Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [41]
One of the names he mentions is the Perry Street meeting, which I remember Dr. Valium telling me about. The next meeting is at eight, so I decide I’ll do this.
It’s only a ten-minute walk from my apartment, but I leave immediately. Better to walk around than sit alone in my apartment. I arrive in front of the meeting place in less than seven minutes. I’m walking too fast. But since I have over an hour to kill and Pighead’s apartment is five minutes away, I decide to stop by.
The doorman looks too happy to see me and I am immediately suspicious. “How you doin’ there, Mr. Augusten?” he says. “Long time no see.”
I want to grab him by the lapel of his doorman jacket and say, “What did that Pighead tell you? Whatever he said, don’t believe a word: I’ve been in Madrid . . . shooting a commercial.”
But before I can do this, he says, “Oh, your friend, he just now got back from walking Virgil.” Virgil is Pighead’s scrappy white terrier. Virgil loves me more.
I take the elevator to the fourth floor and make a left. Pighead’s apartment is the last one on the right, at the very end of the long hallway. But already I can see he has the door open, because I see Virgil’s head sticking out and Pighead’s hand attached to the collar. “Go get him,” Pighead says and Virgil tears down the hallway, barking and snapping, immediately grabbing hold of my pant leg with his mouth.
I bend down and rub both of my hands across his back really fast. “Virgil, Wirgil, Squirgil, what a good boy, what a very good boy.” I run down the hallway to Pighead’s door, Virgil yapping at my ankles as he runs alongside.
I walk past Pighead, who’s standing in the entryway, and go right into the living room, where I pick Virgil up and throw him onto the sofa. He bounces off and back onto the floor, charging at me immediately. I do it again. Then he runs to the corner of the room and retrieves a rubber carrot, brings it to me and drops it at my feet. He barks. I turn around and throw the carrot down the hallway into the bedroom, and Virgil takes off after it.
“Holy shit,” Pighead says when he finally sees my face. “I wouldn’t have recognized you.”
I take my jacket off, sling it over one of his dining room chairs.
“Don’t do that,” he says, “use a hanger.”
As he walks toward the hall closet for a hanger, I ask, “What do you mean?”
He turns. “A coat hanger? You know, that thing Joan Crawford hit her kid with?”
“No, fool. The other thing. How different I look. Tell me more. Me, me, me.”
He rolls his eyes, goes to the closet and hangs up my coat. “You look so . . . different . . . younger . . . and you lost so much weight. You look great.” He smiles and looks away from me as if he’s shy. He walks into the kitchen. I follow. “Want something to drink?” Before I answer, he corrects himself. “I mean, you know, like juice.”
“Oh, Christ. Is this how it’s gonna be from now on?” I whine.
He takes two glasses from the cupboard and opens the refrigerator. I notice a bottle of Chardonnay next to the cranberry juice. “Actually,” I say, “I’ll take some Chardonnay, but only this much.” I hold my thumb and forefinger about two inches apart.
Pighead looks troubled. “What, Chardonnay?”
I casually lean my hip against the counter. “Well, we’re allowed to have Chardonnay because it’s not really alcohol. It’s just, you know, wine. And that’s okay.”
He stands there with his hand in the refrigerator looking back and forth between the cranberry juice, the wine and me.
I grin at him. “I’m kidding, Pighead.”
He pours us each a cranberry juice and then carries them into the living room. He sits on the sofa, next to the end table where he sets both glasses and I sit right next to him and rest my head on his shoulder. I mumble