Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [81]
I call Foster again; still nothing. I am insane, that’s all there is to it. What was I thinking? Falling for a crack addict from my group therapy? A guy who can’t even set a clock? A man who, while stroking my hair and telling me everything is perfectly fine, was going out at night and scoring crack?
All of a sudden Hayden says, “I need to go for a walk. I need some air.” And before I can ask him what the problem is, he’s out the door.
I rummage around for a snack. I choose the wrong thing. There is no worse taste in the mouth than chocolate and cigarettes. Second would be tuna and peppermint. I’ve combined everything, so I know.
“I’m sorry, Auggie. I’m sorry I let you down.”
I’m sitting on Foster’s sofa, because I took a cab up to his building and tipped the doorman fifty dollars to let me in. Then I took the elevator up to his apartment and pounded on the door until he answered it, groggily.
“Why?” is all I can think to say.
He says nothing.
I look at him, sprawled back on his sofa. A raging crack addict, group therapy dropout disguised as a Banana Republic ad. His toes wriggle in his socks and my first thought is, I want to snip them off with hedge trimmers. Not only does he not deserve to wriggle his toes, he does not deserve to have toes. He deserves to have stumps. He cannot be trusted with toes because they enable him to walk and thus seek out the company of crack dealers. Kathy Bates’s character completely understood this concept in Misery.
“I hate you,” I tell him. “I really, really hate you.” I lean my head against his chest. “You’re bad for me.” I am channeling Hayden. What I really feel is, You are perfect for me.
He kisses the top of my head and I pull away. “You look horrible, Foster,” I tell him. And he does, for him, look horrible. He’s fallen rock-bottom to a nine-and-a-half in the looks department. I turn away. It’s an effort.
The coffee table is strewn with debris; cigarette butts, dirty glasses, old newspapers, his asthma inhaler. I fantasize about sticking a safety pin through the opening of it and ppppfffffssssssssst, letting all the medicine out. So when he reaches for it in the night, it won’t be there, like the sobriety he had amassed. It will be gone. And as he wheezes and turns blue, I will point out the irony. “See, Foster, one must never take for granted those things which keep us alive.”
“Don’t hate me, Auggie,” he says, in his best puppy dog voice, which unfortunately is a very good puppy dog voice.
“It’s a little too late for that, Foster.” Kick the puppy.
“Auggie, answer me honestly. Do you hate me?”
Long, contemplative sigh. “No, I don’t hate you, Foster.” I don’t tell him that what I feel is far beyond mere hatred, and well into another state of mind that only a handful of people on the FBI’s Most Wanted list ever experience. Those people and perhaps Jim.
“It’s so easy for you, Auggie, so easy. You go to rehab and BAM! you come back and that’s it—you don’t drink anymore. You don’t even go to meetings anymore. That group therapy just wasn’t working for me.”
“Well, how could it work, if you were high all the time?” I’m disgusted with him. And me. “Look, you know what? Go ahead and smoke all the crack you want. Hang out with your hustlers or your dealers or whatever it is you do.” I stand up to leave. “But know exactly what it is you’re giving up.”
He leaps up off the couch and grabs a hold of my arm. “Auggie, please.”
“Please what, Foster?”
“Please don’t walk out of my life.”
I could kill him, I really could. “Give me one good reason why not.”
“Because I love you.”
Uh huh. “Yeah, but not as much as you love other things. Like crack, for example.” I pull my arm away and turn back toward the door. I tell myself, Just keep walking. Go to the door and turn the knob. Don’t look back at him. Don’t do it. Go with the flow of mental health.
“Auggie,” he says.
I stop, still facing the door. “What?” I say angrily.
“Would you please turn around and look at me?”
I don’t budge.
“Auggie, please?”
I turn around and face him.