A/N: Warning for suicidal themes/thoughts.
Everything a Man Could Want
They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town
With political connections to spread his wealth around
Born into society, a banker's only child
He had everything a man could want – power, grace and style
But I work in his factory,
And I curse the life I'm living, and I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be… Richard Cory.
Papers print his pictures almost everywhere he goes
Richard Cory at the opera, Richard Cory at a show
And the rumors of his parties and the orgies on his yacht
Heart and soul he must be happy, with everything he's got
He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch
They were grateful for his patronage, and they thanked him very much
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read,
'Richard Cory went home last night… and put a bullet through his head.'
But I work in his factory,
And I curse the life I'm living, and I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be… Richard Cory
~ "Richard Cory", Simon and Garfunkel
…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
He bounced gently on the side of the guest bed in the Dubois chamber, the rhythm at odds with the shifting techno beat from the party downstairs, staring at the small white bottle with the blue label in his hand. With only the bedside lamp on, it took concentration to read the black words on the white part of the bottle, and he wasn't exactly clear-headed tonight, thanks to Jack and José, among others. He didn't always keep track.
One soft-gel per dose. Non-habit-forming. Good to know.
He bounced again, considering remotely the fact that he was lucky no one from the party was using this room. Then again, it was third-floor. Couples rarely ascended past the second-floor rooms of the mansion, and he locked the doors of the rooms he knew his father would be furious to have violated.
Surely they didn't keep guest bedrooms stocked with sleeping pills, in addition to every hotel toiletry imaginable? Maybe it was part of Morgana's stash.
Gentle bounce. It wasn't a mattress with springs, and all he did was sink into the memory foam, causing his phone to slide over the coverlet, down into his depression to tap against his thigh.
His father could dry-swallow painkillers. That had always been one of the worst sort of reprimands, in his opinion. Right in the middle of a conversation – read argument – he'd pull out his own tiny bottle, pop the lid, tap a couple out and toss them in his mouth to be swallowed, the implication unmistakeable. What a headache you are…
He would have to get a glass of water from the bathroom. Should've thought of that when he was in there puking up hors d'oeuvres and booze, minutes ago.
Take it with the drink? He'd been handed the tall skinny glass clinking with ice by one of the servers in the game room – he was sure she was only wearing the one garment and it was probably one that could fit inside his fist, crumpled up. Painkillers or sleeping pills, though?
Because he was done. He was done.
Weary of everything, but still staring at the bottle of pills. What happens if you take more than 50mgs? How many is too many?
Would he fall asleep and not wake up for a week?
Or would he not wake up at all.
The techno beat changed from hammers-on-glass to approaching-freight-train.
But wait – if he slept for a week, wouldn't he just not wake up anyway? Dehydration? What if he drank as much water as he could with the pills before he fell asleep… and then piss himself and the whole bed with its annoying sponginess. That would be attractive for whoever found him. And run the risk of breaking one of Uther's cardinal rules. No bad press.
His body pressed gradually lower into the mattress, and his phone slid toward his knee, finding no friction against the expensive fabric of his trousers.
He picked it up and thumbed it on. Google ask-a-question. Hey Jeeves, what happens if I take too many sleeping pills?
Sleep Better At Night, Drug-Free! Fall Asleep Faster And Stay Asleep Longer So You Can Wake Up Feeling Refreshed. Understand Your Insomnia. Common and Potentially Harmful Side Effects.
Generally, sleeping pills do not often cause lethal overdose when taken alone…
What about with half a liter of mixed alcohol?
Ask A Doctor: Side Effects.
He huffed and rubbed his eye with a knuckle of the hand holding the bottle – the soft-gels nestled together suggestively.
What happens when I take – he did the math in his head – 1600mgs of… he turned the bottle. Diphenhydramine HCl.
Drug Overdose. Symptoms, Reasons, Risk factors, First Aid… Call Poison Control Center.
Oh, poison control. That might be good, they were a reputable source of information. He tapped the screen twice and put it on speaker so he wouldn't have to lift the phone to his ear.
All pleasantries aside, I'm curious about the answer to my question. What happens if you take 1600 milligrams of diphenhydramine hydro-chloride? That's how you pronounce it, right? That's what capital-H-Capital-C-lowercase-L stands for, right?
Sir, have you or anyone near you ingested-
No, no one's actually ingested anything, I'm just wondering. What happens. Could you take, say six of them and sleep for seventy-two hours? Would you wake up to pee and eat, or not? At what point would you worry about permanent damage to, say, your brain or your liver? And then wouldn't it be easier simply to take half a dozen more and be unaware of the consequences? Or would it be better to take too many milligrams of acetaminophen instead?
