We walked to the Camry and he asked if I was hungry. I realized that I was. I hadn't had dinner, just a slice of pizza on the way home from the library.
'You like Middle Eastern food, Matt? I don't mean your hole-in-the-wall falafel stand, I mean the real thing. Because there's a place in the Village that's really good.' I said it sounded fine. 'Or you know what we could do, we could take a run out to the old neighborhood. Unless you spent so much time on Atlantic Avenue lately that you're sick of it.'
'It's out of the way, isn't it?'
'Hey, we got a car, right? We got it, we might as well get some use out of it.'
He took the Brooklyn Bridge. I was thinking that it was beautiful in the rain, and he said, 'I love this bridge. I was reading the other day how all the bridges are deteriorating. You can't just leave a bridge alone, you got to maintain it, and the city does, but not sufficiently.'
'There's no money.'
'How did that happen? For years the city could afford to do whatever it had to do, and now all the time there's no money. Why is that, do you happen to know?'
I shook my head. 'I don't think it's just New York. It's the same story everywhere.'
'Is it? Because all I see is New York, and it's like the city is crumbling. The whadayacallit, the infrastructure? Is that the word I want?'
'I guess.'
'The infrastructure's falling apart. There was another water main break last month. What it is, the system is old and everything's wearing out. Who ever heard of water mains bursting ten, twenty years ago? Do you remember that sort of thing happening?'
'No, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Lots of things happened that I didn't notice.'
'Yeah, well, you got a point. That would go for me, too. Lots of things still happen that I don't notice.'
The restaurant he chose was on Court half a block from Atlantic.
At his suggestion I had the spinach pie appetizer, which he assured me would be entirely different from the spanakopita they served in Greek coffee shops. He was right. The main course, a casserole of cracked wheat and sauteed chopped meat and onions, was also excellent, but too much for me to finish.
'So you can take it home,' he said. 'You like this place? Nothing fancy, but you can't beat the food.'
'I'm surprised they're open this late.'
'Saturday night? They'll be serving until midnight, probably later.'
He leaned back in his chair. 'Now the way to cap off the meal, if you were to do it right. You ever had something called arak?'
'Is that anything like ouzo?'
'Sort of like ouzo. There's a difference, but yeah, it's sort of like it.
You like ouzo?'
'I wouldn't say I liked it. There used to be a bar on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Ninth called Antares and Spiro's, a Greek joint—'
'No kidding, with that name.'
'— and sometimes I'd drop in after a long night drinking bourbon at Jimmy Armstrong's and have a glass or two of ouzo for a nightcap.'
'Ouzo on top of bourbon, huh?'
'As a digestive,' I said. 'To settle the stomach.'
'Settle it once and for all, from the sound of it.' He caught the waiter's eye, signaled for more coffee. 'I really wanted to drink the other day,' he said.
'But you didn't.'
'No.'
'That's the important thing, Pete. Wanting to is normal. This isn't the first time you wanted to drink since you got sober, is it?'
'No,' he said. The waiter came and filled our cups. When he'd walked away Pete said, 'But it's the first time I considered it.'
'Seriously considered it?'
'Yeah, I would say seriously. I would say so.'
'But you didn't do it.'
'No,' he said. He was looking down into his coffee cup. 'What I almost did, I almost copped.'
'Drugs?'
He nodded. 'Smack,' he said. 'You ever have any experience with heroin?'
'None.'
'Never even tried it?'
'Never even considered the possibility. Never even knew anybody who used it, not in the days when I was
