"Then-"
"Look," he said, and leaned forward. "I'll just repeat what I was told. He told me, he said, if the guy wants to drink himself to death I can't stop him, and if he wants to come in here he's welcome, but I'm not selling him the booze. This isn't me talking, Matt. I'm just saying what was said."
"I understand."
"If it was up to me-"
"I didn't come in for a drink anyway," I said. "I came in for coffee."
"In that case-"
"In that case the hell with it," I said. "In that case I think what I want is a drink and it shouldn't be all that hard to find somebody willing to sell it to me."
"Matt, don't take it that way."
"Don't tell me how to take it," I said. "Don't give me that shit."
There was something clean and satisfying about the rage I felt. I stalked out of there, my anger burning with a pure flame, and stood on the sidewalk trying to decide where to go for a drink.
Then someone was calling my name.
I turned. A fellow in an army jacket was smiling gently at me. I couldn't place him at first. He said it was good to see me and asked how I was doing, and then of course I knew who it was.
I said, "Oh, hi, Jim. I'm okay, I guess."
"Going to the meeting? I'll walk with you."
"Oh," I said. "Gee, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it tonight. I have to see a guy."
He just smiled. Something clicked, and I asked him if his last name was Faber.
"That's right," he said.
"You called me at the hotel."
"Just wanted to say hello. Nothing important."
"I didn't recognize the name. Otherwise I would have called you back."
"Sure. You sure you don't want to tag along to the meeting, Matt?"
"I wish I could. Oh, Jesus."
He waited.
"I've been having a little trouble, Jim."
"That's not so unusual, you know."
I couldn't look at him. I said, "I started drinking again. I went, I don't know, seven or eight days. Then I started again, and I was doing okay, you know, controlling it, and then one night I got into trouble."
"You got in trouble when you picked up the first one."
"I don't know. Maybe."
"That's why I called," he said gently. "I figured maybe you could use a little help."
"You knew?"
"Well, you were in pretty rocky shape at the meeting Monday night."
"I was at the meeting?"
"You don't remember, do you? I had a feeling you were in a blackout."
"Oh my God."
"What's the matter?"
"I went there drunk? I showed up drunk at an AA meeting?"
He laughed. "You make it sound like a mortal sin. You think you're the first person who ever did that?"
I wanted to die. "But it's terrible," I said.
"What's so terrible?"
"I can never go back. I can never walk into that room."
"You're ashamed of yourself, aren't you?"
"Of course."
He nodded. "I was always ashamed of my blackouts. I didn't want to know about them and I was always afraid of what I might have done. Just for the record, you weren't so bad. You didn't make trouble. You didn't talk out of turn. You spilled a cup of coffee-"
"Oh, God."
"It's not as if you spilled it on anybody. You were just drunk, that's all. In case you were wondering, you didn't look to be having a very good time. Matter of fact, you looked pretty miserable."
I found the courage to say, "I wound up in the hospital."
"And you're out already?"
"I signed myself out this afternoon. I had a convulsion, that's how I got there."
"That'll do it."
We walked a little ways in silence. I said, "I wouldn't be able to stay for the whole meeting. I have to meet a guy at ten o'clock."
"You could stay for most of the meeting."
"I guess so."
It seemed to me as though everybody was staring at me. Some people said hello to me and I found myself reading implications into their greetings. Others didn't say anything and I decided they were avoiding me because my drunkenness had offended them. I was so maddeningly self-conscious I wanted to jump out of my own skin.
I couldn't stay in my seat during the qualification. I kept going back to the coffee urn. I was sure my constant visits to the urn were drawing disapproval but I seemed irresistibly drawn to it.
My mind kept going off on tangents of its own. The speaker was a Brooklyn fireman and he had a very lively story but I couldn't keep my mind on it. He told how everyone in his firehouse had been a heavy drinker and how anyone who didn't drink that way got transferred out. "The captain was an alcoholic and he wanted to surround himself with other alcoholics," he explained. "He used to say, 'Give me enough drunken firemen and I'll put out any fire there is.' And he was right. Man, we would do anything, we would go in anywhere, take any crazy goddamned chances. Because we were too drunk to know better."
It was such a goddamned puzzle. I'd been controlling my drinking and it had worked fine. Except when it didn't.
On the break I put a buck in the basket and went to the urn for still another cup of coffee. This time I managed to make myself eat an oatmeal cookie. I was back in my seat when the discussion started.
I kept losing the thread but it didn't seem to matter. I listened as well as I could and I stayed there as long as I could. At a quarter of ten I got up and slipped out the door as unobtrusively as possible. I had the feeling every eye in the place was on me and I wanted to assure them all that I wasn't going for a drink, that I had to meet somebody, that it was a business matter.
It struck me later that I could have stayed for the end. St. Paul's was only five minutes from my hotel. Chance would have waited.
Maybe I wanted an excuse to leave before it was my turn to talk.
I was in the lobby at ten o'clock. I saw his car pull up and I went out the door and crossed the sidewalk to the curb. I opened the door, got in, swung it shut.
He looked at me.
"That job still open?"
He nodded. "If you want it."
"I want it."
He nodded again, put the car in gear, and pulled away from the curb.
Chapter 11
The circular drive in Central Park is almost exactly six miles around. We were on our fourth counterclockwise lap, the Cadillac cruising effortlessly. Chance did most of the talking. I had my notebook out, and now and then I wrote something in it.
At first he talked about Kim. Her parents were Finnish immigrants who had settled on a farm in western Wisconsin. The nearest city of any size was Eau Claire. Kim had been named Kiraa and grew up milking cows and weeding the vegetable garden. When she was nine years old her older brother began abusing her sexually, coming into her room every night, doing things to her, making her do things to him.
"Except one time she told the story and it was her uncle on her mother's side, and another time it was her father, so maybe it never happened at all outside of her mind. Or maybe it did and she changed it to keep it from being so real."
During her junior year in high school she had an affair with a middle-aged realtor. He told her he was going to leave his wife for her. She packed a suitcase and they drove to Chicago, where they stayed for three days at the Palmer House, ordering all their meals from room service. The realtor got maudlin drunk the second day and kept telling her he was ruining her life. He was in better spirits the third day, but the following morning she awoke to find him gone. A note explained that he had returned to his wife, that the room was paid for four more days, and that he would never forget Kim. Along with the note he left six hundred dollars in a hotel envelope.
She stayed out the week, had a look at Chicago, and slept with several men. Two of them gave her money without being asked. She'd intended to ask the others but couldn't bring herself to do so. She thought about going back to the farm. Then, on her final night at the Palmer House, she picked up a fellow hotel guest, a Nigerian delegate to some sort of trade conference.