Drug of Choice

He agreed that it was all very wonderful, and they arranged to meet in an hour for drinks before dinner. He went back inside to unpack and take a shower. While he was unpacking, he heard an odd humming sound. At first he could not locate the source of the noise; it was very soft, almost a droning. He walked around the room, listening.

And then he realized it was coming from the television set. Funny, he thought. He made a mental note to tell the management about it. He slapped the set once, with the flat of his hand. The sound stopped.

“Well,” he said, “that’s that.” Life for Roger Clark became a kind of idyll. After the first day, he stopped wearing his watch, and when, after three days, he chanced to pick it up, he saw that it had stopped. He didn’t care. It seemed almost fitting, that time should stop on this island. He was having a superb time.

The first night, he had had dinner with Sharon in the hotel, and had been pleasantly surprised at the excellence of the food. Afterward, they had gone to a discotheque, one of three on the new resort island. It had been a smashing, vibrant place; he had gotten drunk and enjoyed himself thoroughly.

The next day he had played tennis with Sharon, and discovered that she was a blood player, a true fighter. She wore a very short white skirt and a very tight white blouse, and used her wiles to distract him whenever she could; he was beaten miserably in the first set. On the next two sets he fought back, winning the third 22–20. Then, exhausted, hot and laughing, they had swum in the Olympic pool, before lying in the sun to dry. They had dinner at a native restaurant where they were served squid and other strange things, but it was all excellent. They made passionate love and he slept soundly afterward.

The next day was more of the same; the day after, they took a sailboat out and sailed around the north tip of the island, passing a coastline of rugged beauty. They went skin-diving in a warm sea alive with fish, brightly-colored, darting about.

He felt marvelous.

The next day, he played tennis so vigorously that he broke his stringing; Sharon laughed, he bought her a drink, and they went back to his room in the middle of the afternoon.

And so it went, day after day. Every once in a while, one of the other guests — and the guests were an unusually congenial and interesting group of people, it seemed to Clark — would come up and say, “Isn’t this fantastic? Isn’t this ideal?”

And Clark would have to agree. It was absolutely, completely, totally ideal.

He awoke in the middle of the night with a strange kind of abruptness; one moment he was asleep, the next moment he was wide awake, staring at the ceiling of his room.

Something was wrong.

He knew it with frightening certainty. Something was wrong. He could not say what it was, but he was quite sure.

He lay in his bed and listened.

He heard the sound of the ocean, carried on the wind through the open doors to the balcony. He heard the chattering of some nocturnal bird, hidden in the trees around the hotel.

Otherwise, nothing.

He sat up. The room was familiar, his room, his bed, his desk in the corner, with the letter to Ron Harmon at Aero that he had begun to write, but had never managed to finish. Propped up against one wall was his tennis racket with the broken string.

It was all perfectly normal. He sat up slowly, trying to decide what disturbed him. He got out of bed and walked toward the bathroom, and as he did so, he kicked something on the floor.

He turned on the light and looked.

A tray.

It was a simple iron tray, scratched and battered, the tray of a cheap all-night cafeteria. There was a bowl of soup on the tray, thin yellow gruel, now cold. Next to the bowl was a plate of unappetizing hash, and a glass of water.

He stared at the tray for a long time. It seemed absurd, this cheap tray and this awful food, sitting in his room. How had it gotten there?

He looked closely. The hash had been partially eaten; a fork lay on the plate. He scooped up a bite of the hash and tasted it.

Awful. Revolting. He went to the bathroom to spit it out, turning on the light, and—

He stared at his image in the mirror. His eyes were pink and haggard; he had a heavy growth of beard, at least several days’ worth; his skin was pale.

And then, as he stood in the bathroom, he heard the growl of thunder, and the wind blew more strongly. He frowned, spit out the hash, and walked onto the balcony.

He could hardly believe his eyes.

The dock was bare; the boats had all been taken in and lashed to the trees on shore. The beach was wet and ugly-looking. Beneath him, the polished wood dance floor was soaked, puddles standing about everywhere; the bar was closed down, and covered with a canvas tarpaulin. He looked at the flowers on the balcony, which had climbed snaking through the railing. They were closed, beaten down by rain, battered-looking.

As he stood there, the first drops of rain began to fall from leaden skies, and the thunder rolled again.