Doctor Sleep: A Novel

“Listening.”
    “ ‘Get your ass to a meeting,’ he said. ‘If your ass falls off, put it in a bag and take it to a meeting.’ ”
    “Charming. What if I just forget?”
    Casey had shrugged. “Then you find yourself another sponsor, one who believes in forgetfulness. I don’t.”
    Dan, who felt like some breakable object that has skittered to the edge of a high shelf but hasn’t quite fallen off, didn’t want another sponsor or changes of any kind. He felt okay, but tender. Very tender. Almost skinless. The visions that had plagued him following his arrival in Frazier had ceased, and although he often thought of Deenie and her little boy, the thoughts were not as painful. At the end of almost every AA meeting, someone read the Promises. One of these was We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it . Dan thought he would always regret the past, but he had quit trying to shut the door. Why bother, when it would just come open again? The fucking thing had no latch, let alone a lock.
    Now he began to print a single word on the current page of the little book Casey had given him. He made large, careful letters. He had no idea why he was doing it, or what it meant. The word was.
    Meanwhile, the speaker reached the end of her qualification and burst into tears, through them declaring that even though her ex was a shit and she loved him still, she was grateful to be straight and sober. Dan applauded along with the rest of the Lunch Bunch, then began to color in the letters with his pen. Fattening them. Making them stand out.
    Do I know this name? I think I do .
    As the next speaker began and he went to the urn for a fresh cup of coffee, it came to him. Abra was the name of a girl in a John Steinbeck novel. East of Eden . He’d read it . . . he couldn’t remember where. At some stop along the way. Some somewhere. It didn’t matter.
    Another thought
    ( did you save it )
    rose to the top of his mind like a bubble and popped.
    Save what?
    Frankie P., the Lunch Bunch oldtimer who was chairing the meeting, asked if someone wanted to do the Chip Club. When no one raised a hand, Frankie pointed. “How about you, lurking back there by the coffee?”
    Feeling self-conscious, Dan walked to the front of the room, hoping he could remember the order of the chips. The first—white for beginners—he had. As he took the battered cookie tin with the chips and medallions scattered inside it, the thought came again.
    Did you save it?
    3
    That was the day the True Knot, which had been wintering at a KOA campground in Arizona, packed up and began meandering back east. They drove along Route 77 toward Show Low in the usual caravan: fourteen campers, some towing cars, some with lawn chairs or bicycles clamped to the backs. There were Southwinds and Winnebagos, Monacos and Bounders. Rose’s EarthCruiser—seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of imported rolling steel, the best RV money could buy—led the parade. But slowly, just double-nickeling it.
    They were in no hurry. There was plenty of time. The feast was still months away.
    4
    “Did you save it?” Concetta asked as Lucy opened her blouse and offered Abra the breast. Abby blinked sleepily, rooted a little, then lost interest. Once your nipples get sore, you won’t offer until she asks, Chetta thought. And at the top of her lungs.
    “Save what?” David asked.
    Lucy knew. “I passed out right after they put her in my arms. Dave says I almost dropped her. There was no time, Momo.”
    “Oh, that goop over her face.” David said it dismissively. “They stripped it off and threw it away. Damn good thing, if you ask me.” He was smiling, but his eyes challenged her. You know better than to go on with this, they said. You know better, so just drop it .
    She did know better . . . and didn’t. Had she been this two-minded when she was younger? She couldn’t remember, although it seemed she could remember every lecture on the Blessed Mysteries and the everlasting pain of hell administered by the Sisters of Mercy, those banditti in black. The story of the girl who had been struck blind for peeping at her brother while he was naked in the tub and the one about the man who had been struck dead for blaspheming against the pope.
    Give them to us when they’re young and it doesn’t matter how many honors classes they’ve taught, or how many books of poetry they’ve written, or even that one of those books won all the big prizes. Give them to us when