Chapter Eleven:

A Sliver Of Hope

Burton Peck glanced up from his sketching in time to catch Michael Hope in fluid movement. It immediataly sharpened into focus at the diminutive figure appeared dressed for a long run.

Peck's expression registered a rather curious mixture of morbid curiosity and shocked alarm at the wasted remains of what had once been a robust and healthy young man.

"Michael, just what the Hell are you trying to prove? That you can stand out in a rainstorm and eventually reach the point where the drops just dance around you and keep you totally dry?"

Hope turned with an unrehearsed expression of surprise, born from being caught totally off-guard. "Just what are you babbling on about? If this is one of your desperate attempts to come up with some original lyrics for "The Great American Rock Song", then you're doing a piss-poor job at it". Hope smiled inwardly with the relief of a man who has regained despertately fumbled footing.

Peck slammmed his fist onto the heavy, oak table and hollered in muffled tones as he felt his hand buckle. "Don't be so freaking cute, Michael! You know what I'm getting at. You look terrible, absolutely God-awful, and after all of your flimsy, bullshit promises to get over this damned starving crap! Should we start planning your funeral or what."

Peck could see that twinges of panic were plucking at his friend's protruding spine. Cracking his knuckles in a flutter of nervous aggitation, Michael stammered dryly, "Just lay off this stuff, will you, Burton? You're blowing this up into something that it's not. You been reading about Karen Carpenter again? We are two different individuals, so don't forget it, okay? I'm on my way out for a walk, unless you're going to tie me to a chair or something".

Peck sprang angrily to his feet and grabbed Michael, frail as he was, by his scrawny forearm. "So you can burn off another four hundred calories that you don't freaking have to spare? You're crazy, you know that? Your thinking's gotten all hopelessly screwed up and you are virtually incapable of seeing what you are doing to yourelf! And you think that I and the rest of the people who, for some stupid reason, give a damn abot you, are going to sit by and watch as you destroy yourself? You're loonier than I thought!"

Hope struggled to free himself from Peck's talon-like grip. "Get your damned hands off me! You're the one who's crazy! Stop harping about this over and over!! I can't take it anymore!"

Finally liberated from remaining a frozen, captive audience to Peck's soliloquey on the "finer points of guilt", Julian abruptly left, giving his front door a healthy slam that capped off an exit worthy of Bette Davis.

Peck sank back in his chair, defeat wrapping its weary arms around his tightening chest, wherein a riccocheting heart bounced off the walls of its chamber. "Damn him!" he cried, clamping his teeth together. He was oblivious to the fact that the edge of his tongue was caught between those sharp, pearly whites.

He swept Oxymoron's "Machine" up in a flourish of fury and fear and hurled it against the wall with a force that splintered the CD's plastic cover into razor-sharp fragments, freckling the rich Indiab carpet of which Michael was particularly partal.

Then Peck did something that had, until this moment, been a stranger to him for over three triumpant years: He reached for a bottle of the "forbidden elixer" from Michael's liquor cabinet, and, after glaring at it with a mixure of self-despising lust and curdling disgust, poured a glass of the bourbon. He downed it in a single gulp, savouring its famiilar, yet long gone essense. Sitting down on the sinfully comfortable couch, he drained the remainder of the glass with the gusto of a man who had been perishing of thirst. "Dammit", he mumbled, defeat filling his mouth like the foul taste of rat poison, the kind he had injested as an inquisitive three-year-old.

Peck would not stop until the bottle was unceremoniously "killed in action".

* * * * *
The uncompromsing morning sun shot a glace through the window in Burton Peck's direction as he lay sprawled across the dining room table. He was in the unconscious post of the alchol-saturated individual who's quietly oblivious to a world of light and movement.

A shard of yellow, heated clarity lifted one eyelid, then zeroed in for the kill as it pierced Eddie's red-veined eye and stabbed him into wakefulness. An effort to lift his lead-coated, mangle-haired head proved futile for the moment, so Peck opted for more sleep.

Suddenly, a scizzored rapping at the door cut into the muffling curtain of the "king of early-morning hangovers", forcing Taylor to struggle quiveringly to his unsteady feet and force his way into Michael's front hallway with the hesitance of a recently blinded man.

Turning the knob in a awkward movement, he pulled open the wooden door, revealing none other than Gill Giles. Gill's even-tempered expression altered almost immediately, however, upon setting eyes on the unmistakenly ailing Peck. "Guess I don't have to ask how you spent the evening, do I?"

Peck turned away, dismissing Gill's judgmental comment with a half-hearted wave of his hand. "Save it", he mumbled, heading slowly toward the kitchen for a jolt of coffee, preferably brewed-unto-death. "Want a caffeine fix? I sure as Hell could use one".

"Yeah, I can see that", muttered Gill, picking up the empty bottle. "For one thing, I cannot believe that you started drinking again, but did so at Michael's place. Have you no shame, man?"

