Blazing Addles

Of course they won the motion. Alan never considered that it could go any other way once Denny walked in, and if Denny did, he never let on. Never lost; never will.

The derriere being healed to a reasonably comfortable state, they opted for dinner out—a treble celebration with Crane & Shore, surf & turf, and scotch & soda.

They arrived back at the a quiet and darkened house. "I miss our balcony," said Alan. He slouched into a living room chair.

"We'll get it back," said Denny. He walked toward the bedroom, discarding articles of clothing along the way.
"Do you want me to change your bandage?" Alan started to pry himself up from his seat.

"No need," Denny called back. "It's stopped oozing. I can reach it myself."

Alan sank back in his chair. He wasn't needed anymore. He lit a cigar and inhaled until he felt slightly sick.

Denny padded back out wearing pink jammies with little red hearts all over them and fluffy pom-poms at the drawstring waist.

Alan raised an eyebrow.

"I'm running low," said Denny. "Been going through a pair a day with that damned shot. It was either this or the ones with the elephant trunk over the fly."

"Something to look forward to." Alan set his cigar down. He wondered if he would get to see it.

Denny took the chair beside him and picked up the remote control. He clicked on the television. "Oh, it's B Movie Babe week! Look, Green Slave Women from the Planet Exo. That's a good one." Denny lounged back and scratched. "And the really good ones come on this weekend: I Was a Teenage Ho-wolf, Rocketship KY, and The Tingler."

"Pity I'll be missing them." Alan sipped scotch.

"Why? Going somewhere?" Denny turned to him, his face was unreadable.

"Not that I know of." Alan guarded his tone.

"Good. I hate eating marshmallows alone." Denny turned up the volume on the TV.

Alan started to speak, but Denny cut him off. "Look, look! Here's the good part. Watch where the green girl hides her lasergun." He waved at the screen with the remote control.

"Ingenious," said Alan. He twisted his head upside down to try to get a better view.

"I taught her how to do that," Denny said.

Alan just stared at him.


***


For the first time in a long time, Alan slept like a rock. If the alarm went off, he didn't hear it. Instead he woke to Denny in a candy-cane shirt and suspenders shaking him by the shoulders.

"Get up, lazy bones. Lock and load! Today's the day that Denny Crane is back in the saddle."

Alan pulled the pillow over his head. "Perhaps you could wait for me down in the livery, pardner. Somewhere between the green slave women and the fourth glass of scotch I seem to have misplaced a few hours sleep. What time is it?"

"Six o'clock." Denny pulled the pillow off. "Come on; you and me, soldier. We're flaming in together, you and I."

Alan pulled the duvet up. "I must have forgotten to tell you: we're not going in. The hospital called. You have a post-operative check this morning at 10:00. I thought I'd take you in case he needs to do something--give you something."

"You go in. I'll call the car service."

"I'd hate to think of you stoned and running about Boston with your bottom hanging out and a drain hanging out your bottom. You might get taken advantage of. Worse, by someone who isn't me."

Denny peered at him. "You just...forgot to tell me?"

"I am sorry, but what does it really matter? Wake me at eight and have your saddle soaped for both of us."

Denny sat on the edge of the bed. He was silent almost long enough for Alan to fall back to sleep.
Almost.

"You know, this not-sex is kind of fun."

"Mm."

"But I am feeling a little...one-sided." Denny fidgeted with the hem of the sheet that bore his embroidered name.

"You like things one sided. As long as it's on your side." Alan tugged the coverlet to his chin.

"I do. But I wouldn't want you to feel used."

"I liked feeling used by lovers. It is much safer than the alternatives and virtually obligation free."

"You're never obligated to me," said Denny.

"Nor are you to me."

"No, but hypothetically, if we were to not-do something that you wanted, what would it be?"

"I can't think of a single thing I wouldn't want to not-do."

"Hm." Denny stretched out on the bed and reached under the sheet.

Alan was suddenly wide awake. "Denny, this isn't a good idea. I've never been a...morning person, so to speak, and am somewhat slow to rouse. This isn't a token gift of appreciation that you can drop off and be about your business."

Denny shrugged. "It's not like I have any place to be without you." He loosened his tie and undid his top button. He slid his arm back under the sheet and placed his hand in the way he always liked it himself. "How about it? Does that feel good?"

"That feels...phenomenal." Alan closed his eyes and, just for the moment, allowed himself to be taken away. And how much lighter he felt once he did. "But I promise you, I am quite fine. As much as I appreciate the gesture, it's not something you have to do."

Denny's focus faded into the distance. "In fifty years of law, I've wielded power and won litigation that's made tens of thousands—hundreds of thousands of people happy. But do you know how many people I've made happy for myself?"

Alan swallowed. "I do not. But if it is your goal to make it one more, there's no need. You've already done so. He brushed the back of his fingers along the side of Denny's jaw. "I shouldn't risk gilding the lily."

