Public Secrets

the garden during his morning walk. It was a lovely spot, filled with tea roses and hollyhocks and bird songs. Little brick paths wound through it, under arbors of wisteria and morning glories. Both the staff and the patients at Whitehurst were given free rein there. Until the sturdy stone walls rose up.
He detested the clinic, the doctors, the other patients. He despised the therapy sessions, the scheduling, the determined smiles of the staff. But he did what he was told, and he told them what they wanted to hear.
He was an addict. He wanted help. He would take one day at a time.
He would take their methadone and dream of heroin.
He learned to be calm, and he learned to be cunning. In four weeks and three days, he would walk out a free man. This time he would be more careful. This time he would control the drugs. He would smile at the doctors and reporters, he would lecture on the evils of drugs, and he would lie through his teeth. When he was out, he would live his life as he chose.
No one had the right to tell him he was sick, no one had the right to tell him he needed help. If he wanted to get high, he’d get high. What did they understand about the pressures he lived with day after day? The demands to excel, to be that much better than the rest?

Maybe he’d gone too far before. Maybe. So he’d keep it a social thing. The frigging doctors swilled their bourbon. He’d do a line if he felt like a line. He’d smoke some hash if he had a yen for it.
And fuck them. Fuck them all.
He tore open the envelope. He was pleased that Emma had written him. He could think of no other female he’d had such pure and honest feelings for. Taking out a cigarette, he leaned back on the bench and drew in the scent of smoke and roses.
Dear Stevie ,
I know You’re in a kind of hospital and I’m sorry I can’t visit you. Da says he and the others have been there, and that You’re looking better. I wanted you to know that I was thinking about you. Maybe when you’re well we can go on vacation together, all of us, like we did in California last summer. I miss you a lot and I still hate school. But it’s only three and a half more years. Remember when I was little and you always asked me who was the best? I’d always say Da and you’d pretend to get mad. Well, I never told you that you play the guitar better. Don’t tell Da I said so. Here’s a picture of you and me in New York a couple of years ago. Da took it, remember? That’s why it’s out of focus. I thought you’d like to have it. You can write me back if you feel like it. But if you don’t that’s okay. I know I’m supposed to have paragraphs and stuff in this letter, but I forgot. I love you, Stevie. Get well soon .
Love,
Emma
He let the letter lie on his lap. He sat on the bench and smoked his cigarette. And wept.

P . M. OPENED HIS LETTER as he sat in the empty house he’d just bought on the outskirts of London. He was on the floor with the ceilings towering over him, a bottle of ale by his knee and the cool blues of Ray Charles coming from his only piece of furniture, the stereo.

It hadn’t been easy to leave Bev, but it had been harder to stay. She had helped him find the house, as she’d promised. She would decorate it. She would, now and then, make love with him in it. But she would never be his wife.
He blamed Brian for it. No matter what Bev had told him, P.M. eased his pain by placing the blame squarely on Brian. He hadn’t been man enough to stay with her through the bad times. He hadn’t been man enough to let her go. Right from the beginning Brian had treated Bev badly. Bringing her a child from another woman, asking her to raise it as her own. Leaving her for weeks at a time while he toured. Pushing her, he thought viciously, pushing her into a lifestyle she never wanted. Drugs, groupies, and gossip.
And what would Brian say, what would they all say, if he announced he was leaving the group? That would make them sit up and take notice, P.M. thought as he swallowed some ale. Brian McAvoy could go to hell and take Devastation with him.
More out of habit than curiosity, he opened Emma’s letter. She wrote him every couple of months. Cute, chatty letters that he answered with a postcard or a little gift. It wasn’t the girl’s fault that her father was a bastard, P.M. thought, and began to read.
Dear P.M .,
I guess I’m supposed to say I’m sorry about your divorce, but I’m not. I didn’t like Angie. The sisters say that divorce is a