Peck turned in his tracks, anger scurrying among his even features like an angry rat. "Look. You don't know anything about the circumstances and what's more, I really resent your sanctimoneous freaking garbage right now!"

Gill ran caloused fingers through his newly-curled hair. "You know, you could have at least called Anna to say that you wouldn't be home last night. She's worried sick about you".

"Damn! I never thought about that! She expected me at midnight. Hell, I expected me at midnight. It's just that yesterday was so very strange". The Richter scale in his brain registered an alarmingly high number. "But, wouldn't she just figure I stayed over with Michael?"

Gill folded his arms in his customary gesture of annoyance. "That's actually what I explained to her to calm her down".

"She could have called".

"She did, asshole. But obviously you were in the "land of the lost" and didn't hear the damed phone ring. What's the matter with you anyway, Burton? This isn't like you at all".

Peck felt like one of those hapless wooden ducks at the carnival being relegated to moving stiffly back and forth while some gawky jerk in a vain attempt to impres his chick shoots at it with a suction-cup gun. He realized that there were two choices he could make at this point: Continue to let Bryan take verbal pot shots or change the subject completely. He enthusiastically opted for the latter. "We have to discuss something, Gill. Namely, our fearless leader".

Giles walked into the spacious kitchen where Peck was fumbling with Julian's coffee filters. "Problems with Michael?"

"You have to ask?"

Gill frowned, his concern marked evidently on his face. "Burton, I've tried many, many times over the past five months to get through to him, to pound inot that thick head of his that he's going to get into some really deep trouble if he keeps starving himself. Yes, I believe he's definitely slipping again, but he won't listen to reason at all".

Peck finally extricated a filter and shoved it into the coffee maker after ladelling five heaping tablespoons of coffee into it. "I don't think you and Paul realize how bad he is right now. We argued last night and Michael ended up taking off. It's his thing to do when he's cornered. I imagine he came back late and went straight upstairs to bed".

"Have you seen him today?"

"No, as a matter of fact, I haven't. Think we should go see if he's okay?" Peck frowned and snapped on the coffee machine.

Gill headed toward the staircase. "I'll go up. Maybe I can try to talk some sense ino him and see if he'll finally get help this time".

Several minutes passed. As Peck was finally able to pour himself a cup of coffee, he heard Gill running downstais, crying out in a desperate, frightened voice, "Eddie! He's not here! Anywhere! I checked all the rooms carefully, but I don't think he came back here at all".

Peck felt his stomach liquify and pour itself into his shoes. "What? He just went out for a walk, for God's sake! Where did he go, Alaska??"

Giles picked up the phone. "I'm calling 911".

"What??? Don't do that! We'll take my car and and go out looking for him. Knowing how crazy Michael's been acting lately, he's likely fallen asleep on a park bench somewhere". Ah, Peck thought with more than a slight hint of bitter irony. The charmed and privileged life of a rock icon".

Gill placed the receiver back on its cradle. "Yeah, you're probably right. They don't get too interested until someone's been missing for more than twenty-four hours. Here, before we go---call Anna before he has the entire Waco police force sent out on a wild car chase in a franic effort to recover your rotting corpse. You have been gone for more than a day and a night".

"Funny, Gill. You certainly have a way of brightening up my otherwise dull existence". Peck did let Anna know, who was, by this time, worked into a state of unbridled panic, that he was still a living and breathing member of the human race and would return home after their band's prodigal son was located.

"Well, you could have told me you were spending the night", Anna responded tersely, with an irritating mixture of annoyance and whining. "You are so totally insensitive sometimes, Burton! I'm not trying to upset you, but---"

"Well, hon, you're doing a pretty good job of it", Peck interrupted, feeling the sudden need of another drink.

Giles frowned, sensing that the Peck's conversation, barbed as it evidently was, had the unsettling potential of continuing at some length. "Wind it up, Burton, my friend. We've got to get moving. Just tell her you'll be back as soon as you can".

"Gotta go, sweetheart". Peck was relieved that had shown him a welcome escape hatch. "See you real soon, I promise". He hung up before Anna could be given the opportunity to press on with some heavy-duty, homegrown sarcasm, a product for which she was infamous. "Let's move it!" Peck snapped, fumbling in his pants pocket for car keys and sighing thankfully when his fist closed around them.

The two were just about to step out of the front door whe it hesitatingly opened to reveal the wraith-like figure of Michael himself, looking as if he'd gone twelve rounds with a world-class boxer.

"Well, just look who decided to put in an appearance". Peck drew folded arms across his chest, feelings of both substantial relief and sharp irritation fighting for dominance in a heart keeping time with his loudly tapping foot.

Michael, his face terribly drawn and etched deeply with the pained wince of severe starvation, pushed his way past his former college pal and let his coat slide to the hardwood floor. "Just leave me alone, Burton. Please".

