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.
That’s Mr. 357 to you, Walter tells Rosemary and she falls into that laugh again.
Walter, where’ve you been? I ask him.
Salvation Army’s recovery center.
He raises two fingers.
Two months.
If I wasn’t as old as your mother I’d give you a second look, Rosemary says, and I swear Walter blushes.
Katie, Walter goes, give me a cigarette.
Give me? They teach you no manners at Sally’s? They pay you?
Like prison. A dollar an hour.
For two months. How many hours in two months, Walter?
C’mon, Katie.
I pull my purse from a file cabinet and give him a smoke. Rosemary asks him his plans. He shrugs.
You need a plan, Rosemary scolds. Have you signed up for a halfway house?
I’ll be all right, Walter says.
At that moment I know he plans to start drinking again and Rosemary knows it too. He has a plan; the plan is to drink. Don’t assume, Stacey would tell me, but I know.
Walter wanders around some tables in the waiting room where a handful of guys slouch in chairs trying not to pass out before we do their intakes. He pauses, greets people he knows. Almost like a guy picking up a day labor crew. He shows them his Salvation Army name badge. They know he has money. He walks toward the door. They wobble to their feet and follow him.
And off they go. Rosemary mutters, staring after them.
About fifteen minutes before I clock out, Walter weaves through the door stumbling forward like someone is pulling him by the nose. Somehow he lost his shoes and his bare feet are bloody. He’s pissed himself. He leans against a drinking fountain, picks a broken cigarette from an ashtray, and holds it uncertainly. Sinking to the floor, he shouts for Rosemary and me. A bottle of Thunderbird tilts out of his jacket pocket.
Jesus, you couldn’t even last a day, Rosemary snaps.
I go to a cabinet, pull his file—Johns, Walter, No. 357—and drop it on a desk. I pull out a chair and sit. Walter starts crying. Rosemary yells at him to get up. He lurches over to me and collapses in a chair. I search a drawer for a pen.
