by Ron Corbett
Everyone seemed disappointed when I couldn’t answer. One of the women put away her clipboard. The interview ended a few minutes later with the owner saying the successful applicant would be contacted by the end of the week. If I didn’t get a phone call by then, there was really no sense in trying to reach him. Xavier stuck out his hand and said it had been a pleasure.
I went to a meeting that afternoon. Found one on the AA website taking place at a hockey rink in the French Line, in the upstairs banquet hall. I sat at the back of the room listening to stories until the urge to get drunk and burn down Tiggy Winkles had passed.
. . .
I think I knew, even in those first few months, that I was kidding myself about starting a new life by avoiding the Silver Dollar, going to the meetings, getting a new job, and pretending I was a new person. I knew but didn’t know. Maybe that’s what hopeful is. I’m not sure.
That all ended when I returned to my apartment one afternoon and found a parcel outside my apartment door. A small, wrapped box about two feet square, no postage or courier stamps, no name or street address.
I opened it on my kitchen table and inside was the contents from my locker at the Silver Dollar. I started bringing the items out one by one. A mesh shawl. A change-making belt. Black Chinese slippers. Magazines and crossword puzzle books. I had not used the locker in years. There was no need to return any of this stuff, and whoever had access to my locker would have known that.
I kept emptying the box — a pair of silver pumps that had cost $1,200 in New York City five years ago. A bundle of showbills for featured dancers at the Silver Dollar. Business cards, either dealers or marks, no way of remembering now. I didn’t know what it would be exactly, but I found the message at the bottom. It turned out to be a half-full bottle of Glenlivet with a handwritten note wrapped around it.
Darling, you left some things behind. Not sure if you still need the Scotch. You need to phone me.
Love,
Tommy
I put down the note and looked at the junk on my kitchen table. On my best days, I thought I would be forgotten. They had bigger fish to fry. If they were going to do anything at all, I was hoping for something minor league. Anthony coming over and suggesting I leave town, saying, Call us when you get somewhere. Maybe it wouldn’t even be that. They’d watch me for a while, see no cops had approached me, see I was being a stand-up girl, and then they’d move on. I wouldn’t be forgotten, exactly. And I wouldn’t be safe, exactly. I would be somewhere in between. Which would have been fine with me.
I looked at the note and realized it was going to be none of these things. Tommy Bangles. Of all people.
. . .
Why didn’t I leave town the next day? It seems crazy to me now, but I managed to convince myself Tommy’s note was actually a good thing. A clear sign I had some breathing space. Nothing would come at me from out of the blue. I had received notice and there was a process that needed to be followed. I had seen it often enough. Nothing would be decided and nothing would be done until Tommy talked to me.
I was in no hurry to talk to Tommy.
I don’t know if there was a connection, but after getting the parcel I finally spoke at a meeting. I had put it off for months. Not because I was shy, but because I didn’t know what sort of story to tell. The whole truth? Half a truth? Something I made up?
I was leaning toward made up. Because there is something false in most confessions, and I am not sure if personal details even matter. I heard so many stories at the meetings, I got people confused. Was it the purple-pantsuit lady who ended up getting a divorce? Was it the mill hand who had tried controlled drinking? And who was it again who told the story of going on a four-day bender and waking up in the cockpit of a private plane on the runway of an airport in Montgomery, Alabama? The man didn’t know how to fly. Had never been to Alabama. Just woke up one morning, opened a plane door and fell to the ground in Montgomery. He was a big fan of Hank Williams. Only clue he ever had.
I can’t remember who told that story.
So, I got up at a meeting one Monday morning and described how a person becomes a drunk, leaving my name out of it. Could have been any person there. Wake up after more than three years sober and find you want a fun day so badly you go to a liquor store and purchase a mickey of Crown Royal. Don’t agonize over it much. Don’t stand at the front door of the liquor store wondering if you should walk inside. Don’t stare at the bottle before opening it. None of that nonsense you see in bad movies.
And that mickey of rye was like being given a bus station locker. A secret place to stow away every worry, regret, and bad memory I woke up with that morning. Suddenly I was alive again. Hopeful instead of worried. It was the right decision to make. Am I supposed to be a liar and pretend it wasn’t?
But it doesn’t stay the right decision. That’s the damn problem. Before long the fun drinks need maintenance drinks and then the maintenance drinks have to start at ten in the morning, then nine in the morning, before you roll free of your sheets. After that come the blackouts, the shakes — the days when everything around you is spinning like a deck of cards thrown into the air. Reason is gone. Cause and effect is gone. All that shit.
How does it end?
There seemed no easy way to keep me out of that part. So I told them. In the saddest, sorriest voice I could make up, I told them how I woke up one morning beside the Springfield River, coughing up blood and silt, two cops staring down at me asking where I had come from, puzzled looks on their faces when they stood to look around, the mist so thick we couldn’t see the Kettle Falls, just hear it roaring down the canyon.
. . .
