a persistent illusion

-Ohh lemme tell you, I ran into Ronny Halberstan. Remember Ronny?

- Noo.

- Guy who put up some of the seed money for my club…

- Okay?

- Guy is strung out on h.

- Really?

-Ohh. He’s about ninety pounds, looks like an Auschwitz survivor. Gave him twenty bucks, told him to go get a sandwich or something. He won’t. He’ll use it for drugs. But my God, I didn’t even recognize him. He approached me. Can you imagine what it took for him to do that? I know he lost a boatload on some internet stocks…I mean he’s always had his demons, they go very deep, you know, he was always a depressed sorta character, always on the verge of suicide, never knowing where he stood with men or women. I’m not knockin’ him for it ‘cause the guy obviously needs help…

- Right…

-My point is, how does a guy who had so much potential and so much talent succumb to that sort of a breakdown?

- I have no idea.

- Guy went to Harvard, for chrissakes…

- People are very complex, Mel…

- …Now I kinda feel bad just flippin’ him a twenty…maybe I shouldda…Whaddaya think? Should I have intervened more than I did…?

- It’s hard to say…

- What would you have done?

- Probably exactly what you did…

- I mean, it’s not like we were friends or anything. He was the money guy. I knew him very superficially, we never even socialized. Quite frankly, I thought he was a pain in the a*s, but who the hell am I…?

- I don’t know what to tell you, Mel…

- …the guy had no shame at all about coming up to me…like the continuity of our association had never been broken…

- Where’d you see him?

- The airport, of all places…Joanie’s father’s sick, he has the first stages of pancreatic cancer, so she flew out. I was dropping her off…what was Ronny doin’ there, though? That’s my question. I’m leaving the terminal, I hear this voice. "Mel!" I turn around, I’m starin’ at this bag o’ bones tryin’ to get a read on his face thinking, "Who is this guy?" He says, "It’s Ronny," he says. "Ronny? Jesus Christ, that’s you?" He says, "Yah, how ya doing?" I was so blown away. You know I never think about what I say half the time, I say a lot of stupid s**t. I say, "Ronny, Jesus, what happened to you?" And he goes into this whole long drama about being hooked on the h and everything…and I’m standing there with my jaw on the floor thinking, this guy used to be like an Adonis! He was a bodybuilder, for chrissakes! …My first instinct was to reach into my wallet and give him a twenty, I dunno why, I guess I was nervous, I couldn’t even look at him, I mean, it was painful to look at him, I didn’t know what the hell else to do. What should I have done? What else should I have done?

- I don’t know, Mel…

- It’s nuts, right?

- That’s life…

- I know but it’s crazy…

- I know it’s crazy…

- Should I have done more?

- Whaddaya gonna do?

- I don’t know…I suppose I could’ve left my number with him…

- What’s he gonna do with your number?

- In case of an emergency, I dunno…

- How involved do you wanna get? You wanna perform an intervention on him? Check him into rehab? Pay for his rehab? How far do you take

it? And do you trust him?…You did the right thing…

- I feel like I owe him something, though…

- What do you owe him for? For giving you a portion of the seed money for that club of yours? He got his money back, didn’t he…?

- Yah.

- So what do you owe him?

- I dunno…

- Well, if you don’t know, then you probably don’t owe him

anything…

- …I dunno, he sorta haunts me…

- Haunts you?

- …the image of him standing in the terminal haunts me…he looked like he had the collective pain of mankind on his face…I know it’s nuts, I can’t explain it, but I’ve been having nightmares about him…his face…his emaciated body…two of his teeth were missing…oh, he had such an odor, he smelled of death…I dunno what the hell death smells like, but I’m sure he smelled like it…it was nauseating…and he had these lesions on his neck…

- Maybe he’s got A.I.D.S.

- I dunno what the hell he’s got…I’ll tell you, though, it scared the hell outta me…you know what it was like? It was like in A Christmas Carol when Marley comes back and tells Scrooge whatever the hell he tells him. It was like that…So you’re thinking I’m cool…I don’t need to…call him or follow up with him or anything…

- Why, because he haunts you?

- …No, you’re right…leave it alone…