anything.'
'So you smoked for the good of the revolution.'
'Bet your ass. Camels, a couple of packs a day. Or Picayunes, but they were hard to find.'
'I never heard of them.'
'Oh, they were wonderful,' she said. 'They made Gauloises taste like nothing at all. They would rip your throat out and turn your toenails brown. You didn't even have to light them. You could get cancer just carrying a pack in your purse.'
'When did you quit?'
'In New Mexico, after my marriage broke up. I was so miserable anyway I figured I wouldn't even notice cigarette withdrawal. I was dead wrong about that, as it turned out, but I stuck with it anyway.
You don't drink at all?'
'No.'
'Did you ever?'
'Oh, yes.'
'He said emphatically. You drank, therefore you don't.'
'Something like that.'
'I sort of figured as much. Somehow you don't remind me of any of the lifelong abstainers I've known. I don't usually get along too well with that type.'
She was sitting crosslegged on top of the bed. I was lying on my side, propped up on one arm. I reached out a hand and touched her bare thigh. She rested her hand on top of mine.
'Does it bother you that I don't drink?'
'No. Does it bother you that I do?'
'I don't know yet.'
'When you find out, be sure and let me know.'
'All right.'
She tilted the can, drank a little beer. She said, 'Is there anything I can offer you? I can make coffee, such as it is. Do you want some?'
'No.'
'I don't have any fruit juice or soft drinks, but it wouldn't take me a minute to run to the corner. What would you like?'
I took the beer can out of her hand and put it on the table next to the bed. 'Come here,' I said, easing her down onto the mattress. 'I'll show you.'
Around eight I groped around until I found my shorts. She had dozed off, but she woke up while I was dressing. 'I have to go out for a while,' I told her.
'What time is it?' She looked at her watch and made a clucking sound with her tongue. 'Already,' she said. 'What a lovely way to while away the hours. You must be starving.'
'And you must have a short memory.'
Her laugh was richly lewd. 'For nourishment. Why don't I make us something to eat.'
'I have to be someplace.'
'Oh.'
'But I'll be done around ten. Can you hold out until then? We'll go out for hamburgers or something.
Unless you're too ravenous to wait.'
'That sounds good.'
'I'll be back around ten-thirty, no later than that.'
'Just ring my bell, honey. And, incidentally, you do. Loud and clear.'
I went to St. Paul's. I walked down the steps to the basement entrance, and the minute I got inside I felt a sense of relief, as if I'd been holding something in check and could let go of it now.
I remember, years ago, waking up and needing a drink bad. And going downstairs to McGovern's, just next door to the hotel, where they opened early and where the man behind the stick knew what it was like to need a morning drink. I can remember how it felt in my body, the pure physical need for a drink, and how that need was actually slaked before I got the drink down. As soon as it was poured, as soon as I had my hand on the glass, some inner tension relaxed. The simple knowledge that relief was just a swallow away banished half the symptoms.
Funny how it works. I needed a meeting, I needed the company of my fellows, I needed to hear the wise and foolish things that got said at meetings. I needed, too, to talk about my day as a way of releasing it, and thus integrate the experience.
I hadn't done any of this yet, but I was safe now. I was in the room, and it would get done in due course.
So I felt better already.
I went over to the coffee urn and drew myself a cup. It wasn't a great deal better than the instant decaf I'd had at Willa's. But I drank it down and went back for more.
