by Hazel Parker
And it didn’t help that the other girl on shift with me, Sue, thought that he was also hot as hell.
“Was he flirting with you?” Sue, a recent immigrant from Vietnam, said. “He’s hot.”
“Yes, but he’s a customer,” I said.
“So? This isn’t your end all, be all job, right? You’re here temporarily, right?”
“Well, true…”
But the reason for this not being my final job was something that Sue didn’t know. About twenty people in the world knew, and they didn’t know my last name, just as I didn’t know theirs. That was the nature of Alcoholics Anonymous—the second word didn’t exist just for the sake of alliteration.
I was in no rush to tell Sue or anyone. To have fallen from the heights I once had attained… well, it was embarrassing, frankly. And if I wasn’t going to tell people I’d known for longer than the three weeks Sue had been at Egg, I sure wasn’t going to tell her.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “But the most important thing is to be professional.”
“And get tips. Brooklyn is not cheap.”
Unfortunately, you speak the truth all too well.
I made it a point whenever I approached the table to take a deep breath, engage in a relaxed manner, and smile, but not flirt. It wasn’t hard; there was only one other table, and Sue was taking care of it. We didn’t need two servers, honestly, but the owner liked to have employees for the sake of helping others. My old life would have laughed at it, but I sure as hell appreciated it now.
For the rest of their meal, though, our interactions were like that of any other customer-waitress interaction. I smiled and served, and brought them the check at their request. The arrival of the little brother had distracted Marcel from engaging with me. I think both of us seemed happy to have that in place.
I didn’t know why he felt that way. He seemed to be enjoying our conversation.
As Marcel reached into his wallet, I silently watched from the side, out of view of him. The little one could see me, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. The two of them then clinked glasses over something.
Well, it’s not alcohol. But anyone who drinks alcohol is going to do that. So if you want to get yourself entangled with someone who drinks after all you’ve learned in AA and elsewhere…
Don’t fuck it up. One hot guy isn’t worth it, Christine. You know this.
I went to the back of the store and looked at the time. Four-fifty-eight. The store would close in two minutes. Sue walked in a few seconds later.
“Closing out hot guy’s tab?”
I gave a slight chuckle.
“He is handsome, but that’s it. There’s not much else to it.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, girl! I saw you two talking when he walked in! Go for it!”
I laughed.
“I really can’t right now, Sue. I appreciate it, but it’s not something I can do right now.”
“Aw, boo,” she said, causing me to laugh.
“Boo all you want; it won’t change anything.”
It left me smiling, though, as I approached Marcel’s table. I placed his card and the receipt on the table.
“Thank you both for coming and enjoy the rest of the day.”
“Be assured we will, Christine.”
Why does him saying my name do that to me? I gave a nervous laugh, struggled to remember the words “thank you” and walked off. I went to the back to see Sue had been watching me the whole time.
“That was adorable.”
“And it’s closing time,” I said, hoping to change the subject. “Do you want to take care of close? Or do you need my help?”
“Nah, girl, you go. I got this.”
Thank heavens. I didn’t want her to know, but I had an AA meeting in about an hour and a half in downtown Manhattan. Though I currently had many meeting options much closer to me, this was the location that I had first started coming to when I realized I had serious problems; this was the location where I knew people; and this was the location where my sponsor was. What I sacrificed in convenience, I gained in stronger relationships.
But still. It was hard to escape your past when your past lit up the New York City skyline every evening.
I removed my bib and my name tag, stuffed it into my bag, and walked out. Marcel and his little brother were still chatting. I tried to keep my eyes straight ahead. I was off the clock, but that made flirting with Marcel or anyone else even more dangerous. I couldn’t earn a tip now.
Well, not a financial tip, at least. Christine!
I opened the door and turned left, starting to go to the subway station, and—
Someone ran into me hard. I was left stunned and reeling, but I regained my senses just fast enough to see someone trying to steal my purse.
“Gimme that!”
“No! Help! Help!”
The mugger, a bearded white guy with malicious brown eyes, yanked hard. I could have resisted or slowed him down, but I wasn’t going to win this fight. With just a couple of yanks, he had me spilled out on the ground and started running the other way.
And then the door to Egg swung open, staggering the mugger. The mugger regained his footing and tried to take off, but Marcel—Marcel?—grabbed him, tripped him, and delivered a hard punch to the face that knocked him out cold. The whole thing had lasted maybe five seconds, but it was something I would never forget.
“You OK?” he asked as he reached down and grabbed my bag.
I looked in awe at Marcel. I knew that he was a big dude, but I had not expected him to kick as much ass as he did. He hadn’t just beaten the shit out of the mugger; he’d done so with shocking ease. It wasn’t a challenge for him so much as it was just something that he needed to do, as easy for him as bringing out plates of food was for me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just surprised. It’s OK, though. I should’ve been more aware.”
“Nonsense, don’t blame yourself for this shit,” he said, offering a hand to help me out. I took it—it was very calloused and thick. It sent shivers down my body. “Assholes think they can get away with shit but need a fucking lesson. Do you need me to walk you home?”
