Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [80]
He’s smoking crack, I think. “Are you using?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
Foster has two clocks in his living room. One on the fireplace mantel and another on the table next to the sofa. Both clocks are set incorrectly. And he knows exactly how incorrectly. The clock on the mantle is one hour and four minutes slow. The one on the table is five minutes fast. So when you ask him the time, his eyes dart back and forth between the two clocks while he does the math in his head. Although he could have not one but two clocks that are each set to exactly the correct time, this does not happen. It would be too easy. Better to struggle. Better to work for the time and sometimes get the math wrong and arrive an hour late.
I ask him if I missed anything interesting in Group this week. “Nah, nothing much,” he says. Something is off with him. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe he doesn’t like me anymore. I test the theory by leaning back against him.
He folds me into his arms. “Ahhh, that’s exactly what I needed,” he drawls. “I missed you so much, more than you can know. I hate your work, Auggie.”
I figure, as long as there aren’t any scented candles burning, this can’t be considered romantic, and thus in violation of the “no romantic involvement” clause I signed.
He reaches over for a book on the coffee table. “Here, let me read you a little Dorothy Parker. That’ll cheer us up.” He gives one of his utterly comforting Southern laughs. His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade. He begins reading, and I close my eyes. I realize I have not been read to since I was little kid. My mother used to read to me all the time. As he reads, he kind of wraps those thick legs of his around mine. I picture my therapist Wendy asking me, “So what do you and Foster do?” And me replying, “Oh, we talk on the phone, hang out.”
What are the odds of me finding another movie-star handsome, literate, sweet, loyal, masculine, independently wealthy and single guy who seems to be crazy about me? Crack is only five letters, I remind myself.
Last week after my road trip with Foster, Hayden asked if we’d slept together yet.
“No, we haven’t,” I said, the truth.
“Just be careful,” he said. “Just know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, if you’re going to sleep with the mobster then fine, sleep with the mobster. But don’t pretend that’s a Stradivarius he’s carrying around inside that violin case.”
We haven’t slept together. But we’ve napped.
The weekend goes like this: Hayden paces around the apartment, frantic and edgy, because of an opera he’s editing freelance, which he calls “incomprehensible, impossible.”
I pace around the apartment wondering why Foster hasn’t called me. Why, when I call him, which I have been doing constantly, he doesn’t answer. I’ve left messages, I’ve spent large chunks of time psychically directing him to make my phone ring. Nothing. Why is it not difficult to imagine him smoking crack in a hotel room somewhere?
Hayden goes to four meetings on Sunday. I go to none.
Our of sheer anxiety and general mental dysfunction, I shave off my chest hair and see a Gus Van Sant movie at the Angelika. I go to the gym twice. I almost have a washboard stomach now. It’s a five-pack, not quite a six-pack. I take care of it like I’m taking care of Foster’s pet. I consider it his.
By Sunday night Hayden’s calmer, having made progress on the score.
And I’m worse. At group on Tuesday, there’s no Foster. And the reason there’s no Foster is, as Wayne the group leader explains, because “Foster has quit therapy. He called one of our staff on Monday and explained that he’s been using for a month and that he’s not ready to stop.”
My first thought: Evisceration—swift and complete. My second thought: So that wasn’t salt I tasted on his lips at the beach. It was crack.
After Group, I go to the nearest pay phone and call him. I let it ring a couple dozen times. No answer.
“Guess what?” I tell Hayden when I come home, furious. “Foster quit therapy. He’s been smoking crack for a month, in secret.”
“Je-sus,” Hayden says slowly.