Start Without Me

by Joshua Max Feldman

  As he came around again to the gates, a woman ran past him—blond hair pouring from under a knit cap embroidered with rings of flowers, a black duffel bag swinging at her hip. Adam watched her—through one of the numbered doors, watched her step smilingly, gratefully onto a bus. And how he envied her that feeling of having made it: arriving just where she’d wanted to be. It was such a simple and perfect consonance: the place you wanted and the place you were. Why was he denied it? Why did he deserve to be stuck in a bus station, with nowhere to go?

  Adam wasn’t stupid. He’d been through rehab twice. He knew what his mind was doing, what decision he’d arrive at when the gears in his head clicked into place. He’d walk around the bus station a while longer, and finally muster enough loneliness and self-pity and estrangement from his sober life that he’d decide to have a drink. Maybe this had been the plan all along, from the moment he’d woken up that morning: find his way to a situation (say, wandering around the Brattleboro bus station alone on Thanksgiving Day) in which having a drink would be the only thing that would make sense, the only thing that would feel honest. Adam was ashamed to be a drunk, but at least he could recognize himself, too, through the prism of that shame. He’d be less lonely when he began drinking, because he’d find himself in the company he knew best: his own drunk self.

  “Cope,” he said aloud as he passed the pizza place, and the word landed with a farcical pop, like a snapped guitar string. “Nine months and four days!” and the words came out the same way, like a joke told so often it was no longer funny. Through the glass door, he watched as the bus the girl had caught jerked and pulled away from the curb, seemed to hesitate for just a second, and then headed off to wherever.

  He got out his phone to call Marissa. He wasn’t ready to give up quite yet; he recognized that he’d want to be able to tell himself, maybe around the third or fourth drink, that he’d done everything he could. He scrolled among his contacts until he found her name: Marissa Cavano. His thumb hovered over her name but then he changed his mind. He worried that if she knew who was calling, she wouldn’t answer; or maybe he worried that if she knew who was calling, she would.

  Either way, he turned around and went back to the pay phone, dug out a quarter, appreciated the tactile sensation of sliding it into the slot, followed by the little rattle the coin made as it worked its way down the call box, and dialed the number off his phone. Three rings. Four rings. Five. Then: “This is Marissa Cavano. Please leave me a message. If this is Venture Scheduling, my AIN is 7574813.” Beep, he heard.

  The metal handset had some kind of moist film on it. He held it a little away from his mouth and ear as he spoke—quietly, like he didn’t want to be overheard. “So, hey, it’s Adam. Um . . . I’m still in the bus station, believe it or, um—yeah. I’m not going out to Ann Arbor. I’m really sorry about that. Thing is, I’m thinking of making some pretty, like . . . bad decisions. Sobriety-wise, I mean. And I didn’t know who else to call. So . . . Help? Ha ha ha. Anyway, no worries. Hope it goes well with your mom. Okay, thanks, bye.”

  He hung up, feeling lighter already. That was it, his last, best shot. Now he could surrender to his folly—his fate. His life in San Francisco lacked any toehold of emotion, it had nothing to do with him, really. It was merely his impersonation of a life. He’d fucked it up with his family, who’d be smart enough never to have anything to do with him again. And the last person he had left to call hadn’t answered. And Johanna was dead, he hadn’t saved her, and the music hadn’t saved her. So what else could he do but the only thing he knew he’d do right, every time?

  “Time to get fucked up!” he announced. As he turned, he saw waiting behind him for the phone a stout woman with a scarf wrapped around her face up to her eyes. She glared at him, her eyes above the scarf fierce with enmity.

  “Sorry!” he shouted, louder than he meant. She edged backward, bobbing her head in little jerks.