But Peck was not about to be muzzled at this point in time. Springing on his heels, he jabbed his index finger aggressively at the air and bit his words off sharly as he spat them out."Well, I'm afraid we're going to talk about it anyway, so just hold on right there! It's bad enough that you've gone completely weird on us and began this seemingly irreversible process of automatic self-destruction, but now you go racing off into the night and don't even bother to come back until hours and hours later, with absoutely no explanation!! Gill and I are practically driven crazy worrying about you as you left yourself ripe for any kind of terrible disaster. Man, you can be a real jackass sometimes, Michael!!"

Hope started upstairs, keeping his back turned on the sputtering Peck. Then he replied in an even, metered tone, "Look, I'm a big boy and therefore perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Okay? Now if you don't mind, I'm really tired and I-I'm going to......I'm going to crash for awhile, with....with or without your permission".

As he spoke that last sentence, Michael appeared to be having a great deal of difficulty keeping himself steadily upright. Watching from below, Burton and Gill were suddenly gripped with horror, as Hope lost his footing on the stairs and, in a desperate attempt to save himself from falling, reached for the wooden bannister with both hands. He missed it completely and pitched over the structure head-first, hitting the floor in a sickeningly quiet instant, with the sound of a wet bundle of clothes being tossed carelessly from a second-storey balcony onto the cement sidewalk.

Peck stood motionless, his feet suddenly acquiring the weight of several hundred pounds. Giles, yelling a terrified "Oh my God!" rushed forward, kneeling down beside Michael's limp form, confused as to whether or not he should touch him. "Get an ambulance!" He yelled at Peck, who remained frozen and empty-eyed, as though frigid, lumpy ice cubes had invaded is bloodstream.

"Did you hear me?? Call for help, Goddammit!!" Peck, unaccustomed to dealing with emergency situations, didn't exactly possess a calm and rational demeanor.

Peck, seeming to begin moving in slow motion, with a kind of smoky, dreamlike state enveloping him, somehow made the call, momentarily forgetting the address and hanging up before the hospital confirmed it. Nonetheless, the paramedics arrived in an impressive time, obviously knowing where Michael Hope lived.

The subsequent minutes slid into a pool of unrecognizable murky water, sunbmerged and threatening to drown all of them in fear and panic. Later, neither Peck nor Giles could recall the events that transpired while the two young paramedics examined Michael and prepared him for transportation to the hospital.

Peck vaguely recalled being asked why Michael was so emaciated. "Oh, it's deliberate", he replied, sighing deeply, through lips that felt as though they had been shot full of Novocaine.

Later, in the waiting room of the hospital, Peck had absolutely no recollection of how he and Gill had gotten there or what time it was. The two of them sat, exceedingly overstressed, in virtual silence. Gill cradled his head in his hands and stared at the floor.

Patients entered in vast droves, ranging in symptomology from broken toes to massive corronaries, while their friends and families waited for one verdict or another. Finally, after what seemed an interminable length of time, a youthful, flaxen-haired doctor came walking briskly through the sliding doors, smiling symathetically. "Are you relative of Michael Hope?" She asked, looking straight at Giles and then in the direction of the obviously emotional Peck.

"Uh, no, we're just good friends. Michael's family is elsewhere. How is he?" Gill could, at times, hold tightly to his composure in a truly remarkable way.

"Well, he suffered a slight concussion from the fall, but that's not the real problem. What we have to be concerned about is why he fell in the first place. Am I correct in assuming that Michael is anorexic?"

Peck felt his stomach constricting, pulling him into a crouching position at the edge of his seat. "You would be correct in your assumption, doctor". Here it comes, Peck thought with the dread of a man who is about to have his darkest fears hit the glaring and uncompromising light of reality.

"I thought so", the unusually attractive female physician replied, perusing the chart in her hands. "When we examined him, we found that Michael's physical condition was extremely precarious. There is substantial damage to his kidneys, liver and his electrolytes are completey out of balance. In short, we nearly lost him".

Gill sat motionless, while Peck struggled to his feat and walked stiffly to a nearby water fountain. His throat had become so dry that he knew talking would have been futile without a couple of sips of the lukewarm substance. Wiping his mouth on a wrinkled sleeve, Peck turned to face the utterer of doom, whose name, it turned out, was Dr. Julia Robinson. "What are you saying, exactly? That Michael is going to die?"

Dr. Robinson produced a half-smile as a weak gesture of consolation. "Not necessarily. But if he continues to starve himself in the manner in which he's been doing so, he will die most certainly, and very soon. Therefore, since Julian is a rather extreme case, we are going to insert what is known as a hyperalimentation tube, right here", and she pointed to a spot near her collarbone, "and this will give him adequate nutrition to keep him alive".

Peck was relieved but somewhat confused. "I tried to get his doctor to have him put in the hospital weeks ago, but I was told that unless it was a matter of life and death, he couldn't do a thing".