“Oh, no, no, no, I’m fine. I’m not going home right now.”
“Well, where are you going?”
I gulped. I obviously wasn’t telling him. I—
“Is it somewhere I can join you?”
What? Oh, Lord, if it were anywhere else, right now, honestly, I’d probably say yes, but—
“Marcel!” his brother said. “Get out of here. Go back to my place.”
“But—”
“You can’t afford to be seen swatting a fly, let alone knocking someone out, even if it was a good thing. Get your fat ass home. I’ll take care of clean up.”
Marcel shot me a look that said: “this sucks, but I’ll be back.” He looked to his brother, appeared to give him some sort of gesture—probably a middle finger—that I couldn’t see, and then walked away.
“Sorry, I know he did a good thing, but he’s dealing with some shit right now where even the appearance of him being in the wrong could have drastic consequences,” the younger brother said. “You are OK though, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, but my mind had gone from wondering why I was being robbed to wondering what in the world this guy was referring to.
“Do you need me to walk—”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, not wanting anything to hint at me going to AA, even if the subway into Manhattan could have meant thousands of possibilities. “I just appreciate what your brother did.”
“He’s a good guy. But unfortunately, a lot of so-called smart people think always following the law equals being a good person, or that breaking the law automatically makes you a bad person. Marcel is proof that ain’t true. And so is…”
He didn’t finish his sentence.
“You have yourself a good night, ma’am. Stay safe.”
What in the hell just happened?
And am I going to get to see you again, Marcel?
It’s probably not healthy for me to say this, but I sure as hell hope so. I still haven’t gotten used to having questions go unanswered or be unanswerable.
* * *
The first time I had ever stepped foot into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I had felt embarrassed beyond anything I’d ever felt in my life.
I’d done some terrible, really stupid things in my life. I’d been duped into one-night stands. I’d slept with one of my bosses. I’d blurted things out drunk I shouldn’t have. But in every situation, I could take ownership of it by saying I just needed to be better, and I would be. I was warned going into that meeting that I had to surrender the idea that I could control my alcoholism. I was reassured that I would not be judged for such an admission, and, in fact, I would be embraced for it.
But the opposite played out in my head. I saw myself being judged and rejected for being someone who, metaphorically, had it all and then pissed it away because I couldn’t control myself with my liquor. I refused to believe that I couldn’t control my alcohol consumption—I just hadn’t found a way to take care of it. The story in my head was that I was in the midst of a great struggle for my soul, and as soon as I figured out how to defeat that struggle, I would emerge triumphant.
I went through the motions in that first meeting. I can’t pretend now that it was a revolutionary moment in my life. But it allowed me to realize I wouldn’t be laughed at, snickered at, or mocked. New Yorkers weren’t exactly the paradigm of warm and friendly folk, but they also weren’t mocking and shaming. They just needed time to judge and trust before they warmed up.
It took multiple “first” meetings in that I broke my sobriety several times. Even now, though I’d been sober for fifty-nine days, compared to the number of days that had passed since I first started going to these meetings, I was a little embarrassed.
But at least now I could walk through those doors without feeling like I didn’t belong. In fact, in some ways, I might have felt like I belonged a little too well. I made more meetings than anyone else, looked forward to these dates more than anyone else, and embraced being in AA more than most people. But maybe that was the point. Maybe by being so committed now, by aiming to get first to a hundred days and then one year and then a thousand days and so on, I could get sober.
Maybe.
Or maybe I was so broken that I couldn’t tell the difference between if I needed to belong or not.
We went around the room, the routine the usual. “Hi, my name is Christine, and I’m an alcoholic.” “Hi Christine.” “It’s been fifty-nine days since my sobriety date.” Saying the words out loud had a really powerful effect; it was hard to deny being an alcoholic when you uttered the words. It was still somewhat embarrassing to hear, and I wasn’t at the stage yet where I could truly embrace it without some shame, but like I said, it was definitely easier than before.
I then got the opportunity to discuss the challenges and the problems that laid behind me and ahead of me. This was more of a chance to get things off of my chest than anything else; it wasn’t so much a chance to get advice, although afterward, people would seek it out.
“I’ve been pretty good about not wanting a drink since my last meeting,” I said. “I haven’t gone out much, which sounds tough, but I think right now, it’s necessary to keep my distance. Work has been good. I’m regaining the confidence to believe I can be around coworkers and not want to grab drinks with them. I…”
Marcel. You have an attraction to him. If he’s going to ask you out, it’s going to be to a drink.
Of course, it’s pretty presumptive of you to assume he’s going to ask you out. That’s a bit bold and something that’s probably not real, but it’s easy to believe, isn’t it? It’s easy to want to believe, at least.
“I, yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
In my head, at least.
“Hopefully, when I’m here next week, I can say that it will have been sixty-six days.”
Polite applause broke out, the group’s way of encouraging everyone to feel supported and secure. If they knew how much I’d left out, though, they wouldn’t have applauded.