  Adam hurried over to the bright little shop. “Rocket Man” was playing, which had to be the universe telling him this was the right thing to do: It was a song about drinking and it was a song he’d played drunk so many times he could do it in a blackout. He stepped over to the cooler, with its refrigerated racks of beverages in cans and screw-top bottles. But as his eyes darted over the juices and sodas and energy drinks and varietals of water, top to bottom, he saw they didn’t carry beer. A desperate, aggrieved feeling washed over him: He’d decided to have a drink, so why the fuck wasn’t he drinking yet? His body had thrown off all pretense of recovery—every inch of bone and sinew cried out for alcohol with such harmonic aching need, it was downright orgasmic. And the fucking shop didn’t sell fucking beer! “Take it easy,” he told himself aloud, because he was on the verge of tears. “You’ll find some.” And it was true, too. The primordial alchemy of a divining rod for water, the bloodhound pack on the scent of an escaped con, the most technologically sophisticated tracking systems ever devised to spot nuke-laden bombers before they reached American cities—that shit had nothing on an alcoholic after booze. If there was a bottle of anything in Brattleboro, Vermont, he would find it.

  He pushed out the revolving doors, came out onto the street. The sky had darkened into dusk, skeins of snow coiled in the air, a haze hung over the street in which the headlights of approaching cars glowed with wolfish menace. The whole world had turned bleak and fierce, and he knew this wasn’t just the weather: The fear and desperation and that old sadness for himself had grown so thick he couldn’t see past them. But the sensation thrilled him, too, addled him, with its potency, the clarity of intention it gave him.

  He rushed down the sidewalk, on the hunt. “Tryin’ to get my load on on Thanksgiving Day again,” Adam sang to himself, to the tune of “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” The jukebox in his head would shut off, too, when he drank.

  This was going to be harder than he thought, though. Everything he passed was a fucking antiques store or a kids’ clothing store or a bougie home goods store, all of them closed. He felt anxious walking under the streetlights, but when he moved into the dark on the edge of the sidewalk, he worried about getting jumped. But who had ever gotten jumped in Brattleboro? Tchaikovsky strings screamed tragicomically in his head. Serenade in C Major. What a fucking joke.

  Had he walked for ten minutes? Twenty? An hour? By the time he found himself in front of the Hungry Panda, a freestanding Chinese restaurant on a stretch of sleepy sidewalk, the arthritis and cold had dug so deep into the fists in his pockets he wasn’t sure he’d be able to open them. But beer signs glowed in the windows like the deck lights of a ship to a castaway. Pushing open the door was like stepping through the parting of the pearly gates. If it was meant to be any other way, it would’ve been closed, he thought as he walked in. Then he thought, If it was meant to be any other way, it would have been some other way.

  Globular paper lanterns dangled across the ceiling, mirrors lined the walls, the sides of the booths were painted red and gold, carved in swirls and waves. From somewhere, orchestral Christmas music played feebly. And there was a full bar at the back.

  But Adam was prepared to take his time now. He brought his fists to his face, blew on them as he waited at the podium for someone to appear and seat him. A great, blue-lit fish tank stood beside the door, striped and spotted and lacquered fish swimming around in brainless content inside. He tapped on the glass with his knuckle, watching for them to scatter. “Don’t do that, please!” a lilting voice said. A hostess had turned up: a plump, sturdy woman with a high forehead and a thin, quick mouth. “Only one?” she asked him.

  “Yup, yup, only one,” Adam heard himself say; some breach had opened inside himself, and he was peering in from the margins, watching to see what he did next. Unity would come with the first swallow, he knew.

  He followed the waitress to a booth, the table set for six. She put the menu down in front of him and disappeared. From his seat, Adam saw that the Christmas music was coming from a synthesizer in a corner, a
cheap off-brand you could pick up at Target for eighty bucks, an iPod on the stool behind it plugged into the input jack. “It figures,” he said. Probably somebody played the synth on the weekends or something—and Christ, he could just hear it: glossy digital notes played off sheet music, a muzak “Yellow Submarine” interrupted by “Happy Birthday.” Yes, it figured.

  “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” all strings, anemic and tinny, spread through the restaurant. An Indian family in a booth by the door were the only other customers: a chubby, mustachioed dad, looking bored, a mother in powder-blue scrubs, looking tired, and two heavyset little boys, one playing a video game on a handheld device, beep-do-deep, the other watching the fish in the tank like it was the goddamn Super Bowl. Adam turned his head toward the bar. He had a clear view to the stacked shelves of bottles, the alpha through omega of shapes and colors, from the crystalline high-end vodka to the electric blue of Curaçao to the inky black of coffee liqueur, the manly square of the whiskey and the unwieldy elephant trunk of Galliano and the squat sphere of Chambord.

