No Way Back by Matthew Klein Read Free Book Online Page B

during one of those lulls that sometimes hit downtown
bars – right after the post-work Happy Hour crowd goes home to their families, leaving behind only the incorrigible drunks. This time, the waitress named Libby Granville ignored my question
entirely. She had just brought my fourth scotch of the evening, and had put it on the bar in front of me; and when she leaned over, to lay down the glass, I asked her softly – so softly that
no one else could hear – if I could take her away from this place and buy her dinner. She froze in that position, leaning over the bar, wisps of brown hair in her eyes, and she didn’t
look up. I still remember that – the way she stood there, motionless – the graceful lithe posture, the tendons in her outstretched arm, the hair in her eyes. There was a moment of
frozen indecision. And then, her uncertainty vanished, and she stood up, and walked off, shaking her head, as if reprimanding herself for coming so close to making a terrible choice.
    Finally, on the fourth try – six months after the first attempt – she relented – ‘so that you would finally leave me alone’, she told me later. I ran into her not
at the bar, but at the supermarket. She was in the checkout line ahead of me. There’s something sad about a grocery-store express line at eight p.m.; only the loners and the heartbroken use
it. We stood there, smiling and embarrassed, clandestinely comparing each other’s purchases, scattered on the neoprene conveyor belt in front of us – for myself, a rotisserie chicken;
for her, a pre-made salad – and it was then that we decided to join forces and have the dinner together.
    We were married one year later.
    That was the end of the romance. I worked insane hours, giving myself entirely to my career. I had little time left for Libby. When we had our first child, I had little time left for him. I was
always grasping for that next rung on the corporate ladder. From VP of Sales, I jumped to Chief Operating Officer at NetGuard. From there, it was just one more leap to Chief Executive Officer. I
got my first CEO job when I was only thirty-eight years old. It was the peak of my career.
    As my career ascended, the rest of my life fell apart. I had always drunk, but somehow managed to control how and when I did it. I was what is referred to as a ‘highly functional
drunk’ – which is a term used by people who can’t admit they have a problem. I’d show up to work sober and perform competently – even brilliantly – but as soon
as the hands on my Rolex said six o’clock, I knew it was time to leave work and drink. ‘
My
time,’ I called it, possessively, as if my employer could control me from eight
to six, but, after that, it was my right to claim my body and destroy it however I damn pleased. I stayed drunk most nights, sometimes blacking out, which I suppose was a mercy, since at least I
forgot most of the sins I committed while loaded.
    Over the years drinking turned into snorting, and snorting into whoring, and whoring into crystal meth. Oh, and there was gambling, too. How
that
started, I still do not know. My father
never gambled, and – until I started using – neither did I. But one day, with a straw in my nose, a whore in my bed, and a
Racing Form
on my lap, I looked up and realized that
the thrill of a new bet made me almost as high as the thrill of a new woman. When you find yourself calling your bookie at two in the morning, laying ten g’s on the coin toss at Ball State,
you know you have a problem.
    By the time I made it to CEO, I was out of control – fighting in bars, screwing strangers, gambling everything I earned, losing it and winning it back, owing money to scary men, arriving
home high or drunk, hurting Libby in every way I could, short of violence.
    The end came when my son died. Cole was three years old the night he drowned.
    Even after the DA cleared me of his death, Libby did not leave me. To this day, I have no idea why she