"You're not listening to me", Dr. Robinson said firmly. "This is a matter of life and death now. We can't afford to waste anymore time".

Gill rubbed his forehead, his brief fling with composure rapidly coming to an end. "I can't believe this is happening! I had no idea things were this bad. No idea at all".

Peck put his arm around his troubled friend's shoulder. "That's what I've been trying to tell you and Paul all along, that Michael is in very serious trouble. That's why I got so mad at him all the time. It was more out of fear than anger, but there was some of that too".

"Guess we just didn't want to hear it", Giles murmured, fighting back the tears of fright and jolting shock. He turned to Dr. Robinson. "Can we see him now?"

"I don't recommend it. We're prepping him for surgery to insert the tube right now. I think we should wait for awhile before Michael has any visitors". She glanced in her sympathetic manner at Peck and said, actually to both of them, "Don't worry. He's in capable hands. We have to be optimistic".

} Driving home later, Peck's mind unfolded leaf by leaf of the lush, greener years of the past and revealed the golden bud of his and Michael's college days. The two of them were sitting in Peck's room at the residence, sharing a bottle of screwtop wine and musing about their futures as only eighteen and twenty-one-year-olds are truly capable.

Michael had smiled, replying somewhat sardonically, "Well, I don't have to worry about my father's reaction, since he's currently drowning in a tumbler of Southern Comfort as we speak. I'm not even sure if he knows I'm here".

As a teenage college student, Michael Hope had been mildly overweight, with a sloppy tangle of curly auburn hair, framing what could best be described as a classic baby face. He possessed the large, translusent blue eyes of the uninformed innocen, streaked lightly with the careful brush of the young and brooding creature of mystique. His nose was non-descript, but to compensate, he possessed, this post-pubescent man-child, a classically full, pretty-boy mouth that would do any Elvis impersonator proud.

In short, Michael looked every inch the part of the struggling musician, but unfortunately for the time frame in which he was esconsed, Hope was most definitely not "preppie material". Shy, quiet and cruelly cursed with a bad case of acne, he escaped into music whenever he could. He found very little in common with classmates whose chief activities were football and girls. What Michael had found most distasteful about his contemporaries' pursuits was the manner in which they all vied to be "inebriated lush of the week" and thus be the proud recipient of the mythical "golden beer pitcher award".

Burton Peck had been a heartily welcomed diversion from the desert of plastic faces and cardboard cutout bodies, sifting from building to building and class to class. Peck had liked Michael immediately-----he was honest, sincere and completely direct. Bullshit was a word alien to his vocabulary and his knowledge of music and musicians had even outshone Peck's.

They had begun to write songs together in early November of 1978. Peck smiled in amused recollection at a time Michael had penned a song that had been a heartfelt protest of that miserable disco fiasco of the mid-to-late seventies. This dismal phenomenon was, thankfully, beginning to grind to a halt by the close of the decade. The song had been entitled, "Malignant Discoma: Cut It Out!" and the two fledgeling musicians had performed it at the residence Christmas party that year.

Peck recalled having realized that his friend and future bandmate was not just mindlessly speculating on scenarios that would never really come to pass. He had desperately wanted out of the academic mainstream and into a world over which he could not only exercise some control, but feel comfortably at ease and secure in the knowledge that he was good at what he was doing. Michael Hope was a well-above average singer/songwriter, even in those early days.

Lee told Burton, two hours before the show, that he thought Michael to be "more reclusive and antisocial than he's ever been" and "I just can't deal with him anymore. He's changed, Burton. He's just not the same guy with whom we've worked together all these years and I hate to say it, but I really don't like him much anymore".

"Why?" Peck was curious. Julian might be weird, but certainly not unlikeable to any degree, as far as he could see, at least.

"He's become such a, well, a wet blanket. Haven't you noticed how everything is so damned serious with him now? I realize that he's quite intense and all that, but you have to have some fun in this life. What people see onstage and what we live with Michael are opposite extremes".

Peck thought quietly for a moment, feeling that Bryan was being unfair. "It hasn't been easy for him, you know", he began slowly. "and I don't think you know this, but he's into some pretty heavy shit right now, trying to pull everything together, I hope. Try to understand a little. Michael's just sort of stuck at the moment".

"Stuck?" Gill exclaimed and shook his mane of curls. "Believe me, Burton, I know a hell of a lot more than you think I do and I'll just say that we are not Michael's Goddamned babysitters! He had better get unstuck pretty freaking fast!"

As Giles walked away, Peck called out after him, "You don't have much of a heart left, Gill. Maybe you should make some internal repairs yourself".

Burton was surprised at this disturbing conversation with a man he had thought he knew well. He had been ready to write Michael off himself as a veritable basket case, turning from the anorexic issue in hopes that it would magically go away, but not now. Taylor was totally confused. "Dammit, I care", he murmured, biting his lower lip so hard that it began to bleed. "no-one else ever gave a shit about Michael until he was worth the megabucks. Maybe if someone had, he wouldn't be in the mess he's in".