Guillaume came to me after I spoke. The first time I saw him talk to anyone at the meeting.
“That was the most honest story I’ve heard at a meeting,” he said.
“Well, thank you. Are we ever going to hear yours one day?”
“Not much to tell, really. Wouldn’t want to bore people.”
“You’re court ordered?”
“No.”
“Angry wife?”
“No.”
“Here of your own free will?”
“As much as such a thing is possible.”
I think that’s when I first noticed him. Most people at AA meetings fall into one of two categories. There are your earnest types, the people who have gone through the Shadow of the Valley of Hard-Core Drinking — mainlining Listerine, three-year blackouts, all that crazy stuff — but they manage to survive, and, because they survive, they have no interest in being loud and brave or even noticed. They’re just glad to be here.
The other ones are your stone-cold desperate types. The people just starting the journey. Looking at the road ahead and freaking a little every day at how impossible it seems to them. No drinking. Ever.
Those are your two AA types. Awkward-earnest or hopped-up desperate. But Guillaume was neither. His speech was different too. Not slow or stuttering, the way it was for so many people at the meetings. He seemed sure of himself. Damaged goods certainly; I remember thinking that. But sure of himself for some reason.
We went for a picnic the next week. It was after a meeting and Guillaume asked if I wanted to grab a coffee, and when I said yes we went to a nearby Second Cup where he bought coffee, date squares, juice, and panini, and we turned it into a picnic. We walked to Strathconna Park and sat beneath a crabapple tree in late bloom, the last petals blowing out over the river. The air smelled of apples and lilacs and fresh water and every once in a while of peat and musk from a nearby flowerbed a city work crew was turning over. There were kayakers in the river and they were making their way down a course that ended at a bridge not far from where we sat.
“Why do you go to the meetings if you never speak?” I asked.
“Why do I have to speak? Don’t the people talking need an audience?”
“I suppose. Although I think telling y
our story is part of the therapy, something that helps you stay sober.”
In a far channel of the river, some kayakers were making their way down a stretch of white water, the brightly painted boats bobbing in and out of view. When the kayakers reached the flat water underneath a bridge they came ashore. Some stopped there and rested although most were quick to put their kayaks on their shoulders and return to the start of the course. We watched them go back and forth like that, as though a procession.
“How would your story begin if you were to tell it?” I asked.
“Just the beginning?”
“That would be easiest, right? Maybe you’re not sure where your story goes, but everyone knows how it begins. Why not start there?”
Guillaume looked at the kayakers before saying, “I’m not sure you’re right about that, Lucy. I met an old man once, after soldiers had come to his village and taken away every other man. Raped and killed the women. Burned and blown up whatever they hadn’t raped or killed.”
“My God, where was this?”
“Bosnia. Although it could have been anywhere. Doesn’t matter where. I’ve seen other villages just like it. The man was allowed to live because he was old. That’s funny, right? Because he was the oldest, he got to live. He wasn’t worth taking and wasn’t worth the effort to kill.
“I asked the old man where the soldiers had gone, but he didn’t know. He had been knocked unconscious, and when he awoke his village was gone. That was all he knew with certainty. Probably the only thing he would know with certainty for the rest of his life.
“I wanted to leave the old man alone, but my commanding officer insisted I ask more questions. Ask him when the attack began, he said. Surely he must know that.
“So I asked him. He said the attack began when they built the village. It had been a provocation, building where they had. I looked it up later, and that village was three thousand years old.”
Guillaume and I stayed in the park until the city workers left and the sun slipped below the treeline. The wind picked up right before dusk and changed direction, so it swept across the river and blew the last of the kayakers off course. As we walked out of the park we were holding hands.
. . .
Tommy phoned a week later. I have no idea how he got my number and he wouldn’t say. He was drunk. It was a Saturday night, so of course he was drunk.
“Lucy, darliiin,” he said when I answered. “It’s been a while. We’re all missing you down here at the Dollar. You shouldn’t turn your back on old friends, darliiin. Why don’t you come down for a drink tonight?”
Dr. Mackenzie thought turning my back on old friends was exactly what I needed to be doing right then. Although no one should need a therapist to tell them Tommy Bangles is the sort of person you avoid in this world.
“That’s sweet, Tommy,” I said. “I got your note, by the way. I’ve been meaning to phone. It’s just a bad time right now. I’ve been out of the hospital less than three months, you know.”
“Three months! Shit, that’s a lifetime. Do you know what you and I could do in three months? Have you ever considered a thing like that, Lucy?”
“Tommy—”
“Shit, they’d be writing songs about us forever if we had three months. That is fuckin’ forever.”
“Tommy. You’re not listening. I’m not in a good place right now. I’m in recovery. The Silver Dollar is the last place I should be.”
“Well, sure, I respect that. You being in recovery and all. But it’s Saturday night. Can’t you slip out for just one drink? Do you know it’s Saturday?”