"You fairies and your damn flowers," said Denny. "You give me fair warning before any...gilding. I just had this suit cleaned."

Alan chuckled, and his muscle tone went noticeably less tense. It had been so long since he had encountered anyone he held in higher esteem than he did himself, that he had forgotten how good it felt to relinquish so much trust.

Or that he even could.

Denny flashed a private smile. "That's better. Relax, I know what I'm doing." Hand still under the sheet, Denny kicked his shoes off one at a time. One flew into the deflated corpse of Shirley Schmidt-Ho, and knocked her face first to the carpet.

"Dear me," said Alan. He sat up and cricked his neck to regard the doll.

"I know what I'm doing; you remember that." Denny voice called him back with impassioned intensity, as if to brand the words in some metaphysical way.

"All right," said Alan. His head lolled back, and he let out a gigantic sigh.

"You remember that," Denny repeated softly. "There may come a day when you have to do it for the both of us."


***

Surgical follow-up clinic was on the sixth floor. "Denny Crane. Ten o'clock appointment. Denny Crane." Denny propped his hands up on the entrance desk and waited to be recognized.

The receptionist checked her computer. "I'm sorry, sir. We don't have you."
"Crane, Denny. Try it that way. Denny Crane."

The receptionist glanced askance at him and pretended to look. "I'm sorry, still not there." She hit a button, and new listings scrolled by. "Oh, I see! You do have an appointment, but not here. Ten o'clock, Dr. Lee, 1262, neurology. That's—" she pointed to the elevator bank.

"I know where it is," said Denny. He stalked off down the hallway with Alan hopping to catch up.

"You said it was for the staples." When Denny sounded really angry as opposed to posturing angry, it was generally because he was afraid.

"I'm sorry, Denny. I must have misunderstood." Alan's voice took on his shaggy-dog story lilt. "The hospital called, I wasn't really paying attention. I heard ten o'clock today, the important part—and considering everything, I must have just naturally assumed the rest."

"You're lying," Denny said. "You didn't think I'd come if I knew the truth."

"I know that one of the best hospitals in the world called to say they wanted to help. It seemed reasonable to at least stop by."

Denny glared at him. "I wasn't scheduled for another six months. Paul must have told him something. Or Shirley did. I hope she didn't tell him about our threesome with the drag queen. I didn't know. He even had Streisand's nose."

"Then, I can set your mind to ease," said Alan. "They've told no one outside the top levels of the firm and are fighting tooth and nail to see that it stays that way. At one point Paul seriously considering having me killed because I knew too much." Alan cocked his head. "Or perhaps that was merely an excuse to act out his fondest desires."

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. Denny didn't move. "This doctor--what if he knows?" He turned his eyes to Alan.

"This isn't about pride," Alan said.

"It's always about pride. It has to be. At the end of the day, it's all we really own. Life can take anything and everything from you, but never that because you make it up yourself as you go."

Alan swallowed. "He's trying to help you, and can only do so if he knows the truth."

"What if he can't help?" When the biggest people looked so lost was when the true fragility of the human condition became most apparent.

Alan swallowed. "Then we go home." He rested a palm upon Denny's shoulder.

"Home." Denny exhaled, squared his shoulders, and strode down the hallway to 1262.

They left just in time to hit the lunch hour traffic snarl.

"You knew," said Denny. His eyes were closed and his voice was ominously soft. He stared straight ahead from the passenger seat.

"I scheduled it," said Alan. Up on the clutch and down on the gas just a smidgen, he rolled a couple more feet down the street.

"You have no business trying to run my life. I'm not senile yet."

"No."

"I make my own decisions."

"You do. And no one is stopping you. In fact, they are encouraging you."

"Pushing. You're pushing me."

Alan rolled a few more feet forward and stared off over the line of traffic ahead. "When my wife died horribly, it killed most everything that mattered to me—in me. I did not believe that I could feel that way again. Or perhaps I didn't want to. Perhaps I still don't, as I am not certain that anything is worth enduring that amount of pain again. But it seems I am now in a position where I have no choice."

"We can't stipulate our feelings," said Denny. "No. We can't. I have often thought that God and the Devil must have teamed up before the fall to create such a wonderful and terrible trick."

Denny chuckled. "Who needs the Devil when we have Bill Buckner?"

Alan didn't laugh. "I don't want to lose you, Denny. I can't put it more clearly than that. And if out of my terror and my selfishness I seem to endorse you protecting yourself a little more strongly than an outside party strictly should, perhaps, if in your lifetime you have ever suffered such a loss, perhaps you will empathize and grant me a little latitude with my reactions. Please believe me when I tell you that in the most literal sense of the word, I do not believe I can survive that kind of grief and loss again."