Peck resolved that, following that night's performance, he would approach his ailing friend and tell him everything: That he had overheard Michael talking to Paul in the hospital and that he had seen what Michael really looked like under the flashy image of public stardom and mass adulation. "Hell, for all I know, he'll just tell me to shove my concern up my ass", Peck mused, rolling up his shirtsleeves, "but that's okay. That kind of crap I can deal with".

Burton sat reflecting upon his life prior to being a rock music icon. As he did so, strong memories of an idealistic youth permeated his mind and coiled like wisps of smoke in and among the cells of his brain.

He recalled that, although a serious and stolid high school student, he broke out of this straightforwardly stodgy mold in his freshman year at a particuarly rough school and adopted a radically pre-punk mien. He came complete with dyed-black hair, dark, funeral home-groupie-type clothing and even, yes, much to his mother's horror, make-up! Later, when the punk rock movement really took off, Peck even resorted to sticking a safety pin through his cheek, though not a rusty one (he wasn't stupid, after all). In much later years, Peck would grow a beard and moustache, partially for the purpose of concealing the somewhat embarrassig scar left when he overzealously removed the pin and painfully carved a one-inch tear in his face.

As Peck deduced from Michael's meandering monologue, Bernie had adopted several alarming extracurricular activities. "He figured I'd either become a famous rock star or a serial killer. I truly believe that he was certain it would be the latter.

All this aside, Bernie and Michael became fast friends to a degree and thus this was to last for a couple of years as they utilized their strong points to assist one another in varying times of need.

Jessie Hope eventually took her own life in 1975 with an overdose of blood pressure pills. Tyke had been in no condition to attend the funeral, so Michael went alone and watched solemnly as her casket was lowered into a grave beside Brandon's.

"I felt I was just marking time before my entire family slipped away from me", Michael had mumbled despondantly on one occasion, while Burton had attempted to talk his friend out of a particularly dark, depressive episode. "It was just a matter of a year or two before Dad would be put to rest in that cemetary too. I felt as if it was somehow all my fault, that if I'd been a better son like Brandon was, my parents wouldn't have gotten so messed up. I know it sounds weird, but I'll never be able to shake that idea, no matter how much fame and fortune we achieve in the future, if any".

Peck thought of the lengths that Oxymoron had gone to since its inceoption in 1980, to untangle themselves from the long, constricting arms that had threatened to wrap themselves so tightly around all of them to one degree or another. He was inwardly amazed at what the band had achieved, given what was marked against them at the beginning.

However, becoming filled with pride was not only unproductive at this point, but, in a way, a perversely deformed way of thinking. After all, what was mega-success, respect and artistic integrity if the band's charismatic front man lost his life?

"Ah, Michael, my friend, did you work so damned hard all those years in order to escape your dark dungeons just to end up another grim chapter in the Hope family legacy of doom?"

Peck noticed that he had more-or-less driven on automatic pilot the rest of the way home from the hospital. He stopped the vehicle, got out after and muttered, "See ya", to Gill, who then clambered into the driver's seat and walked stiffly up the lane to his front door. He knew, with a sudden, comforting rush of relief, that Anna would be standing there waiting with her mother-earthen arms wide open to greet him with her love.

* * * * * * *
Michael, when he regained consciousness the following day, was not particularly pleased, to say the least, that the intrusive tube was continually pumping unwelcome nourishment into his body. Even worse than that, it had been inserted without his permission. Thus, he became quite uncharacteristically hostile to the nurse looking after him and began struggling to free himself of both the hyperalimentation device and the two IV's plugged into his stick-like arms.

"Now, Michael", the large-boned, middle-aged nurse said sharply, pushing a button on the wall to summon assistance and making a valiant effort to grasp the thrashing young man's wrists without snapping them by accident. "Settle down or you'll be placed in four-point restraints!"

Michael was livid at this point. "Let go of me, you fat cow!" He sputtered, wrestling weakly to free himself from her firm grasp. "You can't keep me here, you know! Bring me my clothes! I'm leaving this Goddamned hellhole and this hospital will be sued for every freakng dollar it's got!!"

Just as he managed to yank one of the IV's loose, two burly orderlies muscled their way into the room and held Michael down while the needle was replaced amid a drastic, streaming squirt of blood that splashed the flustered nurse squarely in her left eye. "That's it! No more nonsense from you, I'm afraid. "Get the four point resrtraints!" She hollared at the white-shirted orderlies, who promply obeyed.

Michael was then strapped by his wrists and ankles to the bed, screaming and writhing in uncontrollable rage, where he was left, unable to be of anymore harm to himself. "You got a live one there, Ruth", the shorter, bulkier of the two men smirked as he turned to take another look at Michael. "He won't give you anymore trouble now, though. Sure does seem to have a deathwish".