“Yes, Tommy, I know it’s Saturday,” and I laughed when I said it, hoping it would sound like a carefree laugh, me amused at something Tommy had just said. As if anyone who knew Tommy Bangles ever thought he was amusing.
I could hear the sounds of the Silver Dollar in the background: tinkling glass, laughter, the badly mixed sound of Steve Miller’s “The Joker.”
“So are you coming?”
“It’s not a good time right now, Tommy. I’ve already told you that.”
“Ahhh, Lucy, come on. There are people down here who are dying to see you.”
I didn’t say anything. In the background: cash registers, pool balls, the rat-like laugh of men not accustomed to laughter, the shrill laugh of girls who laugh too much.
“Is he there now?”
“No.”
“He’s not at the club?”
“I just said no.”
“Then why are you phoning me now?”
“I already told you, Lucy. It’s Saturday night, and I thought it would be nice to—”
“Bullshit, Tommy. You wouldn’t be phoning me unless he told you to phone me. And if he’s not there now, that means he ordered you to phone me. What else has he ordered you to do?”
“Don’t start freakin’, Lucy. We were just drinking last night and he said it would be nice to see you. You haven’t been around in a while. There’s nothing formal about this phone call.”
“It’s still a bad time.”
“Well, don’t take too long recovering, darliiin. That’s all I’m saying.”
There was an awkward silence after that, ended only when Tommy said, “Have a good night, Lucy.”
“You too, Tommy.”
. . .
Again, why didn’t I leave town the next day? I have been driving myself mad thinking about it, and I suppose the short answer is I thought it would be a dumb thing to do. Running would have been like putting a target on my back. Telling them they did indeed have something to worry about.
I also convinced myself — and it is a wonder how a person can do this, take a bad set of facts and convince themselves it’s really not that bad — that the phone call from Tommy was another good thing. He as much as told me he didn’t have free will. He couldn’t do whatever he wanted. I needed to speak to another person before any decision was made about me. Knowing this, I made a promise to stay out of the Silver Dollar. A promise I had already made, so the next few weeks were not that different from what they would have been without Tommy’s phone call.
I got a job the next day. At a McDonald’s. Something I could not have imagined doing a few months earlier, although I could have said that about so many things. My worker arranged the job interview, helping with my curriculum vitae (that’s what she called it), and although my work experience could be written with two words — Silver Dollar — we managed to stretch it out to a full page, complete with my name, address, and phone number in bold type on top of the page, like it was important.
“You have restaurant experience?” asked the McDonald’s manager, his eyes peeking over my CV.
“Restaurant and bar. Yes.”
“You are . . . where is it here . . . ?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Yes. Twenty-two. Is it part-time work you’re looking for?”
“No, full time.”
“You’re not in school?”
“Not at the moment.”
“I see. Well . . .”
The interview was held in the manager’s office in the back of the kitchen. His name was Roger Rodriguez and he was mid-thirties probably, had a hairy stomach that hung over his belt. You could see it easily because of a missing button. Everything in his office was metal. Desk, chairs, window blinds. A burnished silver metal. Like every stove, fryer, and appliance in his kitchen.
He didn’t know what to make of me. I did not present as a typical McDonald’s job applicant — that was the word my worker kept using: “How do you present, Lucy?” Talking as though I were a gift being offered, which maybe is more right than I care to admit.
When the manager hadn’t said anything for a minute, I fidgeted in the chair and said, “I need a job, Mr. Rodriguez.”
“Yes, well, there are things I need in this world as well, Ms. Whiteduck.
One thing I certainly do not need is to spend money training an employee who will be gone in a month.”
“You don’t think I’ll stay?”
“I do not understand why you are even here. Look at you.”
We didn’t say anything for a minute. I waited to see if he would hit on me but he didn’t.
“I promise you I will stay for one year, Mr. Rodriguez.”
“One year?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
He laughed, put down my CV, rubbed his eyes, and looked out at the people working in the kitchen. It looked like I would be one of his older employees if he hired me.
“Ah, why not? Can you start Thursday? There’s a training session that evening. You would need to be here by five.”
The old starting time for the Silver Dollar, if you were dancing in the evening. I thanked him and told him that five would be fine.
. . .
Guillaume stopped coming to the meetings around then. Said he had heard all the stories. He would meet me afterward in back of the church with a Woods rucksack packed for a picnic. One hot July day, a summer storm blew in, coming with no warning, no distant thunder or flash of sheet lightning, no gradual darkening of the sky. One minute it was clear and humid. The next, rain was pelting down and we were running toward my apartment.
When we got there we both knew what was going to happen, but there was none of the games you normally have the first time. No made-up stories. No uncertainty or give-and-take. We took our time about it, like we knew we were starting something that would be with us forever, so there was no need to hurry.
We stopped after every button and tug of denim, our tongues warm in each other’s mouths. When we had undressed, we made love on sheets turned cold from the dropping temperature, in front of white walls that danced with the late afternoon shadows cast from my windows — leaves blowing past, rain bleeding down.