  “So we meet again,” he said toward them in a James Bond–villain accent. Yup, the gang was all here, reunited at last. He used to spend hours just staring at the shelves of bottles behind the bar, finding such comfort in the abundance: every viscosity, every proof, like a new box of crayons, like a family at a dinner . . .

  “You ready order?” The hostess who’d seated him was back, notepad in her hand, pen poised.

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Awkwardly, he picked up the menu, opened it—suddenly shy, for some reason, like the guy who strides into a brothel, all macho and fuck-swagger, and gets tongue-tied when the pro asks what he wants. “So, uh . . .”

  “Need more time?”

  “No,” he said sharply. “I’ll have . . . Let’s see . . . I’ll have some egg drop soup, and the fried pork dumplings, and a beer, and—”

  “What kinda beer?”

  He stared, like she’d caught him red-handed. She looked back, bland and disinterested. “You want Chinese beer?”

  He nodded. “And moo shu with chicken,” he went on, “and a double gin and tonic, and . . . and . . . and General Tso’s, extra spicy, and crispy beef. And some . . .” His mouth was dry. “And water. And a Jack and Coke.” He tried to smile. “I know that’s a lot.”

  She wasn’t looking at him, her eyes were on the pad. “Egg drop soup, fried pork dumpling, moo shu with chicken, General Tso chicken extra spicy, crispy beef, Chinese beer, gin tonic double, and Jack Coke, right?” She spoke in a detached, singsongy voice, like she was chanting an incantation she knew by rote. He nodded. She didn’t see. She looked up and he nodded again. It was a ridiculous order, but what did she care? The more, the better, right? he wanted to ask her. She turned and walked away.

  A gust of wind tumbled in as the door opened; Adam looked up with a shock of hope. But who could he expect to see? An elderly couple walked in: the man in big, square sunglasses, like he must’ve just had eye surgery, the woman’s face a cold-pinched ruby red, earmuffs on her ears. The hostess hurried over to them. “Hi, Mister, Missus Bernstein, Happy Thanksgiving,” she said cheerfully.

  “The Little Drummer Boy” began now. Marissa hadn’t called him back; Kristen hadn’t called to check on him; Jack hadn’t, his parents hadn’t. It was amazing, how short the list of people who might care where he was had gotten. All his friends—well, he’d fucked over most of them: borrowed money, pawned their instruments, insulted their girlfriends or wives. And the money his parents had spent! For rehab, plus the lessons, camps, teachers over the years. Jack told him they’d taken out a second mortgage to afford Stone Manor. He was an expensive habit! And all a waste. Because now it was all settled. The future was more predictable than anyone liked to admit, because no one ever changed. You were the fish tank you swam in: only so much was possible between those four walls. Johanna was crazy; Adam was an alcoholic. You could rub them together however you wanted, but the outcome would always be the same: the loony bin; the bar. He was never going to be Sufjan Stevens. She was never going to be St. Vincent. It was a miracle they’d even made the one record. It was pretty good, at least. But too bad it hadn’t been better.

  The beer appeared before him with a clunk. The hostess had maybe forgotten to open it; he didn’t check whether it was a twist-off. He watched as she went behind the bar, poured a gin and tonic: his gin and tonic. She swirled the ice cubes in the Jack and Coke with a straw. Adam had to piss.

  He shoved his way out of the booth, looked around. The hostess, with a sort of hostess-manager-only-waitress-working telepathy, lifted her head and pointed to a doorway to his left. He jogged over, pushed the door open, almost toppled down stairs he hadn’t expected. Grabbing the rail, he let his momentum carry him down two at a time. On the landing at the bottom, through a gap between racks of glasses and stacked cardboard boxes of paper towels, he saw a white sliding door with the pictograph for a bathroom. He slid the door open, flicked on the light switch, closed the door behind him, and locked it.

