Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [42]
Virgil leaps onto the sofa, bouncing onto my stomach, almost knocking the wind out of me. Bark, bark, bark. I take his head in my hands and smush his face up.
“Virgil missed you,” Pighead says. I look at him, but he’s looking at his hands.
“I missed him too,” I say gently.
I pick the slobbery plastic squeaky carrot up off the floor and throw it hard, not caring if it hits a wall or a lamp or a painting. Pighead, who has a beautiful, fastidiously decorated apartment, doesn’t care either. If a lamp broke, I know it would be okay with him because I broke it. But if anybody else broke it, he’d have a shit fit. I know I’m lucky this way.
“What do you want to do for dinner?” he asks.
Pause. “Can’t, I have to leave in a few minutes. I have a lush meeting.”
“AA?” he asks. “But you just got back from rehab.”
Virgil charges back with the carrot, drops it at my feet. I ignore him, and he carries it over near the fireplace and chews, trying to kill the squeaker.
“That’s the whole point,” I tell him. “Alcoholics go to AA.”
“How long do you have to go?” he asks, like I’m on parole, which is sort of the case.
“Every day for the rest of my life.”
“You’re kidding, right?” he says, eyebrows raised.
I tell him that unfortunately I’m not. I tell him what Rae said about how if you found time to drink every day, you can find time for AA every day.
His eyes become large in actual disbelief.
“Oh, I know,” I say. “I was just as shocked as you.”
“What’s that they say, ‘One day at a time’ or something?” He takes a sip of juice.
“Yeah, one day at a time. For the rest of my life.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, we don’t call it ‘Jesus’ anymore.” My head itches so I rub it against his shoulder. “We call it a ‘higher power.’ ”
“Oh no,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You’ve turned ‘recovery’ on me.”
For a moment we just sit there and say nothing. It’s so good and comforting to be with him. And yet . . . and yet. A sense of loneliness, and something else that is more frightening but that I cannot name. “Pighead?” I say.
“Hmm?” He turns to me.
This time I’m the one who turns away. I examine the cuticle of my thumbnail. “Nothing.”
“What?”
There’s so much I want to talk to him about. Need to talk to him about. But I’m not even sure I know what it is I need to say. It’s an odd feeling. Well, all feelings are odd to me because I’m not accustomed to being aware of them. But this feeling is especially odd. It’s like when I was a little kid, I never wanted my parents to leave the living room and go to bed until I was asleep first. I needed to know they were there, otherwise I couldn’t fall asleep.
“I have to go,” I tell him, getting up from the couch.
“But you just got here,” he says.
“I know. But I have to go. I just stopped by.” I am happy to see him, therefore I must leave. It’s weird, like there are magnets at play.
He straightens a book on the coffee table. “Well, it’s nice to see you haven’t changed all that much. ‘So long. I have to go. Everything’s more important than you, Pighead.’ As usual.”
It’s not difficult to hear the hurt in his voice. “I have to go,” are probably the four words I use most with him. The thought that normally accompanied these words was, Because I need a drink. Now it’s because I need to go talk about needing a drink. It’s like alcohol gets in the way even when it’s out of the way.
The room is small, no larger than the average suburban kitchen, though it’s not bright yellow with spider plants hanging from colorful baskets in the window. It’s dark and grim because the front window of what could have rented out as a tiny but chic Perry Street boutique instead features a donated curtain that blocks all the light out. In the center of the room against the wall are a small podium and a tall chair behind it. In a horseshoe configuration around the podium are about fifty folding metal chairs—the