Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [58]
I tell her I didn’t. I came home and talked with Hayden about it until midnight.
“Next time something like this happens, it’s a good idea to force yourself to go to a meeting.”
Meetings are the Hail Marys of alcoholics. You can do or almost do anything, feel anything, commit any number of non-sober atrocities, as long as you follow with an AA chaser.
“After I cut off his penis, I sautéed it in rosemary butter and ate it.”
“But did you go to a meeting afterward?”
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, then.”
Wendy asks how things are going between Hayden and me. I tell her it’s great to have him around, how he takes his sobriety very seriously, how we’re both really good for each other. We spent the entire weekend going from AA meetings to movies to Ping-Pong.
She asks me how Group went last week. I tell her that I thought Group was very helpful. She says she thinks I’m doing well, that I’m “rising to the challenges of sobriety.” I nod and think, I’m actually getting away with this.
As I’m standing in the hallway, waiting for the elevator to take me downstairs, I hear behind me, “Auggie?” I turn to see Foster walking toward me. “What are you doing here?” he says.
“One-on-one with Wendy,” I tell him. I wish I had a longer answer. One that would take at least forty-five minutes to explain. In private.
“I just had my one-on-one with Rose. What a coincidence,” he says, shifting all his weight onto one leg and smiling at me.
“Yeah, funny,” I manage. My heart is racing in my chest.
The elevator arrives and we step inside. Foster breaks the elevator law by speaking. “So, ah, what are you up to now?” he asks.
I watch the numbers illuminate as we sink. “Oh, I don’t know, probably hit the gym.”
The elevator stops on the fourth floor, but nobody gets on. He sticks his head out, looks both ways, shrugs and pushes the DOOR CLOSE button.
We both look ahead and neither of us speaks until we reach the lobby. As we walk toward the main entrance Foster says, “You wouldn’t wanna go out for some coffee, would you?” Adding, “I mean, unless you gotta hit the gym right away.”
In as calm a voice as possible, I answer, “Yeah, sure, why not?” I don’t obey my first impulse, which is to jump up and down like a six-year-old and cry, Can we? Can we? Can we?
We walk to French Roast on Sixth Avenue and Eleventh. We take a table outside and order cappuccinos. There’s a light breeze that seems to have arrived via FedEx for this exact moment from a resort hotel in Cabo San Lucas.
“So, Auggie,” he asks me in his slow, thick drawl, “what’s your story?” He settles back in his chair like he intends to stay there for a while, like whatever I have to say is bound to be fascinating.
I love summer because the sun takes so long to set. The gold light is coming at us almost horizontally. I notice the dark chest hairs that peek out from the V of his shirt collar actually glisten. His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.
I smile, confident that the side lighting will accentuate the cleft in my chin.
He smiles. Cocks his head slightly to the right. Full dimples.
I look away. Look back.
Our cappuccinos arrive.
He’s surprised to learn that my Southern parents divorced when I was young and that my mother gave me away to her psychiatrist when I was twelve and that I lived with crazy people in the doctor’s house and never went to school and had a relationship with the pedophile who lived in the barn behind the house.
I’m surprised to learn that less than two months ago, he was in a crack hotel with a piece of broken bottle glass pressed against his neck. And that he knows, for a fact, he is unlovable. And he’s afraid to kick the Brit out of the apartment because he’s worried the Brit will kill himself.
“But in Group, you were saying how he hits you, screams at you all the time.” Even I wouldn’t put up with that shit. I’d deport his ass. “He sounds just awful.”
“I know, Auggie, he is awful. But I’m all he has. If I kick him out, where will he go?”
Fresh from rehab, I answer, “That’s his problem. He is his own responsibility,