Ninety Days by Bill Clegg Read Free Book Online

cell phone, Jack is not one of them. I’m sure Kim called him—she’s had his number since I was in the hospital.
    As the Tylenol PM begins to kick in, I start thinking about Jack’s patronizing phrases, his dismissive accusations of self-pity, and how he never just listens to what I’m feeling, what I’m going through. If not him, then who? He’s my sponsor, isn’t he? I think about going back to Mark’s, but I know there won’t be any more drugs there until evening when he can call Happy or Rico. Mark agreed not to tell Happy that I was in the bedroom when he came with the drugs two nights ago, because of the money I owe him. I wonder if Mark kept his word or instead tipped him off that I’m back in town. Worry about Happy mingles with my rising resentment toward Jack, and in a burst of frustration I pick up the lamp next to my bed and throw it against a wall. The light bulb shatters but the small wooden base remains intact. Next to the wall where I’ve thrown the lamp I see a meeting book. Reluctantly, I pick it up to see if there is a mid-afternoon meeting nearby. I can’t bear to call anyone else back and have no idea what I will say when I eventually do. I flip through the meeting book and see one starting in ten minutes a few blocks away at the gay and lesbian center. I go.
    The meeting is small, gloomy, and filled with mostly middle-aged gay men who look sick. I’m on the end of two days smoking crack and guzzling vodka with no food or sleep, so I don’t look so hot either. The meeting is a round robin format where everyone is expected to talk once the speaker has qualified, which means he describes, in ten to thirty minutes, what it was like when he used, how he got sober, and what it’s like now. I make it through the first ten minutes of the speaker’s qualification and I can’t bear the idea of talking, of having to admit I’ve just relapsed; and I don’t want these guys crowding me after the meeting with their numbers and their understanding faces. I want to leave, so I do.
    I call Polly from the street and she picks up right away. Did you go to a meeting and say that you’ve relapsed? she snaps without salutation and I lie and say yes. Which one? she asks doubtfully and I tell her. Did you call your sponsor? I lie again and say yes. So what are you going to do now? she asks, and the truth is I have no idea. I tell her so and she says, Well, let’s talk. I don’t remember everything we talked about that night, but I do remember her telling me a story of getting drunk on a flight to Dallas, where, once she landed, she blew off the rehearsal dinner for a wedding she was supposed to be a bridesmaid in to go looking for an ex-boyfriend. She hit a bar on the way and ended up walking in traffic on a freeway outside the city and getting arrested. I tell her how I was—just three months earlier—thrown off a flight to Berlin because I was convinced the plane was crawling with DEA agents and said something bizarre to the flight attendant. We talk and trade war stories, and I walk west on 15th Street, north on Eighth Avenue, east on 16th Street, south on Seventh Avenue, west on 15th, completing the loop around the block again and again and again. Polly keeps me on the phone a long time, and I remember several times thinking that the dealers will be back in business soon and maybe I should get off the phone and go over to Mark’s. But I stay on the phone, walk in circles until I’m exhausted, and, finally, go home.
    I call Kim that night. Dave and Jean and Asa, too. The call with Dave lasts less than ten seconds and he says, Good luck, call Kim. It’s clear he’s had it and that I am not his problem anymore. Kim is similarly short with me. I leave a message for Jean on her answering machine that I’m OK and will speak with her in the morning. Asa and I talk. As with Polly, we stay on for a long time. Long enough for me to fall asleep, because I wake up at four or five in the morning with all the