  The toilet and sink and electric hand dryer were enough to make the space crowded. He undid his pants, pulled them to his thighs, and pissed. Then he pulled up his pants and looked in the mirror. It was easy to forget how you really looked, how bony and shifty your face must appear to other people. This would be the final relapse: You could see it like it was etched into the creases that wrung his eyes, like it was the only words his trembling, untrustworthy mouth had to say. And there was comfort in knowing that. He’d never again force himself to make the long climb up to sobriety—he’d just let himself sink. Rock bottom was a myth: You never smacked into some unbearable floor of shame that impelled you back up to the arms of good sense. Rock bottom was just whatever point addicts reached before they cleaned up and then, looking back, declared, That was the worst. In truth, you could spend a whole life sinking, if you wanted. And that would be Adam’s life—being one of those guys at the bar with the fragile, friendly, grasping look, who got kicked out every night, but was always there the next day. He’d never drive anywhere without stopping for a twelve-pack, trash bags of empties would accumulate wherever he lived, like tumors.

  He washed his hands, as certain of this later destiny as he was of the course of the next hours, as if it was annunciated by the choiring angels Johanna believed she heard from the spigot of their bathroom sink. He’d drink here until they cut him off, and when they cut him off, he’d trash this place. Adam was a happy drunk, until he became the opposite. He grinned in the mirror at the thought: ripping the paper lanterns from the ceiling, smashing plates on the floor, grabbing bottles from behind the bar. He’d shove the fish tank over, he’d watch the cascading water hurtle the fish across the floor—flop, gasp, die. He’d jump up and down on the synthesizer, he’d throw chairs to try to break the windows. You could do a lot of damage before the police finally showed up. I’m not scared anymore, he thought as he climbed the stairs, I’m not scared.

  His ears were ringing when he sat down again, he couldn’t hear the music. The food had arrived: beef and chicken piled in mounds on the plates, oozing to their lips, the table so crowded with dishes it was like he’d ordered for the empty seats, too. And his three drinks: the beer now plucked of its cap, the double gin and tonic, the Jack and Coke. That was all it would take; it was more than enough. He hesitated a while longer, but only because he knew it was already too late. God, he was tired of being himself; God, he was tired of being himself, and being ashamed of it. And at last the simplicity that made the dependency so powerful, for him, finally, incurable: If he had a drink, he would feel better.

  His phone dinged its voicemail ding. It wasn’t exactly a lightning bolt, it wasn’t Johanna with wings descending from the sky. But he figured he should at least check it. On the screen, he read that he had a message from Marissa. But he didn’t believe it until he heard her voice, alto-ish, firm: “I’m in the bus station, but I don’t see you. If it isn’t too late, let me know where you are and I’ll pick you up a
nd take you to a meeting. I know you may not believe this, but there are a lot of people counting on you.” She was silent for so long he had to look at the phone to see whether the message had ended. “Think about the people who love you, Adam.” And silenzio.

  As Adam tossed the phone across the table, he felt the most clear and perfect hatred he had ever known. It was like a black, polished diamond burning in his palm: He hated Marissa. He hated her for calling him back, he hated her for looking for him at the bus station, hated her for what she’d said in her voicemail: “the people who love you.”

  In the grip of that hatred, with an anguished wail, he shoved everything on the table off the table, onto the floor. There followed a tiny symphony of shattering glass and bouncing flatware, the foodstuff slither, and a plate spinning almost to a whistle before its sudden facedown plop, ice cubes tripping over tile, a final diminuendo of a rolling chopstick, and, like applause, the gasps from everyone else in the restaurant. It was worse than the worst case of blue balls; Tantalus himself wouldn’t have understood the physical torture of what Adam had just done to himself. He even considered getting on the floor and licking up some of the spilled Jack and Coke. Because no matter what he said to the hostess now—and he’d have to come up with that pretty quickly—there was no server on the planet who’d bring him a drink after this.

  And just like that, the hatred drifted away like smoke. Adam blinked around the restaurant, smiling stupidly at the Indian family, at the Bernsteins. He climbed out of the booth, got down on his knees, and started picking up the shards of glass.

  When the hostess, rattling off an unbroken monologue in Chinese, walked over with a mop, he took a minute to text Marissa:

  Chinese restaurant near the bus station. Hungry Panda. Not too late.

  A restaurant table, Christmas music, a waitress who wanted nothing to do with them. “Here we go again,” Marissa said as she sat down across from him. He looked worse for wear since she’d first seen him, and he hadn’t exactly started the day looking daisy fresh.