Sir, we are just as interested in answering the question as you are – could you hold please for a moment?
He rolled his eyes. You'd think professionals would know. Isn't that what the website said, staffed with pharmacists and so on? Over another recorded opening greeting, Thank you for calling, he said aimlessly, "It's not like it's that big of a deal. I was just curious, you know…"
…Be with you in a moment.
Another voice came on the line, unhurried and relaxed. "Hey, I'm glad you called. What's on your mind tonight?"
Trying not to have anything on my mind tonight. He realized he'd said that out loud when the other person – a young man, by the sound of it - gave a soft, easy laugh that reached through the invisible connection.
"I hear you. Anything in particular?"
"Well, I called about these sleeping pills." He repeated the dosage and type. "I wanted to know what happens when I take six or eight or all of them."
A moment of silence that wasn't silence, it was the soft clatter of a keyboard in use, not unlike the gel-pills in his bottle. He tipped it, listening to both sounds as the baseline of the downstairs music thumped irritatingly suggestive of horizontal partying. He couldn't help envisioning thrusting hips and spilling drinks…
"Huh. Modern sleeping aids are safer than their predecessors. Fatal doses differ based on the type… and OTC meds are a helluva lot safer than prescription stuff. But um, it talks about excessive lethargy and abdominal pain and breathing irregularity and seizures, too… What… were you thinking would happen if you took six or eight? Or all of them?"
"Trying not to think, remember? Keep up," he told the voice.
Which didn't crackle with forming ice, or inform him he was going to be hold-ed to someone else to deal with. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"
He couldn't help it. It popped out of the depths of his psyche, some sepia-tinted childhood photo, some last-minute replacement babysitter trying to amuse and distract with out-of-the-box thinking, and old videos.
"A very good place to start?" he snarked.
The person the voice belonged to caught the reference, which was mildly surprising. "Well… I suppose that's good for teaching children to sing. Neither of us are Julie Andrews. And adulthood can be… a lot more complicated than eight notes of a musical scale."
"What are you, a shrink?" he said confusedly. "Thought you all were supposed to have degrees in chemistry or pharmacology or something."
"I'm… still in school. Studying for psychology? Headed for a counselor's certificate? I'd ask you how I'm doing, but this is your quarter-and-dime. We're talking about you."
"They pay you to sit and listen?" he said skeptically.
"They don't pay me. Volunteer. And we can take as much time as you like. So, shoot."
Huh. He let his knees bend, sliding him off the dented side of the bed onto the plush carpet floor. Someone who didn't know him. Who didn't want anything from him. Wasn't getting paid, was only offering to… listen.
"No one ever listens to me," he said softly. He hadn't said that since he was twelve, and Uther had slapped his face for raising his voice, and told him, You have nothing to say that's worth listening to.
His mind was still half-stuck on the old loop he never realized he had. When you read, you begin with A-B-C…
"It's not A-B-C," he said, staring blindly at some watercolor masterpiece framed and hung on the wall of a room Uther paid to keep immaculate, and no one ever used. "It's more like, W-T-F. Like you face-planted on your keyboard from exhaustion or frustration, or… the time your sister changed your settings to Cyrillic. Or Mandarin. And locked them." Just before that big merger-meeting with Concord Bank and Trust.
"You have a sister? Tell me about her."
Morgana. He didn't say the name aloud, though. Even half-inebriated, he knew the rules.
"She's… a freaking force of nature. A speeding freight train. A speeding bullet. She's just like my father and – on purpose, I think? Like she decided when she was a little kid that she was going to be him, only better. Cuz women are inherently better than men, obviously."
There was a chuckle of shared humor and gender. "Older or younger?"
"Older. You'd think that would make her softer or more sympathetic, less antagonistic, wouldn't you? Since our moms died…"
"Sorry – your moms?"
"Oh, we're half-siblings. Same dad, different moms. Sometimes I wonder if they died to get away from our dad. Because, pre-nup. Divorce wasn't an option." He paused, tilting his head back against the mattress and shifting his tailbone on the carpet. "That probably sounds like a horrible thing to say."
"You're allowed," the voice said mildly. "To me, you're allowed to say anything."
He immediately said something he'd never been allowed to say, as a child. And even if he was the cool younger generation, suave and sophisticated was more to his father's taste than rebellious and disaffected.
