There ain’t nothing you can do about it, except pray, John says.

Thanks man, Matt says and squeezes the back of John’s neck.

John shrugs him off and asks Gail for a shot of Jack and a beer.

You’ll be all right, John tells Matt.

I first met John here one night when he asked me if I knew who had won the previous night’s Chiefs game. I told him I didn’t follow football. I was reading a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle someone had left on the bar and handed him the sports page. How about basketball? he said. I shook my head. I don’t follow that either. I went back to reading the paper. He flicked a finger in my face.

Hey! I said.

I’m talking to you. Don’t you have a TV?

No, actually, I don’t.

Jesus, what kind of person doesn’t have a TV?

Until recently, John had been seeing the daytime bartender, Bonnie. He would stop by at noon during her shift and have lunch with her. When he got off work, he came back and waited until she punched out. Then they would go to his place for pizza and Netflix. Bonnie had nothing better going on. The way Gail tells it, Bonnie chewed John up and spit him out in no time flat and took up with another guy, a real estate agent. John installs kitchen cabinets, drives a pickup. Real Estate Man doesn’t work with his hands. He takes Bonnie to restaurants. I mean downtown restaurants. He takes her to the theater and they’ve enrolled in a tango dance class together. John doesn’t have it in him to offer Bonnie the two-step.

Why do you come here? Matt asks John.

Because, John says and raises his glass.

Fair enough, Matt says.

He blows at the foam on his beer.

We all die sometime. I just wasn’t expecting to now, he says.

You’re not dead yet, Matt, I say.

I suppose this’d kill me as well.

Don’t I know it, I say.

We all get our ticket punched, don’t we?

I couldn’t argue with that. Matt stands and walks stiff-legged to a popcorn machine.

I’ll pray for him, Gail says. She smells of the soap she uses to wash the glasses. During the day, she’s a cashier at the Best Buy in Oakland. Just the other week, she told me, a gal who had worked there five years was laid off.

I sip my beer, watch her turn the lights down, and stare at myself in the mirror behind the bar. I see only the dim, circular outline of my head, my face obscured by the shadows curtaining the mirror. I should get back to my alley, but it’s nice here. I live light. When I first hit the streets, I had a shopping cart, but it got so I was acting like I still had a home. I collected stuff, like everybody does, unnecessary stuff, clothes and blankets—more than I could possibly use. And I had to pack it up every time I left my camp so no one would steal it. The cart became a weight like so much else in life. So I walked away from it as I did my apartment when I thought all I had to do was move, stop drinking, get right, and I’d be OK and would get everything back I’d lost, but by then all the helium had leaked out of the balloon, so to speak, and there was no renewal on the horizon. I’ve been in detox programs. Moving to escape your problems is what you call a geographic. At least that’s what alcohol counselors have told me. I don’t know why everything has to have a name. It’s kind of a judgment. You did a geographic, like that’s bad. Man, I only wanted to get away, call it what you want. These days, I spend a few nights in shelters when it gets cold, but most don’t let you in if you smell of alcohol so I go back to my alley. I guess that’s kind of doing a geographic too. This stuff gets in your head. I wish I could just stay here at the Comeback.

Do you think Matt’ll make it? John asks, leaning over to me.

I look at him over by the popcorn machine. At the patchy beard on his face and at the faded blue work shirt cut off at the sleeves and at the loose threads stuck to his arm. I can’t see Bonnie ever having dreamed long-buried dreams with John as I presume she does now with Real Estate Man. I see Real Estate Man put his hands on her waist. He holds her on the dance floor turning her in ever-widening circles, making those dreams seem possible.

I don’t know if he will or not, John, I say.

I don’t either, Dennis says.

Matt sits back down holding a bowlful of popcorn.

Want some popcorn?

No, thanks.

You got a wife? Matt asks me.

Nope, I tell him.

