Are you?

I guess.

I think you should.

This guy in AA?

How’d you know?

You’re fooling, right?

He told me he was in recovery and wanted to help a fellow drunk.

A fellow drunk?

My words. Five-minute showers.

I don’t want him lecturing me.

Oscar reaches behind his chair and tosses me a white towel.

You don’t have to say anything but Thank you.

I go to a table where a guy sits in a chair outside a bathroom.

Shower open? I ask him.

Sign in, he tells me, and pushes a clipboard toward me. No one’s ahead of you.

May I have a hygiene kit?

I almost said “Can I,” but “may” is grammatically correct. My sixth-grade teacher, Miss Fowler, drilled grammar into us. She made us write two-hundred-word essays once a week and blue-lined the hell out of them. I like to think that sets me apart a bit from everyone else.

The volunteer reaches for a box at his feet and hands me a baggie with a razor, soap, a deodorant stick, and a finger-size bottle of shampoo. His hands shake. Fresh Start’s twenty-four-hour detox is next door. I don’t recognize this guy but I bet he dried out and is waiting for an inpatient program. I don’t ask. I’ve been there. You get tired of people getting into your business. No good comes of it. Someone will go, Where are you on the waiting list? and then you’re reminded how long you’ll be waiting, and then you think, Screw this, and start drinking.

I walk into the bathroom, pull off my mask, hang my towel on a hook, and take the soap and shampoo out of the baggie. The yellow linoleum floor smells of bleach and shines in the pale light. A bucket of gray dirty water and a mop stand against the shower door. I move them and open the door and turn the knob to hot. I pull my shirt off and drop it on the floor and really catch a dose of my stink. I step out of my pants and the air quality gets even worse. I turn my head so as not to get a dose of my feet when I yank my socks off. Steam rises out of the shower and a shiver goes through me as the water hits the top of my head, and I just stand there, chin against my chest, as the heat waxes over my shoulders. Water bubbles against my arms and I scrub myself three times all over until my skin squeaks beneath my fingers. I rinse myself a final time and shut off the water. Toweling off, I hear the bathroom door crack open.

Time’s almost up, the volunteer says.

OK.

I lean against a wall and put on a pair of jeans I picked up at a Goodwill on my way here with a voucher Oscar gave me last week. Got a blue polo shirt and a pair of socks too. I pull the pants up and roll the cuffs because they’re a little long. I take my belt from my old pants and tug it through the loops, feeling behind me with my fingers so I don’t miss any, and I see myself in a mirror, not fat but sagging around my chest and stomach, every hair gray. A middle-aged man dressing for work, that’s me. I slip on the shirt. It falls like a feather against my shoulders. I put toothpaste on the toothbrush and scrub my tongue. I’ve lost most of my teeth and the few still in my mouth resemble posts from a rotted fence. I rinse my mouth, shave, wipe my face with the towel, and put on my mask. I look at myself again. Not so bad. Can’t see my teeth, anyway.

Combing my hair, I think maybe this time I’ll stop drinking, for real, and there’s this voice in my head that goes, Sure, sure you will, and I hear the sarcasm but it doesn’t stop me from thinking maybe, just maybe. I always get this way after a shower, I guess because I feel better and I don’t look so ragged. I’m tired from the aches and pains of sleeping outside that pile on with the years. Maybe this is the moment. Maybe. If this job works out, if this guy needs me for other work, if he can keep me busy. It’s on him. I’m in his hands. And if he goes all Nazi on me with AA, I’m out of there. I don’t want to disappoint Oscar, but I’ll be gone. I get stressed thinking about it, all these ifs and the things he might say, but I got ten bucks in my pocket to deal with any problems. I don’t want to do Oscar like that, but if I can’t handle this guy then that’s how it’ll be. I won’t have a choice, not if he pushes my buttons. Try not to worry about him, I tell myself. You’re clean. You’re back in the game. He’ll be cool. Don’t trip. I take a deep breath. You can do this. Sure, sure, the voice in my head says.

I pull on the socks. They stick to my feet. I wiggle my toes. The socks cling to the sweaty insides of my sneakers. I take off the shoes, stick the towel in each one, and wipe them out. When I finish I put them on again. That’s a little better. Tucking in my shirt, I imagine knocking on the door of the guy in North Berkeley. I’m here about the paint job, I see myself saying. I guess the guy will ask me in. Maybe not. I don’t know. My heart ticks up a notch just thinking about it.

Time’s up! the volunteer shouts.

I grab my old clothes and hurry out.

Sorry, I say, thanks.

I drop the clothes in a hamper to be washed and recycled for someone else.

I got a job today, I tell the volunteer.

Where at?

North Berkeley.

At least you’ll get out of here for a while.

That’s what I’m thinking. What about you?

Waiting on a program?

I figured. Which one?

Redwood Center.

It’s good.

Been there?

Yeah.

What happened?

What always happens. I started drinking again. Nobody made me. I didn’t have to.

I’m like tenth on the waiting list.

Good luck.

Day at a time, right?

That’s what they say.

I turn to leave. Passing Oscar’s office, I raise my hand goodbye, but he’s talking to that gal who was behind me in line. I go out the front doors to the sidewalk. The sun blazes down and I cover my eyes. Cool in the shade, warm in the sun. I like days like this. I feel almost like a normal person. My hands shake a bit, my body talking. Where’s that wine? it’s asking me. Across the street I see two guys I know, Lonny and Jeffrey. Lonny lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident, or that’s what he says. He doesn’t have it, I know that much. The accident cost him his job at a garage. He got on disability and started drinking. He always drank, he said, but after the accident he got into it full-time. He has a thick brown beard, and when he listens to people speak he frowns and pouts his lower lip and makes me think of a clam all bristly with that beard. I can’t talk to him without laughing. He dried out one time and would have been accepted into a program except for his leg. He had to show he could get out of a room, hop through a hall, and down a flight of stairs in sixty seconds in case of a fire. He hopped like a mofo, but he always fell, even when he used crutches. Nerves, he said. Everybody watching him. The program wouldn’t take him and he started drinking again.

If they’d’ve given me a few seconds more . . . he said. Katie, one of the detox counselors, told him to apply to other programs, but Lonny decided that getting drunk in a doorway was less humiliating.

Lonny raises a hand, and I see he’s got a bottle. I wave back but keep walking. If I go over to him I’ll start drinking. Then the three of us will blow my ten bucks, and then Oscar will tell me how I burned a resource and ruined it for all the other people this North Berkeley guy could have helped. I cut up Sixth Street and turn on Market toward the Embarcadero to catch a BART train. I don’t have to walk, I could catch a bus, but I want to walk. In my clean clothes, strolling to work like everyone else. Nobody knows who I am. They think I’m one of them. I laugh. Shadows retreat, shrink up buildings, slide back on the rooftops. Sweat begins to pool under my arms. I feel a little jittery but good, I’m good. I’ll get past the shakes. Sometimes I stay sober for two or three days. I’ll have this bloated feeling and I can’t drink. Or I just don’t feel well. The few hours of the first day sober are hard, not impossible, but hard. On warm days like this they’re easier. On cloudy days when the air gives me chills, then it’s impossible, and I drink and I won’t care how bad I’ll feel later, or how down I’ll be on myself.

I jog down the steps of the Embarcadero Station, flash my BART pass, and shuffle behind a man pushing through the turnstile to the platform where a train waits, doors open. I have about an hour to spare, more than enough time to get to the job.

I’m going to work, I say to the guy ahead of me.