SO TO GET OUT of the room and kill time--yes, almost literally every fucking minute--I took the elevator down, and in the lobby were four hundred million people from some kind of convention, all gabbing and laughing and wearing the same clothes, corpie suits even here in Atlantic City; and on each lapel and breast was pasted a sticker that said Visitor, and for some reason I found that hilarious.
I said to one guy, “Is this a philosophical statement?”
“A what? We’re with the convention.”
“I mean we’re all visitors on this planet, is this what you’re saying?”
“You must be crazy.”
Maybe I was. I was feeling crazy. The casino itself was half empty, blackjack dealers standing alone and bored before their outstretched cards waiting to be shuffled. There were even two-dollar tables.
But I could not zero in because of this crazy feeling. So what if I won? So what if I lost?
So what? So what? So what?
For crying out loud, we’re just fucking visitors.
In making my rounds, in and among the blackjack, the roulette, the craps, the baccarat, the Big Wheel, around and around, back and forth, speeding past faces and faces, and faces all so tough and joyless, I was like a swimmer who had gone in too far, too deep and once too often, and was now madly stroking for life.
Make sense of something, I warned myself. Quickly. Insanity is next.
Think of something nice. Like what? Your wife? That hurt. Your father, your mother, your children? That also hurt. Think of the money. That hurt the most. So think of Jerusalem. Okay. That was nice.
Next year in Jerusalem--with Joan.
Are you all right? I asked myself. Now are you all right? You’re not going to die now, are you?
Are you all right?
Is he all right?
Don’t touch him, somebody said.
I don’t think he’s all right.
I was not flat on my back. I was in a sitting position. So I had not fainted. Only collapsed. My legs--they were so weak. Could not support me. Just like that they gave--and I sat down. I had not fallen, just sort of came to a stop.
I had been walking too fast, around and around. I had gotten dizzy. That was what this was, a dizzy spell. Another dizzy spell. Big whoop, as Joan would have said. If she were here. But she was not here, of course. No, Joan was not here.
Joan was busy at the moment.
“Are you all right?” voices said.
“Is he all right?”
Men and women in uniform were ringed around me. The same thing had happened to me in Jerusalem on day six of the Six Day War. I pitched hand grenades as we charged the Wall. Then something hit me and I was carried into an ambulance. A bearded man asked me my name. “Joshua,” I said. “Aha,” he said. “Do you know the story of Joshua?” Yes I did. “Then you know about the twelve stones.” Yes, God had ordered Joshua to place twelve stones in Jordan as a memorial for the deliverance to the promised land. “So what we must do,” said the bearded man, “is place twelve stones by the Wall.”
I had taken a bullet right through my kneecap and spent six weeks in the hospital. When I got out I could not find the bearded man. I asked about him. I described him. Was he a doctor? A chaplain? Nobody knew who he was. So I did it myself. I gathered twelve stones from Mount Zion and placed them by the Western Wall. They had to be gone by now, but in my mind they were still there.
Now the man who seemed to be the leader of the group said, “Can you get up?”
He stretched out a hand. I reached for it and pulled myself up, but when he let go I was down on my ass again. My legs seemed to have forgotten what they were intended to do.
“That does it,” the leader said, and in my blurred condition I had no idea what he meant.
Were they going to line me up and shoot me?
Is that what they do when you can’t stand up to gamble anymore?
To collapse in public had always been my big fear--next to being confined. The shame of it, more than anything. But there was no shame here. No, everything continued. I had collapsed beside a craps table where the action was loud and furious and on it went--“Come on seven...come on seven...bring it in, sweet baby!”
People from the casino’s Emergency Care Unit now arrived and they were alarmed. Very concerned about me. Loosened my tie, took my pulse as they moved me along in a wheelchair. What was I doing in a wheelchair? I did not remember them seating me in. This is awful, I thought. I’d seen the crippled come here as if to Lourdes to be healed, but never the other way around, like me, walking in and being wheeled out. Sort of the opposite of being healed.
Still, there was dignity in all this. This was like a presidential procession, sentries at attention along my route, information being passed about my condition by walkie-talkie--and even an elevator held just for me. All because I could not stand upright anymore.
Why could I not stand anymore? Because I had heard the voice of God.
This was what He said: “Joshua?”
