Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [21]
“Thirty days,” I answered, and he howled in laughter.
Cathryn waved him away, “Vince, be nice. Save it for group.”
“Aw, Ms. Fitz, you know I’m nice. Just tryin’ to make conversation,” he said and turned to me. “Sorry if you thought I was laughin’ at ya. I thought you was tryin’ to be funny.”
“No problem,” I mumbled and wished I’d worn something in military camouflage so I could disappear into the surroundings. Go figure. When I thought I was funny, everyone looked at me like I’d just spit. I answered a question honestly, and I’m the last comic standing. This place was definitely off center. Sober people must operate in an alternate universe.
Cathryn flicked the overhead lights on and off, a move that stirred Doug enough to open his eyes and grunt twice.
“Stop flashing those lights in my face. I feel like I’m home with my old lady.” Doug pushed himself up into a sitting position, but his body slouched into his lap as if his muscles were still asleep.
“Doug, if your old lady wanted you home, she wouldn’t have stuck you in here. Again. Benny, hand that thing over; you don’t have a license to speed through all those channels.”
Benny pointed and clicked the remote directly at Doug. “Sober, drunk, sober, drunk, sober, drunk.”
I shuffled behind Cathryn, wondering if she’d provide sufficient protection when Doug flew off the sofa to beat the blazes out of Benny. That familiar spool of anxiety unrolled in my gut, and its threads flew into my hands and knees. I rocked back and forth, heels to toes, heels to toes, stirring the nervousness as if I could somehow dilute it through the motion of my body. The body in the corner sighed hugely and, without even lifting her eyes to the scene playing out in front of her, continued to flip magazine pages. Vince disappeared into what I suspected was the bathroom.
Doug stood, dragged the back of his knobby hand over his wide mouth, then wiped it across his well-worn Levis, and wrestled the remote from Benny. But instead of this being the prelude to the battle I anticipated, both men laughed as Doug, now in control, pointed the remote at Benny, “Pot head, Coke Nose.”
“Are you two kids finished now? You’re about to be late for breakfast.” Cathryn shook her head back and forth in the way harried mothers do after telling their precious Rambo-tots to stop eating bugs for the zillionth time.
Vince appeared from around the center station and pounced on the elevator button. When the doors opened, the men filed in. Vince straddled the space between floor and elevator. “So, Annie, ya’ coming or what?”
Annie abandoned her page-flipping and strolled through the room to where I stood next to Cathryn.
“Y’all go ahead. I’m taking the stairs.” Her Southern drawl suited her unhurried style. She pulled a purple hair clip out of denim overalls that must have fit looser three sizes ago, and clipped her streaked brown hair into a fat ponytail. Her eyes were the color of green signal lights, so unreal they looked like wet paint. Midnight-black eyeliner edged her lids, which were covered with moss-green eye shadow. Her lashes fanned out like they’d been dipped in wax. I made a mental note to discuss her foundation choice, a tan that made it seem as if she’d taken her face to Florida and left her body behind.
“After Theresa arrives, the women won’t be outnumbered,” Cathryn said, as she unlocked the stairwell door and held it open.
Annie looked me over like a statue she might have been deciding to buy, glanced at Cathryn, shrugged her meaty shoulders, and said, “Yeah, guess not,” before she traipsed down the stairs.
Cathryn closed the door, stepped back over to the central station, and grabbed a clipboard hanging on the wall.
“Leah, open the door next to the one I just closed. We can talk in that office.”
An acid pit sloshed against my stomach walls. Tiny creatures pounded bass drums against my temples. My hand started to itch again. I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t belong in this institution. I wasn’t like these people, this subculture of misfits. Our