The rest of the meeting, at least, went normally. It was easy to pick out the new people by the way they hesitated to speak about their experiences or what they had done in the past week. Their body language was also much more fidgety and awkward than the regulars; for the regulars, it was like going to order Subway for lunch.
At the end of the meeting, I usually didn’t spend much time hanging out. I preferred to say my piece, duck out, and call it a night. Part of it was because I wanted to get home before the nightlife of Manhattan tempted me; part of it was because it was much more likely I’d run into old coworkers here than in Brooklyn; and part of it was just that, mean as it sounded, I didn’t connect with many of the people here.
While I believed I was an alcoholic, if not outright embraced it, many of the people talked about ruined relationships. They spoke of divorces, getting cut off from parents or children, or estranged friendships as a result of their drinking. Me? I had just lost a job to drinking. I supposed I could have said that I lost a relationship due to drinking too, but that relationship was so toxic that something, if not booze, would have killed it.
But on this night, I couldn’t leave without telling someone what had happened. There was one other girl my age, an aspiring music artist by the name of Jessica. Jessica, with gorgeous brown hair, light brown skin, and deep brown eyes that were both beautiful and haunting at the same time, had bonded with me quickly. We hadn’t hung out yet outside of AA meetings, but we’d also only known each other for about a month. Like a good relationship, we didn’t rush straight to the good stuff.
Maybe tonight would change that.
“Hey, Jess,” I said, grabbing her by the arm sleeve. “Walk with me to the train station?”
“Of course,” she said in a bubbly voice.
I felt some envy. She, like the rest of us, tried not to drink, but she seemed to have reached the grateful and chipper stage much faster than the rest of us. I was still in a period of adjustment and flux where I didn’t know how to be an adult. The details didn’t matter as much as the fact that happiness, for me, had felt mighty fleeting in the past two months. And yet, it’s the anguish from your decisions that makes you a great painter. Ironic, isn’t it?
“You know, I didn’t say everything back there,” I said once we were alone. “Don’t worry; I didn’t drink. There was a guy who came to my work today. Big handsome dude. Hot, but with a hint of mystery to him. He—”
“Did you hit on him?”
I bit my lip.
“Not aggressively, but—”
“But yes. OK.”
“And I got mugged, and he saved me. He knocked out the would-be thief and gave me my purse back.”
“So now, not only is he hot, but he’s also your Superman.”
I nodded. We both knew the problem. For people like us, even if we weren’t clingy and dependent on partners, in moments like these, just starting to deal with addiction, we were vulnerable. I didn’t exactly have the greatest of history with making smart romantic decisions, and Jessica had revealed to me she wasn’t either.
“You know what you need to do, then,” she said as we approached the stairs to the train.
“Quit my job, move away, and go someplace else?”
“Yes.”
I could always count on Jessica to give it to me straight—almost frustratingly straight. She wasn’t wrong, but that was what drove me the craziest. At least she wasn’t someone who expected me to figure everything out and do everything in a very short time.
“You know what we say in AA. Put yourself near smoke, and soon you’ll get burned. This man sounds like he’s smoking hot, but that plays into your situation in more ways than one.”
I know, I thought. But at some point, I’m going to have to trust myself not to let the fire burn me,
but just warm me. Right?
“You’ll be alright, girl. You’ve gone two months now without drinking. One man ain’t gonna stop you.”
That’s the hope.
It’s also a lot easier said than done.
Chapter 3: Marcel
Sweat poured off my forehead like it was the middle of the summer in Nevada, except it was fall in New York City.
Paranoia followed me the whole way back to Biggie’s apartment. I felt sure that every single cop car that I saw would pull me over, telling me they had a warrant out for assault against a citizen. It wouldn’t matter that I’d been acting as a good Samaritan; given my past, I could have punched Hitler in the face and most places would have found me guilty.
I looked over my shoulder, waiting to see someone trailing me. I looked ahead with fear, sure that someone would ambush me. I went into my head, convinced that if I could come up with a good explanation, somehow, someway, maybe I’d avoid going back to jail and all but ensuring I faced a life behind bars.
Instead, none of that shit happened.
When I got to Biggie’s place and shut the door behind me, I went to the couch, crumpled in a heap, and immediately felt at ease. Obviously, the police still could come and get me, but by this point, the odds of that were much lower than before. I had done a good deed, and I had not gotten punished yet.
But there was still one part of today that I’d been dreading from the start.
I’d meant to do it last night, but I hadn’t managed to get access to a phone until it was far too late in the evening. There was no reason to do it during the day, and I couldn’t do it in the early afternoon when I was meeting with Biggie.
But now, I could finally call my little girl.
And, unfortunately, my daughter’s mother.
I pulled out my old phone and started dialing the phone number of my ex, Sarah. Even though this new phone had none of the old numbers that I had before I got arrested, I had her number memorized. I never would forget the way to contact the mother of Lilly; fifty years could have passed, and I would still remember the number to reach her. The phone began to ring.
