Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [51]
The moderator of the group, Wayne, asks the room, “Would anybody like to give Foster any feedback?”
An older man to my left says, “I’m glad you didn’t use, Foster. I’m really glad you didn’t use.”
Foster mouths a quick Thanks and slumps lower in his chair.
For a moment, the room is silent. Watching him. I mean, handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.
“You know,” Foster begins with almost a manic level of intensity, “I just want go kayaking in the Florida Keys, get a black lab, grow tomatoes, have a life. I don’t want all this craziness. I don’t want this insanity. I’m really sick and tired of it.” He pounds his fist on his thigh.
His eyes dart around the room. He glances over here, over there and then at me, and then on to someone else, but he sort of skids into a double take and turns back to look at me. He stares at me for what feels like a very long time and I think, Do I have something hanging out of my nose?
“Hey, I’m sorry I was late. What’s your name?” he asks as he gets up out of his chair and comes over to me, hand extended.
“Augusten,” I tell him, discreetly wiping my hand on my jeans before taking his hand to shake it. My heart is racing. He is thrilling.
“Augusten,” he repeats. “Augusten. What an interesting name. You mind if I call you Auggie?”
“Auggie is fine.” I repress the urge to smile at my delight over having just been given a pet name by this man.
He smiles back. “Great,” he says. “Welcome to Group.”
He sits back down and Group continues. For the next hour and a half, I am aware that he is watching me.
When Group is over, we all pile into the same elevator and nobody says a word. That’s the strange thing about elevators, it’s like they have this power to silence you. I’ve just been in group therapy where people will reveal the most intimate details of their lives to complete strangers, yet in the elevator nobody can say a word.
Outside, people exchange good-byes and see you soons, and head off in different directions.
I make a left toward Park Avenue and I can feel Foster a few beats behind me. Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me, I am psychically commanding him.
But he doesn’t. At Park, he heads north and I head south.
I walk the ten blocks home thinking about Group, specifically this Foster guy. I realize I’m excited for Thursday, the next Group. I realize Foster is the reason why.
I go straight to Perry Street AA. Tonight, the speaker is talking about how people in recovery are always looking for these big, dramatic miracles. How we want the glass of water to magically rise up off the table. How we overlook the miracle that there is a glass at all in the first place. And given the universe, isn’t the real miracle that the glass doesn’t just float up and away?
THE BRITISH INVASION
H
ayden calls from rehab, collect. I accept the charges.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he says in that British lilt that I miss as soon as I hear.
“Really? What are you going to do, where are you going to go?”
Silence. Then, “Well, I really don’t have anywhere to go, except home to London, but I’m not ready for that yet. So I was wondering . . .” He drifts off. “Well, I was wondering if maybe I could stay with you, just for a little while, just until—”
I cut him off, unable to contain my excitement. “Yes, I would love it.”
“Really?” he asks.
“Come immediately. It’ll be like a minirehab.”
It’s decided that he will arrive tomorrow night, at eight. After we hang up, I walk around my studio apartment, grinning like a crazy person. It’s a tiny apartment, but no smaller than the rooms at rehab, and three of us fit into those at a time. Hayden can sleep on the sofa, like a pet.
He can curl up at night with the stuffed animal I will get for him.
At work the next day, we’re informed that we are finalists in the review for the Wirksam beer account. This means that instead of pitching against seven other agencies, it’s down to three.
“I have a really good feeling about this,” Greer confesses. Then, “It