"And…" Maybe the voice struggled with disconcertion, or with amusement, to respond like a sympathetic listener. "How did that feel?"
He couldn't help it – he started to laugh. When a terribly-appropriate response became terribly inappropriate. He snickered – he giggled – how long had it been since…
Tears were running down his face, and the sounds he was making weren't mirthful anymore. "Damn. Sorry, it's just – it feels like a really long time since I…"
"Don't apologize, it's fine. Since you what?"
"Since I laughed." He was astonished these words were coming out of his mouth. He never allowed these sorts of words, and rarely thought the thoughts, not anymore. "Since I let go."
"Let go of what?"
He rolled his head to stare at the phone, and let the seconds tick by. Of what? Everything. Years… layers… weight, and defenses. Expectations and suppressions and obligations. Failures.
"It's too much," he whispered. "It's too much. And I can't… can't bear it. Can't get it off, can't get out from under, can't leave…" Unless he swallowed the bottle. Found in – well, not his bed, but a bed. Awful accident. Family in mourning. Tragedy, not scandal.
"Your sister loves you?"
Love you, little brother. Tossed sarcastically with a smirk, usually after some victory of hers. Love you too, he'd toss back in an effort to disguise the frustration she provoked. Did either of them mean it?
"Do you love her?"
Yes. That was what made it hurt. He'd always do what she asked – this meeting, this party, this signature on this check to this charity – but he didn't think she understood why he'd always do what she asked. Just like his father never understood.
In the hopes that one day it would all add up to enough for them to love him, too.
"Does she know you love her?"
When they talked, they talked schedule, and policy and expected behavior. Ever since he could remember, even in grade school when it was his father talking to both of them. She gave him orders in-between phone calls. And a genuine, I would do anything for you Morgana because I really do love you and I want you to be happy – satisfied – relaxed… would be met with a look of shock, and then quickly shrugged-mocked off.
"Perhaps it is the same for her, then," the voice suggested; Arthur must have been speaking at least some of his thoughts aloud. "It goes unexpressed, but she loves you. Can you imagine how she'd feel after your six or eight or all?"
"Disappointed," he said, with honest sarcasm. And Uther would be irritated, like he'd left a meeting at its recess, not its conclusion. Another sign of incompetence, leaving duties unfulfilled. Surrender. Quitter. No matter what they showed the press, no matter what the people believed…
"Sometimes… family isn't the best support in times of crisis. That fear of disappointing them can be quite… smothering. Tell me about your friends."
His thoughts dropped two floors down. Guest lists, official and unofficial, mailed invitations or mass-texted at the last minute. Routinely in the three-digits – anything less was hardly worth the enormous effort and expense. He could recite names to this disembodied voice for an hour and scarcely be through half his contacts. And it wasn't all, cute girl taking selfies with his phone and putting their number with a message – all boiling down to Call me; I'll be with you for your looks and money and popularity. I'll eagerly sleep with you just to brag that I did. I'll play the adoring girlfriend so I can fly to exotic places and party on the fleet of yachts and wear the million-dollar dress plus jewels to the opera and act totally enthralled if… maybe I get to keep the bracelet? Or the earrings?
"Um." The voice said, interpreting his silence, "What about coworkers? Classmates? Teachers or advisors?"
Please sign this nondisclosure so we can sue you when you tell a reporter – or post on your social media – that Richard Arthur Cory is having an emotional crisis.
"You still there?"
An existential question. Was he, still here.
"I wasn't kidding when I said nobody listens to me. There's no one I can talk to. It's never quiet, you know, people always asking me things, asking me for things, telling me things…"
Uther and Morgana and their assistants and his own assistants and the lawyers and chairpeople of the corporation or charity. And when he spoke, it was decisions and orders. Socially? They all talked about everybody else. Nick's new Ferrari, Sally's new boob job, and did you hear that the representative from the third district was caught with enough oxy to be charged with distribution and not one but two prostitutes, of different genders my dear, or so I hear. Snigger… who even knows these days…
"You don't enjoy your work?"
He allowed himself to tip sideways on the carpet, laying the phone next to him and relaxing onto his back. The ceiling was vaulted and paved – did one say paved for a ceiling? – with patterned tiles of some sort, painted white.
"That's a loaded question," he said. "There's times I think I love the work."
Given a genuine challenge by the supervisors, the low-level, self-conscious, ingratiating minions, this is our problem and we can't see a solution. Being creative with the numbers – juggling or introducing some fourth- and fifth-party bartering, or even… the look in the eyes of the kids in the cancer ward that year their Santa fell through and he was tasked with finding a new one an hour before the celebration – massive, televised live on three networks – and he'd gone dressed in a fluffy white beard and red-velvet beer gut.
