry, "This mornin' he-"
"What did you see this morning at the hospital? Had Tony passed on?"
"No, no, no. But I wished that he had," Paul sighed and then broke down into a fit of weeping.
Liz left her seat and went to comfort him, something she accomplished with a free sample of Prozac, but she went to Paul. She held his head to her chest, running her fingers through his thick black hair, and rubbing the small of his back in semicircles. She could feel his hot tears on her collarbone and after ten minutes he pulled away, wiping his eyes, and looking at the door.
"He is going to die, and there is nothing that anyone can do for him. And if anyone asks they'll just say it was the coke that killed him. I know the truth, and now so do you. I'd better go and see him."
"Ok, ok Paul," she said. She didn't want to let him go but she knew the only thing short of a tranquillizer that'd calm him was seeing his friend. But she thought she'd better leave this open ended and said "Now, if you need to talk again you have my card. Please feel free to do so."
"Thank you Liz. I really needed to talk, but I gotta go." He took the card and tucked it into his breast pocket. Then he got up off of the leather chaise and slid on his jacket and turned from her. His shirt was all bunched up in the back.
"Wait, your tag is out" Liz said. She reached forward and tucked it back into his jacket when she noticed a small red bump on his neck. It didn't look like a pimple, but she couldn't be sure and didn't want to set him off. 'It is probably just an ingrown hair' she rationalized.
"All set?" he asked.
"Um, yeah, I hope your friend feels better, and you take care of your self as well." And she patted him on the back and led him out of the office.