Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs Read Free Book Online Page B

for this. The real Augusten would say, “Could I get a Bloody Mary, extra Tabasco . . . and the check.”
    I finish signing the forms and stare ahead. My eyes fall on the filing cabinet beneath the window. On top of it is a disposable aluminum cake pan containing the ravages of a supermarket birthday cake. A car-wreck of garish pink and blue frosting, green sprinkles, canary yellow sponge cake. It has been hastily, greedily devoured. As if frantic nurses have made mad dashes into this room between crisis interventions and scooped whole handfuls of the cake into their mouths, desperate for the sugar rush, before running back out to strap somebody onto the electroshock therapy gurney, which I am certain is just around the corner, out of view.
    I make a mental note to check Peggy’s uniform and chin for evidence of frosting.
    Sue pops back into the room. “Your bags are clean. Got your paperwork finished?”
    “I think so,” I say meekly.
    She glances over the forms. “Looks good. Let’s get you all set up in your room, follow me.”

    I follow her for exactly twelve feet. My room is directly across from the nurses’ station. It’s a “detox room,” and I’m told it will be mine for seventy-two hours, then I will be moved to one of the long-term rooms. The floor plan is basically a V with one corridor for men, the other for women. At the spot where the two corridors meet is the nurses’ station with the chicken-wire window, overlooking the conversation pit, which is three sofas and various chairs, plus one huge coffee table. The furniture is a heavy wood-crate style, covered in industrial plaid fabric. It speaks not of good design, but indestructibility. Ian Schrager clearly had nothing to do with any of it. Ian Schrager would take one look and order the building doused with gasoline as he climbed back into his silver Aston-Martin Volante. This is the anti-Royalton.
    My room, like the others, has three beds, each a single.
    “Here you go, sweetie,” Sue says as she hands me a folded white terry cloth towel. On top is a thick blue bible-ish looking book called, cleverly, Alcoholics Anonymous . She also hands me a pair of paper slippers. “I’ll give you five minutes to freshen up and then we’ll get started,” she says as she leaves. “Oh, by the way, this door is never to be closed, never .” There is threat in her voice. But then she adds happily, “See ya in a few.”
    I take off my leather jacket, hang it on the hook next to the mirror above the sink and sit on the bed. The sheets are paperthin, smell of bleach. Not Rain Fresh bleach, or Lemon Summer bleach—these sheets smell like Acme Institution Supply bleach.
    There is one flat foam pillow. A framed print of a single footstep in the sand with a rainbow emanating from the sole hangs at the head of my bed, crooked. Printed below the footstep is the phrase, A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP .
    I stand up, look out the window. It’s a ground-level view of the backyard of the institute; dirt with a picnic table, cigarette butts scattered all about. In the distance, I can see a small creek and beyond that, more industrial park.
    Liz Taylor wouldn’t be caught dead here.
    I notice that one of the other two beds is unmade, luggage haphazardly stuffed beneath it. How perfect. One roommate, with the threat of a third.
    “Knock, knock,” Sue says at my door.
    I spin around, alarmed.
    “All set?”
    I nod, since I am now a mute.
    Sue leads me into the conversion pit, which is empty. She explains that the other patients are upstairs in “group” and that they should be down in about ten minutes and then there will be lunch in the cafeteria.
    She points to a folding chair next to what appears to be a substandard airport bar, like what one might encounter at the Kitty Hawk Lounge in the Fresno airport. But it’s actually a freestanding nurses’ station.
    Nurse Peggy appears from nowhere, her great whiteness causing me to squint. She