Please!
Hank laughs. I think if I gave him the chance he’d jump on me in a minute. I don’t like him in that way. I mean, I don’t get that feeling in my chest looking at him as I do watching Joe. Hank’s more like a big brother sort of. I don’t know. He’s not bad looking. He doesn’t have an innocence about him like Joe does. There’s a hardness to him, like a busy, unpaved road. He’s thinking of leaving Fresh Start. Maybe taking a job at Walmart. He took it kind of serious what Tom said about moving on and swimming to shore and all that. He won’t go back to school or anything, but a different job, a totally different job, might be a good thing. Leave the old life behind. Working here you’re really not off the street, I get it. But you’re sober. There’s no forgetting your problems behind a bottle. I’m tired of dealing with people like my old self, drunks calling me names, cussing me out. Like they forgot we used to be on the street together. I get disgusted and beat up on myself for who I once was, like them, and they see my disgust and hate on me. I think Carol hated on me at times. Sometimes when she drank she’d turn mean. I’d never noticed that before, when I was drinking with her. But I sure noticed when I stopped and began doing her intakes. She’d tell me in a hoarse voice that sounded like she was not fully awake, We all got to die sometime. You think you won’t? You think you’re sober and that changes who you are? You’re a drunk who ain’t drinking. That makes no sense. I’m a drinking drunk. I ain’t never going to quit. You can forget where you come from, Katie, but I won’t.
Maybe another job would be good for Hank, but I think no matter where we go we’ll always carry our old selves with us. We’ll always be drunks, just not drinking drunks, so he might as well stay here. I will.
I squint to see Joe moving from mat to mat, the dim ceiling lights being no match for the shadows. At the table that Hank is sharing with Walter, he’s again trying to drink coffee but his hands shake so bad he puts the foam cup on the table, and this time leans forward to drink from it like dog lapping from a puddle.
Joe stops by the mat with John Doe. He stares down and then bends over and leans in. After a moment, he drops to his knees and gets closer. Hank notices and comes up behind him. Joe stays down by the guy.
Everything all right? I shout.
Hank says something. Joe shakes his head. He stands. Hank kneels and leans in like Joe had. Joe watches Hank. Hank turns to him and raises his chin toward me. Joe comes over looking serious as a heart attack.
What’s wrong? I ask.
The guy on mat two, Joe goes, voice shaking
What about him?
We don’t think he’s breathing.
Don’t think he’s breathing?
He’s not breathing, Katie.
I stare at him and then I’m up and beside Hank. He holds two fingers against the guy’s neck.
Talk to me, Hank, I say.
Nothing, he says. No pulse.
A blanket covers John Doe’s legs. He smells of wood smoke and of poop, like he crapped himself in his sleep. Hank shakes his shoulder. He pumps his chest, one, two, one, two. The guy rocks like a log. His open eyes don’t blink. Hank gets up pressing his hands against his knees like they hurt. He pulls the blanket over the guy’s face. I swallow hard as if something’s sticking in my throat.
He’s already cold, Hank says.
You mean he’s dead? Joe says, his voice almost cracking.
I still can’t speak.
There was nothing wrong with him when I brought him in, Hank says. He was drunk that’s all.
Hank didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t either. Me and Hank got nothing to do with this. I was so used to fucking up and having to cover my ass when I was drinking that I didn’t know what to do if something did go wrong. But this isn’t that. I’m not drinking. This is just bad luck. For John Doe and no one else.
Poor guy, Hank says. I’ll call Tom.
I’ll call 911.
I can call it if you want.
I got it. You call Tom.
Hank lets out a deep breath. He doesn’t move. He takes my hand and begins saying the Serenity Prayer. Joe watches us. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. When we finish, Hank squeezes my hand.
Sixty seconds at a time.
Back at you, I say.