And in the morning, both Uther and Morgana had reamed him for not making a personal appearance because no one had recognized him, not even his family.
"It's me," he said, turning his head on the carpet to address his phone. "It's all me, of course. I'm not… misanthropic enough to think, I'm not surrounded by decent friendly people daily, who'd give their kidney to a friend who needed it, to say nothing of the shirt off their back. It's just me. Everywhere I go, there I am. And when people look at me, that's all they see. Me."
"Hm… What do you think you'd like to do about that?"
"Sleeping pills," he said immediately. "Just – oblivion. For a few days. A week, maybe. No one asking me for anything, no one telling me what to do…"
"A vacation?" the voice suggested hopefully.
He snorted. That was even worse. The ordinary in his life made local headlines – the extraordinary hit the internet and sometimes went viral. Vacations were scrutinized for scandal, and he was aware it could be cleverly manufactured for the tabloids.
But maybe, if he could put on a pair of old sneakers and jeans with holes in them and drive a rusted Ford to one coast or another wearing a ballcap and sunglasses and blend in, find a town where their own local news was more important to them than him, and just… sit. Under a picnic table umbrella with the sound of the waves and someone's radio, or in an old smelly bar where the other patrons ignored him to argue about sports teams…
Unless he stole a beater pickup and robbed one of his own charities for the clothing, it would never work. He didn't know anyone who'd loan him old, nondescript clothes or car and keep it quiet. And any attempt to procure those things would be met with public curiosity – speculation – attention.
"Not really an option," he sighed.
And the other route – take any of the cars, the jet, the boats, seclude himself forcibly in some resort penthouse, would only last as long as it took either of his relations to get there and reprimand him for selfishness. What were you thinking! Responsibilities shirked! Finances wasted!
Buy a new identity. Buy an island and make a law banning everyone from its shores… Retire.
It wasn't to be thought of. After his father's death Morgana would be twice as bad. And before his father's death, he'd want to see Arthur well-started on a family of his own to tyrannize in his turn, which required him to choose one of these socialites to propose both marriage and family to… The future tunneled away, bright spot diminishing in clarity and size til all around him yawned dim and dark and oppressive.
"Maybe a re-focus, then. If you don't think that trying to speak to your family about the way you feel-"
"Pushy much?" he interrupted. Not rudely – just tiredly.
Silence.
"Sorry," said the voice, sounding sheepish. "I get ahead of myself sometimes. Rush toward solutions. I want to help. I… I want to know I'm helping, and so often these conversation are just, getting stuff off your chest. Verbalization helps of course, but that's just the first step, and I… don't often know that any other steps have been taken."
"These conversations?" he said. "People call Poison Control to complain about their lives often?"
"Ah…"
He got it a second before the voice said. That secondary phone number, dialed by the first operator from Poison Control, and he'd said…
"This isn't Poison Control? Who did you think you called?"
"Who did I call?" he said, his position on the floor and the time of night and the alcohol his system had absorbed, carrying away any consternation and leaving a fair bit of apathetic residue behind.
"We're a twenty-four-hour crisis hotline?" the voice said.
He stared at the phone. Then he stared at the ceiling. Then he humphed sardonically to himself.
"Lucky accident? You didn't mean to call us?"
"I probably couldn't have called any other number and found someone willing to chat like girls for-" he raised his head, tipping his hand to see his watch. "How many hours now?" When had he made the first phone call?
"No, probably not." Comfortable silence. "Still considering those sleeping pills, or do you feel better?"
"I feel better," he said toward his phone, and was surprised to discover it was the truth.
"I'm glad." And the voice sounded sincere, which was also a surprise. A stranger cared about him for real, and not just because it was him, or because he was supposed to.
"Do you study us? Record the calls so you can improve? Get class credit?"
"No. No. And, no."
"How long have you been doing this?" he asked curiously. He felt a bit floaty-tired. Less like he was tied with seaweed at the bottom of a very heavy lake, and more like – just drifting down a ripply river. It was better than anything he could have taken. "Because if you were working from a script, I didn't notice. It wasn't awkward."
"There's no script. We get a little training, a little practice with someone who's had experience. Coaching."
"So this is what you do. Coax someone to spill their problems, sift through them, and… what? Recommend therapy?"