Already I knew that was bad.
When He loves you He calls your name twice: “Moses...Moses,” He had said.
But I just got one, “Joshua?”
“Here I am,” I said.
“I am cutting you off from your people, Joshua.”
That was when my legs gave.
Now I was never one of those who claimed to hear from God, and I still wasn’t. That was my father talking to me--my father, since he died, had become God. That was how I imagined God, as my father. Quick to anger, slow to forgive. That was how I saw my father. That was how I saw God. My father’s face, harsh but loving, loving but harsh, became God’s face.
But I could separate them. I knew when my father spoke to me as my earthly father, and when He spoke to me as my heavenly father. This time He had descended on me as my heavenly father. This time He had descended on me through a whirlwind in a blazing chariot.
I am cutting you off from your people.
They had me down on a bed now, in a room full of lights, a nurse taking my temperature. She asked me if I was cold. I said yes. She spread a blanket over me. I said the wool itched. She did not hear me. They seemed to choose when and when not to hear me.
She asked me what was wrong.
The thing was, I wanted to tell her! Everything. I wanted to tell her about Joan, what Joan was doing right now--and what I was doing. I wanted to tell her what I had done.
What have I done? How could I have done this? Where do we go from here? This is the beginning of something and it is the end.
I wanted to tell her that I was being cut off from my people. I was no longer under the protection of the covenant.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Anything hurt?”
“No.”
“You have a fever. But your heart is racing like a child’s.”
Was I on drugs?
“I take Valium occasionally. Fiorinol for migraines.”
“Do you have a migraine now?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Why can’t you walk?”
“I think I can walk now.”
“No, you stay here and rest.”
“How long?”
“We’ll see. I’d like the doctor to take a look at you.”
I shut my eyes against the light. Think good thoughts I told myself. Bad thoughts are what kill you. But--what was Joan doing now? I saw her naked, down on her knees...
I threw the blanket off me.
The nurse rushed over. “I thought you were cold.”
“I’m hot.”
Hot and cold was what I was.
“The doctor will be right over.”
“Can I have something to put me to sleep? All I want is sleep.”
“The doctor can give you something.”
I waited. So where was this doctor? Everything, I thought--everything is taking so long. Things are happening in the world and here I am, wasting, my flesh devouring my soul. A malady of the spirit this was.
The doctor was a skeptical old man. He had the blithe attitude of a professional who had already seen everything, seen so much that nothing could surprise him. He had people categorized by type. His name was Moore, Dr. Horace Moore.
As he examined me he kept up a chatter.
“I hear you want a sleeping pill. Just one, I hope. I have people come in here wanting more, if you know what I mean.”
“Just one,” I said.
“I get them after they’ve dropped their entire life’s savings. Gambling is not for the fainthearted.”
“I didn’t lose,” I said. “I won.”
“Hmm. I get those, too. They can’t handle that, either. What did you win? A million dollars?”
How did he know? Of course he didn’t know. A million dollars was the magic number.
The American dream. The American jackpot.
“You’re a sick man,” he said after he checked my eyes.
“How sick?”
“I don’t know. But you have the symptoms of shell shock. Were you in a war or something?”
“Many years ago, yes.”
“No, I mean today, yesterday. Now there is nothing physically wrong with you, but...”
But, he said, he saw something, something he did not like.
“You need rest,” he said.
“Can I have a sleeping pill?”
“You really want that sleeping pill, don’t you? That’s also a symptom.”
“You just said I need rest.”
“Rest doesn’t mean sleep. Rest means...you know what rest means. You’re fighting something. What are you fighting?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m sure you do understand.”
“You want a confession of some sort?”
“No, I’m only a doctor. My stethoscope can only reach your heart. Your heart of hearts, that’s something you know. You and God. Anyway, I’ll give you that sleeping pill. But that won’t be the answer.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
“Yes, the sleeping pill.” He paused to look me over, human to human. That was something he obviously did not do too often. “I’m worried about you,” he said. “You know, I was in a war myself. World War Two. I saw what people do to other people. That’s sad. Now I’m here and I see what people do to themselves. Guess what? That’s even sadder.”
A confession, that was what this man wanted from me.
“You’re one of those,” he said.
“One of those?”
“You know what I mean. Here...here’s your pill, just remember, it’s not the answer.”