Please, please, please, for their sakes, let me get this right.
* * *
—
By the time the night owls have been shown to the door, my mood is subdued. I scrub and polish, stack and sweep in silence. Viv is in the kitchen, scouring down, while Stoney closes out the register.
It’s been a long day. I should head to a meeting, then get some sleep. Or maybe I could go for a run. It’s late and dark and dangerous, but that’s never stopped me before. Sometimes my blood flows too close to my skin. I can feel my own nerve endings spark and snap, the pressure building in my chest.
Once upon a time, I would head to a bar, slamming back shots of tequila and dancing with abandon. Dance drink dance. Or maybe it had been drink dance drink. Oblivion. That’s what I sought, what I still seek.
One precious moment when I’m no longer trapped inside my own head. Knowing things I don’t want to know. Remembering things I don’t want to remember. Worrying about things I can’t change.
As I do too often, I think of Paul. The feel of his lips whispering down my neck. The tickle of his hair, the strength of his hands. The beginning, when he made me feel safe. The end, when I broke his heart and shattered the last of my self-respect.
I don’t want to go to a meeting. I don’t want to run. I want to grab a bottle of Hornitos, crawl upstairs, and dial his phone number. The pain will be swift and brutal. Like a razor to the soul. Then I can lie there and feel myself bleed, while guzzling tequila. Drink and wallow. Maybe Piper the homicidal cat likes pity parties, too. You never know.
Viv comes charging out, already thrusting her arms into her coat. Her husband is waiting just outside the door to walk her home. It’s sweet and charming and salt on my gaping wound. Addicts are particularly good at this game. Everyone else’s life is easier, better, happier. If we could be those people, then we wouldn’t need to drink again.
It’s everyone else’s fault. The universe’s. Never our own.
Go to a meeting. Just walk out the front door and go. I eye the rows of bottles that line the back wall. I feel the beast stir to life in my belly, opening its eyes, stretching out its claws.
It’s been a hard day. And I’m tired and alone. And white. Dear God, when did I become this impossibly glow-in-the-dark neon white, so that everyone stares at me and no one knows me? My skin color has made me the enemy, a walking advertisement for entitlement and privilege except I don’t feel like any of those things. I feel like I’ve always felt. Broken. As if the whole rest of the world knows something I don’t. Feels things I can’t. Connects in ways I’ve never learned how.
Of course, I’ve spent enough time by now in marginalized communities to understand there’s more to that story. That for all my internal angst, the truth is I grew up with limited fears and unlimited dreams. I had implicit faith in authority and never thought to question the system. I had an innate understanding of the world and my place in it. Let alone a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and a safe neighborhood to grow up in.
Which is a privilege indeed.
I should go to a meeting. Just walk out the front door, find my people, and set down my burden. Breathe.
The restless dragon, fully awake now, uncoils. It whispers memories of my very first drink, a sip of my father’s Jack and Coke fetched by my eight-year-old self for my already slurring parent. The feel of caffeine and bourbon sliding down my throat, both hot and cold, melting and jolting. The slow-spreading euphoria that brought a flush to my impossibly young face.
Not a bottle. Just a shot. Or two or three. Then I’ll sleep. Sleep is good. I’ll feel better after a good night’s rest.
“Sit.” Stoney stands in front of me. He grips the chair I just stacked on the table, flips it back down, points at the hard wooden seat. “Sit.”
I do.
A second chair, slapped down next to the first. Then a pause, as he disappears and I close my eyes, count to a hundred by fives, then when that doesn’t work, by sevens. I’d just hit eighty-four when Stoney reappears with two mugs of coffee.
“Decaf.” He keeps one, hands over the other. He takes up position across from me. We both sip our coffee in silence.
“You married?” I ask him at last. The pressure is easing in my chest, but I grip my coffee mug hard, like an anchor. Another trick. Rattle off five things you can see right now in as much visual detail as possible. “I spy with my little eye” as a grounding exercise. If that doesn’t work, then five things for five senses. The smell of freshly brewed coffee. The sound of the buzzing overhead lights. The feel of the warm mug. The look on Stoney’s impassive face. The taste of regret.
Stoney takes his time answering. “Was. She died. Ovarian cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Had thirty amazing years. Appreciated every minute. Makes me luckier than most.”
“Kids?”
“Three. Two girls and a boy. One of my girls lives in Florida now. Keeps asking me to join her and her family. But this is my home.”
“You grow up here?”
“New Jersey. But moved here when I was in my teens. Close enough.”
“This neighborhood, this bar, these are your memories.”
“I see my Camille everywhere,” Stoney affirms. “And I’m not complaining.”
“Grandkids?”
“Four. Ages three to eight. Two in Florida, two in New York.”
“All three of your kids are married?”
“My two girls. Jerome, my son, died at sixteen. Not easy to be a young Black man. Harder still, when you’re sixteen, stupid, and susceptible to your peers.”
As usual with Stoney, it’s what he doesn’t say that matters most. “Gangs or drugs?” I ask at last.
“Drugs. Broke his mother’s heart.” His father’s, too, but that went without saying.
“Gonna die in this bar?” I ask him.
“That’s the plan.”
“What’s it like?” I whisper. “To know exactly what you want? To know this is your home? To feel like you belong?”
Stoney doesn’t answer, but then, I don’t expect him to.
“You know the family?” His turn to question. “The missing girl, Badeau?”
“No. This is what I do. I look up cold cases involving missing persons. Then I find them.”
“How many?”
“Fourteen.”
“How long?”
“Nine years. More or less.”