"There's a reason therapy helps. It's not only girls who have to talk, and release the internal tension of frustration and disappointment, not to mention things like grief and trauma and fear. Loss, or depression, or isolation. And then begin to brainstorm workable solutions."
Isolation. The word resonated with him, and bothered him. He was so rarely alone – yet he was always alone.
"Therapy isn't an option either," he said. Reluctantly?
It could never be anonymous; someone would find out and his father would be furious and Morgana mocking… And a professional would be paid to fix the problem ASAP, not just listen indefinitely.
"That's too bad. I'd like to make you promise me to call this number again if you start having similar thoughts and feelings, but in the end… you've got to do things for yourself, don't you, not other people. But we can help you if you let us. The number's national, but it redirects you to a local center. So we're literally, here for you."
He didn't quite believe. Experience had taught him otherwise. But he repeated the phone number showing on his screen, which wasn't the one he'd dialed for Poison Control.
"Yeah, that's us. Twenty-four-seven, remember."
"Are we done?" he said, feeling himself sink just slightly. "That's it? Pat on the head and take the bottle out of my hand and send me on my way? Yet another disaster averted! Another tally-mark on your call-center whiteboard."
Pause.
"Do you want to tell me your name?" the voice asked. "I don't know if you'll believe me, but I'll light a candle for you this week."
He jerked away from his phone, staring at it. "No, I don't want to tell you my name!" he snapped. "I thought this was supposed to be anonymous."
"It is. Only I just got the feeling… you wanted to feel like you mattered to me. Not just another phone call out of thousands."
Thousands. He swallowed.
"Do you keep track of numbers?" he asked.
"Do you want me to keep track of you?"
He considered. Would it be weird to think of some stranger, some student of psychology who went to some kind of church, thinking about him? Not him, rich boy and media darling, but him.
"It's… Arthur," he said, feeling self-conscious. A middle name. On record but never, to his knowledge, publicized.
"Oh," the voice said, sounding just… off.
Interested, taken aback – but Arthur was an ordinary enough name, wasn't it? He'd been named after a colleague of his grandfather's, and had met at least one other – because no one named their kid Art. One of the hospital patients, though not one of the cancer kids.
"I suppose then you can refer to me as Merlin," the voice said, sounding cheeky in an endearing way. Like Morgana's teasing, but without the acerbic edge.
"You think you can work magic?" he scoffed.
"It is magic of a sort, isn't it? Levitation of someone's spirits? Teleportation of hope into the closed room of someone's heart? Curing the diseases of the mind with words?"
"You're taking a poetry class on the side, aren't you?" he said dryly.
"It's an elective." The voice was playfully defensive.
Merlin's voice. And he had to admit, Merlin was kind of a magic word even as a pseudonym. Evocative of power and mystery – even as his own name was meant to suggest the controlling, reigning sense of power. Richard the Lionheart. King Arthur with Excalibur. Great deeds.
Only he wasn't great. Or special. He was of average attractiveness and intelligence – it was only a trick of birth that he was this town's one-percent.
"Did you go to college? Take electives?"
"Yeah…" he said. Downstairs, the subtle thrum of baseline that had replaced the techno cut by half the volume and he tensed, listening.
"What did you take? What did you enjoy? What did you ever do for fun as a kid?"
Still listening within the house, he could hear voices shouting his name. He didn't move, didn't respond… and a moment later, felt rather than heard the front door slam shut with finality. Imagined rather than heard the last of those expensive engines starting to leave the drive. Maybe they thought he'd left with someone. That had happened before, though it was usually only, a ride to one of the family's other homes, or one of the apartments when he was through for the night but the party wasn't.
The house was silent. And then it began to feel odd to him that he should spend hours on the phone with a stranger. Tomorrow… What was tomorrow? Or later today, rather. It would be something, of course, and he'd be in trouble if he was late or unprepared, or exhausted enough to seem hungover.
"Listen… Merlin," he said awkwardly. "I think I'm gonna go now. Go to bed, I mean. It's late and I'm tired…"
"Yeah. Tired can be good."
"It is a good tired," he agreed, feeling stupid. Lying on the carpet on the floor of a guest room, baring even anonymously personal secrets to a student of psychology because he'd mistakenly called a suicide hotline. "I'm going to be busy tomorrow, too…"
"Always good to have a tomorrow to be busy," Merlin said. Cheerful, and no trace of disappointment or regret. And why would he? They didn't know each other.
"So. Thanks again," he said. "Good night."
"Good night," Merlin told him – and then with that unbelievable sincerity, "Good luck."
(not the end…)