“I’ve already lived longer than I ever thought I would.”
We kicked that around for a few minutes, and then she went to the kitchen and came back with two cups of chamomile tea. I used to drink coffee all day and half the night, and now it’s a single cup in the morning. Sometimes two cups, if I’m in a holiday mood.
Depressing or not, depending how you think about it.
In the morning I was somewhere between asleep and awake when the phone rang. Her side of the bed was empty, so I reached to answer it, but she’d already picked up in the other room. I heard a woman apologizing for such an early call, and Elaine assuring her it was all right, she was glad she’d called. At which point I cradled the phone and decided it was time to get up.
She must have heard the shower, because she had breakfast ready by the time I got to the kitchen. An omelet and a toasted English muffin. I was working on my morning cup of coffee when she said, “Did the phone wake you? I’m sorry, I had my hands full, and it was on its third ring by the time I could pick it up.”
“I wouldn’t have slept much longer anyway.”
“How’s your knee this morning?”
“I never thought about it until you just now mentioned it. So I guess it’s fine.”
She’d made tea for herself in the little Wedgwood teapot. She filled a cup and took a sip, and she said, “That was Ellen Lipscomb.”
“On the phone?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is she the one I met? Ellen the Tart?”
A week or so earlier I’d passed the Morning Star, on the northwest corner of Fifty-seventh and Ninth, when I caught a glimpse of Elaine at a table by the far wall. I thought she was by herself, but by the time I’d entered the diner I could see she had company. The woman across the table from her was perhaps half her age, with a pleasing figure and honey-blond hair that fell to her shoulders. I crossed the room and Elaine introduced us, and I said it was nice to meet her.
“Ellen and Elaine,” the young woman said. Her face was pretty, her blue eyes alert. “Just a couple of Ellies, except nobody ever called me that.”
“Or me either,” Elaine said.
That was about as much conversation as the occasion required, and I said again that it was nice to have met her, and went on to do whatever I’d been on my way to do. When I caught up with Elaine later in the day, I said her friend was attractive and seemed nice.
“Very nice,” she said. And after a beat she said, “I know her from meetings.”
“You’re sure I can’t go to those meetings?”
“She’s pretty, isn’t she? I’m sort of her sponsor.”
“Sort of?”
“Well, I haven’t heard the term at any of our meetings. But she seems to have picked me out as the more experienced member to seek advice from, and I like her, so I guess you could call that sponsorship.”
A fellow named Jim Faber had been my sponsor. We had dinner, just the two of us, every Sunday night for years, always at one or another of the neighborhood’s Chinese restaurants. Sometimes but not always we’d cap the evening with a meeting. He was the man I called when I wanted a drink, and after that ceased to be a problem he was the man I turned to when something else in my life was troubling me.
Then one Sunday night twenty years ago he got killed, shot dead by a man who’d mistaken him for me. I blamed myself for his death, until his voice in my ear finally got through to me and told me all I was guilty of was having to go to the bathroom, and that my guilt was just another form of self-pity. The thought was as annoying as if he’d been standing there and spoken the words aloud, but it got through to me.
The standard recommendation, when your sponsor dies or drinks or moves to New Orleans, is that you find someone appropriate and ask him to take over the role. That’s more important and more easily done if you haven’t been sober all that long, but when Jim died I had fifteen years, and that made it more difficult to find someone suitable, and less urgent that I do so.
You generally want your sponsor to have more sober time than yourself, and probably to be your age or older. There weren’t many men in my home group who emerged as logical candidates, and I told myself I’d get a sponsor when I felt the need, and that never happened. If I had something on my mind that needed discussion, I’d ask somebody or other to join me for a cup of coffee, and we’d have the sort of conversation I might have had with a sponsor. But it was far less formal, and it wasn’t the same man each time.
Now, across the breakfast table a few weeks later, I said, “So you’re her sponsor.”
“Sort of.”
“Ellen and Elaine,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“What was it she said? ‘Just a couple of Ellies.’ ”
She rolled her eyes.
“You know,” I said, “not that I wish her anything but the best, but if she happens to have a slip, could you let me know?”
“And I’m sure you already know you’re a terrible man.”
“I do.”
“I figured you’d like the looks of her. She’s cute, isn’t she?”
“Very.”
“I could go for her myself,” she said, and showed me the tip of her tongue. “But you were already thinking that, weren’t you?”
“It may have entered my mind.”
“You were imagining yourself in bed with both of us at once,” she said. “The old threesome fantasy, except it wouldn’t be a fantasy, would it? It would be real, and she’d be right there in our bed between the two of us. And we could do whatever we wanted to her.” She ran her tongue around the circle of her lips. Her eyes sparkled, and she put a hand on my thigh. “We could go back to bed,” she said, “and talk about it. Do you think that might be something you’d enjoy?”
Afterwards I guess I must have dozed off for a few minutes, and when I opened my eyes Elaine was standing beside the bed with a cup of coffee. “It cooled off,” she said, “but I’m happy to see we haven’t.”
“Jesus.”
“Up for breakfast and then back to bed. Well, a nap’s a good idea at our age, isn’t that what they say?”
“That was some nap.”
“It was almost as if we really had her in bed with us,” she said, “except it was actually much better, because this way it all turned out the way we wanted it to. They say you should never act out a fantasy because the reality never matches up.”
“Is that what they say?”
“It would have to be, don’t you think?” She stretched out alongside me, laid a hand on my flank. “Did you have a good time?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“No, and I was right there with you. I think it’s marvelous that we’re still hot for each other.”
“Every once in a while.”
“Which is probably about as often as either of us can stand. But we can never ever do this again. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Can’t do what? Go back to bed? Share an innocent fantasy?”
“We can do both those things,” she said. “But we’ll have to find other imaginary friends.”
“Because she’s your sponsee.”
“Whatever. What do they call it when a basketball player turns pro after his first year in college?”
“One and done.”
“That’s Ellen,” she said. “As far as we’re concerned, she’s one and done.”
She left the room, and I heard the shower running. Before I knew it she’d hurried back to the bedroom, towel in hand, drying herself frantically. “Oh, shit,” she said. “How’d it get to be a quarter to eleven?”
“What’s wrong?”
“She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”