Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [17]
“Just give me one sec here, Augustine,” she says, mispronouncing my name and stacking one mound of papers on top of another. She takes a sip of coffee from a permanently stained mug that reads in swashy, cheerful type, GO AHEAD, MAKE MY DAY! “Okay then, you’re Augustine,” and suddenly I have her complete and undivided attention. Her face is molded into an expression of, What can I do for you today? yet her eyes say, Just you wait.
I can think of nothing to say, so I say, “Yes, Augusten,” correcting her without actually correcting her. My first display of passive-aggressive behavior, something sure to be noted in my chart.
She asks if I met my ride okay at the airport. I tell her I took a cab. She looks troubled.
“But Doris was supposed to pick you up!” She frowns and looks at the phone. “How long did you wait?” she wants to know.
Afraid I’ll get this Doris person into trouble, I do what comes most naturally to me when put on the spot: I lie. “Oh, I didn’t wait. I thought I was supposed to get here myself, so I took a cab.” Then for authenticity, “Cabs are so much less expensive here than they are in New York, I was really amazed.” I’m smiling like somebody who has just pocketed a pair of ruby cuff links at Fortunoff.
She looks at me for what seems like a very long time. For some reason, it occurs to me that I forgot to pack deodorant.
“Well, anyway. Let’s get you checked in and settled.” And before I’m able to say “I have changed my mind,” she has me filling out paperwork, takes a Polaroid (for curious “legal” reasons), and tells me my bags will have to be searched. “For cologne, mouthwash, anything containing alcohol.”
“Cologne?” I ask, incredulously.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she says, “by the things alcoholics will try and sneak in here to drink.”
In my mind this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne and therefore am not an “alcoholic” and am, in fact, in the wrong place. This is clearly the place for the die-hard, cologne-drinking alcoholics. Not the global-brand-meeting-misser alcoholics, like me. I begin to say something, and make it as far as actually opening my mouth but she stands abruptly and picks up my bags. “I’ll just take these into your room and have them inspected while you finish up your paperwork, okay.”
It’s not a question. And again, I have this feeling of powerlessness, of forward propulsion against my will. I am strangely impotent.
I look at the papers in front of me: insurance forms, releases, next-of-kin, places for me to sign my name and initial over and over again. My handwriting is messy, confused. My signature, different every time I sign it. I feel like an imposter. As if some deranged spirit has overtaken the body of Augusten and is right this very moment willfully committing him into a rehab center.
The real Augusten would never stand for this. The real Augusten would say, “Could I get a Bloody Mary, extra Tabasco . . . and the check.”
I finish signing the forms and stare ahead. My eyes fall on the filing cabinet beneath the window. On top of it is a disposable aluminum cake pan containing the ravages of a supermarket birthday cake. A car-wreck of garish pink and blue frosting, green sprinkles, canary yellow sponge cake. It has been hastily, greedily devoured. As if frantic nurses have made mad dashes into this room between crisis interventions and scooped whole handfuls of the cake into their mouths, desperate for the sugar rush, before running back out to strap somebody onto the electroshock therapy gurney, which I am certain is just around the corner, out of view.
I make a mental note to check Peggy’s uniform and chin for evidence of frosting.
Sue pops back into the room. “Your bags are clean. Got your paperwork finished?”
“I think so,” I say meekly.
She glances over the forms. “Looks good. Let’s get you all set up in your room, follow me.”
I follow her for exactly twelve feet. My room is directly across from the nurses’ station. It’s a “detox room,” and I’m told it will be mine for seventy-two hours, then I will be moved to one of the long-term rooms.