Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [75]
“What’s your pleasure?” said Sam.
“Water’s fine.”
“That’s right,” he said. “You’ve been drying out. There’s juice and beer in the fridge.” He pointed.
Lewis located a carton of orange juice in a near-empty refrigerator and handed it to Sam.
“I was surprised to hear you’re an alcoholic,” Sam said. “I mean you drank. I drink. Hell, we all drink. But I never noticed any problem.”
“I had three arrests involving drunkenness.”
“Not when you lived here.”
“I drank every day,” said Lewis.
“Who doesn’t?”
“My life was unmanageable. I lived in a garage, for God’s sake.”
“Only because Queen Bitch wouldn’t let you in the house.”
“It’s more than that,” Lewis muttered.
“If you say so.” Sam added a short burst of water to his scotch. “I never saw it.”
THE NEXT day, after his former boss at the library agreed to give him another chance, Lewis drove over to Sunset to see his friend and fellow Ph.D. candidate Ed Hunkle, who tended bar in the lounge of a large, expensive hotel. Although the adjoining restaurant was busy, the cool, gray bar was empty. Ed threw back his head when Lewis walked in. “Hello, stranger!” he called, and laid a napkin on the bar. “What’ll it be? On me.”
“Coke,” Lewis said.
“Coke?”
“I haven’t had a drink in almost eight months.”
“I’ll be darned.” Ed squirted Coke from the gun. “So what’s new?”
All Lewis could think to say was, “I’m sober”—and hadn’t he already said so?
ON SATURDAY night, Lewis drove to Brentwood for an AA meeting that proved to be an intimidating fashion show. The speaker, a studio executive with fourteen years of sobriety, called Alcoholics Anonymous a “womb of love” where people could discover their true human nature as affectionate, compassionate beings. Such talk made Lewis nervous. He remembered that today Lawrence was finally leaving Round Rock, after almost a year’s residency. Lewis had missed the standard farewell party with the crummy supermarket cake. He hadn’t gathered on the porch with the others to wave napkins and handkerchiefs like so many disconsolate war brides until Lawrence was gone from sight.
“We alcoholics routinely, constantly, save each other’s lives,” the speaker said. “If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.” Lewis slipped out before the closing prayer.
Sunday morning, Lewis read the paper and waited for Sam to appear. He wanted to take him out to breakfast. At noon, Lewis left the house alone, ate eggs in a coffee shop, then walked past closed shops down Westwood’s littered streets. He took himself to a movie, a thriller, and when he came out, the fog had rolled in. A gloomy darkness fell fast.
Back at the house, Sam was watching a news program. During a commercial, he stood up. “Want a beer?”
“No, thanks.”
“Can’t you drink beer?” he called from the kitchen.
“It’s got alcohol, Sam.”
Lewis had forgotten how much avid drinkers despise those who refuse their hospitality. Back in his own drinking days, Lewis always took any trace of abstention personally; anything short of whole-hog swilling, in fact, was the equivalent of a moral rebuke.
Sam returned with a fresh drink. “So tell me about you and Amanda,” he said.
“What’s to tell?”
“She turned on you.”
“You could say that.”
“You ball her?”
“Sam.”
“She turns on everyone she balls.”
“I didn’t ball her.”
“You can tell me. I don’t care.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“I wouldn’t get mad. I already know you balled her.”
“Can we change the subject, Sam?”
“I won’t throw you out. I’m just trying to get the complete picture of my fucked-in-the-ass marriage.”
Delving any further into such a sensitive and personal matter with a drunk person didn’t seem wise—or avoidable. Without another word, Lewis went to bed. It was eight-thirty. The small office smelled of burnt dust. He raised the blinds, intending to open the window. Long arms of ivy had snaked in behind the screen and across the glass as if desperate to get inside. The window itself was painted shut. He lay on top of his sleeping bag in his underwear and slid into a sticky sleep, a pit of dreams swarming with police, glass elevators,