one shoulder to the other, so arranged that you'd tear it when you twisted the cap. I teased the edges of the stamp with the ball of my thumb. I picked up the bottle and held it to the light, looking at the overhead bulb through the amber liquid the way you're supposed to view an eclipse through a piece of smoked glass.
That was what whiskey was, I'd sometimes thought. The filter through which you can safely look upon a reality that's otherwise too vivid for the naked eye.
I put the bottle down, made a phone call. A gruff bass voice said,
'Faber Printing, this is Jim.'
'This is Matt,' I said. 'How's it going?'
'Not so bad. And you?'
'Oh, I can't complain. Say, I didn't catch you at a bad time, did I?'
'No, it's a slow day. What I'm doing right now is running carry-out menus for a Chinese restaurant. They buy thousands of them at a time and their deliverymen leave stacks of them in every vestibule and hallway they can find.'
'So you're printing litter.'
'That's exactly what I'm doing,' he said cheerfully. 'Contributing what I can to the solid-waste disposal problem. And you?'
'Oh, nothing much. It's a slow day.'
'Uh-huh. There's a memorial service for Toni. Did you hear about that?'
'No.'
'What's today, Thursday? It's sometime Saturday afternoon. Her family's holding a funeral somewhere in Brooklyn. Is there a section called Dyker Heights?'
'Near Bay Ridge.'
'Well, that's where the family lives, and they'll be having a wake out there, and a service with a requiem mass. Some of Toni's friends in the program wanted a chance to remember her, so somebody arranged the use of an assembly room at Roosevelt. There'll be an announcement at the meeting tonight.'
'I'll probably be there.'
We talked a few more minutes, and then he said, 'Was there anything else? Or can I go run the rest of these menus?'
'Go to it.'
I hung up and sat down in my chair again. I must have sat there for twenty minutes.
Then I stood up and got the bottle from the dresser. I walked into the bathroom, and when I got there I gave the cap a twist, breaking the seal and tearing the tax stamp. In one motion I removed the cap with my right hand and tilted the bottle in my left, letting its contents spill into the sink. The smell of good bourbon came rushing up from the porcelain basin, even as the booze spiraled down the drain. I stared down at it until the bottle was empty, then raised my eyes to regard myself in the mirror.
I don't know what I saw there, or what I'd expected to see.
I held the bottle inverted over the sink until every drop was out of it, capped it, dropped it in the wastebasket. I turned on both taps and let the water run for a full minute. When I turned it off I could still smell the booze. I ran more water and splashed it up against the sides of the basin until I was satisfied that I'd washed it all away. The smell of it still rose from the drain, but there was nothing I could do about that.
I called Jim again, and when he answered I said, 'This is Matt. I just poured a pint of Early Times down the sink.'
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'There's something new available that you ought to know about. It's called Drano.'
'I think I may have heard of it.'
'It's better for the drains, it's cheaper, and it's not a whole lot worse for you if you should happen to drink it by mistake. Early Times. What's that, bourbon?'
'That's right.'
'I was more a scotch drinker myself. Bourbon always tasted like varnish to me.'
'Scotch tasted medicinal.'
'Uh-huh. They both did the job though, didn't they?' He paused for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was serious.
'Interesting pastime, pouring whiskey down the sink. You did this once before.'
'A couple of times.'
'Just once that I recall. You were about three months sober. No, not quite that, you were just coming up on your ninety days. You say there was another time?'
'Around Christmas last year. Things had fallen apart with Jan, and I was feeling sorry for myself.'
'I remember. You didn't call me that time.'
'I called you. I just didn't happen to mention the bourbon.'
'I guess it slipped your mind.'
I didn't say anything. Neither did he for a moment. Outside, someone, hit his brakes hard and they squealed
