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.
Another day, another two cents, he says, glancing at me over a shoulder.
The train jerks forward just as I get on and I reach for a pole to keep from falling. An older woman watches me stumble and I smile and then I feel embarrassed for showing her my bad teeth. I lift a hand to hide my mouth, but I feel my mask and realize she can’t see my teeth.
That was close, I say, and she smiles back and we both shake our heads as if to say, Isn’t this something? The train starting before I can sit down. She adjusts her mask, digs into her purse for a pair of glasses, and starts reading a copy of The New Yorker. A subscription card falls out and I pick it up.
Thank you, she says.
I smile again and sit down across from her.
I’m painting a house today, I say. I work at Lowe’s.
Oh, she replies, looking over the top of her glasses. A good day for it. Weather, I mean. I didn’t know Lowe’s sent people out to do house work.
I shrug.
A house in North Berkeley, I say.
Oh, she goes again. That’s where I live. Do you do gutters?
I do, I say. Since I was a kid. Used to clean my mom’s gutters.
Well, mine need to be done, the lady goes. Do you have a card?
I don’t.
She takes out her cell phone.
What’s the Lowe’s number?
I hesitate for a minute and then make up a number. If she calls, she’ll think she misheard me or put it in her phone wrong. At least that’s what I hope. I want her to believe I work.
I can do your gutters, I tell her.
I show her the address in North Berkeley.
I’ll be here if you can’t reach me on the phone.
She peers at the address but doesn’t take it down.
