The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(41)

Immediately a hand shot in the air. It belonged to a middle-aged man whose knee bounced up and down like the needle of a sewing machine. “Hi, I’m Doug. I had a really bad week. My daughter invited a bunch of her friends over for a board game and they were loud. I came downstairs to get a drink. I wanted to tell them to be quiet, but I didn’t want to interfere because my wife had warned me to stay out of their way. Plus, she was already mad at me because she says I never help around the house. Which isn’t true. I mean, I run the vacuum and I empty the dishwasher sometimes. Anyway, I couldn’t say anything to my daughter and her friends, but it’s like, I couldn’t take the noise, either. So I just stood there, in the kitchen, feeling like I might explode.”

A woman in a nurse’s uniform who was slouching in her chair, arms crossed, sat up suddenly. “It happens to me, too. I’m Adriana, by the way. Sometimes I just want to scream when my kids ask me to take them to the park or the movies. I can’t go out looking like this.” She uncrossed her arms then, and I saw that her left hand was missing its ring and pinky fingers. “But I know I can’t say anything, because it’ll only make them think that my ex-boyfriend was right about me. About my temper, I mean. I’m in so much pain all the time. That’s what they don’t understand.”

I could practically feel the heat of Fierro’s disdain radiating from him. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, I thought. Maybe I should’ve insisted that he go through the VA, even though they wouldn’t offer him the private counseling he wanted and would just send him home with another prescription for Paxil or Zoloft or Wellbutrin. But then Fierro did something I didn’t expect: he raised his hand.

“Ah,” Rossi said. “We have a new member tonight. Please, introduce yourself.”

“My name is Bryan Fierro. It’s hard to find someone to talk to sometimes, so I ’preciate you all having me here. My problem is, I can’t sleep. I don’t mean, like, occasional insomnia, everyone gets that sometimes. What I mean is, I never get more than three or four hours of sleep, ever, no matter what I do. Been going on for years. I’ve tried everything. You name it, I’ve tried it. Even chamomile tea. You know how fucked up a guy is when he starts drinking a tea he can’t even spell. Nothing works. I stay up all night and think. Like, I think myself into circles.”

I looked at Fierro only once—when the word insomnia came out of his mouth—then stared at my shoes until it was over.

“Anger can cause all kinds of problems,” Rossi said. “And insomnia is certainly one of them. Lack of sleep can lead to exhaustion, which can lead to poor decision-making, which in turn leads to even more anger. It’s an ugly chain reaction. You may want to talk to your doctor about getting a sleeping aid. Without proper rest, it’s harder to make good choices, explore the source of your anger, and try to control it.”

“Right,” Fierro said, nodding. “Right.”

An older man with tattooed arms raised his hand to speak. He worked for Home Depot, he said, and had been put on probation at work because he’d had an outburst with a customer over an order of window shades. Another guy, a long-haul truck driver, said he missed his wife while he was gone, but as soon as he came back home they’d fight until it was time for him to leave again.

Finally, the wall clock chimed nine o’clock and the session was over. I waited until Fierro and I had left the community center and were alone in my car before I turned to him. “You think that stunt you pulled in there was funny?”

He thumped me lightly on the arm. “Kind of. Admit it, it was funny.”

“You can be such an asshole sometimes.”

“I told you it’d be a bunch of pussies talking about their feelings.”

“Try calling them that to their faces, see what happens.”

“Dude. Relax, it’s not a big deal.”

“Everything’s always a joke to you.”

Fierro leaned in. “What’s that?”

“You heard me. So don’t act like you didn’t.”

“Come on, don’t make such a big deal out of it. I won’t do it next time.”

“There won’t be a next time,” I said, starting the car and backing out of my parking spot. I was getting tired of his antics. If he didn’t want to get help, I wasn’t going to make him. Let him do whatever the hell he wanted. I turned the dial on the radio, changing stations. I was looking for the news, but the folk and country station came first and I settled on that instead. My father had been in a folk band before he met my mother, and I’d grown up listening to that music at home—that was how I’d become interested in playing guitar.

Fierro took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair. “I liked those people. Seriously.”

But that was the trouble. I could never be sure he was serious. “Yeah, whatever.”

“And the group leader, what’s-his-name, he was nice.”

“Rossi.”

“Seems like a good guy.”

“He is. You’re really going to be back next week?”

“I said I would, and I will. Wanna go bowling?”

“It’s getting late.”

“Dude. It’s only nine.”

I thought for a minute. “Let’s go to Desert Arcade.”