Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [61]
“My brother’s taking care of him.”
“What about work, weren’t you supposed to go back today?”
“I said I had a family emergency.”
I can hear something in the background, voices, commotion.
“I gotta go. They want to me to go downstairs for an MRI. Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay—bye.” There’s strain in his voice and hearing it rubs my heart a little raw. I want to protect him from the doctors. I don’t want the doctors taking his Valium.
I hang up the phone in slow motion, just sit there for a minute. Finally, I look at Greer. “I don’t know what’s going on. Neither does he.”
Greer sits in the chair across from my desk, her legs tightly crossed. “Well, is he okay?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
She gives me a look she has never given me before. I don’t like that this moment warrants a new look.
Foster told the group he kicked the alcoholic abusive illegal alien Brit out of his apartment. He gave him a check for ten thousand dollars and instructions to get out of his life and stay out of his life. When asked why he finally made this big move, Foster looked at me for one brief though ninety-proof instant before looking away and saying vaguely, “I just realized what I might be missing.”
I talked about Pighead. Not that there was much to say. “Is lost a feeling?” I asked the group.
“I’m sorry, Auggie,” Foster says once we’re outside on the sidewalk.
“Thanks,” I say. I feel small. A Disney dwarf miscast in Terminator 5.
“I wish I knew you better,” he says softly, “so I could give you a hug.”
“You don’t have to,” I tell him. Pause. “Know me better, I mean.”
Foster opens his arms and I move into them, rest my head on his shoulder. He doesn’t hug me like I’ve seen alcoholics hug each other after AA meetings. He doesn’t hug me like a crack addict I have known for three group therapy sessions and one meeting over coffee. Foster hugs me like he has known me all my life.
He doesn’t pat my back or pull away after four or five seconds. He hugs me tightly and takes deep, slow breaths, almost like he is teaching me how to breathe.
“I’m afraid,” I say into his shoulder.
“Of what?” he asks.
“Of everything.”
“You know what you need?”
I can feel it coming. He’s going to say, A blowjob. He’s just another pig, after all. Just another typical gay guy who wants to get his rocks off, disguised as somebody I can imagine myself caring about, despite the fact that I can’t.
“What?” I ask, not wanting to know.
He gently pushes away from me so he can see my face.
“You need a Cheez Whiz and pimento sandwich with potato chips. And not the low-fat baked chips either, the real ones.”
Foster’s apartment is on the forty-seventh floor of an East Side high-rise only a few blocks from my office. It’s a beautiful space, furnished with boxes and bookshelves overflowing with books, dust rabbits—not bunnies—and various pairs of khakis strewn about. We obviously have the same decorator.
His machine is blinking and he walks over to it. “Oh God, now what?” he says, punching the PLAY button. “You have fifteen new messages . . . first message today at . . .” Foster pushes STOP, then ERASE. The machine, an old-fashioned cassette-tape version, whirrs into motion.
“That’s Kyle. Ever since I kicked him out, he calls me twenty times a day asking to move back, and then asking for more money when I tell him to leave me alone.”
“Man, I’m sorry,” I say, understanding completely what could lead a person to stalk Foster.
He goes into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator, pulling out the ingredients of the Southern white trash sandwich.
“Can I use your phone?”
“Sure, go ahead,” he says with his head in the refrigerator.
“You . . . are . . . where?” Hayden asks like the parent I have turned him into.
“I’m at Foster’s apartment. We’re just having a little sandwich and talking some.”
“You’re at the crack addict’s apartment? Having a little sandwich?” he says. From the tone of his voice, you’d think I’d just