"Yeah, and for the life of me I don't know why", the taller, wiry partner mused, shaking his head. "I'd give my right arm to be in his shoes. But now he's bloody well just a rotting corpse. The poor guy must be half-dead already with AIDS. Give me my simple life anyday, now that I think about it some more. At least I'm gonna live to see forty".P> * * * * * * * *

Peck was awakened the morning following Michael's temper tantrum by a pair of strong, but soft-skinned hands gently massaging his tense and stiffened neck, which even sleep had not relazxed. He rolled over slowly in time to meet the burnt-blue eyes of his wife, which playfully danded and smiled in a valient effoer to get her husband up. "Hi", he mumbled, with a distinct and glarigly obvious lack of enthusiasm. "If you're wondering, in your inimitable fashioh, as to whether or not I'm going to crawl out of my eiderdown womb today, the answer is a resounding "Forget it".

Polite, long-suffering Anna remained undaunted, however. "Well, my man, you can just forget about the burrowing stuff from now on. I know you told me that you were going to stay in bed all this week, but you cannot hide from your problems like this! Not forever anyway. And the longer you lie there like a vegetable, the harder it is going to be to break the habit. For one thing, you'll eventually get pussy, oozing bedsores and for another, Jake and the guys have a meeting with your record execs. Remember?" Anna grasped Burton's long, limp hair, that had not seen shampoo in days, and twisted it around her fist in a pretend gesture of aggravation.In reality, she was more worried and concerned than anything else.

"Let go, for God's sake!" Burton growled, wishing like Hell that the "little woman" would disappear and take Keystone Records with her. "Phone Jake and tell him I can't make it. I'm otherwise, just say, inoccupado".

Anna kicked what she summarized her sorry excue for a rock star husband in the ribs, her playful nature sorely tested. "You're starting to act so much like a giant tuber that you're growing extra eyes!" She could match his bitchiness anytime. "Now, I've put up with your languishing characteristics for so long, dearheart, that it is time to make some positive changes. Life does not spin out of orbit because Michael, who, whom he realizes is seriously ill, can only be helped by professionals and who, I might add, is in very capable hands at the moment, as well as out of yours and temporarily absent from Oxymoron. You, however, are not, and neither are Gill and Paul, going to magically make him well by lying immobile day after day. If you want to keep the band going through this crisis, and that is all it is---a live crisis that happens, Burton, then you must, I repeat MUST, get your ass moving and get on with the business of living!"

"Are you done?" Peck asked quietly, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, a vague tinge of respect in his voice.

"No, dammit, as a matter of fact I'm not"! Anna was obviously on a roll. "You guys haven't toured for years. Five entire years. Oh, I've heard the excuses: You're getting too old. Well that's pure bullshit and you know it! And that you're all protesting the skyrocketing ticket prices and that the young people who like you can't afford to buy them. More crap. Oh, and let's not forget the "Michael Hope Excuse"; that's a reliable old standby. "He's too unpredictable, healthwise. We never know if he's going to take another anorexic nosedive, like this last one. Well, listen to me, sweetie, that's part of the unpredictablility of LIFE! Nobody knows the future; Hell, you could get cancer in a year, or, more appropriately, get cirhosss of the liver from alcohol abuse. You simply cannot run your life on "what ifs". When Michael gets beter, get your current album finished at long last and go back out there and play! You all love your music and playing for the audience. It brings you to life for God's sake!!" She paused to take a much-needed gulp of oxygen and then kept right on going, like an impenetrable human juggernaut.

"Now, sure, Michael did, in reality, slip back again after a year of maintaining a fairly normal weight. But did you ever think that, maybe he wouldn't have if Oxymoron had been out on he road? He would simply not have been able to starve himself to this dangerous degree and exercise for hours a day. He would have needed the energy for the stage. You have all had too much time to sit around and ruminate, feeling sorry for yourselves and getting out all of that deep, philosophical crap you encountered way back when. Am I making any sense to you at all, Burton Stephen Peck?"

Peck, who had, at one point during this dramatic soliloquey, worthy of anything that Jessica Tandy had ever done on the Shakespearian stage, been tempted to guffaw uproariously. Now, he sat up in bed with a mixture of startled awe and genuine interest, realizing that Anna had, with her passionate pep talk, awakened the heretofore somnambulistic spirit of adventure and motivation, which had been in a kind of cryogenic state for too long.

Peck rose to his feet, wrapped a robe around himself and headed quickkly to the bathroom to shower. There was no need for a rebuttal.

* * * * * * *
"Are you nuts? Plan a tour for the summer? A world tour at at that? It's only eight months away! Have you forgotten that our lead singer is hooked up to artificial feeders in the hospital and our album's not even close to being in the can yet? Hello....have you been hitting the sauce again?"

Gill had been paid a spontaneous visit by a revved up Burton Peck. Paul was on his way over, as was the half-asleep Jake. The meeting with Keystone Records was still three hours away, but Burton wanted to spill out his musical revivial to the guys first.

