Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [102]
I know exactly what he means. Then remembering something, I ask Hayden, “Where do whales go when they die?”
“They beach themselves,” he says immediately.
“Oh,” I say.
“You really ought to go to a meeting, Augusten. I’m telling you this as somebody who has recently imbibed and who is now counting days once again and steeping in his own misery.”
I want to ask him if it was just a little bit fun, a little bit worth it. “It was really awful, huh?”
“You see?” Hayden explodes into the phone. “You’re asking buying questions. You want to know if it was really awful as opposed to semiawful. I swear, Augusten, I’m worried. Go to a meeting. Don’t drink.”
Hayden is annoying me. I had no intention of drinking. He’s the one who got smashed in the Times Square of London. He’s the one who threw his sobriety against the wall and now has to go clean up the mess.
All I have to do is change a few diapers.
• • •
Greer is not pleased when I tell her, over the phone, that I am taking a leave of absence. But because of the reason, she is forced to bite her tongue. Probably literally. Probably it is bleeding. “Well, that’s a very good thing you’re doing,” she says, like I have volunteered to serve turkey to homeless people in the Bowery.
“I’m a little late,” I say with some disgust at myself.
“Late for what?”
“Late for showing him that I actually give a shit. Late for everything.”
“It’s never too late,” Greer chimes. I picture her wearing a horribly expensive sweater made by a seven-year-old Cambodian orphan with head lice. “I’m sure you’re helping.”
“How’s the Nazi?” I ask, changing the subject to something neutral.
“He was furious that the music house wanted forty grand. He wanted us to ‘Jew them down.’ ”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Oh yes, he did. His exact words.”
I wonder how much of my soul remains after spending so many years as an advertising copywriter. Will I end up in Hell along with the Hamburger Helper Helping Hand, Joe Camel and Wendy, the Snapple Lady?
“Call me,” Greer says.
I know she doesn’t mean to call her and chat. Or call her for updates on work. She means call her when it all goes down.
For three days in a row, Pighead has had no hiccups. He stopped drooling and seems more mentally alert. Enough to call me “asshole Fuckhead” when I accidentally spill Ocean Spray CranApple juice on the arm of his pristine white sofa with the down cushions. It’s not a large stain, but it will be permanent, a fact Pighead has the mental capacity to remind me of more than once. Even Virgil has crawled out from under the bed. For weeks, he has been afraid of Pighead. Probably because Pighead no longer smells like Pighead but like something made by Pfizer.
His mother rolls pastry dough with a toilet paper dowel in the kitchen and I sit at the dining room table reading Esquire: “101 Things Every Guy’s Gotta Do Before His Number’s Up.” Number 73 is: paint a woman’s toenails. I add my own number 102 to the list: clean diarrhea off your ex-boyfriend’s legs. “Your eyes look better,” I tell Pighead. “Brighter,” I add.
“I feel a little better,” he says.
Virgil sleeps in a wedge of sunlight in front of the fireplace. He cannot be roused, even with the squeaky carrot. Dog denial.
If it weren’t for the seven boxes of medical supplies stacked next to the front door, the biohazard bags, the disposable diapers, the rubber gloves, the IV pole with the Plum XL3M Series Pump, the fact that most of the furniture has been moved to the sides of the room to make space, and the visiting nurse who is quietly connecting two lengths of clear plastic tubing in the corner, this might pass for an ordinary day.
On my way home, I surprise myself by stopping into a liquor store on Seventh Avenue and Twelfth. I surprise myself even further by buying a pint of Black Label. On the way out, I think how strange it is that liquor stores never redecorate. They never get cool-ized. But then, they don’t need to be hip. They are like urinals—people will go there no matter what.
THE DEEP END
A
t home, I sit at my desk and open the bottle. I bring