Eight Million Ways to Die

"You have one?"

She nodded. "I called her after I spoke to you."

"Why?"

"Because I was nervous. Because it calms me down to talk to her. Because I wanted to see what she would say."

"What did she say?"

"That I shouldn't have told you to come over." She laughed. "Fortunately, you were already on your way."

"What else did she say?"

The big gray eyes avoided mine. "That I shouldn't sleep with you."

"Why'd she say that?"

"Because it's not a good idea to have relationships during the first year. And because it's a terrible idea to get involved with anybody who's newly sober."

"Christ," I said. "I came over because I was jumping out of my skin, not because I was horny."

"I know that."

"Do you do everything your sponsor says?"

"I try to."

"Who is this woman that she's the voice of God on earth?"

"Just a woman. She's my age, actually she's a year and a half younger. But she's been sober almost six years."

"Long time."

"It seems like a long time to me." She picked up her cup, saw it was empty, put it down again. "Isn't there someone you could ask to be your sponsor?"

"Is that how it works? You have to ask somebody?"

"That's right."

"Suppose I asked you?"

She shook her head. "In the first place, you should get a male sponsor. In the second place, I haven't been sober long enough. In the third place we're friends."

"A sponsor shouldn't be a friend?"

"Not that kind of friend. An AA friend. In the fourth place, it ought to be somebody in your home group so you have frequent contact."

I thought unwillingly of Jim. "There's a guy I talk to sometimes."

"It's important to pick someone you can talk to."

"I don't know if I can talk to him. I suppose I could."

"Do you respect his sobriety?"

"I don't know what that means."

"Well, do you-"

"This evening I told him I got upset by the stories in the newspapers. All the crime in the streets, the things people keep doing to each other. It gets to me, Jan."

"I know it does."

"He told me to quit reading the papers. Why are you laughing?"

"It's just such a program thing to say."

"People talk the damnedest crap. 'I lost my job and my mother's dying of cancer and I'm going to have to have my nose amputated but I didn't drink today so that makes me a winner.' "

"They really sound like that, don't they?"

"Sometimes. What's so funny?"

" 'I'm going to have my nose amputated.' A nose amputated?"

"Don't laugh," I said. "It's a serious problem."

A little later she was telling me about a member of her home group whose son had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. The man had gone to a meeting and talked about it, drawing strength from the group, and evidently it had been an inspirational experience all around. He'd stayed sober, and his sobriety had enabled him to deal with the situation and bolster the other members of his family while fully experiencing his own grief.

I wondered what was so wonderful about being able to experience your grief. Then I found myself speculating what would have happened some years ago if I'd stayed sober after an errant bullet of mine ricocheted and fatally wounded a six-year-old girl named Estrellita Rivera. I'd dealt with the resultant feelings by pouring bourbon on them. It had certainly seemed like a good idea at the time.

Maybe it hadn't been. Maybe there were no shortcuts, no detours. Maybe you had to go through things.

I said, "You don't worry about getting hit by a car in New York. But it happens here, the same as anywhere else. Did they ever catch the driver?"

"No."

"He was probably drunk. They usually are."

"Maybe he was in a blackout. Maybe he came to the next day and never knew what he'd done."

"Jesus," I said, and thought of that night's speaker, the man who stabbed his lover. "Eight million stories in the Emerald City. And eight million ways to die."

"The naked city."

"Isn't that what I said?"

"You said the Emerald City."

"I did? Where did I get that from?"

"The Wizard of Oz. Remember? Dorothy and Toto in Kansas? Judy Garland going over the rainbow?"

"Of course I remember."

" 'Follow the Yellow Brick Road.' It led to the Emerald City, where the wonderful wizard lived."

"I remember. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, I remember the whole thing. But where'd I get emeralds from?"

"You're an alcoholic," she suggested. "You're missing a couple of brain cells, that's all."

I nodded. "Must be it," I said.

The sky was turning light when we went to sleep. I slept on the couch wrapped up in a couple of spare blankets. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to sleep, but the tiredness came over me like a towering wave. I gave up and let it take me wherever it wanted.

I can't say where it took me because I slept like a dead man. If I dreamed at all I never knew about it. I awoke to the smells of coffee perking and bacon frying, showered, shaved with a disposable razor she'd laid out for me, then got dressed and joined her at a pine plank table in the kitchen. I drank orange juice and coffee and ate scrambled eggs and bacon and whole wheat muffins with peach preserves, and I couldn't remember when my appetite had been so keen.

There was a group that met Sunday afternoons a few blocks to the east of us, she informed me. She made it one of her regular meetings. Did I feel like joining her?

"I ought to do some work," I said.

"On a Sunday?"

"What's the difference?"

"Are you really going to be able to accomplish anything on a Sunday afternoon?"

I hadn't really accomplished anything since I'd started. Was there anything I could do today?

I got out my notebook, dialed Sunny's number. No answer. I called my hotel. Nothing from Sunny. Nothing from Danny Boy Bell or anyone else I'd seen last night. Well, Danny Boy would still be sleeping at this hour, and so might most of the others.

There was a message to call Chance. I started dialing his number, then stopped myself. If Jan was going to a meeting, I didn't want to sit around her loft waiting for him to call back. Her sponsor might not approve.

The meeting was on the second floor of a synagogue on Forsythe Street. You couldn't smoke there. It was an unusual experience being in an AA meeting that wasn't thick with cigarette smoke.

There were about fifty people there and she seemed to know most of them. She introduced me to several people, all of whose names I promptly forgot. I felt self-conscious, uncomfortable with the attention I was getting. My appearance didn't help, either. While I hadn't slept in my clothes, they looked as though I had, showing the effects of last night's fight in the alley.

And I was feeling the fight's effects, too. It wasn't until we left her loft that I realized how much I ached. My head was sore where I'd butted him and I had a bruise on one forearm and one shoulder was black and blue and ached. Other muscles hurt when I moved. I hadn't felt anything after the incident but all those aches and pains turn up the next day.

I got some coffee and cookies and sat through the meeting. It was all right. The speaker qualified very briefly, leaving the rest of the meeting for discussion. You had to raise your hand to get called on.

Fifteen minutes from the end, Jan raised her hand and said how grateful she was to be sober and how much of a role her sponsor played in her sobriety, how helpful the woman was when she had something bothering her or didn't know what to do. She didn't get more specific than that. I had a feeling she was sending me a message and I wasn't too crazy about that.

I didn't raise my hand.

Afterward she was going out with some people for coffee and asked me if I'd like to come along. I didn't want any more coffee and I didn't want company, either. I made an excuse.