"Hold on, smartass. Don't go off like a malfunctioning cap gun". Peck was not about to let anything or anyone put a leaden lid on his happily boiling pot of optimistic rejuvination. "First of all, Michael's going to survive, for he always does. And when his anorexic phase goes by the boards, just as the others have over the years, then there will be no stopping us from becoming the Oxymoron that we were in the eighties and better! Right?"

Paul walked in, his customarily solemn countenance living up to its reputation. He silently took seat beside Bryan to test the conversational waters before deciding either to dive in or ramain shiverig on the shore of uninvolvement, as was his customary preference.

Giles was incredulous. "Burton, you've absolutely and positively lost it this time! Just a few days ago you were saying to me how worried you were about Michael, convincing Paul and me that he was really badly off, and then after a ten-minute diatribe from Anna, of all people, you've tossed away all concern to the wind and are weaving some magical carpet-in-the-sky theory about some major tour and a new outlook. And you, who despise touring more than any of us! Just what exacly is going on with you?"

Suddenly, reality with all of its corrosive acid, began to slowly eat away at Peck's fresh, dynamic outlook, fostered of a desperate longing to resolve the aching depression that, for so long now, discoloured and scarred the near-perfect world envisioned from youth. He had meticulously and unflinchingly delved it up in a futile attempt to take Anna's words to heart and make them a nebuous reality. Suddenly it all blew up in his face like a revolting smoke bomb.

"God, how I needed to believe that stuff!" Peck cried out, sinking to his knees with tears of heartbroken despair pouring from his eyes onto Gill's thick, shag carpeting. I just feel so......so bad! So awfully, awfully scared".

Giles, feeling immediately recaltricant, was similarly completlely unable to give his friend any kind of soothing consoluation. Instead, he turned away to gaze numbly out of a nearby window.

Paul stared quietly at his shoes, one of his trademark gestures of of awkward misery and discontentment. He left Eddie to his desperation and turned inward to suffer inwardly.

A potentially tragic situation that, by all rights should have been uniting the three healthy members of Oxymoron was, conversely, driving them further apart. This fact would, if he were aware of it, greatly distress Michael, who had always felt a strong sense of bonding within the band.

It suddenly hit Peck with the breathless force of a megaton kick in the gut, that there had been a chillingly prophetic reason for his musings upon the past, that had pushed their way from the furthest recesses lf his memory to his present consciousness: It was a variation of one seeing one's life pass before one's eyes. In this particular case, it was Michael's thirty-four years playing out as they were spiralling down into oblivion. Was that possible? Was it a stark, stinging prophecy of his dear friend's eventual death? Eddie shook those morbid, contemplative cobwebs from his mind and did his best to leave it emptied for a more posible, reality-based outlook on Michael's situation.

His despairing posture of gloom was quickly evaporating and in its place beaded a dewy mist of vapid exasperation and impatience. In a Burton Peck trademark of protestation, he threw up his hands, this time with such force that his expensive watch sailed off his wrist, in a most undignified manner, across the room where it eventully hit the flower-festooned wall. "Too bad there was no audience for that bit of unrehearsed mastery," Peck said to himelf, since Gill and Paul had since left the room. "I couldn't repeat that if I tired a hundred times or more", Peck smirked to himself as he grabbed his black, leather jacket and made his way out of Gill's stiffling suburban home en route to the hospital, which, Peck thought with distaste, alawys smelled of chemicals and antiseptic floor cleaner.

"This time, Michael Hope, you are not only going to listen to what I have to say, but you are going to do something constructive with it! I have had enough of this nonsense and so have Paul and Gill, though they aren't in nearly as deep as I am. Your day of reckoning has arrived".

* * * * * *
Entering Michael's room, Peck was somewhat surprised and thrown off balance by the presence of Paul Perry. "How the Hell did you get here so fast?" Burton questioned. He was certain that Paul had still been back at Gill's when he left.

"When you were sitting on the floor in a trance or whatever, I walked right by you and drove over. Must have been a half hour ago".

"Oh", Peck replied, wondering whether he should leave the two to talk in private.

Paul was often mistaken for the "strong, silent type", to coin a well-trodden phrase, but that was due to an inordinate ability to appear much calmer and non-plused than was actually the case. Perry, as well as Peck, was somewhat limited in his capacity to deal with inordinate stress, other than that strictly associated with his professional life. Impressively gifted in that area, Paul had enormous difficulty in coping with the problems and emergencies of everyday living.

Michael, to whom Paul felt the closest alliance of the other three bandmates, understood the painfully reserved drummer and would take time to draw him out when Burton and Gill became inpatient and exasperated with him.