I don’t either. I got a girlfriend. She’s not talking to me. Last night, we got into it over her daughter. She’s like ten. The three of us were having dinner together and all of a sudden her daughter shoves her plate aside and says she hates chicken. Last week, chicken was fine. Same dinner, no complaints. Tonight chicken, and rice and peas, and a salad were cause for a tantrum. And what does my girlfriend do? She gets up from the table and goes out and buys her daughter Taco Bell. I thought that was crazy, so we got into it. On and on until we ran out of words, ran out of breath. I’m leaving her. I know it. I just don’t know when. I need something that will give me a reason to say, I’m done. We’re through. Taco Bell didn’t provide that. I mean I can’t say, my gal got her daughter a bacon ranch tortada and that was it. I had it. I walked. People would laugh. What I’m saying is, when I leave her it has to count for something.

He picks at the popcorn but doesn’t eat it. I look out a window. Ellis Street is pitch black. How’d it get so late? A bus stop stands empty. Nothing moves.

I got to go, I say.

And do what?

He had me there. Go to my camp. Drink some more there. I should have a bottle of T-bird stashed. We all have our schedules. More like routines, I guess. The restaurant I stay behind got robbed twice in the past week. Last night, when I got back I saw that the owner was installing bars over the windows. He doesn’t have a problem with me sleeping in the alley so I helped him and he gave me a few bucks. I told him he didn’t have to, but he insisted, Here, take it. I didn’t do much but hold the bars while he drilled holes and screwed them in. When we finished he went his way and I went mine. I liked helping him, showing him I could be useful. Maybe I’ll do more of that with him, I don’t know. No point to go thinking that far ahead.

Good luck, I tell Matt. I hope to see you again.

I hope to see you again too.

That strikes me as funny and I laugh and so does he. We’re almost hysterical. One of those moments when you forget where you are and you laugh for no good reason.

I get up, slip on my coat. Matt stands too. I reach to shake his hand, and he wraps me in a back-breaking bear hug burying my face in his T-shirt, and I’m swamped by the rankness of cigarette smoke and sweat.

Why do we come here, man?

I try to pull away but he holds me. I feel his heart race, can’t talk, and shake my head.

Because we’re scared, Matt says. I think it’s because we’re scared.

Katie

I get off at eleven, come home, and usually watch some YouTube on my phone and put off sleep and the nightmares, but tonight I take a shower because I had to help a man who pissed himself, and even though I had put on plastic gloves and washed my hands afterward, I still felt kind of gross.

The shower must’ve relaxed me because I nod off and have a drinking dream. I see the guy who pissed himself raise a bottle, swallow, and then pass it to me. Just as I tip it to my mouth, I feel Stacey beside me. I’m not saying a word, she says. She takes the bottle from me and polishes it off. I’m in no position to comment, she says and wipes her mouth. I wake up in the dark. What are you doing? I say to her fading image. I don’t move. The dark consumes her absence. I lie on my bed until I remember I’m in my room. I had a dream about Stacey. Stacey. Shit. She’s my AA sponsor. Was. Last month she started drinking again.

I’m an intake worker for the twenty-four-hour alcohol detox program at Fresh Start. I come in for the swing shift. This afternoon, I clock in just as one of our regulars, Walter Johns, struts through the door slick as he can be.

Look at you, my supervisor Rosemary says.

We have a fat folder on Walter but today you’d never know it. He’s wearing a brown corduroy jacket, white shirt and brown tie, and blue jeans. Lines river his tanned face and a ceiling fan disturbs his slicked-back hair, unraveling strands against his forehead that he keeps batting from his eyes. His clothes are typical thrift store stuff but clean and pressed; they fit him well. If I didn’t know him, I’d assume he was a normal guy.

Look at you, old 357, Rosemary says again, and she gives this deep ha, ha belly laugh that creases her cheeks with a smile and makes me smile too. Three fifty-seven is Walter’s file number. Rosemary avoids calling clients by their name to keep her distance, so when they start drinking again it doesn’t bother her. I think it still does. It does me. You can’t help but get to know people if you see them every day but sometimes you just have to pretend it doesn’t bother you, and I guess that’s how Rosemary pretends.