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When I can’t watch anymore, I walk over to the window. It’s floor-to-ceiling and I bring my hand to the glass. Although I can see the ripple, I can’t touch it. The glass feels smooth, solid and cool. Yet I know glass is a liquid, always in motion.

Once I accidentally cut my wrist on a broken glass in the sink. How can a person slice their wrist with liquid? It’s incomprehensibly brilliant and clever, glass.

It’s dark outside and I can see Foster in the reflection. He’s lying still now, breathing heavily.

“Augusten,” he says.

I turn. “Yeah?”

“This is me. Now you’ve seen me.”

I walk over to him. Sit beside him. “I could live here,” I tell him. I take the pipe from his fingers. “I mean here,” I say, holding it in front of his face. “I could live right here.”

“Come curl up with me,” he says, patting the space on the futon beside him.

I do. I climb beside him and lie on my side, hands between my legs. It seems like only a few minutes pass before Foster is sound asleep. But I can’t sleep. So I go to the window and sit on the floor. I lean my head against the molding and stare at the street. Sometimes a car drives by, but mostly it’s calm.

Time passes. A harrowing amount of it.

DRY

M

onths later—perhaps ten?—I walk down St. Mark’s Place and I am insanely drunk. It is after midnight but the street is jammed with people and the vendors are selling Yankees caps, temporary tattoos, bootleg videos. Halfway down the block I see two beefy black guys sitting on the tall stairs that lead to a converted brownstone. As I pass by, one of them says, “Rock?”

I stop. “You have any crack?” I ask.

They rise and come down the stairs. “You a cop?” one of them asks.

I laugh. “I am so not a cop,” I say.

They do not laugh. They ask again. “Yo, man. You’re not a cop, are you?”

I say, “No. I am not a cop.”

It’s difficult to stand without swaying. Normally when I am this drunk I am sitting at my computer. I am not accustomed to standing.

“I need crack,” I say.

A small plastic bag is produced; it contains two white rocks. “Fifty,” one of the men says.

I remove my wallet from my back pocket and open it. I have a quarter-inch of twenties and remove three of them. “Here,” I say. I have cashed in my 401k and feel incredibly rich, with over sixteen thousand dollars in the bank.

“Ain’t got change, man,” says one.

“Hurry this shit up,” says the other.

“Whatever. Fuck it,” I say, motioning for them to keep the change. I have always been a generous tipper. I used to work at a Ground Round restaurant in Northampton, Massachusetts, and I got very bad tips. So I know. So I tip.

“How do I do this?” I ask. Foster did it last time and I didn’t pay attention. But I don’t know what to do with them on my own.

“Oh, man. We ain’t got time for this.”

They walk away, fast. Almost a run, but not quite. But I don’t know why they are afraid. Nothing will happen to them. Or me. I feel we are all protected. The alcohol in my system gives me a powerful sense of immunity.

I slide the bag containing the crack cocaine into my front pocket and turn around, walking back in the direction I came. Except now I feel more powerful, having the crack in my pocket. But I don’t know how to smoke it on my own, so I feel like I have just bought the most amazing Corvette and I can’t drive a stick. It is a feeling of supreme power together with utter dependence.

I need somebody who knows what to do.

I walk north on Third Avenue and then make a right on Eleventh and walk toward Second. Often there are prostitutes on the corner of Eleventh and Second and prostitutes know how to smoke.

I feel charmed when I see one, sitting on the sidewalk, her back against the side wall of the sushi place on the corner. “Of course there’s one here,” I say to myself. My confidence is total.

I stop when I reach her. “What’s up?” I ask. I am smiling, trying to look friendly and not horny.

“What you want?” she asks, flat. She sounds exhausted, empty. Like a clerk in a Wal-Mart who does not want to help,