Therefore, it was understandable to Peck that Paul was drawn to Michael when it was he who required brotherly support. Peck waited just outside the door, not really intending to eavesdrop, but doing so none-the-less. What he overheard was enough to tear at his uncomfortably over-taxed heart. The conversation reminded him of part of a script whose chief aim was pathos and humour, as it perained to the final words spoken by doomed, but charistmatic lovers:

Paul: (stammering and shuffling his feet disquietly). "So are you going to get better or just...well....wait until your body literally consumes itself?"

Michael: (struggling onto his bird-like elbows with an expression of feinged shock on a gaunt, greyish face that had once been striking) "Say what? You been reading those morbid medical texts again, Paul?"

Paul: (frowning) "Cut the clowning, shit, Michael. You're a really intelligent guy and you are fully aware that when a body is in a state of severe starvatioh, it begins to eat itself---you know, it's own organs in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Don't tell me that you're in such a state of denial that you're not acknowledging that stark fact of reality>!"

Michael: (still maintaining his cafefully crafted cool). "You are certainly emerging from your shell with a vengeance. Are you looking for an argument or what? (The coolness was beginning to simmer, just a hint). Paul, I just spent the last twenty-four hours in restraints, pinned down like a dead butterfly on a piece of cardboard on some kid's bug collection! Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? Do you? Being fed against my will with no way of getting out of it? Think about it, Paul. I despise this hospital and everything for which it stands and as soon as they give me the word, I'm out of here!"

Paul: (staring evenly at his distraught friend of nearly fourteen years). "And then what? Back to your deadly little rouutine? Where the Hell does it end for you? With your funeral? I know your pattern, Michael. You force yourself to get well enough to function and get back on track for awhile, then you begin the ominously predictable regressions of which we've all become so agonizingly aware. Just what in God's name has happened to you? You were so gifted, so intense and you cared about so many causes and issues, not to mean gross injustices in the world. Now your universe has shrunk to this garbage! Can't you see that??? Can't you? Just give me a damned straight answer for once like the "old Michael"...the one who could feel, who could overcome an early life of pure horror and do the impossible! This is really hard for me to say because it sounds so corny and stupid, but do you know how much I used to admire you and live through you viariously at times? Well, not anymore. No way in Hell would I want to be in your shoes now. You're so freaking pathetic, Michael Hope!"

Michael: (losing all of his composure completely now as Paul's words stung him with the painful realization that his desperate, frightened comrade was absolutely right). "Shut up!! I never wanted you or anyone else to put me on some Goddamned pedestal or whatever you've done! I know I've messed up in a big way, but I can't get out of this trap I'm in!! Do you hear me, Paul??? I'm stuck in my own concentration camp and there's NO WAY OUT!!! God help me----I don't want to die! Not like this. All I wanted to do in the beginning was lose some weight for the video camera. I felt self-conscious and chubby, particularly beside skinny Gill. Things just got out of hand, somehow. Competely and utterly out of control!" (Michael buried his face in wildly trembling hands and sobbed uncontrollably, while Calvin looked on helplessly).

Paul: (his own voice breaking)."I just don't know what to say to you, Michael, to help you, I mean. I've stood by with my mouth shut, watching you wasting away and letting on to the other guys that I didn't think it was any big deal. I can't take it anymore. I may as well tell you that I'm seriously considering leaving the band".

Outside the door, Peck jolted upright upon hearing this shocking piece of news.

Michael: (looking up, his face dripping wet). "What? Leaving Oxymoron? For good?"

Paul: (nodding). "Yeah. I just can't take living in an emotional pressure cooker with you. I'm just about ready to lose my mind".

Michael: (stares into space and says nothing at first, then mumbles almost inaudibly)"I don't blame you, really. The band's splinering into fragments that can never be put back together again. The last thing I want is for you to pull apart with it. I care about you too much. You and the other guys, you're like a family to me, even these days. You always were. I never really belonged to anyone and I believe it's necessary".

Paul: (turning to leave) "Michael, I can't stay here any longer today. I have a lot to figure out. ( He pauses for a moment). "I love you, buddy".

Burton quickly stepped aside and hurried into the next room which, thankfully, was vacant. His head swam with the impact of the conversation to which he'd just been been illegally privy.

"My God, this is a nightmare that just never ends!" He thought morosely, finally able to clearly see the dissolution of Oxymoron as a stark reality and not as some nebulous event in the uncertain future.

Worse than that was that Michael would likely suffer a similar fate.

Just as Peck was coming out of the deserted hospital room, he happened to run into the pretty, young Dr. Robinson who took a few minutes explaining some medical facts about her difficult anorexic patient. She could immediatly see that he did not want to hear them.

She stopped, putting her hand on Burton's shoulder and offered, instead, a simple quote spoken to her by a wise and kind-hearted nurse who had once cared for her dying grandmother. It had greatly comforted her and so she offered it to the distraut man:

"A person can live five days without water, three months with no food, but not even a minute without hope".

Peck smiled with gratitude at the simple gesture of compassion. It was an interesting choice of words.

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