'He took on a boxcar full of booze and you let him get in that big car of his and drive away,' Annie said. 'Way to go, Ricky Lee.'

'Never mind.'

'He's going to kill himself.'

And although this had been Ricky Lee's own thought less than five minutes ago, he turned to her when the taillights winked out of sight and shook his head.

'I don't think so,' he said. 'Although the way he looked tonight, it might be better for him if he did.'

'What did he say to you?'

He shook his head. It was all confused in his mind, and the sum total of it seemed to mean nothing. 'It doesn't matter. But I don't think we're ever going to see that old boy again.'

4

Eddie Kaspbrak Takes His Medicine

If you would know all there is to know about an American man or woman of the middle class as the millennium nears ti s end, you would need only to look in his or her medicine cabinet — or so it has been said. But dear Lord, get a look into this one as Eddie Kaspbrak slides it open, mercifully sliding aside his white face and wide, staring eyes.

On the top shelf there's Anacin, Excedrin, Excedrin PM, Contac, Gelusil, Tylenol, and a large blue jar of Vicks, looking like a bit of brooding deep twilight under glass. There is a bottle of Vivarin, a bottle of Serutan (That's 'Nature's' spelled backwards, the ads on Lawrence Welk used to say when Eddie Kaspbrak was but a wee slip of a lad), and two bottles of Phillips Milk of Magnesia — the regular, which tastes like liquid chalk, and the new mint flavor, which tastes like mint-flavored liquid chalk. Here is a large bottle of Rolaids standing chummily close to a large bottle of Turns. The Turns are standing next to a large bottle of orange-flavored Di-Gel tablets. The three of them look like a trio of strange piggy-banks, stuffed with pills instead of dimes.

Second shelf, and dig the vites: you got your E, your C, your C with rosehips. You got B-simple and B-complex and B-12. There's L-Lysine, which is supposed to do something about those embarrassing skin problems, and lecithin, which is supposed to do something about that embarrassing cholesterol build –up in and around the Big Pump. There's iron, calcium, and cod liver oil. There's One –A-Day multiples, Myadec multiples, Centrum multiples. And sitting up on top of the cabinet itself is a gigantic bottle of Geritol, just for good measure.

Moving right along to Eddie's third shelf, we find the utility infielders of the patent-medicine world. Ex-Lax. Carter's Little Pills. Those two keep Eddie Kaspbrak moving the mail. Here, nearby, is Kaopectate, Pepto-Bismol, and Preparation H in case the mail moves too fast or too painfully. Also some Tucks in a screw-top jar just to keep everything tidy after the mail has gone through, be it just an advertising circular or two addressed to OCCUPANT or a big old special-delivery package. Here is Formula 44 for coughs, Nyquil and Dristan for colds, and a big bottle of castor oil. There's a tin of Sucrets in case Eddie's throat gets sore, and there's a quartet of mouthwashes: Chloraseptic, Cepacol, Cepestat in the spray bottle, and of course good old Listerine, often imitated but never duplicated. Visine and Murine for the eyes. Cortaid and Neosporin ointment for the skin (the second line of defense if the L-Lysine doesn't live up to expectations), a tube of Oxy-5 and a plastic bottle of Oxy-Wash (because Eddie would definitely rather have a few less cents than a few more zits), and some tetracyline pills.

And off to one side, clustered like bitter conspirators, are three bottles of coal-tar shampoo.

The bottom shelf is almost deserted, but the stuff which is here means serious business — you could cruise on this stuff, okay. On this stuff you could fly higher than Ben Hanscom's jet and crash harder than Thurman Munson's. There's Valium, Percodan, Elavil, and Darvon Complex. There is also another Sucrets box on this low shelf, but there are no Sucrets in it. If you opened that one you would find six Quaaludes.

Eddie Kaspbrak believed in the Boy Scout motto.

He was swinging a blue tote-bag as he came into the bathroom. He set it on the sink, unzipped it, and then, with trembling hands, he began to spill bottles and jars and tubes and squeeze –bottles and spray-bottles into it. Under other circumstances he would have taken them out handful by careful handful, but there was no time fo r such niceties now. The choice, as Eddie saw it, was as simple as it was brutal: get moving and keep moving or stand in one place long enough to start thinking about what all of this meant and simply die of fright.

'Eddie?' Myra called up from downstairs. 'Eddie, what are you dooooing?

Eddie dropped the Sucrets box containing the 'ludes into the bag. The medicine cabinet was now entirely empty except for Myra's Midol and a small, almost used-up tube of Blistex. He paused for a moment and then grabbed the Blistex. He started to zip the bag closed, debated, and then threw in the Midol as well. She could always buy more.

'Eddie?' from halfway up the stairs now.

Eddie zipped the bag the rest of the way closed and then left the bathroom, swinging it by his side. He was a short man with a timid, rabbity sort of face. Much of his hair was gone; what was left grew in listless, piebald patches. The weight of the bag pulled him noticeably to one side.

An extremely large woman was climbing slowly to the second floor. Eddie could hear the stairs creak protestingly under her.

'What are you DOOOOOOOOING?'

Eddie did not need a shrink to tell him that he had, in a sense, married his mother. Myra Kaspbrak was huge. She had only been big when Eddie married her five years ago, but he sometimes thought his subconscious had seen the potential for hugeness in her; God knew his own mother had been a whopper. And she looked somehow more huge than ever as she reached the second-floor landing. She was wearing a white nightgown which swelled, comberlike, at bosom and hip. Her face, devoid of make-up, was white and shiny. She looked badly frightened.

'I have to go away for awhile,' Eddie said.

'What do you mean, you have to go away? What was that telephone call?'

'Nothing,' he said, fleeing abruptly down the hallway to their walk-in closet. He put the tote-bag down, opened the closet's fold-back door, and raked aside the half-dozen identical black suits which hung there, as conspicuous as a thundercloud among the other, more brightly colored, clothes. He always wore one of the black suits when he was working. He bent into the closet, smelling mothballs and wool, and pulled out one of the suitcases from the back. He opened it and began throwing clothes in.

Her shadow fell over him.

'What's this about, Eddie? Where are you going? You tell me!'

'I can't tell you.'

She stood there, watching him, trying to decide what to say next, or what to do. The thought of simply bundling him into the closet and then standing with her back against the door until this madness had passed crossed her mind, but she was unable to bring herself to do it, although she certainly could have; she was three inches taller than Eddie and outweighed him by a hundred pounds. She couldn't think of what to do or say, because this was so utterly unlike him. She could not have been any more dismayed and frightened if she had walked into the television room and found their new big-screen TV floating in the air.

'You can't go,' she heard herself saying. 'You promised you'd get me Al Pacino's autograph.' It was an absurdity — God knew it was — but at this point even an absurdity was better than nothing.

'You'll still get it,' Eddie said. 'You'll have to drive him yourself.'

Oh, here was a new terror to join those already circling in her poor dazzled head. She uttered a small scream. 'I can't — I never — '

'You'll have to,' he said. He was examining his shoes now. 'There's no one else.'