I remember taking Valium one time after drinking a fifth of vodka with Carol. I don’t know how many pills I took but Carol said, What are you doing? You want to kill yourself? She stuck her fingers down my throat and made me vomit. A fire burned in my throat as I retched, and the puke covered her fingers, but she kept them down my throat until I had nothing left. Carol wouldn’t let me pass out. She said my soul would leave me and never come back. I’d be sleeping forever in darkness. She held my arms around my knees and rocked me back and forth and we stayed awake all night. A pain in my temples felt like screws being turned. My hands shook. Carol got us a mickey when Fred’s Liquor opened at six. I held the bottle in both hands like a prayer and drank.
Most days, after a night in Golden Gate Park, Carol and I would work Van Ness, taking turns panhandling on the median near the intersection with Golden Gate. We had ourselves a cardboard sign we tore off a box we found in a dumpster: homeless. anything will help. god bless. Carol had these markers from a shoulder pack a kid forgot at a bus shelter. Probably a kid. Had a blank spiral notebook in it with a few math problems scrawled in pencil like the kid was just getting used to writing. Simple stuff like 3 + 6 = 9. I wondered what had happened. Was this one of those missing kids pictured on supermarket bags? What if it was? What if someone sees us with their pack? Carol thought I had a point and got rid of it, but she kept the markers. I used to draw, did you know that? she said. I shook my head. Well, I did, she said.
Carol took the lead with the sign while I waited across the street to relieve her. She’d hold it and when the light turned red she’d walk between idling cars and not say a word, just hold our sign. Sometimes, someone called her over and gave her a dollar or some change. Most times, people just stared over their steering wheels without blinking and ignored her. When she got tired or too warm in the sun, she gave me the sign and I took over. When it got really hot, we sat under the awning at a McDonald’s and propped the sign up against the building. Usually we’d get enough for a couple of quarts of Thunderbird. One afternoon, we both passed out and someone stole my shoes. Had to have tugged them off my feet. I didn’t feel a thing. I sat there my mouth tasting all kinds of foul from having slept after we shared a bottle, my body slick in its own oiled mess. Where’re my shoes? I wondered. It just kind of hit me: I have no shoes. Someone took my shoes. I started laughing and then I got pissed. Carol lay on her side snoring, her head on our sign like it was a pillow. She had her shoes. Why’d someone take mine? I thought of taking hers. I thought and thought and then I did. I pulled them off her feet, gray sneakers that had once probably been white. They fit. A little tight but they fit. She kept on sleeping. She looked peaceful. Staring at her I tried to imagine us in a meadow. People walked past us, their knees level with my eyes. They stepped around us, and then I stood and they moved away, really skipped away like dancers, they didn’t miss a beat, and then they resumed walking in a straight line again. Looking down at Carol, I said, I took your shoes. I knew taking her shoes, well, there’s just something rotten about that. I didn’t want to be that rotten but I was. I felt bad—not so bad as to give them back—but bad enough to say I’m going to detox. Hank checked me in. I took a shower and he gave me clean clothes, a yellow T-shirt and blue jeans, both of which were too big, and another pair of shoes. Sandals really but they fit better than Carol’s shoes. I told him how I’d taken her shoes and I started crying. I hung on to them. I told myself I’d give them back when I got out of detox but I never did. I didn’t have them with me when I saw her. And I didn’t tell her I had taken them. I never mentioned them. About six months into my sobriety and about two months after I started working at Fresh Start, she died. The coroner had taken her body by the time I came into work. Funny the things you think of, but at the time my mind went back to the night I left her and how pebbles and bits of glass cut into the thin soles of her shoes. I could feel them dig in, like they were trying to get at my feet, and how I kept walking and hoped she’d yell for me so I’d turn around and go back and return her shoes.
I left a message for Tom, Hank says. He didn’t pick up.
I put down my phone.
They said they’re on their way, 911. Asked me if it was an emergency.
What’d you say?
Not anymore.
I glance around for Joe and see him sitting at the table with Walter. Hank and I go over and join them.
You ever seen a dead body? Hank asks Joe.
No.