"Then you shouldn't be here." Denny gazed out the passenger window.

"Probably not." Alan placed his right hand upon Denny's thigh and smiled out the side of his face. "But aren't stolen pleasures the most fun?"

Denny chuckled. He opened the left side of his jacket, nudging Alan's hand away from his leg and reached into his inside pocket. He pulled out the prescription slip and twiddled it around.

"There's a drug store two blocks down. Pull in, will you," Denny said.

Alan glanced to him.

"What?" Denny shot a look back to him. "I'm out of condoms. They sell the jumbo packs." Denny set the prescription on the dash and leaned back in his seat as the car inched forward through a traffic light.


***

Denny sat at the kitchen table staring at the capsule in his hand.

Alan slid into the chair beside him. "I don't think it works by staring at it."

Denny grunted. "I looked this stuff up. Did you know it's related to weed and insect poison as well as chemical weapons?"

Alan reached across the table and picked up the bottle. He rolled it over, and the capsules rattled against the plastic. "Nerve gasses. Yes, I did. They're all types of cholinesterase inhibitors. In an over-dosage, there are symptoms similar to those shown with organophosphate poisonings. In prescribed doses, for people who have need of it, this particular formulation acts specifically in the brain to return diminishing chemical levels to pre-illness states and have been shown to allow as much as five extra years of meaningful cognition."

"It's killed people's livers." Denny rolled the capsule between thumb and forefinger. "If my liver's going to go before me, I promised it would be barrel-aged single malt or nothing."

"The first medication developed did, yes. This one has not shown those problems."

"Yet."

Alan remained silent, for it was either that or agree.

"You want me to take it," Denny said.

"I would never ask a friend to make a life altering decision on the basis of what I want. And with a loved one, I should hope I wouldn't have to. But it terrifies me how very close I am to beseeching you to do just that." Alan set down the pills and folded his hands atop the table.

"If I take it, I have the disease." Alan had to strain to hear the mumbled words.

"And if you don't, then what do you have?"

"Who knows?" Denny shrugged.

Alan creased his face and tried to think like Denny. "The pill can't give a person Alzheimer's."

"Of course it can. I create my own reality. Always have."

"That would explain much." Alan sipped from Denny's whisky glass.

The kitchen clock ticked off seconds as Denny contemplated the pill. "When I stand up in front of judge jury and explain things the way I want them to be seen, that's the way it becomes. The judge gives his ruling, it's entered as a legal ruling—a fact—and from then on, that's the way it is. It's Denny Crane's gift. He can make anything he says become true."

Denny hesitated, then started to speak again. "This pill is a commitment, Alan. He said that this stuff works like a dam. Once you start it, you have to keep taking it or you lose everything you built up. If I acknowledge I'm committing to an Alzheimer's medication for life—" Denny raised the capsule in the air, and his voice trailed off. "That's not the reality I want to create."

"All successful people mold their own reality. They take action to make what they want become real. That's what a life lived is. So I suppose the question is, what do you want for your mad cow, Denny, and what are you going to do to make it happen?"

With a rough movement, Denny grabbed the glass of scotch and downed the pill.

Alan picked up the empty glass and twiddled it. "When the doctor said to take with a meal, I suspect he had something other than this in mind."

"Don't tell me what to do." Denny stalked off into the living room.

Alan followed with the bottle and two glasses. He poured for both as if nothing had happened, brought the humidor over between them, then sank into an overstuffed chair.

The Chinook stared down at him with beady eyes. Alan stared back. "I've been thinking: when could we go fishing again?" He cut the end off a Padrón and raised it between his lips.

Denny grunted into his drink. "Not for a while. They'll need me to make up for the time I was out. Things aren't the same without the Big Bird around the place."

"They will, and they aren't." Alan raised his glass of scotch in a toast.

"Maybe next month."

"Sounds good. Perhaps Simon might like to go with me before then." Alan held the flame to the cigar and puffed until it caught.

Denny glared at him.

"Kidding," said Alan. He exhaled and waved the cigar in the air.

"Not funny. You're sleeping with me now. I expect you be faithful, or...I'll sue you for breech of promise."

"Ha!" Alan chortled. "I'd love to see old Jibber-Jabber Sanders hearing that one!"

"Could be fun," said Denny.

"Could be," Alan agreed. "So...I should call Simon?"

"Don't even think about it." Denny chewed his cigar.

"Promise," said Alan. He blew a ragged smoke ring toward the Chinook.

Denny reached for the TV remote. "So what'll it be tonight? Zombies of the Stratosphere?"

"A true classic. And you say it gets better than this?"

"It does." Denny reached between his legs and rearranged his genitals with his hand.

Alan kicked of his shoes and put his feet up on the coffee table as the intro credits rolled. "Oh goodie. I can hardly wait to see what's coming next."